| Lin Yutang is not only a world-renowned writer but also an active "journalist" during the Minguo Period (period of Republic of China). On the basis of his journalistic practice and thoughts, this paper investigates his journalistic practice and style,analyzes his journalistic thoughts and its shaping process, as well as discusses his status in the history of journalism in China to show the unknown side of this famous writer,namely the image of a journalist. This paper is divided into four parts with the structure of "general-divided-general".The first part of this paper, namely the first chapter explores the growing background of Lin Yutang as a journalist. Being affected by the propaganda activities of Christianism in the 19th century, following his father to do the missionary activities,studying English in St John's University as well as the experience of editing, all of these equipped Lin Yutang with the basic attainments to be a journalist. The living environment,development of journalism,personal experiences and so on provided Lin Yutang with some favorable chances to become a journalist. Finally, Lin Yutang came into journalism as a participant of the New Culture Movement and started his journey in Journalistic practice under the action of many factors such as the living environment, family background, education experiences, personal characters and so on.The second part of this paper includes the second and third chapters. The second chapter describes his journalistic practice process systematically and especially analyzes his journalistic practice experiences as well as styles. The journalistic practice of Lin Yutang includes four periods, namely the Period of Yiisse (1924-1932),the Period of Lun Yu (1932-1936), the Period of Anti-Japanese propaganda(1936-1945) and the Period of All Things Considered (1965-1967). In the Period of Yusse, he criticized the autocracy and the supporters of the Northern Warlords with the styles of the papers being unscrupulous. In the Period of Lun Yu, because of the suppression of expression, he established the magazines like Lun Yu (Analects), the Jenchienshih, the Yuchoufeng and so on, and wrote A History of the Press and Public Opinion in China to criticize the extreme domination of the news consensus by the right-wing of the Kuomintang. In the Period of Anti-Japanese campaign, he gave speech in the western media to get the support from the international community and make them understand Chinese participation in the world war. Furthermore, in the Period of All Things Considered, he established the special column called "All Things Considered" in the central press. His journalistic practice owned the characters of real anti-war properties, standing in the position of the mass and literary flavor. Compared with other intellectuals in the same era, unlike Hu Shi who contributed all the life to his political career or Lu Xun who stood by the left-wing side that publicly against authority,he chose the "middle-of-roader" journalistic way to sympathize with the Communist Party and revolutionary news activities. The third chapter mainly talks about the connotation and forming process of the journalistic opinions of Lin Yutang.In the process of his journalistic practice, he absorbed the western news concepts actively and combined them with the news concepts obtained from his journalistic practice, and then formed his own concepts with the functions, literary forms, journal editing and management of the news concerned. At the same time, he was not satisfied with the suppression of expression at that time, so after studying the development process of the will of the people as well as the consensus in China, he put forward his own opinions about the consensus, which were firstly, the consensus came from the public not the government; secondly the public were the main bodies to produce and promote the development of the consensus while the elites and officials were just the participants; thirdly the consensus can be suppressed for a period of time but cannot be suppressed all the time; fourthly the opinions of the public boosts the development of the society. The formation of his journalistic opinions was not only affected by western democracy and freedom as well as the Three People's Principals of Sun Yat-sen (Nationalism,Democracy,the People's Livelihood) but also absorbed the western media communication theory like liberalism journal theory, social responsibilities and so on. In addition, it was related by his spirit of scholars participate in the politics,the traditional Chinese ideological resource of Confucian mean and the intellectual spirit.The third part of the paper is Chapter 4 which contains the discussion and research about the influences of Lin Yutang upon the basis of former analysis. He gave birth to the research about the press in China and the result of it made a contribution to the express of Chinese history of journalism within the world. He created informal press style lead to the appearance of "the year of magazine" which contributes to the revolution of the magazine style; making humor style became popular at that time. He used an ironic and facetious way to criticize warlord government and the news-control policy of Nationalist Party, indicating an upright scholar has the impartial and objective critical spirit and the strong willing for free of news. He also used his words and speeches to call for the support for Anti-Japanese War, which changed the prejudice to Chinese and made a positive effort to the victory. And meanwhile,Lin Yutang's journalistic practice and thoughts had the limitation because of times and individual experiences.The forth part is epilogue which discusses substantive characteristics about the image of Lin Yutang. Lin is regarded not like what traditional research said: negative,support humor only and leisurely literati, he was a righteous, patriotic and innovative journalist. Totally speaking, he was a progressive journalist with his own style and also has the limitation of times.Lin Yutang is famous as a writer not a "journalist" in the social and academic field of vision, but the book A History of the Press and Public Opinion in China written by him is the first journalism and press monograph published abroad; the experiences of news practice and thought have already become a part which can not be ignored within the history of Chinese journalism and have resulted in a huge influence of journalism industry. This paper aims to use an objective way to expound Lin Yutang,and judge his contribution and status for the development of journalism and society.Via researching about him, we hope he could be the representative of May Fourth Period and can comprehensively indicate intellectual of that time. |
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