중국 한자학의 연구 동향 분석

The present paper aims at analyzing the trends of research on the study of Chinese characters for the recent five years from 2014 to 2018. This paper takes on two big topical approaches: First, the study of Chinese characters is examined in its specific academic disciplines as categorized in the topic by the Ministry of Education(MOE) of China and Chinese academic circles. Second, statistics are analyzed according to the research fields discussed by the ‘academic papers’ published in Chinese major periodicals(核心期刊), CSSCI and other Chinese academic journals on Chinese characters study and by the ‘research tasks’ assigned as government-funded research projects. Based on the analysis, this paper examines the trends of the research on the study of Chinese characters.The findings from the analysis on 1,083 academic papers on the study of Chinese characters published in 11 academic journals are: the research fields of these papers may be divided in accordance to the periodical division of Chinese characters’ development history into ‘Ancient Chinese Characters’, ‘Modern Chinese characters’, and ‘Contemporary Chinese characters’; major research fields of papers not classifiable in terms of historic periods are divided into 10 topics, including ‘general theories on Chinese characters’, ‘dictionaries’, ‘Chinese characters used outside of China’, ‘the history of research on Chinese Characters’, ‘the culture of Chinese characters’, ‘Chinese etymology’, and ‘changes in Chinese characters’.The statistical analysis shows that the highest performance in the research is made on Ancient Chinese Characters(28.1%), followed by Modern Chinese Characters(17.3%), Contemporary Chinese Characters(17.2%), dictionaries (12.4%), general theories on Chinese characters(9.1%), and the culture of Chinese characters(8.4%) by the order of the number of published papers. In the research on Ancient Chinese characters, the largest numeric research performance was made on characters during the Warring States(43.6%), and, as research materials, jiandu (簡牘) occupied over 50%, of which chujian (楚簡) was the major topic. The topics of research tasks on the study of Chinese characters conducted as the Chinese MOE and NSSFC funded projects have been confirmed as consistent with this result.The key word in contemporary China’s research in the study of Chinese characters is ‘expansion’. On the aspect of research materials, there was expansion from the materials handed down since the ancient times to the materials excavated. On the chronological aspect, the expansion was made with the research on modern Chinese characters in Seal Script and Regular Script as a medium stage between Ancient characters and contemporary characters. Spatial expansion occurred in the collection and organization of research materials on Chinese characters used from inside to the outside of China. The Chinese research in progress on the study of Chinese characters used outside of the country is noteworthy. Besides the Chinese character materials imported from China and handed down, those formulated on the Korean peninsula in the ancient times require consideration of the socio-cultural, educational, and political environment of the Korean peninsula. In this sense, I look forward to Korean researchers’ taking initiative to lead further research in Chinese characters identifiable on the Korean peninsula.