Parallels, Interactions, and Illuminations: Traversing Chinese and Western Theories of the Sign 9781442685703

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PARALLELS, INTERACTIONS, AND ILLUMINATIONS: TRAVERSING CHINESE AND WESTERN THEORIES OF THE SIGN

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ERSU DING

Parallels, Interactions, and Illuminations Traversing Chinese and Western Theories of the Sign

UNIV E R S I TY OF TO RO NTO PRE S S Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2010 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-1-4426-4048-1

Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks. Toronto Studies in Semiotics and Communication Editors: Marcel Danesi, Umberto Eco, Paul Perron, Roland Posner, Peter Schulz Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Ding, Ersu Parallels, interactions and illuminations : traversing Chinese and Western theories of the sign / Ersu Ding. (Toronto Studies in Semiotics and Communication) ISBN 978-1-4426-4048-1 1. Semiotics – Philosophy. 2. Semiotics – China. 3. Semiotics – Europe, Western. I. Title. II. Series: Toronto studies in semiotics and communication P99.D55 2010

302.201

C2010-905040-1

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing activities.

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

List of Figures and Tables

ix

Meaning of Symbols and Orthographic Conventions Introduction

xi

3

1 The Platonic Triad and Its Chinese Counterpart 2 Ontological Realism under Fire 3 The Return of the Subject(s) 4 The Peircean Trichotomy 5 The Poetic Logic

8

18

36

59

77

6 Metaphor and Culture

101

7 Myth Making and Its Socio-Economic Functions

133

Epilogue: Semiotics as an Interdisciplinary Enterprise Technical Glossary

157

Biographical Sketches Notes

177

189

Cited Works and General Bibliography Index

205

195

153

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Acknowledgments

The present writer wishes to express his gratitude to various scholarly organizations and academic journals and publishers for allowing him to try out many of the ideas presented in this book: the International Association for Semiotic Studies, which he now serves as an associate member of the Executive Board; the International Communicology Institute, of which he is currently a fellow; the International Comparative Literature Association, which he served as a member of the Executive Board from 2000 to 2003; the Chinese Research Association for Language and Semiotic Studies, which he served as vice president from 1994 to 1997; Suzhou University, Peking University, and Lingnan University, where he has had the privilege of teaching various courses on semiotics and comparative literature; and Semiotica, Semiotic Review of Books, American Journal of Semiotics, New Literary History, arcadia, Asian Social Science, Comparative Literature in China, Foreign Literature Review, Art Theory and Criticism, Social Science Journal of Suzhou University, Academic Journal of Sichuan Foreign Languages Institute, Oxford University Press, SUNY Press, Beijing Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, and Suzhou University Press, where his earlier writings have appeared. A special appreciation goes to artist Zhu Jian (ᓼଡ), who drew all the beautiful illustrations and tables that appear in this work. Finally, the present writer feels profoundly indebted to his wife Cheng Shujian (‫ݶ‬ၡଡ), whose love and care makes all the drudgery that went into the writing of this book worthwhile. Ersu Ding (ࡱ࣋Ⴏ)

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List of Figures and Tables

Figures 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

Plato’s semiotic triangle 8 Saussure’s illustration of linguistic meaning 29 Saussure’s illustration of linguistic value 30 Saussure’s closed system of communication 31 Saussure’s illustration of concept formation 41 ൕ (horse) 59 ྉ (sun) 68 ᐎ (moon) 68 ࿥ (upper) 69 ሤ (lower) 69 ශ (bright) 69 採 (pick) 69 ଫ (river) & ਫ (stream) 70 ౳ (old) 70 ௾ (advanced in age) 70 ड (phoenix) 71 ौ (father) 71 ෤ (mother) 73 ᕅ (child) 74 ਛ (good) 74 ቦ (filial) 74 ႈ (water) 75 Danesi’s associative structure of metaphor 84 Danesi’s radiating structure of metaphor 87 Multiple possibilities for classification 96

x List of Figures and Tables

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

Squares containing a single symbol 96 Squares containing two symbols 97 Squares containing the letter “O/o” 97 Squares containing the letter “X/x” 97 Squares with an upper-case letter in the centre 97 Squares with a lower-case letter in the centre 98 Ᏻጒ (mandarin ducks) 114 ष“ࠫ” (Luck Is Coming) 115 ࢰष (multiple good luck) 116 ቋᐒ (auspicious clouds) 116 Olympic Torch above the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing 117 ྛ፪ (itch scratcher) 117 ഀ (dragon) 118 षണၑ (luck, rank, and longevity) 120 ಔᏍᄴഀඏ (carp jump over Dragon Gate) 121 ॏ৩ອ‫( ض‬nobility and security) 122 ‫ݎ‬ၑॏ৩ (longevity and nobility) 123 ࢰᄎࢰष (a lot of luck and a very long life) 124 ႅሔ (double happiness) 125 ᐲ+ ಙᕅ = ᐳನᕅ (dates + chestnuts = to have many children soon) 126 ೷௬ٝᕅ (to have as many children as pomegranate seeds) 127 ಲถᎺᏊ (successive years of surplus) 128 ᏶‫( ڌ‬gold or silver ingot used as money) 129 ੢෪႞௝ᕅ (the Four Noble Plants in Chinese painting) 131

Table 1. Water-related metaphors

88

Meaning of Symbols and Orthographic Conventions

Following is a list of symbols and formats of letters or characters that need a brief explanation: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Single slashes as in /aaaa/ Single guillemets as in Double quotation marks as in “cccc” (for several different purposes) Single quotation marks as in ‘dddd’ Italics as in eeee (for several different purposes) Bold letters or characters as in ffff Capital letters as in GGGG Chinese characters and their English translations as in /ྉ/ (sun) Pinyin and the Chinese tonal marks as in /tou2/

To a certain extent, the chapters to come follow the graphic convention adopted in Umberto Eco’s A Theory of Semiotics (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1976). This is especially the case with the two single slashes to indicate that the letter, word, word group, or sentence between them is the expression plane of a particular sign or text, while the word or words between two single guillemets stand for the content of a particular sign or text. For example, /red/ means how the word “red” is pronounced or written, and refers to the notion or concept of being red. There is a particular use of capitalization in chapters 4 and 5 to distinguish conceptual metaphors from their specific instances. /Lorrita IS a lark/, for example, is a specific case of the conceptual metaphor “HUMAN IS BIRD” or “HUMAN IS ANIMAL.” In either case, the link verb in the middle serves as an equation and is always capitalized.

xii Meaning of Symbols and Orthographic Conventions

Last, but not least, is an account of the use of Chinese characters (as well as their Pinyin) in the book. First, when Chinese characters and metaphors themselves are the objects to be explained, they are presented in their original forms followed immediately by English translations in brackets. There is an exception to this in chapter 6, where total metaphorical correspondence between Chinese and English is discussed. The expository context makes it clear that those Chinese metaphors mean exactly the same as the English equivalents placed above them, thus making their English translations redundant and unnecessary. Second, when important Chinese semiotic concepts or statements are mentioned for the first time, they are placed in brackets alongside their English translations in order to reinforce their authenticity. However, the names of Chinese philosophers, semioticians, scholars, and historical figures are given only in English; their Chinese originals can be found in the “Biographical Sketches” section. Third, many of the semiotic sources discussed and quoted in this book are not yet available in English. On the advice of this book’s anonymous readers, a separate section, “Cited Works and General Bibliography,” is provided where all such works are listed in Chinese, with English translations of the titles in brackets. As is required by the tradition of Chinese writing, book titles are enclosed in double guillemets instead of being italicized in English. Fourth, when the pronunciation of a Chinese character needs to be represented, the PRC Pinyin system is employed, sometimes followed by the numerals 1, 2, 3, and 4 to indicate the four different tones unique to the language.

PARALLELS, INTERACTIONS, AND ILLUMINATIONS: TRAVERSING CHINESE AND WESTERN THEORIES OF THE SIGN

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Introduction

Despite its modest length, this book aims to be an in-depth probe into the age-old issue of meaning – an issue that is of great relevance and significance to all branches of human knowledge. The assertions and statements made in it cannot be called original in the sense that similar things have never been said by others before. Nevertheless, they are the results of what may be called a unique configuration of textual materials gleaned from a variety of traditions in terms of both “discipline” and “culture.” More specifically, this book strives to be what Charles Morris called in his definition of semiotics “an interdisciplinary enterprise” – one that allows intellectual connections to be made not only across such diverse academic fields as epistemology, anthropology, linguistics, literary research, sociology, and cultural studies but also between Chinese and Western theories of the sign in the hope that they will all shed light on one another. This book has seven chapters and a brief epilogue. Their overall goals are the following: 1. To offer a historical survey of semiotic realism and examine its basic principles. 2. To discuss the deconstructionist theory of meaning and its inadequacy as a model for interpretation and communication. 3. To re-establish the semiotic subject in the plural sense and call attention to the ideological nature of signs. 4. To elucidate the Peircean theory of the sign and its special significance for the study of Chinese characters. 5. To investigate indexicality and iconicity in relation to the cognitive theory of metaphor.

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6. To demonstrate the close relationship between metaphor and culture. 7. To explore the hidden meanings of media images. 8. To briefly explain the transdisciplinary methodology used in this book. Though the book touches on a fair range of academic topics, explicit and frequent cross-references among its chapters and sections have been provided to facilitate a cohesive reading. In addition, various topical connections and linkages can be made across different parts of the book, forming several disciplinary “blocks” that can be appropriated for various purposes of teaching and learning. The first three chapters, for example, explore the perennial epistemological issue of meaning from a semiotic perspective; this makes them relevant to both philosophy and semiotics. The last four chapters apply the semiotic models of Saussure, Peirce, and Barthes to such diverse fields as language, metaphor, social customs, and popular culture, which fall under the “jurisdiction” of linguistics, rhetoric, sociology, and cultural studies respectively. Those who are interested in Chinese studies can group together chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, and 7; this will take them on an intellectual tour through Chinese philosophy, linguistics, metaphor theory, anthropology, and media studies. Finally, an important feature of this book is that it compares heuristically two distinct traditions of semiotic thought – hence it has potential value for scholars of comparative literature and culture. In terms of specific content, chapter 1 reviews two parallel traditions of semiotic realism represented by Plato and Husserl in the West and by Mo Zi and Ouyang Jian in China. These traditions were largely independent of each other before the twentieth century, but they share two fundamental assumptions with regard to meaning. First, there exists an extrasemiotic world with its own qualities and attributes. Second, human consciousness is capable of knowing and then representing the external world with the help of language. Though various theories on this issue have arisen over the centuries, few of them have systematically challenged Mo Zi and Plato’s premise that an ontological reality exists which gives rise to meaning – hence the historical dominance of the realist theory. Chapter 2 examines the deconstructionist theory, which does question the assumption that an extrasemiotic reality is the ultimate source of true meaning. However, deconstructionism fails to offer a convincing alternative account of how sign users generate meaning in their every-

Introduction 5

day activities. This failure can be attributed to the deconstructionist’s radical appropriation of the Saussurean model of signification, which focuses exclusively on the relations among various linguistic elements within a synchronic system at the expense of their referentiality to the life world. The main theorists discussed in chapter 3 are Ernst Cassirer and Jürgen Habermas, who differ significantly from Saussure on the issue of meaning and its representation. Saussure, a linguist, locates the origin of meanings in the two pre-existing continua of sound and thought, which when combined supposedly articulate phonic units on the one hand and conceptual units on the other. For Cassirer, concepts are formed by a universal consciousness with the assistance of various symbolic forms. Though there are no ready-made concepts before the appearance of language, the thinking subject is still there to encounter what Cassirer calls “indeterminate outward material.” In this sense, the current revival of academic interest in Cassirer constitutes a “return of the subject.” For Habermas, however, the representative function of language, in which the solitary subject first knows and then transmits the properties of the external world, should no longer be privileged. What really matters is the performative attitude of the participants in the interaction, who coordinate their activities by coming to an understanding about something in the world. When a speaker takes up a position with regard to a certain life situation, she enters into an intersubjective relationship that allows her to see things from the perspective of the hearer. This explains why chapter 3’s title – “The Return of the Subject(s)” – is in the plural rather than the singular. Chapter 3 concludes with a discussion of the ideological nature of signs and their institutional deployments – a topic neglected by Habermas. Chapter 4 turns to the other founder (besides Saussure) of modern semiotics: Charles Sanders Peirce, whose approach to semiosis is valuable for its attentiveness to the world of things as well as to the human subject who speaks and writes about them. Central to the discussion is Peirce’s concept of “object,” in relation to which signs can be divided into three main types: icon, index, and symbol. In this regard, chapter 4 makes a historical detour into the Chinese reception of Saussure and Peirce: the former has been canonized in university textbooks, while the latter has been banished from academic discussion for political reasons. This is followed by a detailed analysis of the hidden iconicity in Chinese characters – an iconicity meant to demonstrate that, thanks to

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its picto-phonetic origins, Chinese language lends itself especially well to theorization from the Peircean perspective. Hence the importance of embracing the American’s trichotomous approach to language and other types of signs. Chapter 5 is a natural extension of the previous chapter. As is pointed out in chapter 4, three different techniques of sense making underpin the Peircean trichotomy of signs. The same inferential techniques give rise to “metonymy” and “metaphor,” which together bring us right to the centre of contemporary debates about the relationship between language and reality – a debate that has been revived by cognitive linguistics. In chapter 4, a Western theorist (Peirce) is appropriated to illuminate our understanding of Chinese characters; in chapter 5, a late Chinese theorist (Qian Zhongshu) is discussed for the purpose of addressing what the present writer contends is a major problem facing the cognitive theory of metaphor in the West. Specifically, chapter 5 revisits Qian Zhongshu’s theory of vehicular diversity and multivalency in an attempt to question the plausibility and necessity of hypothesizing conceptual metaphors – hypothesizing that has dominated contemporary discussions of the topic. Using examples from both Chinese and English, this chapter tries to show that conceptual metaphors are nothing more than linguists’ meta-metaphorical constructs whose number could proliferate towards infinity owing to the polysemic nature of figurative expressions. It also argues that lower-level semantic associations between the vehicle and the tenor are sufficient for explaining the existence or emergence of a metaphor. In the past two decades, cognitive theorists of metaphor have mostly been pursuing universal or near-universal conceptual metaphors that underpin metaphorical expressions in different languages; in doing so, they have overlooked numerous cases of non-universality in metaphorical conceptualization. By adopting a cultural-semiotic approach and through relevant examples from both Chinese and English, chapter 6 seeks to demonstrate the inseparable relationship between metaphor and culture. It also tries to show that metaphors are tightly related to a society’s collective value orientations, which tend to highlight certain aspects of things and phenomena that are involved in the process of metaphorical conceptualization. By analysing the Chinese folk custom of well-wishing and Chinese scholars’ preferences for certain kinds of plants when decorating their homes and offices, chapter 6 reveals two predominant metaphorical patterns that lie behind what seems to be a kaleidoscope of symbols.

