printChinese Social Thought in the Canon of Erya:
Names, Norms, and Social Governance
Ju Yunsheng
Dr. Sci. (Philo.), Leading Research Fellow at the Center for Russian Studies, Shanghai International Studies University, PRC 2023017@shisu.edu.cn
Kremnyov E.V.
Dr. Sci. (Sociol.), Assoc. Prof., Leading Research Fellow, Institute of Education and Humanities, Head of the Academic and Methodological Unit for Oriental Studies, Research Assoc. Prof., Higher School of Linguistics, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Kaliningrad, Russia evkremnev@kantiana.ru
Ju Yunsheng, Kremnyov E.V. Chinese Social Thought in the Canon of Erya: Names, Norms, and Social Governance. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2026. No 10. P. 135-140
The Erya canon has traditionally been regarded as an ancient Chinese dictionary and a monument of the philological discipline known as xiaoxue (“minor learning”). However, its significance extends beyond lexicography and the interpretation of the classics. The authors seek to examine the Erya as an instrument of social normalization: by explaining the names of things, kinship terms, titles, and canonical vocabulary, it helped establish rules for understanding the surrounding world and the social order. Particular attention is paid to the canon’s connection with the Confucian principle of the “rectification of names.” The dictionary not only clarified meanings but also transformed language into a means of aligning social roles with their corresponding duties. This approach makes it possible to view the Erya as an example of a text that exerted a significant influence on the shaping of social consciousness through the canonization of stable cultural formulas. It is concluded that the Erya was not merely a philological reference work, but also a mechanism of social governance through the symbolic organization of traditional Chinese society.
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