On the afternoon of March 27th, Professor Shen Guowei, Professor of the Department of Foreign Languages at Kansai University, Director of the Society for Cultural Interaction in East Asia (SCIEA) and a renowned expert on the history of modern lexical exchanges between China and Japan, was invited to give a wonderful academic lecture entitled “The Modernization of Chinese and Language Contact in East Asia” to the faculty and students of the Department of Japanese at the 111 Academic Lecture Hall of the College of Foreign Languages.
This lecture was the first lecture of the College of Foreign Languages East Asian Culture Master Lecture in 2023. The lecture was hosted by Professor Liu Yuzhen, Director of the Center for East Asian Cultural Studies, and Professor Han Lihong, Chair of the Department of Japanese, introduced Professor Shen Guowei.
Professor Shen Guowei discussed many questions with a broad vision, informative, in-depth, and lively humor. For example, “How does the lexical system change when the classroom teaching of new knowledge becomes the new norm in terms of expression and discourse behavior?” “What factors influence the reconfiguration of the lexical system?”, as well as the topic on “The Contribution of East Asian Language Contact to Language Modernization in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam”.
In the Q&A session, Prof. Shen Guowei answered the question of why “the concrete manifestations of Chinese language has not completed modernization and its reasons” raised by our students, and had a wonderful discussion with Prof. Liu Yuzhen. The meeting of the two scholars’ ideas was very beneficial to the students and teachers present, and they expressed that they were more than satisfied. In addition, teachers and students of translation majors and the College of Arts and Letters also participated in the discussion, reflecting the charm of interdisciplinary academic exchange.
Finally, Professor Liu Yuzhen made the concluding remarks. Professor Liu said that the 15th International Conference of the East Asian Cultural Interaction Society will be held at Nankai University from May 6 to 7, 2023, and he looked forward to hearing Professor Shen’s wonderful report again at that time.
During this visit, Prof. Shen Guowei also held specific consultations with members of the Nankai University Preparatory Committee on issues related to the May conference.
