ABSTRACT
Besides the developmental comparative paradigm, Westernization of the Chinese language since the early twentieth century also contributes to the material happening of epistemicide in structuring the knowledge system and educational reform in modern China. This chapter moves a step further to scrutinize the principles and rationales of signification and representation that reduce modern languages, both English and Chinese, into an enclosed linguistic system. The chapter presents an ontological language–discourse perspective for educational studies in China and beyond. This perspective calls for a reconceptualization as well as demystification of the Chinese language, no longer with some Western notions and frameworks, but by historicizing it back to its own historical strata. It prepares a way for further mapping out the conditions of possibility of China's entire knowledge system and educational thinking as expressed in Yijing. Language and discourse are two popular yet contested notions. It goes without saying that almost all research uses language–discourse as its means or object of examination.