Introduction 7

Chapter 7 moves to a higher level of signification – one in which the signifier and the signified are media images and ideological themes respectively. Using well-known cultural texts as examples, it demonstrates how everyday myths are created to serve their historically and culturally determined socio-economic functions. Parallels, Interactions, and Illuminations: Traversing Chinese and Western Theories of the Sign aims to be a pioneering work in Sino-Western comparative semiotics. As its title promises, this book compares two parallel traditions of semiotic realism and explores the interactions between the Chinese and Western theories of the sign so that they can illuminate each other.

1 The Platonic Triad and Its Chinese Counterpart

As is made clear in the introduction, this book explores the age-old problematics of meaning. However, this will be done within a theoretical framework in which the unifying point is no longer the ontological reality presumed by so many classical theories of meaning, but rather signs and their interpretations, which involve human participation. Here the term “so many classical theories” refers to the particular tradition of philosophical speculations over meaning that were initiated by Plato (c. 428–347 BC) in the West and by Mo Zi (c. 476–390 BC) in China some 2,400 years ago and that have remained highly influential ever since. One might argue that Platonism has been strongly criticized, especially over the past century, but the fact of the matter is that most modern philosophers of language have applied themselves to criticizing Plato’s inadequacy when explaining the referential function of language, instead of challenging his underlying assumption that there exists an immaterial world of “ideas.” According to Plato, a word has three correlates – sound, idea/content, and thing – and their relations to one another can be illustrated by the following diagram:

Figure 1. Plato’s semiotic triangle

The Platonic Triad and Its Chinese Counterpart

9

The dotted line at the bottom of the triangle indicates the indirect relationship between sound and thing: the two are related to each other through a third correlate, “idea.” Take the word /table/ as an easy example. By using the word form for a particular piece of furniture of a certain size and colour made of a certain kind of material in a specific historical period, the speaker or writer is actually linking the object in question with all other objects that share the same quality of . The meaning of /table/, in other words, is not a singular occurrence of the object; rather, it is a set or class that is a conceptual entity. Many twentieth-century language philosophers are dissatisfied with Plato’s tripartite division of the verbal sign. For example, it has often been argued that there is no mediation between the word form and the object of a proper name. On close analysis, however, this argument does not seem to hold water, because strictly speaking, the great majority of proper names we use in daily life are not to be counted as elements of a language system. In normal circumstances, their referents are known to fewer than one hundred speakers; thus they belong to what may be called “a much more limited code.” Take, for instance, a person with the name Steven Cramer. Because he is not a star in any field nor an occupant of some important public office, the identification of the name with the actual person holding it is restricted to a small circle of relatives and friends plus a limited number of schoolmates and colleagues or co-workers. That is why ordinary names do not make their way into the dictionary as components of a lexicon. And when they do make their appearance in the dictionary as commonly used names, their function changes – that is, they have taken on a universal meaning over and above the fact of pointing to objects. The name /Sue/, for instance, contains the semantic property of , and /David/ indicates that of . In the case of proper names referring to known historical personages, we find the same kind of mediation between word form and object. For example, /Nixon/ does not simply refer to a physical person; it also serves as a well-defined lexical unit alongside other semantic entities of historical figures. To say the very least, the meaning of /Nixon/ should contain a semantic property of because of the Watergate Scandal that the name carrier was involved in during his presidency. For a recent discussion of the issue, we may turn to Willy Van Langendonck’s Theory and Topology of Proper Names (2007), in which he invites his readers to consider the following: (4) John attended a meeting today.

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(5) The Emperor Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo. (6) You are talking about a different John. (7) He is becoming a second Napoleon. For many people, the proper names in the above sentences will seem to have the same referential function, but that is not exactly the case, as Langendonck’s analysis makes clear: In (4) and (5) John, Napoleon and Waterloo function in a way that reflects what is commonly considered the primary function of proper names, i.e. to refer to individual entities … By contrast, in (6) one is speaking of at least two different persons called John. In sentence (7) the NP a second Napoleon is about another man resembling Napoleon. (2007, 11)

What needs to be emphasized again is that because the individual entities referred to by Langendonck’s first group of proper nouns are known to only a small number of people, they are not listed as formal entries in a dictionary. In contrast, Langendonck’s second group of proper nouns are counted as fixed units of a national language because they have acquired new lexical meanings that are universal. As such, / John/ does not just refer to , but rather to ; likewise, /Napoleon/ is not just the name for , but rather for . We will revisit the issue of metaphorization of historical figures in chapter 6. A more respectable albeit equally erroneous challenge comes from those who contend (a) that to understand a sentence is to know what state of affairs would make it true or false, and (b) that the notion of meaning is best explained in terms of truth rather than reference. The sentence /Snow is white/, for instance, can be considered true if, and only if, snow is white. For a layman, such a formula may look very attractive because it depends on a simple mechanism of pairing linguistic entities with non-linguistic states of affairs; but the correlation is not really helpful, because referent as a concept should cover not only people, objects, and places that actually exist in the world but also those that are imagined or invented by language users. In a sentence like /Cheng Shujian dreamed of a dragon/, the subject /Cheng Shujian/ refers to a real person living in one of the residential towers in Gold Coast, Hong Kong, at the present time; and the verb /dreamed of/ indicates a par-

The Platonic Triad and Its Chinese Counterpart

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ticular (subconscious) way of encountering things or events; but the object /dragon/ is a gigantic flying reptile that exists only in Chinese mythologies. Does the fact that one of its words has no physical correspondence make the sentence less referential? Umberto Eco (1976) has this to say: If I declare that /There are two natures in Christ, the human and the divine, and one Person / a logician or scientist might observe to me that this string of sign-vehicles has neither extension nor referent – and that it could be defined as lacking meaning and therefore as a pseudo-statement. But they will never succeed in explaining why whole groups of people have fought for centuries over a statement of this kind or its denial. Evidently this happened because the expression conveyed precise contents which existed as cultural units within a civilization. (1976, 68)

From a liberal semiotic point of view, in other words, it does not matter whether a lexical unit refers to a product of fantasy or hallucination as opposed to a real person, place, object, event, or state of affairs; what is important is “to know which cultural unit (what intentionally analyzable cultural properties) corresponded to the content of that word” (ibid., 62). Finally, there is a widely held view that a linguistic utterance may refer to one thing but mean another. According to John Langshaw Austin, the founder of speech act theory, every time we say something we are also performing a particular linguistic function indicated by the verb that is contained or implied in the sentence. For example, when we utter /I shall be there/, the sentence can be interpreted as a prediction, a promise, or a warning depending on the circumstances. The meaning of the utterance in this case – and by extension in any other case – is nothing but its illocutionary potential. As such, speech act theory has alerted us to the importance of language context in human communication; yet its definition of meaning is too broad to be of much use, given that the possibilities of employing a word in different situations are almost limitless. Besides, the fact that an utterance may have illocutionary and perlocutionary forces does not entail a total loss of meaning for ordinary words like /school/ and /students/. In the final analysis, all words refer to something, in one way or another, and this referential fact brings us back to where we started: the ancient semiotic triangle propounded by Plato. However, that modern philosophers of language have failed to go beyond Plato’s semiotic triad does not mean that the model cannot be

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re-examined from a different perspective. One may, indeed, call into question Plato’s metaphysical explanation of the logical sequence of the three correlates of a sign. Returning to our previous example about , the notion, according to Plato, is not a mental entity or an idea in the mind of a person formed as a result of his having seen many concrete tables; rather, it is an unchanging universal or an immortal idea that exists independently of space and time. On the level of referentiality, Plato’s theory of ideas makes sense in that when we are given /table/ as a lexical item in the dictionary, we are actually encountering something that is apart from space and time; but this raises another question that is epistemological: How are abstract universals or general ideas related to concrete things or specific objects in the experiential world? Plato’s own answer to this question brings in his doctrine of shadows. According to him, all things we perceive with our senses are imperfect copies of eternal ideas. In the famous example he presents in Book VII of The Republic, he compares the ordinary person to a man sitting in a cave looking at a wall but seeing nothing except the shadows of the real things behind his back. Only the wise person, who can hardly be said to exist, has direct access to reality; that person is therefore likened to one who has escaped into the open and seen the real world of ideas. Nevertheless, Plato’s belief in an immaterial world should not be interpreted as a total negation of language and other types of signs we use. He argues that though the world of ideas is not directly accessible to us, we can at least approximate the nature of things by resorting to various instruments of thought. To get closer to the truth of “circle,” for instance, we can utter and hear the word /circle/, or we can explain and learn what is meant by the word, or we can draw and see a sensory image of it in the sand. No one can deny that the shape of a word is ephemeral and changes with time and that its phonetic form is variable and differs from person to person, but a certain correspondence obtains between words and ideas, and that correspondence serves as a bridge for sign users to reach the other world. Though Plato propounded his metaphysics in ancient Greece well over two thousand years ago, such thinking – or at least its theoretic likeness – has not been confined to the time and place of its origin. Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological theory of the sign, for example, is in many ways a twentieth-century version of Plato’s theory of ideas. Like his Greek predecessor, the German philosopher conceives of meanings as a priori entities that may or may not be realized in human semiotic

The Platonic Triad and Its Chinese Counterpart

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systems. This is best exemplified by the fact that though all numerical figures are theoretically possible, only a small portion of them have actually been used. As Husserl himself puts it: As numbers – in the ideal sense that arithmetic presupposes – neither spring forth nor vanish with the act of enumeration, and as the endless number-series thus represents an objectively fixed set of objects, sharply delimited by an ideal law, which no one can either add to or take away from, so it is with the ideal unities of pure logic, with its concepts, propositions, truth, or in other words, with its meanings. They are an ideally closed set of general objects, to which being thought or being expressed are like contingent. There are therefore countless meanings which, in the common relational sense, are merely possible ones, since they are never expressed, and since they can, owing to the limits of man’s cognitive powers, never be expressed. (quoted in Nöth 1990, 99)

Whatever percentage of those objectivities do find their way into the repertoire of human signs, they get there by dint of what Husserl calls a silent intuitive consciousness that is immediately “directed” towards the states of affairs or facts of the world and that then re-creates them in words and other signs for the purpose of intersubjective communication. This is so because consciousness has the ability to re-present meanings ideally: physical objects or states of affairs cannot always be there for us, but they can be re-presented as ideal entities and thus be repeated in the process of communication. As will be shown in Jacques Derrida’s critique of the Husserlian theory of the sign (see chapter 2), Husserl struggles to justify the absolute correspondence between pre-existing objectivities and their semiotic representations in the human world. By neglecting the constitutive nature of language and other types of signs, he stops short at consciousness as a neutral vehicle through which meanings and their expressions can “coincide”; in this way he employs a metaphysical presupposition and thereby adds to a tradition that he set out to reject in his manifesto of phenomenology. Turning our attention to the East for a while, many Chinese philosophers since ancient times have likewise concerned themselves with the relationship between names and actualities – a relationship that from the modern perspective is central of semiotic studies. Of those who have contributed to our knowledge in this field, one group stands out in the sense that its members are concerned with the name–actuality

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relationship not for its moral and political significance but rather for the metaphysical and epistemological aspect of the dichotomy itself. The earliest name usually associated with this line of thinking is Mo Zi, who advocates a mimesis theory of meaning. According to him, names and actualities are distinct categories, but the two can be unified because the former are derived from the latter. In relation to this topic, Mo Zi’s most quoted aphorism is “yi3 ming2 ju3 shi2”1 (፜ළஹ ိ), where /ju3/ means to imitate or designate, /shi2/ means extralinguistic actualities, and /ming2/ means names that are used to imitate or designate. The Chinese philosophical discussion of the relationship between verbal signs and extralinguistic actualities reached a high tide during the Warring States era (403–222 BC). Unlike their predecessors and successors in the history of Chinese philosophy, scholars of this historical period focused strongly on the problem of the correspondence of names and actualities; for this reason, they were given the collective title “the School of Logicians” (ළ૮). Among these thinkers were Gongsun Long (c. 325–250 BC) and Xun Zi (298–238 BC), whose texts were preserved to be studied by later generations. Gongsun Long holds that all things in the world appear in particular shapes and substances; as such, they are given different names. To know whether a word’s meaning corresponds to its actuality or not, we have to know the conditions that give rise to it. As he puts it in Section 6 of his “On Names and Actualities”: “A name is to designate an actuality. If we know that this is not this and know that this is not here, we shall not call it [‘this’]. If we know that that is not that and know that that is not there, we shall not call it [‘there’]” (Chan 1973 [1969], 243). Xun Zi is a more systematic thinker on the word–actuality relationship – indeed, he is probably the most systematic of all ancient Chinese philosophers. He was born in a historical era that witnessed an epidemic of “discrepancies between words and actualities” – a deplorable situation that drove him to write his famous tract “On the Rectification of Names.” According to that essay, the motives for rectifying names are political as well as epistemological. On the one hand, there is a need to distinguish the higher from the lower in terms of social status; on the other hand, we must discriminate among the different states and qualities of things. “When the distinctions between the noble and the humble are clear and similarities and differences [of things] are discriminated,” he says, “there will be no danger of ideas being misunderstood and work encountering difficulties or being neglected.”

