School of English Studies,Beijing Language and Culture University,Beijing,China Email:1027921302@qq.com

Wu Ping①

School of English Studies,Beijing Language and Culture University,Beijing,China Email:wuping@blcu.edu.cn

[Abstract]With the China National Knowledge Infrastructure(CNKI)as the data sources and the application of CiteSpace software,this paper presents a metrological visualized analysis of 395 journal articles related to Rickshaw Boy research in China from 2000 to 2019.This paper finds 3 main points:(1)The number of journal papers published on the studies of Rickshaw Boy has been increasing each year with some fluctuations;(2)The research primarily focuses on topics including contrastive analysis between Rickshaw Boy and other novels in China and abroad,exploration of the theme of Rickshaw Boy from new perspectives,interpretation of the main characters of Rickshaw Boy and study of the translation of Rickshaw Boy;(3)On the one hand,those 4 topics will continue to be researched and be further explored in the future.On the other hand,new topics like the spreading of Rickshaw Boy will become the new development trend.By exploring the trending topics and research trends of Rickshaw Boy,this study intends to shed light on the Rickshaw Boy research in the future and offer guidance to novice researchers.

[Keywords]Rickshaw Boy;CiteSpace;a visualized analysis;research trends

INTRODUCTION

Written in the 1930s,Rickshaw Boyis treated as a milestone in the history of Chinese literature that is not only beloved by Chinese people but also attracted a large number of foreign readers overseas.In the past 80 years,researchers have explored this novel from various perspectives and fruitful achievements have been made.However,most of the previous research is based on the qualitative approaches,a bibliometric one has not been adopted yet.In order to fill this gap,by employing the approach of bibliometrics,this paper attempts to analyze a sample of 396 journal articles retrieved from CNKI with Rickshaw Boy as their keyword,aiming to explore the existing popular research topics and research trends ofRickshaw Boyfrom 2000 to 2019.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND INSTRUMENT

Different from the documentary research that mainly draw conclusions based on researchers’personal reading and subjective inferences,a combination of the qualitative and quantitative approach is employed in this paper.Thus,all the analyses and conclusions made in this paper are based on objective data.

CiteSpace is the main instrument that is used in this paper to explore the trending topics and research trends ofRickshaw Boyresearch.Invented by Chen Chaomei in 2004,CiteSpace has become an influential visualization software after constant updates and improvements.The version of CiteSpace used in this paper is CiteSpace5.0.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND DATA PROCESSING

Through the application of CiteSpace,this paper attempts to seek answers for the following 3 questions:

(1)What is the status quo ofRickshaw Boyresearch in China?

(2)What are the trending topics ofRickshaw Boyresearch?

(3)What are the research trends ofRickshaw Boyresearch?

All the data in this paper are downloaded from the CNKI with the time range setting from 2000 to 2019 andRickshaw Boyused as the retrieving words.To guarantee the quality of the research,the data source is only limited to the journal articles.As a result,503 journal articles were found,and then those articles were examined carefully to exclude the irrelevant ones.Eventually,395 journal articles,including 79 core articles,[Core articles include the Chinese core journal criterion of PKU and CSSCI.]are selected.The data processing was done on 10th February 2019.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The Status Quo of Rickshaw Boy Research from 2000 to 2019

In this section,a picture of the status quo ofRickshaw Boyresearch in terms of annual output of the journal articles is drawn,as is presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1.Annual Publication Record of Rickshaw Boy Research in China

As shown in Figure 1,based on the publication records per year,it is found that the number of journal papers published on the studies ofRickshaw Boyhas been increasing each year with some fluctuations from 2000 to 2019.Generally speaking,the research in the 20 years can be divided into 3 phases:the first phase,from 2000 to 2005,is defined as an accumulation stage since there is only limited number of articles published annually;the second phase,from 2006 to 2010,is regarded as a fast development stage due to the rapid increase in these 9 years;the third phase,from 2011 to 2019,is defined as a stable development stage as the amount of published articles per year tends to stabilize.

The Exploration of Trending Topics of Rickshaw Boy Research

In this section,with the application of CiteSpace,the word frequency analysis is made to explore the tending topics ofRickshaw Boyresearch from 1999 to 2019.

