The Colloquial Chinese Newspaper And The Neoteric Colloquialism Campaign

The colloquial Chinese newspaper, an important part of the neoteric colloquialism campaign in the late Qing Dynasty, was one of the most characteristic and popular media, and offered a platform for the campaign.During the period of promoting the colloquial Chinese newspapers, the founders of those newspapers innovated and broke through the colloquial theories advocated by early pioneers. They used colloquialism theoretically and practically. The promotion and development of the colloquial Chinese newspapers made big colloquialism influence in society and became a vogue then and there, which made social conditions, bred public opinions and fostered the main body for the higher level colloquialism campaign during the Youths Movement around 1919.The paper, based on aspects of edition and media, studied the colloquial newspaper's influence on colloquialism during the Youths Movement and construed that the colloquial newspaper, an important part of mass media, played a revolution role in the colloquialism campaign, hence drove the social modernization. All of this can help us see the colloquial newspaper's role in the transform of history while describing its overall features and development trend.In the first instance, the paper sets the Anhui Colloquial Journal for an example to illustrate the background and course of running the colloquial newspaper and talk about colloquial newspaper's characteristics in different phases, concluding that the colloquial newspaper's emergence and evolution in the late Qing Dynasty is consistent and indivisible to China's political and social transform at the time. That is to say, the colloquial newspaper worked in the social course and strongly driven by political demands at that time. However, besides publicizing and advocating the social reform or revolution then, the colloquial newspaper, theoretically, practically and linguistically, would make a big influence in the colloquialism campaign during the Youths Movement and exert media's cultural mission, hence drive the China's modernization course social evolution. After an overall analyzing the colloquialism campaign, the paper, focusing on the Anhui Colloquial Journal as a model, illustrates theoretically, practically and linguistically the colloquial newspaper's success in the campaign in direct or indirect ways. Theoretically, the paper describes the relationship between the early colloquialism pioneers and the campaign advocators in the Youths Movement, concluding that the former paved ways for the latter and the latter stood on the latter's shoulders, both of them came down in one continuous line. From the original consistency of oral and written language to the orthodox colloquialism, the colloquial theory system establishment made the campaign final success. Practically, through analyzing the foreword to the Anhui Colloquial Journal, we can see its specific purposes, exoteric language styles, abundant contents, numerous readers, clear formats and big sales, which paved ways for the colloquialism popularization and the next round colloquialism campaign. Linguistically, comparing the Anhui Colloquial Journal to some newspapers before and after the downfall of the Qing Dynasty, such as the Secularity Watch Monthly, the Circulation Daily and the New Youths, we can see the language revolution involved in the newspapers above. However, their backgrounds, operators and purposes were so different that they made various effects. By contrast, we can see that the colloquialism campaign advocated by the New Youths achieved the final success, while the colloquial newspaper's language characteristics, represented by the Anhui Colloquial Joumal, set the basis for the New Youths and the colloquialism campaign during the Youths Movement around 1919.