The Platonic Triad and Its Chinese Counterpart

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From there, Xun Zi discusses the theoretical possibility of achieving linguistic universality. Here, his argumentation has much in common with that of his Greek counterpart Aristotle (384–322 BC). Like his near contemporary in Greece, Xun Zi maintains that names or words are symbols of mental impressions. He argues that forms and colours are distinguished by the eye, sounds and tunes by the ear, sweetness and bitterness by the mouth, freshness and foulness by the nose, and pain and comfort by the skin; but in the end, the information we acquire through all of these senses must still be processed by the mind, for it is because the mind collects knowledge that it is possible to know sound through the ear and form through the eye and so on. Nevertheless, the collection of knowledge depends on the natural organs first registering it, and “the organs of members of the same species with the same feelings perceive things in the same way. Therefore things are compared and those that are seemingly alike are generalized. In this way they share their conventional name as a common meeting ground.” Finally, Xun Zi lays down what he calls “the fundamental principle on which names are instituted.” When things are similar, they ought to be given the same name; when things are different, they ought to be given different names; when a simple name is sufficient to express the meaning, a simple name ought to be used; when a simple name is not sufficient, a compound name ought to be used. “Knowing that different actualities should have different names, one should let different actualities always have different names. There should not be any confusion in this respect” (ibid., 125). After Xun Zi, the word–reality relationship gradually abandoned the centre of Chinese intellectual speculations, never to regain its dominance until the twentieth century, when Western epistemology as an important branch of the social sciences was introduced to China through Marxist philosophy. This does not mean, however, that curiosity in this respect stopped after the Warring States era. On the contrary, the debate about the word–reality relationship continued, albeit sporadically, throughout the history of Chinese thought. Important here is the work of Ouyang Jian (c. 267–300), a scholar who picked up the same topic and whose expositions consolidated the realist theory of meaning in ancient China. A well-known essay by Ouyang Jian is “On the Fullness of Speech in Expressing Ideas,” in which he propounds a purely instrumental theory of the verbal sign. Continuing the realist theme but pushing it to its ontological extreme, he argues that

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Parallels, Interactions, and Illuminations heaven says nothing yet the four seasons run their course. Sages say nothing yet their distinguishing wisdom exists. The difference between square and round has been evident before the concepts of shapes arise; and the antithesis of black versus white has been obvious before the names of color are given. Therefore names add nothing to realities and speech contributes nothing to [objective] principles. However, for both the past and the present, to rectify names is always an important task; besides, sages and worthies have to use speech. Why? Because it is sure that one who finds a principle will not feel satisfied until he can express it by speech; a thing that already exists will not be identified from others without a name. If speech could not express ideas, people would not be able to communicate with each other. If names could not distinguish things from each other, it would be impossible for sages to show their distinguished wisdom evidently. (Shi 1996 [1988], I:317)

Spelled out here in simple but emphatic terms are two important principles of the realist theory of meaning. First, independent of language there exist ultimate qualities of things and states of affairs in the extralinguistic world. Second, meanings of words and expressions should and can correspond to the extralinguistic actualities that are their sources as well as their measurements. When placed in the context of the world history of semiotics, Ouyang Jian’s text acquires further intercultural and intertextual significance. Its example of the self-existing square can be linked to “The Seventh Epistle” by Plato, where the circle is also conceived of as a pre-semiotic “form” that is then represented either in language or in painting. The second example, of pre-semiotic colour differentiations, has even more relevance to modern Western semiotics, for the formation of colour terms in language provided a point of departure for Saussurean and Hjelmslevean linguistics in its attack on traditional language theories and has since become one of the most sharply debated issues in twentieth-century humanistic scholarship. Though contemporary Chinese theories of language profess to be applications of Marxist philosophy to the study of language, at a deeper level they are heirs to a native tradition of ontological realism. To a great extent, they continue to assume the independent existence of an extralinguistic world, natural as well as social. That is, to most contemporary language theorists, the essential characteristics of things exist in themselves and would exist even if there were no words to reveal them. However, there is one important difference between the ancient

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and the modern. Unlike their ancient predecessors, modern theorists of language are more acutely aware of the trap of word–reality dualism where the correspondence between the two cannot be logically guaranteed.2 For this reason, they try to insert into the dichotomy a third element – that is, human cognition, which is capable of achieving linear progression. In a wordless world, they argue, actualities of things are available for discovery, but such discovery has been made possible by the formation of human consciousness over millions of years of evolution. Consciousness reflects reality and is what makes language possible. Humans use words to designate surrounding objects and phenomena, their connections and relations, and so on. Words in one sense substitute for objects, representing them in the human consciousness, but they also record the abstractive activity of human thinking. This means that words and phrases are the result of a generalized cognition – a cognition based on sensations and perceptions generated by the impact on the human sensory organs of the objects and phenomena of reality. Furthermore, the process of cognition is an endless one in the course of which human thought draws closer to the essence of things of the extralinguistic world. From this perspective, the form of a language expression, owing to its close connection with human consciousness, ultimately communicates the essential nature of whatever is denoted by it.

2 Ontological Realism under Fire

The realist theory of meaning outlined in the previous chapter has throughout its history faced criticism from the opposing camp of nominalism. Over the final quarter of the twentieth century it came under concentrated attack from a group of French intellectuals led by Jacques Derrida, whose deconstructivist philosophy of language has had a powerful impact on contemporary debates about language. Deconstructionists reject as “essentialist” the idea that concepts expressed in a language correspond to real states of things or affairs that exist independently of language. According to the realists, consciousness has direct access to reality and has no need of a linguistic intermediary except for communication and as an aid to memory. This epistemological perspective propounds an instrumental conception of language, one in which words signify by virtue of their reference to extralinguistic objects or phenomena but are attached to their referents by a mind that is somehow capable of capturing the essence of the extralinguistic world. This assumption that words are transparent – that they yield an unobstructed view of an autonomous reality – constitutes the error of what Derrida calls essentialism, which has dominated the philosophical discourse on meaning for well over two thousand years. In opposition to essentialism, Derrida denies the possibility of correspondence between words and their extralinguistic referents. This is because the identity between the two assumes a final fixture of meaning – something that is linguistically impossible. Every word in a language, because by nature it belongs to the chain of signs, contains the trace of all those elements with which it stands in syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships. The linguistic sign must always involve the silent play of postponement – the delay of everything to which it is directed. For

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Derrida, this perpetual reference to the other implies a dynamic process of signification, a process he terms differance. The linguistic sign differs and therefore defers, which makes interpretation a semantic process of infinite regression. This is why the text – which is the network of these traces – can have no ultimate interpretation; its interpretation becomes an uncontrollable process that cannot yield any stable meaning. Looking back at the humanistic scholarship of the past few decades in the West, it is not hard to see the strong influence of deconstructivism, especially in the field of literary criticism. In most recent anthologies on the subject, we find specific sections devoted to deconstruction as an established approach to literature.1 But when we carefully compare those essays, we may realize that the impact of the much-heralded deconstructivist “revolution” is not all positive. Take, for example, the three essays that appear in the final section (“Rhetoric and Deconstruction”) of Robert Young’s Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader (1987): “The Frame of Reference: Poe, Lacan, Derrida” by Barbara Johnson; “The Stone and the Shell: The Problem of Form in Wordsworth’s Dream of the Arab” by Hillis Miller; and “Geraldine” by Richard Rand.2 Normally, when we have different critics writing about literary pieces as diverse as Poe’s “The Purloined Letter,” Wordsworth’s The Prelude, and Coleridge’s “Christabel,” we expect the results of their criticism to be quite diverse. But this turns out not to be the case, as is evident from the summaries of those critical essays made by Young himself in their respective introductions: (1) Hence the argument between Derrida and Lacan over the letter and its significance (letter = signifier = phallus) can itself not be placed or decided, because the letter as a signifier is not a substance but a function – and it functions as difference. The letter therefore dictates “the rhetorical determination of any theoretical discourse about it” – in other words, the “oscillation between unequivocal statements of undecidability [Derrida] and ambiguous assertions of decidability [Lacan]” is precisely its effect. (p. 504) The letter, in fact, makes the reader perform, makes analysis a performative which repeats the reading of the letter, while the letter itself escapes into – insignificance. (1987 [1981], 226–7) (2) For Plato, in the “Cratylus,” the name was the one element in language which anchored word to thing, since a name has reference but no sense. But in “The Prelude” Book V this stability is no longer assured. The traveller whom the dreamer meets is both an Arab and a knight, yet “of these

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Parallels, Interactions, and Illuminations was neither and was both at once.” He is, precisely, a floating signifier. (ibid., 245) (3) Sign, seal, mark, signature: in the final section Rand argues that to find the mark we must turn away from “the tropes, from the logic and the premise of the sign, and the hope that resides in those premises, of making the ‘seal’ present, punctual, meaningful, sensible.” To turn away from the sign is to turn away from the usual way of reading, which goes straight for the signified. Paradoxically, this means that reading normally also enfolds the signifier within the veils of its own interpretative discourse, and never breaks the silence of the seal. To break the seal poses a drastic step for tropology, for it opens up “a new and potentially limitless chain of discourse.” The graphemes which Rand locates scattered across texts “overflow any discursive boundaries of any kind” and, in the words of Paul de Man, open up “vertiginous possibilities of referential aberration.” Each reading that Rand provides he proceeds to undo - to produce a new slide; again and again he transgresses the folds of the last reading, dropping the reader into an abyss in a final fugitive footnote. (ibid., 281)

It is interesting that all three critics have arrived at more or less the same conclusion – that a particular element in their object-text does not have a fixed signified and therefore is open ended. The similarity of these critical results runs counter to our received notion of what a literary work does. A particular language community treasures certain pieces of writing not because they all point out the same deconstructivist truth but because each possesses a unique quality or message that distinguishes it from the others. As specialists in their field, literary critics are expected to tell us what makes Shakespeare Shakespeare and not, say, Byron or Shelley. When a theory has the Midas touch that turns everything it works on into its own empirical support, readers have excellent reason to suspect that the theory is too powerful to be of much use. Having said this, if we know beforehand what the deconstructionist position on meaning is, the above-described result can almost be anticipated. Young quotes the following statement by Derrida as a motto for the entire section in which those essays appear: “The ‘rationality’ – but perhaps that word should be abandoned for reasons that will appear at the end of this sentence – which governs a writing thus enlarged and radicalized, no longer issues from a logos” (ibid., 223). Given this philosophical premise, it would indeed be a surprise if we did not en-

