Baihua as an Element: Toward a New Methodology of Studying May Fourth Literary Discourses

It is often said that the May Fourth new literature movement is characterized by an emphasis on the use of vernacular (baihua) instead of classical Chinese (wenyan) in literary writing. This understanding is based on an interpretation of baihua as a notion that is separate from and opposite to wenyan. However, the fact that many discourses and debates were generated during the May Fourth period concerning various issues of the vernacular literature or language, suggests that the idea of baihua was not self-evident and self-explanatory at the time. To unravel the discursive complexity of May Fourth literary discourses, I propose to examine baihua not as a form of language but a composite concept that implies and combines different meanings. Specifically, I argue that baihua was conceived by May Fourth intellectuals not only as a new instrument or medium of writing, but also a kind of quality, property, or potentiality of a language. In some cases, baihua was also considered a kind of element that is vital to the survival of any language, and therefore a criterion with which one can use to evaluate or predict the health or life span of any given language.