Linguistic Engineering in Hu Jintao's China: The Case of the 'Maintain Advancedness' Campaign

Linguistic engineering is the attempt to affect people's attitudes and beliefs by manipulating the language that they hear, speak, read and write. It takes a 'pluralistic' form in democratic societies, where governments, political parties, lobby-groups, advertisers, religious groups and social movements promote words, slogans and discourses to advance their often divergent goals. And it has taken a totalitarian form under many Marxist dictatorships, which have used it as a tool in their attempts to create new, revolutionary human beings capable of creating a communist future.