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counter many more repetitions of the same theme no matter which individual literary work was being investigated. For if the critic shows something particular, he or she will fall into the very trap of metaphysics that the project has set out to deconstruct. Yet in saying that signs in a text play infinitely against one another and thus defy any attempt to stabilize meaning, the critic is making a specific point. This paradox is well exemplified by Derrida, who criticizes Lacan’s commentary on Poe’s “The Purloined Letter.” Lacan first analyses Poe’s story as an allegory of the signifier that illustrates the Freudian truth that the subject is constituted by the symbolic order. Derrida, as always, deconstructs the Lacanian frame of reference as metaphysical and accuses its interpretation of Poe’s text of neglecting the text’s status as play of signs, drift of signification, and dissemination of meaning. So the argument centres on two different notions of the signified – one as a final truth (Lacan’s phallogocentrism), the other as an infinite play (Derrida’s undecidability). The irony here is that while Derrida accuses Lacan of framing Poe’s poetry, “he himself inevitably ‘frames’ Lacan’s – Seminar – also.” Clearly, Derrida’s deconstructionist theory of meaning is self-refuting. If it is correct, it cannot hope to persuade people who are not already disciples of deconstructionism, because any particular assertions it tries to make will be lost in the endless play of signs. Also, we as readers have every right to reject his ideas on the grounds that, impressed as we are with his elaborate style, we cannot grasp the meaning of his texts – a meaning that undoes itself endlessly. Yet we must not stop at simply making a polemical denial – indeed, a well-defined doctrine underpins the often too ornate style of deconstructionists. Only, we do not accept many of the arguments that have led to this final conclusion. The problem is not simply to point out that the deconstructionist theory of meaning is self-refuting, but to reveal where it goes awry and how we can best benefit from its critique of the existing theories. It is well established that Derrida has drawn many of his theoretical resources from Saussurean linguistics. Most of the time he is described as a post-structuralist – a term that suggests a break with the doctrine of classical structuralism as expounded by Saussure in Course in General Linguistics (1916). The implications of such discontinuity are quite apparent in the following definition provided by Young in his introduction (titled “Post-Structuralism”) to Untying the Text: The name “post-structuralism” is useful in so far as it is an umbrella word, significantly defining itself only in terms of a temporal, spatial relation-

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Parallels, Interactions, and Illuminations ship to structuralism. This need not imply the organicist fiction of a development, for it involves, rather, a displacement. It is more a question of an interrogation of structuralist concepts by turning one against another. (ibid., 1)

If asked, Derrida himself would probably be happy with this classification despite his open rejection of any theoretical fixity. There are, however, other critics who view Derrida as a neostructuralist alongside Lacan, Deleuze, Lyotard, and Kristeva – a categorization that suggests he has a theoretic affinity with classical structuralism, as well as “a touch of revolutionary energy.” Which of the two views is a more proper diagnosis of deconstructionism we will have a chance to evaluate in the course of our discussion. For the moment it is at least safe to use the Saussurean theory of language as a frame of reference or point of departure in our investigation of Derrida’s theory of meaning. First of all, as Derrida has correctly characterized it, Saussure rejects the notion that language expressions reflect pre-existing states of the world. This anti-realist conviction stems from his structuralist understanding of the nature of the linguistic sign. In Course in General Linguistics, he defines the linguistic sign as “the combination of a concept and a sound pattern.” The two terms for the components of a sign are later replaced by a new set: signal (the signifier) and signification (the signified). According to Saussure, there is no natural link between the signifier and the signified. For example, the top part of a human body can be designated by the sound sequence /head/ as in English or by a different combination of sounds such as /tou2/ in Chinese. As long as they are accepted by members of a speech community, no particular grouping of sounds can be said to serve the purpose of designation better than another. In other words, there is no intrinsic reason why one signifier instead of another should be linked with the concept of . This absence of any inevitable connection between the signifier and the signified fundamentally characterizes the linguistic sign: The link between signal and signification is arbitrary. Since we are treating a sign as the combination in which a signal is associated with a signification, we can express this more simply as: the linguistic sign is arbitrary. There is no internal connexion for example, between the idea of “sister” and the French sequence of sounds s-o-r which acts as its signal. The same idea might as well be represented by any other sequence of sounds. This is demonstrated by differences between languages, and even by the exis-

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tence of different languages. The signification “ox” has as its signal b-o-f on one side of the frontier and o-k-s (Ochs) on the other side. (Saussure 1989 [1916], 67–8)

With the above, Saussure has affirmed nothing more than a traditional thesis concerning the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign. In fact, the term had already been used in exactly the same sense by other philosophers and linguists. Among them was William D. Whitney, a nineteenth-century American linguist, whom Saussure thought was correct on one essential point: that “language is a convention.” Émile Benveniste (1971) has this to say: “Certainly with respect to a same reality, all the denominations have equal value; that they exist is thus the proof that none of them can claim that the denomination in itself is absolute. This is true. It is only too true and thus not very instructive” (1971, 44–5). Anticipating this kind of dismissal, Saussure warns against limited interpretations of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign and points towards deeper meanings that can only be discovered “after many circuitous deviations”: No one disputes the fact that linguistic signs are arbitrary. But it is often easier to discover a truth than to assign it to its correct place. The principle stated above is the organizing principle for the whole of linguistics, considered as a science of language structure. The consequences which flow from this principle are innumerable. It is true that they do not all appear at first sight equally evident. One discovers them after many circuitous deviations, and so realizes the fundamental importance of the principle. (Saussure 1989 [1916], 68)

In other words, to understand arbitrariness, a glance is insufficient – we must look beyond the relationship between the signifier and the signified. Saussure maintains that in the usual understanding of the linguistic sign as an arbitrary combination of the signifier and the signified, it is dangerous to think of language as a warehouse of names arbitrarily selected and attached to pre-existing things or states of the world. The widespread tendency towards such a belief can be attested in the biblical story of Adam naming the beasts that surround him. Saussure, of course, takes exception to this view. On his reckoning, a concept is an arbitrary creation of language and therefore cannot have autonomous existence prior to that of the signifier that actually brings it into being.

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In his monograph on Saussure, Jonathan Culler explains this special meaning of the word “arbitrary”: A language does not simply assign arbitrary names to a set of independently existing concepts. It sets up an arbitrary relationship between signifiers of its own choosing on the one hand, and signifieds of its own on the other. Not only does each language produce a different set of signifiers, articulating and dividing the continuum of sound in a distinctive way, but each language produces a different set of signifieds; it has a distinctive and thus “arbitrary” way of organizing the world into concepts or categories. (1977 [1976], 15)

For people who are sufficiently bilingual, the point is not difficult to understand. If we try to translate the English word /brother/ into Chinese, two words from the target language suggest themselves as close equivalents: /xiong1/ (ኚ) and /di4/ (ࡊ). Neither Chinese word, however, covers exactly the same conceptual range as its English counterpart. The meaning of /xiong1/ only partly corresponds to that of / brother/ – that is, only when the latter is used in the sense of (the other portion of the concept corresponds to ). Such lack of conceptual correspondence across different lexicons often causes headaches for translators and interpreters.3 But Saussure’s aim is not to repeat a “common sense” that lexical incompatibilities often exist between two languages. He points out elsewhere in his book that we should treat language not as a random set of signs but as a system whose parts must be considered in their entirety: It is a great mistake to consider a sign as nothing more than the combination of a certain sound with a certain concept. To think of a sign as nothing more would be to isolate it from the system to which it belongs. It would be to suppose that a start could be made with individual signs, and a system constructed by putting them together. On the contrary, the system as a united whole is the starting point, from which it becomes possible, by a process of analysis, to identify its constituent elements. (1989 [1916], 112)

By viewing the united whole of a language as the starting point of linguistic analysis, Saussure links the thesis of arbitrariness to the idea that each language exists as an a priori system. This particular interpretation of the structural nature of the linguistic sign is crucial to a thorough understanding of the Saussurean theory of meaning.

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According to Saussure, language must present itself as an organization at every moment of its existence. He labels this inherent organization of language a “system,” which those who followed him have often called a “structure.” We cannot, he argues, simply isolate an extralinguistic object or state of affairs that corresponds to a certain linguistic unit and say that this is the meaning of that unit. This is because any determination of a linguistic unit presupposes the situating of that unit in relation to others within an overarching organization. Saussure tries to illustrate this idea with an analogy between language and chess. The actual physical shape or material of the chess pieces is not important as long as there are ways of distinguishing one piece from another. For example, if the piece king is lost, it can be replaced by a piece of any size or material, provided that this object will not be confused with other pieces representing different values. Thus one can say that identity is wholly a function of differences within a system. Likewise, each linguistic term derives its value from its “non-coincidence” with other terms. Suppose there are two people talking. One of them says, “I’m reading a very interesting book,” and the other replies, “Which book?” We all know from our experience that the actual pronunciations of the word /book/ vary from one person to another, but we still recognize them as two examples of the same linguistic unit. How, then, do we unite two different noises by attributing both to a single sign? As in the metaphor of chess, the Saussurean response is that identification involves the language as a whole. The signifier is not the actual acoustic noise produced by one or the other of the people involved in the conversation; rather, it is an abstract unit that is related to the rest of the system. The actual pronunciations of the unit can fluctuate considerably as long as they do not become confused with those of another sign. To return to our example, we can say that the same sign /book/ has been used twice in the brief conversation, not because it possesses any essential property but because its variations are different from such contrasting signs as /beak/ and /bike/. So, Saussure declares that “a language is a system in which all the elements fit together, and in which the value of any one element depends on the simultaneous coexistence of the others” (ibid., 113). The same principle of difference applies to the conceptual plane of a language. Rather than being an autonomous entity defined by some non-linguistic essence, a concept or signified is part of a language system and thus is defined by its relations to other members of that system. Culler explains the structural characteristic of the sign in his

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exposition of Saussurean semiotics, using colour terms as an example (1977 [1976], 16–18). This time, as an example, he talks about a person from a non-European cultural background who wants to learn about colours in English. For Culler, it would be a waste of time trying to show him or her objects of a particular colour, for even after you have shown this person five hundred brown objects, he or she will still have difficulty recognizing the various kinds of brown. The foreign learner fails to grasp the signification of because he or she has not been taught the distinction between brown and red, brown and tan, brown and grey, brown and yellow, brown and black. is not an independent concept defined by some basic properties; rather, it is a single term in a system of colour terms, defined by its relations with the other terms, which delimit it. Saussure summarizes this point: In all these cases what we find, instead of ideas given in advance, are values emanating from a linguistic system. If we say that these values correspond to certain concepts, it must be understood that the concepts in question are purely differential. That is to say they are concepts defined not positively, in terms of their content, but negatively by contrast with other items in the same system. What characterizes each most exactly is being whatever the others are not. (1989 [1916], 115)

/Book/ is what is not /beak/, /bike/, and so on; /brown/ is what is not /red/, /black/, /gray/, /yellow/, and so on. In order to know one concept, we must understand the contrasting ones in the vicinity as well. The same holds for the rest of a linguistic system. Hence a very important Saussurean conclusion: Everything we have said so far comes down to this. In the language itself, there are only differences. Even more important than that is the fact that, although in general a difference presupposes positive terms between which the difference holds, in a language there are only differences, and no positive terms. Whether we take the signification or the signal, the language includes neither ideas nor sounds existing prior to the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonetic differences arising out of that system. In a sign, what matters more than any idea or sound associated with it is what other signs surround it. (ibid., 118)

The structural characteristic thus qualifies the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign. Both signifiers and signifieds are merely products of

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systemic differentiation. In distinguishing categories, each language divides the spectrum in different ways, producing a different system of signifiers and signifieds whose value depends on their relations with one another. We mentioned earlier that Saussurean linguistics served as ammunition for Derrida’s attack on the realist theory of meaning. Derrida in his writings constantly refers to the structuralists’ theme of linguistic value as structural differences. In Positions, for example, he takes up the topic of difference: The play of difference supposes, in effect, syntheses and referrals that forbid at any moment, or in any sense, that a simple element be present in and of itself, referring only to itself. Whether in the order of spoken or written discourse, no element can function as a sign without referring to another element which itself is not simply present. This interweaving results in each “element” – phoneme or grapheme – being constituted on the basis of the trace within it of the other elements of the chain or system. This interweaving, this textile, is the text produced only in the transformation of another text. Nothing, neither within the elements nor within the system, is anywhere ever simply present or absent. There are only, everywhere, differences and traces of traces. (2002 [1981], 26)

This passage, along with five others from various works by Derrida in which Saussure’s central concept is preserved, is quoted by John Ellis in Against Deconstruction (1989) to demonstrate the unusually close theoretical ties between the two theorists.4 Yet at the same time, Ellis points out that Derrida arrives at something quite different from Saussure’s principle of difference. For Saussure, signification is not a matter of connecting sounds to pre-existing concepts; rather, it arises from those phonemic and conceptual differences among the components of a language system. That being said, differences in the Saussurean sense are still inseparable from specific qualities with which linguistic elements are differentiated from one another. In other words, to see a difference between two elements presupposes seeing specific qualities uniquely contrasted with each other. For Derrida, however, nothing either outside or inside the language system can be said to be present to itself, be it phonemic image or a concept. “[Since] no element can function as a sign without referring to another element which itself is not simply present,” the play of differences becomes limitless and infinite. There are no specific contrasts that generate meaning, no positive

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elements that form a system, hence no communication of any definite meaning at all. Ellis attributes the important difference between Saussure and Derrida to the latter’s loose style of exposition, in which some key Saussurean concepts are surreptitiously transformed. Specifically, he criticizes Derrida for making unjustified leaps in his expository process – for making assertions without proof or justification, and for substituting terms with one another as if they were equivalent. With regard to the passage by Derrida quoted earlier, Ellis makes the following comment: Saussure had said that meaning is created by the opposition of terms, that is, by specific differences. Derrida imports into this scheme the word play, which immediately says a great deal more, but that word is introduced into his text without any argument for what it suggests; it is introduced casually, as if only a more colorful term were involved. But play has already suggested that the mechanism of differentiation is much less controlled and specific than it was before the word was introduced. Having done this, Derrida then completes the movement of his argument with the introduction of “limitless,” “indeterminate,” and “infinite,” now making the implications of play quite explicit and taking them to an extreme. This is a very new turn in Saussure’s argument – and yet Derrida allows his prose to introduce these new terms as if they were simply linguistic flourishes and the expression of an energetic, forceful style – there is no pause to explain why he or we should accept the substance of what is being said. And, indeed, the result is not an extension or correction of Saussure’s argument but a garbling of it. For if we use Saussure’s notion of differences and try to extend it with the notion of a limitless, indefinite play of differences, we only succeed in reducing the notion to meaninglessness. (1989, 52–3)