The frequency refers to the number of occurrences of certain topics that the keywords stand for.And keywords with high frequency indicates that these topics have attracted more researchers’attention.Centrality stands for keywords’ability to have connections with others.Thus,keywords with both high frequency and centrality can best reflect the trending topics of research inRickshaw Boy.The statistics generated by CiteSpace suggests that 20 keywords occurring more than 3 times in the analysis,as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2.Detailed Information about Keywords Occurring More than 3 Times

As shown in Figure 3,apart from theRickshaw Boy,keywords with both high frequency and centrality include“Tragic Fate”,“Translation Strategy”,“Literary Translation”,“Social Tragedy”,“Howard Goldblatt”,“Relevance Theory”,“Tragedy”,“Social Environment”,“Conrad”,and“Corpus”.Based on the content of the keywords,this paper attempts to categorize the trending topics ofRickshaw Boyresearch into 4 groups:contrastive analysis betweenRickshaw Boyand other novels in China and abroad,exploration of the theme ofRickshaw Boyfrom new perspectives,interpretation of the main characters ofRickshaw Boyand study of the translation ofRickshaw Boy.Since these 4 trending topics stand for 4 important aspects of the same research,inevitably overlapping studies exist among those trending topics.As a result,when categorizing keywords,the same keywords will likely be grouped into more than one trending topic at the same time.

The Contrastive Analysis between Rickshaw Boy and Other Novels in China and Abroad

Keywords,such as“Conrad”,“Contrastive Analysis”,“Social Tragedy”,“Realism”,“Individualism”,“Tragedy”,etc.will be discussed in this topic.

On the one hand,the contrastive studies are conducted betweenRickshaw Boyand the following foreign novels,such asThe Old Man and the Sea,The Great Gatsby,Jude the Obscure,Tess of the D’Urbervilles,L'Assommoir,etc.The following are some representative studies:Yang(2017,pp.93-95.)explores the influence of the western and eastern literary ecosystem on linguistic features betweenRickshaw BoyandThe Great Gatsby;Sun(2003,pp.72-76)makes a comparison betweenRickshaw BoyandJude the Obscurefrom different aspects to explore different artistic ideas of Hardy and Lao She;Li(2011,pp.39-40)comparesRickshaw BoywithL’Assommoirand revealed that it is the character weakness and the darkness of the society that cause the tragic end of Xiangzi and Gervaise.

On the other hand,researchers compareRickshaw Boywith some Chinese tragic novels,including Su Tong’s Rice,Jia Ping’ao’sHappy Dreams,Chao Yu’sThunderstorm,etc.Among these contrastive studies,it is found that studies ofRickshaw Boyand Su Tong’sRiceoutnumber others,which means the comparison between these two novels has drawn more attention from Chinese researchers.For example,Li(2006,pp.89-93),Li(2013,pp.41-44),and Shao(2014,pp.40-45)compare these two novels from different historical views,life experience,and intertextuality respectively.

Interpretation of the Main Characters inRickshaw Boy

Keywords relating to this topic are“Xiangzi”,“Tigress”,“Female Image”,“Individualism”,“Realism”,“Small Potatoes”,“Character Tragedy”,etc.

Most of studies focused on the interpretation of Xiangzi,the major character in this novel,aiming at exploring the causes that make Xiangzi,once a robust and energetic youngrickshaw boywho was idealistic towards life,becomes degenerated in the end.Also,some studies were conducted to give a full interpretation of Tigress,another main character in the novel.For example,Zhang(2001,pp.201-123)pointes out that the tragedy of character is the primary cause for the degeneration of Xiangzi in the end;Ji(2007,pp.48-50)claims that main causes of his tragic fate are the temptation of money to buy a rickshaw and the sexual temptation from Tigress,etc.;Zhan(2014,pp.169-174)explores Xiangzi from the perspective of psychoanalysis; Zhan(2013,pp.64-70)also gives a pluralistic interpretation of females characters inRickshaw Boy;Li(2009,pp.147-152)attempts to redefine the Tigress by exploring three important aspects.

The Study of Translation of Rickshaw Boy

The representative keywords of this topic are“Translation Strategy”,“Literal Translation”,“Skopos Theory”,“Howard Goldblatt”,“Relevance Theory”,“Corpus”,“Contrastive Analysis”,“Translation Style”,etc.Rickshaw Boy has been translated into 38 languages(Jin,2016,pp.103-111)over the world,thus the studies of the translation ofRickshaw Boyhave become a trending topic in recent 20 years.Currently,Evan King’s Rickshaw Boy in 1945,Jean Jame’sRickshaw:the novel Lo-t’o Hsiang Tzuin 1979,Shi Xiaojing’sCamel Xiangziin 1981,and Howard Goldblatt’sRickshaw Boyin 2010 are the four influential English translated versions.Among those studies of translation,many scholars focus on the contrastive studies of these four translated versions to explore the translation strategy,subjectivity and style of translators,etc.

