国内英语专业知识体系的系谱学考察

The Disciplinary Curriculum Transformations of English Major Programs in China:A Genealogical Perspective

国内英语专业知识体系受国家制度、意识形态与话语权力的规训和影响,一直处于变动与不断形塑的过程中。本文采用系谱学的研究方法,考察清末、民国与新中国70年英语专业知识体系的历史嬗变,梳理文学学科从中心向边缘位移的演变过程,探讨中国社会变迁、教育政策沿革以及课程设置变化对知识体系建构的影响,并对专业知识体系的重构提出思考。

The"crisis"of English Studies in China has been a burning issue in recent years.One may argue that it is not a real crisis,but a sharp"sense"of crisis with which many Chinese scholars have felt about the popular English major programs aiming to teach English language skills.As it is often believed that English majors should have studied"academic disciplines",the current curriculum structured around English listening,speaking,reading and writing in vast majority of English departments has long been criticized or condemned for the exclusion of disciplinary knowledge.As a matter of fact,many critics of China’s English departments are ignorant of the early history in which literature played dominant roles.For more than one hundred years,the substantial knowledge that China’s English majors are required to command has been under constant change because of transformations in political system,ideology and discourse of power.A genealogical perspective into the issue will well illustrate how literature was built as a major discipline in curriculum and why it is now on the periphery of the curricula.Owing to the educational reform and division of academic subjects in modern university,"English"was established as a discipline in late Qing Dynasty."Literature"was officially planned at the center of the curriculum system,but judging by its specified courses,it almost means"humanities"in a broad sense.It was not until in the 1920 s that a great change began to take place when"literature"in its modern narrow sense came into being and literature courses were accepted as the major knowledge in Chinese universities.Most English departments attached much greater importance to literature even than Chinese departments.A second great change has taken place since 1949.This is due to the fact that the new Chinese government chose to take the example of the former Soviet Union in shaping the country’s socialist educational regime.English teaching began to serve different political,economic and educational purposes.Especially in the past 40 years,the national syllabus for English majors has been revised again and again in order to satisfy new demands after the reforms and opening-up of the country started in 1978.It is undeniable that thousands of English professionals who were educated under the new curriculum have made great contributions to the country,but the practical turn in English major programs has recently rendered students more and more uncompetitive in the job market.Confronted with such a"crisis",some intellectuals have been blindly admiring the literature-oriented curriculum in pre-1949 universities.More often than not,they have cited the success of many distinguished literature scholars as examples or evidence of its"excellence",despite the fact that a return to the very tradition is out of the question.As it is,the"tradition"itself was denounced even in its own time for its essential defects.In general,either literature-oriented curriculum or practical English training has its own advantages and disadvantages.Either of them was structured under different circumstances to serve different social purposes in different times.Considering the imbalance and insufficiency of economic and cultural developments in China,an English department may build its own"disciplinary knowledge"differently according to the goals it wants to attain.