Clearly, Ellis’s description of the Derridian theory of meaning verges on irritated and dismissive. There is a great deal of truth in Ellis’s characterization of “the logic of deconstruction,” but this should not prevent us from probing deeper. In other words, we need to go a step further and ask why Derrida transforms Saussure the way he does. One logically possible answer to this question is that he does so unknowingly in an effort to advocate the Saussurean view of meaning. That possibility is eliminated by the fact that Derrida openly criticizes Saussurean linguistics on many occasions. And he does it intentionally, so there is no reason why he cannot use the framework of Saussurean

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linguistics to develop his own anti-metaphysical theory of meaning. Furthermore, Saussure’s theory can hardly be said to be free of contradiction or beyond all improvement. Indeed, in some parts of Course in General Linguistics, the linguistic unit is defined as purely negative and relational, constituted only through its place in the network of relations that make up the language, while in other parts, it is described as possessing a positive reality that maintains its own consistency and that differentiates itself from others. The impression one gains after reading the passage from Against Deconstruction by Ellis is that he believes that Saussure has settled the issue of linguistic meaning once and for all. Actually, the contradiction between the origination and determination of meaning inherent in Saussure’s theory is far from resolved. Derrida sees the inconsistency in Saussure’s theory and sets out to solve the problem. Whether he has succeeded is a different issue. Let us return to the Saussurean discussion of difference quoted earlier. Presented in isolation, that statement seems as deconstructivist in spirit as any made by Derrida and his deconstructionist followers. Yet if we interpret it in the context of the entire book, we find that what Saussure is discussing is not linguistic meaning, but linguistic value. Saussure opens chapter 4 of Course in General Linguistics by asking whether value and meaning are synonymous terms. He immediately answers no, they are not. He then distinguishes between these two terms. He accepts the conventional view that meaning “is simply the counterpart of a sound pattern” – a relationship that can be represented as follows:

Figure 2. Saussure’s illustration of linguistic meaning But that is only part of the meaning of the linguistic sign. In his structuralist conception of the linguistic sign, Saussure objects to the notion that ideas are haphazardly linked with sequences of sounds to form language. The linguistic sign is always part of a system and therefore stands in various kinds of relations with other signs. Besides the inter-

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nal relation between a sound pattern and a concept within the limits of the word, there is a different relation – one that unites the word with others in the system – whose effect Saussure calls value. Such duality of the linguistic sign may be represented as follows:

Figure 3. Saussure’s illustration of linguistic value As Saussure puts it: “As an element in a system, the word has not only a meaning but also – above all – a value. And that is something quite different” (1989 [1916], 114). For Derrida, however, retaining the notion of meaning as Saussure has done “leaves open the possibility of thinking a concept signified in and of itself, a concept simply present for thought, independent of a relationship to language, that is of a relationship to a system of signifiers” (2002 [1981], 19). He contends that this notion can be maintained only if the former can be believed to be final – that is, only when it no longer refers beyond itself to another term. Unfortunately, there can be no such finality for any linguistic sign. If we want to know a word’s meaning, we look it up in a dictionary or textbook. But there we will find more words, whose meanings lead in turn to other words. So the word is never identical with itself and keeps pointing beyond itself to new definitions that can only be partially reached: the current word is the signified of the previous word and in turn serves as the signifier of the next word. In this way, the distinction between the signifier and the signified becomes blurred in the process of signification. If no signified can be said to be the fixed counterpart of a signifier, the distinction Saussure draws between value and meaning loses its significance. For meaning defined as the self-present counterpart of the sound pattern no longer exists in Derrida’s new characterization of signification. The process of signification is referred to by Derrida as “trace”: Difference is what makes the movement of signification possible only if each element that is said to be “present,” appearing on the stage of presence, is related to something other than itself but retains the mark of a past element and already lets itself be hollowed out by the mark of its relation to a future element. This trace relates no less to what is called the future

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than to what is called the past, and it constitutes what is called the present by this very relation to what it is not, to what it absolutely is not; that is, not even to a past or future considered as a modified present. In order for it to be, an interval must separate it from what it is not; but the interval that constitutes it in the present must also, and by the same token, divide the present in itself, thus dividing, along with the present, everything that can be conceived on its basis, that is, every being – in particular, for our metaphysical language, the substance or subject. (1973, 142–3)

So in place of meaning as presence, Derrida proposes the term “alterity” for the irreducibility of reference to the other. The implication here is that there can never be an isolated signified or concept serving as the fixed meaning of a sound sequence. We cannot locate signification without being caught in a network of relations with others; all such determinations are broken apart by the need for alterity. In this way, meaning as presence has been eradicated from Saussure’s system as the last connection to the metaphysical tradition. From what has just been said, it is clear that Derrida is not so much an opponent of Saussure as someone who is trying to rid his theory of the last metaphysical contamination. His objection to Saussure’s theory of signification is more like a recommendation that we abandon the distinction between value and meaning. Once meaning as self-presence is out of the picture, the only form of signification left is that of linguistic value, which is characterized by the differential determination of the sign. In other words, Derrida has taken up Saussure’s theory of value and broadened its application to cover the entire field of linguistic signification. There is another point in Saussure’s theory with which Derrida does not totally agree. According to Derrida, Saussure has based his theory of linguistic signification on an untenable model of communication – one that is supported by an underlying metaphysical conception of language as a complete system.

Figure 4. Saussure’s closed system of communication

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Here a speaker has formed some concepts that he or she wants to transmit to a hearer. The speaker then produces certain strings of sound that correspond to those concepts. On hearing those sound patterns, the hearer begins a psychological process that identifies the incoming sounds with the intended concepts. “All the individuals linguistically linked in this manner will establish among themselves a kind of mean; all of them will reproduce – doubtless not exactly, but approximately – the same signs linked to the same concepts” (Saussure 1989 [1916], 13). Underlying this model of communication, of course, is the assumption that there exists an associative correspondence between the sound pattern and the concept, which together comprise the linguistic sign. As we now know, Saussure also maintains that the signification of a linguistic sign cannot be determined by its relation to a referent or by its concept. This is because different languages articulate the continuum of the conceptual plane in different ways. What enables us to determine the signification of a sign is its differential relations to other terms in the same language system – hence his conclusion that there are only differences in language. The principle of difference as it stands certainly does not go well with the model of linguistic communication. If there are only differences in language, and if the signification of a sign can only be determined by what other signs are not, how can the hearer in the model possibly know what the speaker exactly means? Saussure himself seems to be aware of this problem, and he attempts to modify his principle of difference: “To say that in a language everything is negative holds only for signification and signal considered separately” (ibid., 118). Once linguistic values are established through the initial differential activity of signifiers and signifieds, we can no longer speak only of differences without positive terms. For if there were only innumerable negative differences and no positive self-reference, the bond between the signified and signifier could never be established and language as the most effective means of communication would fail. The fact is that only the origin of linguistic signification has to do with difference and negation. As soon as the arbitrary articulation of uncharted phonic and conceptual nebulae is completed, we are no longer dealing with pure negativities, but with positivities. Derrida takes exception to this compromise. If both of Saussure’s theses were true – that is, if meaning were produced by pure differential references to others but could be identified as fixed self-referentiality in the process of communication – then a transition from one to the other would have to be found. The question would then become: Who

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decides the termination of negative difference, which also starts positive referentiality? Saussure does not address this question directly, but his theory as a whole allows for the extrapolation that decisions about fixed references are to be made by “the collective mind.” For Derrida, the transition from difference to identity can never occur. The collective mind or consciousness itself is the result of linguistic articulation. Therefore, it cannot serve at the same time as the determining authority that watches over the unity between the signified and the signifier. Even if some kind of authority exists, Derrida argues, there is still no certainty that the laws laid down by such an authority will always be followed in the actual verbal exchange. As Saussure himself realizes: Synchronic laws are general, but not imperative. It is true that a synchronic law is imposed upon speakers by the constraints of communal usage. But we are not envisaging here an obligation relative to language users. What we mean is that in the language there is nothing which guarantees the maintenance of regularity at any given point. (ibid., 91)

In either case, there is no final authority that can determine the positive identity of the linguistic sign. The chain of difference thus runs ad infinitum. It is obvious that Derrida has tucked into the old Saussurean concept some new meaning of his own. In its Saussurean sense, difference has the meaning of structural differentiality among the members of a linguistic system. Because the system is a closed one, the differentiating activity must stop at some point. This is what enables Saussure to modify his principle of negative difference so that it becomes one of positive difference. Derrida, by contrast, adds a diachronic or historical dimension to the Saussurean notion by stating that there is no authority other than the individual’s interpretative preference to decide which terms it distinguishes from which other terms. Interpreted in this new light, the linguistic sign is not just one element whose meaning is to be determined by pointing beyond to the other signs in the same synchronic system; rather, it is one whose meaning must also be determined by its various uses in different speech situations. Indeed, Derrida argues that a sign functions only by being repeatable on more than one occasion. The semiotic possibility of being cited in innumerable situations renders the tie between the signified and the signifier uncontrollable by any single structural code. For each time a linguistic sign is used, the standard item from the static structure faces the possi-

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bility of being challenged or modified in the new speech situation. This means that repetition is not simply the recurrence of an identical term: it also makes a pure and rigorous identity impossible. This is why Derrida prefers the word “iteration,” which contains the double meaning of repetition and difference: Iterability supposes a minimal remainder (as well as a minimum of idealization) in order that the identity of the selfsame be repeatable and identifiable in, through, and even in view of its alteration. For the structure of iteration – and this is another of its decisive traits – implies both identity and difference. Iteration in its “purest” form – and it is always impure – contains in itself the discrepancy of a difference that constitutes it as iteration. The iterability of an element divides its own identity a priori, even without taking into account of the fact that this identity can only determine or delimit itself through differential relations to other elements and that it hence bears the mark of this difference. It is because this iterability is differential, within each individual “element” as well as between the “elements,” because it splits each element while constituting it, because it marks it with an articulatory break, that the remainder, although indispensable, is never that of a full or fulfilling presence: it is a differential structure escaping the logic of presence, upon which opposition the idea of permanence depends. (1990 [1988], 53)

In the above quotation, Derrida makes it clear that the principle of difference applies not only between the elements but also within each individual element. This notion is very different from that of Saussure, according to whom negative differentiality between signs is cut short in order to secure a positive referentiality within the sign. Also, Saussure’s interpretation of the principle is ahistorical in the sense that it is confined to the relations among the elements of the same closed synchronic language system. Derrida, on the contrary, extends the Saussurean concept into the realm of parole (as opposed to langue), where the meaning of the sign is affected by its historical variations as well as through differential relations to other elements. To include the diachronic dimension in the semiotic movement, Derrida also replaces the word “difference” with “differance,” which he thinks is better suited for the job. The French word combines the meanings of two verbs: to differ and to defer. Both words convey the sense of a lack that prevents the linguistic sign from having any positive referentiality, but they do so in different ways. “To differ” indicates a spatial

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movement that keeps sliding down to the next structural unit, whereas “to defer” indicates a temporal movement where the meaning of the sign disseminates into the past as well as into the future. In coining the word, Derrida hopes to keep Saussure’s basic idea of meaning as structural differentiation; at the same time, he is trying to overcome Saussure’s static view of the linguistic sign as simply a member of a closed system: The activity or productivity connoted by the a of differance refers to the generative movement in the play of differences. The latter are neither fallen from the sky nor inscribed once and for all in a closed system, a static structure that a synchronic and taxonomic operation could exhaust. Differences are the effects of transformations, and from this vantage the theme of differance is incompatible with the static, synchronic, taxonomic, ahistoric motifs in the concept of structure. (2002 [1981], 27)

Once the metaphysical remnant (the presumption of a closed language system) is removed, Derrida argues, we need no longer think of a linguistic term as part of a whole. The elements are still related to one another, and each possesses presence only as it differs from or defers to other elements. To determine its meaning is to search through a web of differences and delays. Only this time the web is not a finished one, and the play of difference is infinite and limitless. No finality can ever be reached that will transcend the spatial and temporal movement of differentiation.

