De la rudesse du prunus à la patate douce

Abstract

This collective study results from a collaboration between literary criticism and computational linguistics researchers. It shows a correlation between the teaching of literature and the transformations of civility in Taiwan, focusing on the analysis of plant metaphors in Mandarin textbooks. The first part of this article explicits the methodological choices that were made: we first discuss the theory of transitionality, showing the relevance of the studying of plant metaphors traditionally associated with discours on education; and then retrace the construction of a digitalized corpus of Taiwanese textbooks from 1950 to 2018 and its exploration in order to find the relevant metaphors for a critical analysis. The core of the study then consists in classifying and analysing the plant metaphors found in the textbooks. There are a large number of metaphors culturally imported and imposed on young consciences by compulsory education in an authoritarian framework. This process of indoctrination gradually disappeared with the transformations of the regime in favour of more plural visions of Taiwanese identity. Collecting metaphors to which successive generations of taiwanese pupils were exposed in classrooms allows us to observe the evolution of standards and discuss Norbert Elias concept of civilising process, with the transition from a symbolism in the service of a civility-etiquette specific to a propaganda discourse (for example the prunus flower, symbol of the Republic of China) to a symbolism at the service of a renewed conception of civility which makes possible the mechanism of transitionality necessary for the democratic project (typically the sweet potato, commonly figuring Taiwan).