| The discourse of the university president is a very important spiritual product of higher education history.The discourse is one of the linguistic forms.A rigorous and semantically rich discourse will subtly change the way that human sees things in life,especially in the field of higher education.In university,the president’s discourse always plays an important role while young students are pursuing the truth and spirit,or thinking about how to live a significant life,even in their social relationship.This role is reflected in making students aware of their existence as "human being"and enabling teachers and students to gain a sense of group identity in their discourse.Compared with the familiar teaching process,the president’s discourse is not ubiquitous,but their educational philosophy and spiritual concept carried in the discourse have invisibly created a cultural mechanism for the university.Moreover,they can also cohere the whole university maintain and continue the spirit.Entering the modern society,along with the massive capital and the release of human liberation brought by Reform and Opening up,the position of the intellectual group began to gradually become marginalized from the center of the social stage,including the president of the university.Obviously,under the impact of strong utilitarianism,the president of the university began to put more attention on materialized interest,such as indicators and rankings.As for the discourse,the reduction of ideological content and increasing of materialization and administration has caused a lot of controversies in authenticity.In general,it is admitted that the presidents discouese of modern universities have indeed lost the humanistic spirit that education should have,and they are no longer interpreted by the presidents with educational sentiments,even the discourse may be one of a few viable product in the university field.The disappearing of this vitality has been reflected in different individuals,such as the lost of academic pursuit and the impossibility of dreams.During the period of the Republic of China,many university presidents had shown their purpose of"save the country through education"with their sincere concerns and passions to the country and the expressions with great patriotism feelings manifested.Blending the proficiency of traditional Chinese ideology and the enthusiasm of Western advanced knowledge,coupled with the reference to the advanced university model of other countries,they expressed the educational standard of ideology independence,truth supremacy in their discourse,advocating human temperature and cooperation as the key factors.By helping students develope multi-disciplinary talents and having a sound personality,they demonstrate their educational philosophy of humanity and life.In fact,their language is organically linked to their life experiences.The assertions they expressed in their discourse are actually implicit embodiments of their life choices,especially the conflicts and contradictions between ideals and reality.To this day,people work in educational field begin to realize the importance of returning to the ideals and sentiments of education,and continue to appreciate the short-term"golden age"brought by the presidents of the Republic of China.They wonder if the educational Utopia can be reconstructed.But the problem arouse,is it compatible between the past and the present?Does the feeling expressed in discourse by headmasters of the Republic of China can resonate with today’s people?These are still questions that worth exploring.In this study,total 170 discourse made by the nine presidents of National Peking University,National Tsinghua University,Private Nankai University,National Shanghai Jiaotong University,National Sichuan University,National Zhejiang University and National Taiwan University were studied.And try to interpret the discourse of the president of the Republic of China by means of discourse analysis,committed to explore what the real presidents’ discourse will be like and the feelings reflected in that of the president of the Republic of China.Actually,taking Humboldt’s perspective of language philosophy as the starting point,the generation of language must have a deep root of thought,and neither the visible language style nor the hidden feelings can be inseparable from the different choices of the presidents’ life.Based on the position of human values,the exploration to the presidents’ transformative identity between education and politics provides a deeper factor of discourse analysis.It is precisely on the basis of educational sentiment and identity,the strategy and value orientation of the presidents in the Republic of China has been achieved.Therefore,this study will be divided into five parts.The main logical structure is as follows:The introduction part is based on the background of the topic,the relevant research status,the definition of the core concept,the main research questions,the research focus and difficulties,and the research theoretical basis and method.The second chapter will discuss what is the real university presidents’ discourse based on Humboldt’s language philosophy,and the actual state of today’s university presidents’discourse.The third chapter makes a deep analysis to the discourse of the nine presidents,and discusses the feelings based on the content of the text,with the feelings of family and country,the feelings of the university and the feelings of educating people.Furthermore,the investigation of the history and origin of these three sentiments are included,based on the"Tao Tong"followed by Chinese intellectuals as the beginning of the Chinese intellectuals history.The fourth and the fifth chapters are according to the conclusions summarized in the third chapter.The feelings of the presidents in the Republic of China are different from those of the ancient Chinese intellectuals because of the time.Therefore,in addition to the influence of the"Tao Tong",the presidents’cognition of his role is also an important factor.So presidents’contradiction and choice between the political and education will be discussed in three different dimensions.The choice of identity directly affects the presidents’value orientation in education,especially subject structure,the basic unit of university,and also the final export of university-talent orientation.These are going to be the two dimensions of this chapter,as the most obvious objective performance of presidents’ educational sentiments.However,the elements of times must be taken into account when tracing back and appreciating the presidents’sentiments.It is worth pondering whether the sentiments of the presidents in the Republic of China and the glory days of education they created can be re-emerged in modern times.Therefore,at the end of the study,the possibility of whether the presidents’sentiments can be copied in today will be discussed through the comparison between the nationality and technology of the two eras. |