3 The Return of the Subject(s)

Early in the second chapter, we showed through examples that deconstructionism fails as an approach to understanding the oral or written text except for the not so useful generalization that the play of signs in the text is infinite. We have also seen that the deconstructionist theory of meaning has radicalized Saussure’s principle of difference in an attempt to rid his system of metaphysical remnants. To make a case against deconstructionism, one logical step is to take a second look at the Saussurean definition of meaning as structural differentiation – a principle that has been crucial to both structuralists and deconstructionists. In its last issue of 1999, Science in Context published a series of papers on Ernst Cassirer, whose philosophy of symbolic forms has been garnering interest in the field of humanistic studies since the demise of structuralism and deconstructionism. The first paper in that issue is Daniel Dor’s “From Symbolic Forms to Lexical Semantics: Where Modern Linguistics and Cassirer’s Philosophy Start to Converge.” In it, Dor praises Cassirer as one of the most insightful philosophers of language of the twentieth century; the author regrets that he went virtually unnoticed in the mainstreams of modern linguistics. Dor contends that Cassirer has been rejected by modern linguistics because he insists on a constitutive role for language in explanations of linguistic phenomena. This point applies well in the American context, wherein prominent linguists like Leonard Bloomfield and Noam Chomsky assume that extralinguistic meanings exist and are reflected or realized in language; the same cannot be said of Saussurean linguistics, wherein language is also viewed as constitutive in the process of meaning production. Given that the Saussurean linguistic model has had such an enormous

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and perhaps negative impact on contemporary thought as manifested in post-structuralism and postmodernism, it is important that we examine not only where Cassirer and modern linguistics converge but also where they diverge, so that a better understanding of how meaning is produced and communicated can be achieved. As just noted, both Bloomfield and Chomsky believe that linguistic expressions carry pre-existing meanings; but they disagree sharply about the sources of those meanings. Bloomfield (1933) conducted his linguistic research in the first half of the twentieth century, and in the empirical spirit of the time, he focused strongly on what could be observed and stated in clear scientific terms. Specifically, he focused on what he called “speakers’ situation” and “hearers’ response,” which constitute the two factors (A and C) of any given utterance (B). The meaning of /apple/, for instance, can be explained as derived from the hunger and salivation of Jill as she sees an apple and the gallantry of Jack as he jumps a fence, climbs a tree, and fetches the apple (1933, 22). Obviously, Bloomfield defines meaning as something that is already out there in the material world. Chomsky came to prominence in linguistics in the 1960s. Unlike the empiricists before him, who tried to extract all linguistic information from the external environment, he sees language ability as something innate that is realized through the processes of socialization. One common argument for this perspective is that children acquire language with great speed and ease and are capable of producing an endless array of grammatically correct sentences that they have never encountered before. For Chomsky, the only explanation for this miracle is that there exists a universal linguistic mechanism with which human beings are born. In other words, Chomsky’s position on language and meaning is that of a rationalist who postulates the existence of innate ideas and principles. Unlike Bloomfield and, to a lesser extent, Chomsky – who view meaning as external to language – Saussure objects to the conception of language as something that “reflects and refracts another reality”: For some people a language, reduced to its essentials, is a nomenclature: a list of terms corresponding to a list of things ... This conception is open to a number of objections. It assumes that ideas already exist independently of words ... Furthermore, it leads one to assume that the link between a name and a thing is something quite unproblematic, which is far from being the case. (1989 [1916], 65–6)

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Saussure contends that there is no simple one-to-one connection between a linguistic sign and the thing or the state of affairs referred to because the sign is always part of a larger structure that inevitably affects its signification. Since concepts or meanings are the result of an arbitrary division or articulation of linguistic elements, Saussure concludes that the signification of a linguistic sign is purely differential. Saussure derives his anti-realist stance largely from his particular understanding of the relationship between language and thought, which he compares to a sheet of paper: Thought is one side of the sheet and sound the reverse side. Just as it is impossible to take a pair of scissors and cut one side of paper without at the same time cutting the other, so it is impossible in a language to isolate sound from thought, or thought from sound. (ibid., 111)

On the surface, this seems no more than another highly traditional proposition – one that argues for the interdependence of language and thought. Throughout history, philosophers have acknowledged the inseparability of the two sides of a linguistic sign. Without sounds, the argument goes, thought cannot be realized or transmitted, and without thought, sounds would be pure physical phenomena. Other kinds of animals possess the ability to emit sounds through their sound-making mechanisms. Some close relatives of the human species are capable of producing more than thirty distinct sounds. However, they do not have a language in the sense of a system of signs that can be removed from its immediate environment. Sounds unaccompanied by thought do not constitute language, which is a combination of thought and sound. Human language qualifies as such because it serves as a medium for abstract thinking. At one point in prehistory, our ancestors must have reached a stage where they could produce dozens of distinct sounds but still did not have a language. Only when they acquired the capacity for abstract thinking in the evolutionary process of transformation from primate to man did human language occur and evolve. In Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics (1994), Thomas Sebeok dates the beginning of verbal language to around 300,000 years ago, by which time “premodern human already had the capacity to encode language into speech and the concomitant ability to decode it at the other end of the communication loop” (1994, 124). Not surprisingly, this premodern man was characterized by a large skull capacity of 1400 cc as opposed to 600 to 800 cc, which was the brain size of Homo habilis, the earliest known spe-

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cies in the genus Homo, who lived a speechless life in Africa some two million years ago (ibid.). Yet the crystallization of abstract ideas also depends on linguistic materials. It is true that thought is not derived directly from sounds, but linguistic materials are what make possible the realization and transmission of thought. Our thought has to make use of the vocal apparatus for “voicing” and the auditory apparatus for being perceived. Without these, the internal experience of one person would be inaccessible to another person. Saussure, however, goes far beyond the “instrumental” relationship between language and thought. As we have seen, semantic realists from Plato and Mo Zi down to Bloomfield and Chomsky have held that ideas and the inherent qualities of things exist in themselves but can also be realized and transmitted through language. In that sense, language has been viewed only as a secondary formation superimposed on a naturally articulated reality. For Saussure, such a reality with ready-made units simply does not exist because psychologically, setting aside its expression in words, our thought is simply a vague, shapeless mass. Philosophers and linguists have always agreed that were it not for signs, we should be incapable of differentiating any two ideas in a clear and constant way. In itself, thought is like a swirling cloud, where no shape is intrinsically determinate. No ideas are established in advance, and nothing is distinct, before the introduction of linguistic structure. But do sounds, which lie outside this nebulous world of thought, in themselves constitute entities established in advance? No more than ideas do. The substance of sound is no more fixed or rigid than that of thought. It does not offer a ready-made mould, with shapes that thought must inevitably conform to. It is a malleable material which can be fashioned into separate parts in order to supply the signals which thought has need of. (1989 [1916], 110)

In other words, language and thought are not just mutually dependent; they are ontologically indissoluble. Before the appearance of language, “thought is simply a vague, shapeless mass.” The same is true of the acoustic aspects of language. Language is the medium that brings about the simultaneous delimitations of both. It is therefore not a matter of realizing or transmitting thought in language, but of languagethought coming into existence at the same time in one body. Pure and

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simple concepts free of linguistic material do not exist. In this respect, Saussure’s view is similar to that of Cassirer (1965 [1923]): It is in the basic symbolic function and its various directions that the spiritual consciousness and the sensory consciousness are first truly differentiated. It is here that we pass beyond passive receptivity to an indeterminate outward material, and begin to place upon it our independent imprint which articulates it for us into diverse spheres and forms of reality. Myth and art, language and society are in this sense configurations towards being: they are not simple copies of an existing reality but represent the main directions of the spiritual movement, of the ideal process by which reality is constituted for us as one and many – as diversity of forms which are ultimately held together by a unity of meaning. ([1923] 1965, I:107)

For Cassirer, in other words, the function of language is not to repeat definitions and distinctions that already exist independently of language, but rather to formulate them and make them intelligible as such. What we see here, then, is the same emphasis on the constitutive role of language – except that language is now called a “formative organ” that actively synthesizes otherwise indistinct streams of human experience. Even so, it is important for us to note that despite their agreement that meanings are not simply encapsulated in language, Saussure and Cassirer differ significantly with regard to how concepts are actually formed. For Cassirer, concepts form by means of a universal consciousness, with the help of language and other symbolic forms. There are no ready-made concepts or ideas before the appearance of language, but the thinking subject still encounters the chaotic extralinguistic life experience that Cassirer calls “indeterminate outward material.” Yet in its pursuit of the universal, consciousness does not require the entirety of information from the particular itself. Instead, it resorts to sequences of sounds in its creation of necessary complexes of meaning. The result is the birth of verbal concepts or ideas that do not belong to any specific situation but that can be used to evoke those meanings which belong to a whole class of similar situations. Saussure has a very different view of concept formation. Unlike Cassirer, who views language as something that mediates between the world and the thinking subject, Saussure with his model cuts off the two ends of that relationship, leaving language standing all by itself. Here is how he schematizes the appearance of language:

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So we can envisage the linguistic phenomenon in its entirety – the language, that is – as a series of adjoining subdivisions simultaneously imprinted on the plane of vague, amorphous thought (A) and on the equally featureless plane of sound (B). This can be represented very approximately as in the following sketch [1989 (1916), 110]:

Figure 5. Saussure’s illustration of concept formation Saussure’s intention with the above diagram is to show that no readymade ideas or units of sound can exist before language. But he achieves that goal only by dint of his holistic interpretation of the phenomenon. According to Saussure, it is not enough to individually consider a particular combination of a sequence of sound and a concept, because to do so would mean assuming that one can start from the terms and construct the system by adding them together when, on the contrary, one must start from the interdependent whole and then, through analysis, obtain its elements. Thus, he starts his explanation of concept formation not with specific words that connect us with the world through their meanings, but rather with the two pre-existing continua of sound and thought, which, when combined, supposedly articulate phonic units on the one hand and conceptual units on the other. In this way, language takes on the attributes of a self-moving spirit that dissolves into a multiplicity of small components. He goes on to say that different languages decompose themselves in different ways that result in different articulations of the same “vague, shapeless mass.” The same continuum on the conceptual plane can be one unit in one language and two units in another, as in the case of the French /mouton/ and the English /sheep/ and /mutton/. Thus the meaning of a linguistic sign rests not on the correspondence with some extralinguistic essence, but on its relationship with other signs in the same system. This view of language not as a treasury of positive meanings but as a web of negative references to

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other elements constitutes the core of what is often referred to as classical structuralism and has been claimed – both within and beyond the field of linguistics – as a twentieth-century intellectual revolution comparable to the new science of Galileo. From a non-structuralist perspective like Cassirer’s, this differance of meaning into other linguistic elements is rather questionable. To take Saussure’s own example for analysis, why does the meaning of / sheep/ have to be determined through its differentiation with /mutton/ and not through its differentiation with some other element in the system that is also somehow related to sheep? Language would be a very ineffective means of communication if the meaning of each linguistic sign had to be decided in terms of what it is not. At the level of theory, this problem is obviously related to the assumption that a language system pre-exists its elements. As was pointed out earlier, linguistic meaning in this scheme is not to be found in specific signs that are linked to the speaking subject on the one hand and that correspond to concrete life situations on the other. That said, the loss of connection with the extralinguistic world at the level of individual elements is not compensated for at the level of the entire structure or system, given that structure – conceived of as two indistinct masses of sound and thought – has no way of relating to any specific qualities of things or states of affairs outside language. It follows that in the Saussurean vision of concept formation, language is completely delinked from the outside world and our choices of particular linguistic expressions are unimportant because whatever thoughts we have and whichever linguistic forms we choose, we will always find a structure or system already in place that must be accounted for first. In the beginning, as a popular sarcastic saying goes, there was the structure. To what extent, then, can such a structure be justified? In our empirical experience, a synchronic system of language does not correspond to any actual state of its use; rather, it has been socially constructed as a conventional scale for measuring linguistic changes. Without such a social construction, “language presents the picture of a ceaseless flow of becoming” (Volosinov 1989 [1930], 66). For instance, when Shakespeare was writing his plays, the English language was changing, as always. We can suppose there was a fixed synchronic system of Early Modern English at the time he was writing, but that language has been subjectively constructed by us in the present day for the purpose of comparing the English of Shakespeare’s time with that of today or that of his predecessors.

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The case against treating the structure of language as the initial source of meaning and signification can also be made from another angle. When an English speaker uses the word /table/ in an actual utterance, that word does not appear in the capacity of one item from the entire language system but as something that has been used in similar reallife situations by other speakers. Interpreted in this light, the source of linguistic meaning lies in those specific linguistic units that connect language users to their environment rather than in a “system which is merely an abstraction arrived at with a good deal of trouble and with a definite cognitive practical focus of attention” (ibid., 67). Structurally speaking, Saussure distinguishes two major types of relations among parts of a language system: syntagmatic and paradigmatic. According to him, linguistic utterances are linear: we cannot pronounce two words simultaneously; we must arrange them in a sequence or a string. This linguistic sequencing constitutes what he calls syntagmatic relations. The second type of relation is based on the formal and functional similarities among the linguistic terms in a language. These similarities can be found on the plane of concepts, or on the plane of sound-images, or they can involve both planes at the same time. As such, paradigmatic relations seem to hold less significance for the study of language and meaning. Since a word can always evoke everything that can be associated with it in one way or another, language users can create almost as many associative series they like: While a syntagma brings in straight away the ideas of a fixed sequence, with a specific number of elements, an associative group has no particular number of items in it; nor do they occur in any particular order. In a series like desir-eus (‘desirous’), chaleur-eux (‘warm’), peur-eux (‘fearful’), etc. it is impossible to say in advance how many words the memory will suggest, or in what order. Any given term acts as the center of a constellation, from which connected terms radiate ad infinitum. (Saussure 1989 [1916], 124)

These two types of relations mutually condition each other: paradigmatic combinations help set a limit on the number of syntagmatic coordinations; this in turn helps define the compatibility among the elements in a sequence. It must be said that the discussion of syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations is not at all foreign to those who reject Saussurean linguistics. A good example of this is the work of the Russian scholar Mark Blokh, who tackles the same issue in A Course in Theoretical English Grammar

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(1983). To illustrate the various kinds of linear relations among units in a segmental string, he analyses the following sentence: The spaceship was launched without the help of a booster rocket.

