Xinci re, wailaici leng? China's contemporary outlook on borrowings

In the first issue of 1984 of Lexicographical studies, Lü Shuxiang invocated all his fellow linguists to draw their attention to neologisms. Ever since, the production of dictionaries of neologisms has increased: until 2007, more than 50 dictionaries of neologisms have been reportedly put out. Since 1990s, the official list of neologisms has even become a task of the State Language Commission: it has published Yearbooks of Neologisms from 1991 to 1994; from 2005 on, it has published an annual report on Language situation in China, which comprehends the Yearbook of Neologisms. In the meanwhile, other institutes have published dictionaries of neologisms for the years 1995-2005; finally, many other dictionaries, republishing and commenting the neologisms of the Yearbook, have been appearing on the market. An inverse relation exists between dictionaries of neologisms and dictionaries of borrowings. Although not many, all along twentieth century several dictionaries of borrowings have been published until the 1990s; then, dictionaries of neologisms have absorbed borrowings. Yet the debate over borrowings, even in non-academic press, is perhaps even harsher than that over neologisms. The reason of this fierce contraposition of standpoints is that borrowings touch more than native neologisms on the matter of linguistic standardization and purity. The present contribution aims at shedding a light on the standpoints in Chinese academy and Chinese society over borrowings, by means of the analysis of academic and non-academic press; secondly, it carries out researches on treatment of the borrowings in the latest dictionaries of neologisms, according to the latest theoretical categorization.