Chen(2012,pp.149-152)explores the culture filtering in Evan King’s translated version ofRickshaw Boy;Sun(2013,pp.76-80)makes a comparative study of the free indirect speech in four translated version to explore different styles of translators;Lin(2018,pp.109-118)compares the acceptability and cultural refractivity in Evan King’s and Howard Glodblatt’s translated version from the perspective of world literature;Jin(2016,pp.103-111)conducts a comparative study on the prefaces of four English translated version to explore subjectivity of translators; Huang(2011,pp.100-106)explores the shifts of personal pronoun subjects and narrative point of view in Shi’s and Jame’s translated versions,aiming to reveal different translational styles from the perspective of the bilingual parallel corpus.

Exploration of the Theme ofRickshaw Boyfrom New Perspectives

Keywords like“Individualism”,“Realism”,“Social Tragedy”,“Psychological Crisis”,“Character Tragedy”,“Marital Tragedy”,“Female Image”,etc.are discussed in this section.Since the interpretation ofRickshaw Boymay change with the times,researchers have been attempting to reinterpret its theme from new perspectives constantly.

Shao(2006,pp.14-20)defines Xiangzi as a stereotype of a peasant migrating into the city and considers the novel a reflection of the contemporary Chinese society;Wei(2005,pp.100-104)explors the tragic end of Xiangzi and found that it is the social environment and traditional culture that made him to stand in a paradox of existing; Zhang(2018,pp.1-28)explores the political philosophy and modern implication hidden inRickshaw Boy; Meng(2017,pp.58-67)claims that the theme ofRickshaw Boyshould be explored from the perspective of Christian culture; Shi(2015,pp.77-85)finds that apart from the tragedy of character and social factors,the primary cause of Xiangzi’s tragic fate should be considered as an original sin of Christian.Thus,the theme of the novel can reflect Lao She’s understanding of Christianity;Jiang(2010,pp.121-125)explores this novel from the perspective of phenomenology.

Research Trends of Rickshaw Boy

Since the interpretation of the novel may change with the times,new perspectives theories will be adopted by researchers to redefine this novel in the future.Based on the previous studies,we conclude that those five trending topics listed above will continue to be the major research topics and will be further explored and enriched in the future.Meanwhile,new topics,such as the study of spreading ofRickshaw Boy,the study of translation from the perspective of the parallel corpus,etc.are springing up and will become the research trend in the future.

Traditionally,researchers only focus on the comparative study of different translated versions ofRickshaw Boyand make conclusions based on a limited number of examples or subjective readings.With the development of the corpus linguistics,it becomes an inevitable trend to use corpora to conduct empirical studies on the translation ofRickshaw Boyto probe into the subjectivity and style of translators.

After 30 years of development,China has become the world's second-largest economy,however,its cultural development has lagged far behind its economy.Thus,to promote Chinese culture overseas,the government is implementing the culture“going global”cultural strategy.Literature plays an important role in its culture,thus the Chinese government is carrying out the translation of classic Chinese literature project.According to the statistics,Rickshaw Boyhas only been translated into 17 languages(2012,pp.127-130)in 2012 and into 38 languages in 2016(Jin,2016,pp.103-111).So,the study of spreading ofRickshaw Boyshould become an important part of its translation study.However,in the past 20 years,the number of spreading studies is far from enough.As a result,this topic will become a new research trend in the future.

CONCLUSION

By employing the bibliometric approach and with the application of the software CiteSpace,this paper attempts to make a metrological visualized analysis of 395 journal papers related toRickshaw Boyresearch in China from 2000 to 2019.According to the frequency and centrality of keywords,this paper finds 4 trending topics in Rickshaw Boy research.Based on the previous studies and the national policies,on the one hand,those five topics will continue to be researched and be further explored in the future; on the other hand,the exploration of the spreading of Rickshaw Boy,the study of the translation of Rickshaw Boy from the perspective of corpora will become the new research trend in the future.However,this paper only focuses on the study of Chinese.The comparison between Chinese and international studies of Rickshaw Boy has not been conducted and will be explored in the future.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This project is supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(18ZDJ02).

This project is supported by supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities,and the Research Funds of Beijing Language and Culture University(20YCX046).