At the level of words and word-groups, the elements that are syntagmatically connected in this sentence are /the spaceship/, /was launched/, /the spaceship was launched/, /without the help of a booster rocket/, and so on. The combination of two words or wordgroups, one of which is modified by the other, constitutes a unit, which Blokh refers to as a syntagma. Paradigmatic relations are different from syntagmatic relations in that they exist outside the string, where linguistic elements occur one after another. Those elements are paradigmatically related to others owing to the fact that each linguistic unit is included in a set of connections based on different formal and functional properties. In terms of phonology, such a set can be established by the correlations of phonemes on the basis of vowel or consonant, voiced or unvoiced, nasal or non-nasal, or by the factor of length. In terms of semantics, the set can be established on the correlations of synonyms, antonyms, and so on. In terms of grammar, the set can be established on the correlations of number, case, person, tense, or even sentence patterns. Blokh’s analysis demonstrates that language is structural but does not have to be structuralist. In other words, non-structuralists do recognize the structural patterns of language, but that recognition does not contradict the fundamental proposition that human interactions with their environment are the source of linguistic meaning. To an English speaker, for example, /chow mein/ is a relatively new word, referring to a kind of fried noodle usually served in a Chinese restaurant. Its meaning is not derived from its not being spaghetti or any other kind of noodle; rather, it is generalized from the fact that this particular kind of noodle is normally cooked in hot oil with chopped pork or chicken breast and several kinds of vegetables. There must have been a person who first encountered the food and, instead of giving it a new name, simply borrowed the Cantonese term to designate this “new” unit of human experience. When more and more people did the same thing, the term became part of the English language: it could now enter into a syntagmatic relation with other terms as in /I ate some chow mein for lunch/; it could also be categorized as a noun, an imported word, a kind of noodle, and so on, forming various para-

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digmatic relations in different series. But the fact that a linguistic sign is syntagmatically and paradigmatically related to other elements in a language does not take away the correspondence that exists between the sign and its referent and make language a non-representational structure of empty forms as envisioned by Saussure and his deconstructionist followers. In fact, paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations are themselves both generalizations from actual uses of linguistic elements. For once invented, language itself becomes part of human experience – something that can be observed and recorded metalinguistically. Depending on the functions they perform in the syntax of sentences, words can be related to one another in different ways. According to Blokh, there are four main types of syntagmas: predicative (the combination of a subject and a predicate), objective (the combination of a verb and its object), attributive (the combination of a noun and its attribute), and adverbial (the combination of a modified notional word, such as a verb, adjective, or adverb, and its adverbial modifier) (ibid., 13). The classification and terminology used by Blokh may sound more traditional than it actually is. Noam Chomsky, for example, makes almost the same categorization except that he combines attributive modification and adverbial modification into one. In the subject–predicate relation, what is named in the subject is shown to be a function of what is said in the predicate. The verb–object relation expresses the logical relation of cause and effect. The third type represents a relation of limitation that one word or group of words sets on another. And because of the different functions, words in a language develop, over time, distinctive formal features on the basis of which they can be categorized into separate word-classes or parts of speech: education relation donation

typify justify solidify

logical focal global

usually commonly typically

It is true that not all words declare their class membership as clearly. Consider the word /contact/, which can appear in two different syntactic functions. Nevertheless, it is the memberships themselves that concern us more. Through them, we are able to categorize different aspects of experience either into things (using nouns) or actions (using verbs) or qualities or states (using adjectives and adverbs). Of even greater importance are the positive semantic properties of

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the linguistic sign – properties that have been largely neglected by the structuralist and deconstructionist theories of meaning. It is not enough to consider only the interdependencies of empty linguistic forms, as an analysis of the following Chomskyan sentence will show: Green colourless ideas sleep furiously.

Syntagmatically, we have several perfectly grammatical combinations such as /ideas sleep/ (predicative), /green colourless ideas/ (attributive), and /sleep furiously/ (adverbial). Paradigmatically, the noun /idea/ in the sentence can be associated with other nouns; so can the rest of the sentence elements in their respective capacities as verb, adjective, and adverb. Yet when put together, these words do not make much sense except when viewed as a poetic device (i.e., as a calculated deviation from the norm). The example points to the fact that, beyond their relations with other terms, words in a sentence contain within themselves certain semantic properties whose interpretation depends on our knowledge of the extralinguistic world. The linguistic sign, therefore, is a double entity that enters structural relations with others on the one hand while establishing a correspondence between itself and a certain unit of human experience on the other. To explain how the extralinguistic world is conceptualized in language, let us return to Cassirer’s theory of symbolic forms, which has been largely neglected by modern linguistics. Instead of the Saussurean continuum of thought, there is now the kaleidoscope of human experience before the appearance of language. To adapt to their environment, humans are compelled to formulate hypotheses or make predictions about their surroundings. As is well expressed in the Heraclitean maxim that “no one ever steps into the same river twice,” human experience of every moment is unique and unrepeatable; yet we endeavour to extract from the unbroken stream of experience some segment that somehow is a repetition of previous segments. As soon as we try to chop our experience into manageable portions, there begins our search for not just differences but also for likenesses among segments, events, or incidents. If we did not resort to similarity and dissimilarity to categorize our experience, we would remain forever imprisoned in the uniqueness of here and now. This means that the knowledge of event A being followed by event B is of little significance if it happens only once. What is important is that more or less the same sequence has occurred over and over again, which provides us with the basis for anticipating its occurrences.

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For those of us who have had some experience with animal training, it is clear that the ability to classify things into categories based on their similarities and differences is not unique to humans. Performing animals in zoos and circuses, for example, are very good at categorizing their behaviours in relation to rewards and punishments from their trainers. But with humans, the classification of surroundings takes what some theorists call “a qualitative leap.” We not only rely on existing objects as marks for the categories we make, but also invent a variety of symbols to make our work more effective, and this elevates humans far above the rest of the animal kingdom. For example, we are capable of registering new repetitive segments amidst the constant flux of things by drawing pictures, attributing numbers, constructing formulae, and so on. Thus, declares Ernst Cassirer, yet in the human world we find a new characteristic which appears to be the distinctive mark of human life. The functional circle of man is not only quantitatively enlarged; it has also undergone a qualitative change. Man has, as it were, discovered a new method of adapting himself to his environment. Between the receptor system and the effector system, which are to be found in all animal species, we find in man a third link which we may describe as the symbolic system. The new acquisition transforms the whole of human life. (1953 [1944], 42–3)

Of all the symbolic creations of mankind, words have proved to be the most important. By combining three dozen or so distinctive sounds in various ways, the human is able to handle an infinitely greater number of categories than any other creature. And once we have recorded a segment of our experience in a sound sequence, we can reproduce or evoke it through that particular sound combination, which is now a linguistic form, a word. This is easily proved by the fact that words can bring back vivid memories of our past experiences – their colour, their movement, their sound, and so on. Here language serves as an important means of speaking about the world. Events take place and pass away, but their records in language stay with us. It is through language that we try to make sense of the world and adapt to it. Before we discuss the interaction between humans and their environment – an interaction that gives rise to the various types of signs – it is important to note that the critique of Saussure does not mean a simple return to the Platonic triangle of sense–form–denotatum, which, as we saw in chapter 1, measures the meaning of a sign against a pre-existing extrasemiotic reality.

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Historically, the anti-realist camp has always challenged the belief that we can truthfully represent what the world is. Friedrich Nietzsche, for one, dismisses the notion that an objective world can be recaptured through language. Whatever effect our environment may have on us, he argues, it is always filtered through the mind of a will-exercising subject: the object is only “a modus of the subject.” Nietzsche has this to say with regard to linguistic representations of our environment: What is a word? The image of a nerve stimulus in sounds. But to infer from the nerve stimulus, a cause outside us, that is already the result of a false and unjustified application of the principle of reason ... The different languages, set side by side, show that what matters with words is never truth, never an adequate expression; else there would not be so many languages. The “thing-in-itself” (for that is what pure truth, without consequences, would be) is quite incomprehensible to the creators of language and not at all worth aiming for. One designates only the relations of things to man, and to express them one calls on the boldest metaphors. A nerve stimulus, first transposed into an image – first metaphor. The image, in turn, imitated by a sound – second metaphor. (Kaufmann 1954, 45–6)

By saying that the “thing-in-itself” is incomprehensible and that man only designates the relations of things to himself, Nietzsche is advocating a certain linguistic subjectivism – or to use a more recent term, perspectivism. According to this view, the subject faces not an objective reality but a chaotic world. To prosper in it, he must create for himself a fairly stable reference framework. In other words, he is driven by biological needs to project his conditions of existence as the attributes of being in general. The subject represents himself before his own eyes in the hope of bringing the world to order. Thus all of our representations – meanings, concepts, or ideas – are a perspectival interpretation of the in-itself unknowable and amorphous world. If meaning is nothing more than a human invention, as Nietzsche declares, where can objectivity reside in linguistic representation? This question has puzzled many post-structuralist scholars. According to Jürgen Habermas, a contemporary German philosopher, there are two different approaches to discursive rationality. The first is the theory of reflection, which starts with the ontological presupposition that the world is the sum total of what is the case. This approach confines itself to analysing the world of existing affairs that leave their imprint on the human mind. According to this model, objectivity can be applied only

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dogmatically, for the standards by which we evaluate our representations are never quite accessible (as was shown earlier). But there is an alternative to the realist approach, one that Habermas terms “phenomenologist”: The phenomenologist ... does not, that is, simply begin with ontological presupposition of an objective world; he makes this a problem by inquiring into the conditions under which the unity of an objective world is constituted for the members of a community. The world gains objectivity only through counting as one and the same world for a community of speaking and acting subjects. The abstract concept of the world is a necessary condition if communicatively acting subjects are to reach understanding among themselves about what takes place in the world or to be effected in it. Through this communicative practice they assure themselves at the same time of their common life-relations; of an intersubjectively shared lifeworld. This lifeworld is bounded by the totality of interpretations presupposed by the members as background knowledge. (Habermas 1987 [1984], I:12–13)

This paragraph introduces two new concepts: the lifeworld, and communicative practice. In contrast to the realist’s objectively existing world, the lifeworld has only an established objectivity, which a community uses as background knowledge. Habermas argues that a stable, shared world is necessary for the members of a community to orient their actions and understand one another. This background knowledge, which includes language and other cultural forms, supplies us with pre-reflective convictions, from which we draw support when negotiating definitions of common situations. It is true that particular segments of the lifeworld relevant to a given situation can sometimes be problematized, but this still has to take place against the background of other unquestioned pre-understandings that are prior to any disagreements. That such a lifeworld exists is indicated by our ability to ask one another questions like “How come we all understand this, and you don’t?” As members of a particular community, we are able to judge one another’s statements as true or false, subjective or objective, rational or irrational, depending on their relations to our commonly shared beliefs. This does not mean that true and objective statements must correspond to states of affairs as they “really” are in the world. Hallucination, bias, and false consciousness may also be said to be true in certain circumstances as long as we understand them as indicating

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particular methods of observing and representing the world accepted by the entire community. What comes into view in this manner are not the properties of things that pre-exist human praxis, but units of the lifeworld constructed through communication. The proposition that the lifeworld is constituted through communication leads to Habermas’s second important concept: communicative praxis, as opposed to the notion of praxis as conceived in classical theories of economics. The conventional concept of labour or praxis does not include linguistic interactions among people; linguistic untterances are used only when there is a need to communicate. This reduction of the material social process of cognition to non-communicative “labour” or “praxis” is actually dictated by the idealistic framework of the philosophy of consciousness, which is based on the assumption that there exists outside language an objective world. As is revealed by Jean Piaget’s theory of the development of human intelligence, such a conception of the human cognitive process is woefully inadequate; for in that theory, cognitive development refers solely to structures of thought that a single person acquires constructively when confronted with external reality. The truth is that early in a child’s life, there emerges a demarcation between the external universe of objects and the internal universe of the subject; this leads to a further distinguishing between physical objects and social objects (i.e., other subjects like himself). On the one hand, the physical world is differentiated into categories of perceptible and manipulable objects; on the other, the social world is differentiated into norms and regulations of interpersonal relations. The important point here is that the constructions of the two worlds are simultaneous: If reciprocal actions between subject and object modifies both, it is a fortiori evident that every reciprocal action between individual subjects mutually modifies them. Every social relation is thus a totality in itself which creates new properties while transforming the individual in his mental structure. (ibid., I:69)

Access to the world of objects is opened up only through the medium of common interpretive efforts in the sense of a cooperative negotiation of situation definition. The construction of a social world enables the subject to contrast not only his own internal world with the external world, but also the internal worlds of others. In Freudian terms, ego is able to consider how its description of a certain state of affairs in the external

