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China bans wordplay in attempt at pun control
- kercker 12y agoChinese government has a say in every aspect of its people's life. It controls what books can be read, what movies or TV series can be watched, what news can be reported, what part of the Internet can they access, what words can be said by TV anchors (no acronyms like "NBA").
- higherpurpose 12y agoWhat do you think will happen first? An American revolution or a Chinese one? Let's take bets. One one side we have a country where the population has a less than 10 percent approval of its government, yet can't be bothered to (really) do anything about it. Dissent exists from a few but it usually falls on deaf years. You could say it's a more Huxley-esque society. On the other side we have a country where most believe in its government, but everyone is tightly controlled and there's not much room for dissent because any dissent is swiftly quieted down before it spreads to the masses. You could say it's more of an Orwell-esque society.
- captainmuon 12y agoI fear we'll meet in the middle. China is getting more and more (economically) open, and captialist. At the same time, western governments have acquired a taste for surveillance and authoritanism. As if people were trying to get the worst from both systems...
- captainmuon 12y agoGood luck trying to ban that, the Chinese seem to love puns. It will be probably as successful as smoking bans, or getting people to follow traffic rules. However it looks to me that this has been blown out of proportion. Just guessing from the quotes they gave, they want to stop sloppy use of language in media, so kids don't pick up the wrong phrases. Imagine a news anchor saying "for all intensive purposes", or someone in a medical show talking about "old-timers' disease" or "high pertention". If it's clearly a joke, it's one thing, but if it's ignorance or sloppyness, then I'm sure its frowned upon here too.