Migrating Meanings : Sharing Keywords in a Global World

Interrogates the fundamental concepts with which we think, and which form the key concepts for discussing democracy in the Western world: 'the individual', 'the people', and 'the citizen'. Considers the etymology of terms and use existing contemporary electronic corpora to investigate how key concepts in English and Chinese are changing. Looks at Chinese individuals through the prism of the way they handle concepts that have been imported from the WestWith economic, political and cultural globalisation, our world is inseparable from the fates of other nations and peoples. But how far can we trust English to provide us with a reliable lingua franca to speak about our world? If our keywords reflect our cultures and form parts of specific cultural and historical narratives, they may well help trace the paths we take together into the future. This book seeks the roots of four keywords for our times: the people, the citizen, the individual, and Europe. By exploring these keywords in English and understan