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world may look from the perspective of alter ego. This is what makes it possible to adopt a common perspective – that of a third person. Because it fails to recognize the constructive role of the intersubjective relationship in the cognitive process, the realist theory cannot avoid perceiving the subject as an isolated individual who is capable of representing the pre-existing essences of things and then passing them on to others as factual information, thus paying little attention to the interpersonal relations among members of a speech community. What counts as important is the mental activity of a solitary subject. As a consequence, the realist theory fails to elucidate meaning in connection with the model of speech through which the lifeworld is intersubjectively produced and reproduced, and the entire language community is reduced to an ideal-typical user who must measure the truth of his statements against an objectively existing reality. When the theory does sometimes talk about communication among people, language use is reduced to mere transmission of ready-made information from one person to another. Following Piaget’s argument, Habermas proposes a more comprehensive concept of praxis in which the “cognitive-instrumental” praxis may also be incorporated. From that basis, he begins to build his theory along the lines of Anglo-Saxon philosophy of language, which extends the formal semantics of words to speech acts. Here, the cognitive theory is no longer limited to the representational function of language but is open to the multiplicity of language functions. Habermas calls this the theory of “communicative praxis.” One point he tries to get across in the new theory is that, besides the representative function of language, there is also the use of language with an orientation towards reaching understanding. The term “reaching understanding” means that at least two speaking subjects are involved and, in speaking, we relate to the world around us – things, events, people, and their behaviours. To ensure a successful coordination of actions, however, a speaker has to relate to the world in certain ways that are acceptable to the hearer. As can be exemplified by even the most elementary speech situation, the hearer can take either a positive position or a negative one towards the speaker’s statement. By uttering a statement, the speaker is making a claim to the truthfulness of a situation – a claim that can be critiqued. The hearer who rejects a statement is taking issue with that claim. What typifies a speech situation, then, is the fact that, in coming to an understanding about something with each other, the participants involved in the communicative action must claim validity against a common world.

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It is this model of communicative action, in which both the speaker and the hearer are involved in reaching understanding, that provides for Habermas a way out of the aporia of the philosophy of consciousness when the presupposition of an ontological reality can no longer be justified on the level of human experience: In a distinct analogy to the basic assumption of the semantics of truth conditions, I want now to explain understanding an utterance by knowledge of the conditions under which a hearer may accept it. We understand a speech act when we know what makes it acceptable. From the standpoint of the speaker, the conditions of acceptability are identical to the conditions for his illocutionary success. Acceptability is not defined here in an objectivistic sense, from the perspective of an observer, but in the performative attitude of a participant in communicative action. A speech act may be called “acceptable” if it satisfies the conditions that are necessary in order that the hearer be allowed to take a “yes” position on the claim raised by the speaker. These conditions cannot be satisfied one-sidedly, either relative to the speaker or to the hearer. They are rather conditions for the intersubjective recognition of a linguistic claim which, in a way typical of a given class of speech acts, grounds a specified agreement concerning obligations relevant to the sequel of interaction. (Habermas 1987 [1984] I:297–8)

So for Habermas, the fall of the ontological reality does not necessarily lead to the agnosticism of Nietzchean perspectivism. We do not simply express in language whatever we feel about a situation. The nature of reaching understanding is such that we provide and recognize grounds through which a claim to truth can be redeemed. The term “intersubjective recognition” points to the fact that, in order to make herself understood and thereby come to an understanding with a hearer about something, the speaker must make correct existential presuppositions so that the hearer will accept and share the knowledge of the speaker. Only when a hearer accepts the conditions as valid can a mutual understanding come about between her and the speaker. Speech-act theory has far-reaching consequences for the theory of meaning in general and for the issue of interpretive objectivity in particular. The realist theory has developed the concept of objectivity solely from the assumption that the objective reality represented in language offers a suitable point of departure for the explication of meaning. Understandably, realists can only arrive at the finding that a sentence is

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true and objective when that sentence corresponds to an extralinguistic reality: As long as Occidental self-understanding views human beings as distinguished in their relationship to the world by their monopoly on encountering entities, knowing and dealing with objects, making true statements, and implementing plans, reason remains confined ontologically, epistemologically, or in terms of linguistic analysis to only one of its dimensions. The relationship of human being to the world is cognitivistically reduced: Ontologically, the world is reduced to the world of entities as a whole (as the totality of objects that can be represented and of existing states of affairs); epistemologically, our relationship to that world is reduced to the capacity to know existing states of affairs or to bring them about in a purposive-rational fashion; semantically, it is reduced to fact-stating discourse in which assertoric sentences are used – and no validity claim is admitted besides propositional truth, which is available in foro interno. (Habermas 1991, 331)

The theory of communicative praxis tries to overcome this fixation of meaning on the representative function of language. That is, it no longer privileges the representative function of language whereby the solitary subject first knows the properties of entities in the external world and then transmits them. Fundamental to our cognition is, rather, the performative attitude of the interacting participants, who coordinate their plans for action by coming to an understanding about something in the world. When the speaker takes up a position with regard to a certain situation in the lifeworld, she and the hearer enter into an intersubjective relationship that allows her to relate to herself as a participant in an interaction from the perspective of the hearer. In order for her speech act to be accepted by the hearer(s), the speaker has to make claims whose validity can be redeemed from the concrete speech situations by the hearer. And there lies the foundation of agreement between the speaker and the hearer: a mechanism of communicative praxis where the objectivity – or to use Habermas’s own term, “rationality” – of our linguistic representations of the world can be intersubjectively achieved. Note that Habermas’s theory is based on the belief that, to ensure our collective survival, we humans at all times coordinate our efforts through communication; and that to facilitate this coordination among ourselves, we always negotiate and agree on meanings of things and

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events in our common world. He thus talks about the “telos” that is intrinsic to human speech and the “learning processes” whereby all the individuals gradually develop more advanced forms of moral consciousness – forms that culminate in “a universal ethics of speech” in which norms are justified argumentatively. If we accept what Habermas says, linguistic representations of the world are no more than a process whereby aspirations towards rationally founded consensus become ever more explicitly articulated in language. In real life, however, there are innumerable instances where to speak is not to agree but to fight and the solution must be brought about through force. Take, for example, the crisis in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002. On December 8, 2001, the United States and its allies launched extended military attacks on that country, justifying them as a “strike against terrorism.” Yet these same operations were described as “terrorist acts” by the Taliban regime and as “treacherous aggression” by the Iraqi government of the time. To borrow Foucault’s notion of the “vertical system” as elaborated in The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972, 10), we might say that here, the same event was inserted by both sides of the conflict into entirely different discursive “series.” The American side, of course, regarded the military actions in Afghanistan as a response to the 1993 attempt to blow up the World Trade Centre in New York, the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and the events of 11 September 2001, in New York and Washington. The Taliban leaders, however, made other historical connections: they regarded the Afghan military operations as one more “insult to the Islamic world” on top of the sufferings of the Arabs in Palestine and Lebanon at the hands of U.S.-supported Israel, the American military presence in Saudi Arabia, and the military attack on Iraq. Given that the economic stakes were so high – the Taliban government wanted to maintain a good relationship with Osama bin Laden, an exiled billionaire from Saudi Arabia, while the United States wanted to protect its properties from attack by Islamic extremists – it is hard to imagine the two sides ever coming to an agreement regarding how the event should be characterized. Obviously, there are still arguments as to who is in the right. The salient point here is that no one can deny that more often than not, linguistic representations of historical events have an adversarial character, with their validity decided by the stronger of the parties involved (as in “might makes right”). To understand this period of history, then, “one’s point of reference should not be to the great model of language [langue] and signs, but to that of war and battle” (Foucault 1980, 114).

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Needless to say, manifestations of power in language are not always as extreme and violent as in the realm of international relations. Once we enter domestic public space, ideological struggles between parties in speech situations become much more “regulated” and less explicit, especially in democratic social systems, where free access to speech acts is publicly encouraged. But this does not mean that there are no disputes over how a particular event should be characterized. Take, for example, California’s power brownouts of a few years ago. Some commentators attributed the shortage of electricity to the government’s “blind faith in markets” and its earlier “deregulation” of the industry; others blamed the problem on the government’s “intervention” and “central planning.” Neither side won the debate with the kind of decisiveness we witnessed in the matter of the United States versus the Taliban, where the weaker party was simply incapacitated and thereby deprived of its opportunity to speak; but we can still identify the different social and ideological forces that motivated the heated debate. Generally speaking, those who saw the brownouts as a direct consequence of capitalism’s undesirable features tended to be associated with the general consumer, who wanted the insatiable greed of capitalists to be reasonably curtailed; and those who interpreted the incident as an inevitable outcome of the state government’s unwise attempts to control electricity prices tended to have links with big businesses that advocated market determinism. What we learn from this example is that language uses are closely linked with ideology, no matter when and where they occur. For a semiotic corroboration of this point, let us turn to Volosinov, a Russian thinker who emphasizes the close links between sign use and ideology. According to him, human beings always register through language what is important to their existence; and because our interests differ, human language is characterized by what he calls “multiaccentuality.” In classical Marxist terminology, we might say that because of differences in the possession of production materials and inequalities in the distribution of the products of labour, there are divisions in the social fabric between the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, the rulers and the ruled. As a result, most if not all societies exhibit characteristic structures of domination. To sustain their dominant position in society, the dominant groups tend to represent the world, past and present, in forms that reflect their own interests, though they also need to sustain the bonds of solidarity that are the condition of their dominance. Dominated groups, for their part, attempt to resist the power

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of domination in countless social encounters with dominators, often without success. Such struggles for respective interests, according to Volosinov, do not leave untouched the arena of linguistic interaction, where different social groups have most of their encounters: Existence reflected in sign is not merely reflected, but refracted. How is this refraction of existence in the ideological sign determined? By an intersecting of differently oriented social interests within one and the same sign community, i.e., by the class struggle. Class does not coincide with the sign community, i.e., with the community which is the totality of users of the same set of signs for ideological communication. Thus various different classes will use one and same language. As a result, different oriented accents intersect in every ideological sign. Sign becomes an arena of class struggle. (Volosinov 1989 [1930], 23)1

In other words, our speech acts cannot be totally reduced to social interactions whose implicit telos is consensus; rather, they often constitute a sphere of asymmetrical power relations, antagonistic class interests, and irreconcilable social struggle. Their force and meaning are inevitably affected by their connection with different life experiences and values. Yet as Samuel Weber (1985) reminds us, Volosinov is no advocate for a mechanical theory of reflection. His semiotics is rooted in classical Marxism, which connects signs to antagonistic forces in the sphere of production; but it refuses to totally identify with Marxism by defining ideology as the immediate expression of objective conditions in subjective consciousness. Weber argues that while extralinguistic reality does get articulated in language, that articulation functions only in connection with specified and determined social domains that are relatively independent of class conflicts. For this reason, changes in external social conditions cannot affect sign uses directly; rather, they exert their influence by dint of those sets of laws and regulations that are specific to each different domain. Thus, to distance his theory from orthodox conceptualizations of the sign as reflections of social reality, Volosinov proposes the term “refraction,” which effectively destroys any possibility of locating a simple one-to-one correspondence between objective class struggle and subjective consciousness. With a bit of stretch, one might suggest that Volosinov’s “refraction theory” points towards a complementary reading of the philosophical works of Habermas, who seeks to reconnect speech acts to their con-

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crete socio-historical contexts, and those of Bourdieu, who sees various social institutions not as grounds for fair play but as mechanisms for reproducing social differences.2 Modern societies, Habermas contends, are characterized by “the uncoupling of system and lifeworld” (1987 [1984], II:152). The world at large provides the horizon-forming contexts of culture, society, and personality within which communicative action takes place; and it provides the vast experiential resources with which participants in communicative action can transmit and renew cultural knowledge, establish collective solidarity, and build social identity. But such a background is too general and therefore cannot secure for social members the most efficient means of manipulating and controlling their environment – hence the differentiation of the lifeworld into specific domains of science, morality, and art, each with its own subsystems. Once these social systems are in place, they gather institutional momentum, which then acts as a buffer against whatever huge and rapid changes might be taking place in the lifeworld. Pierre Bourdieu holds a very different view on this issue. According to him, social institutions of all kinds are not ideal sites for communal consensus; rather, they are fields of symbolic struggle among social forces. In his seminal work Language and Symbolic Power (1991), he analyses how social positions of dominance reproduce themselves by imposing their interpretations of the world. This imposition that is not widely recognized as ideological because it is achieved under the guise of seemingly neutral social institutions where – in the words of Bourdieu’s editor (who wrote an insightful introduction to the book) – “power is seldom exercised as overt physical force: instead, it is transmuted into a symbolic form, and thereby endowed with a kind of legitimacy that it would not otherwise have” (1991, 23). Bourdieu explains that symbolic power often operates through institutional mechanisms that establish the perspectives of given groups as “natural,” “objective,” or “desirable” while disguising the self-interest involved in establishing such a view of the world. As one consequence, this eliminates or subordinates other symbolic resources and perspectives. Take public schooling as an example. Each pupil brings into this social space a set of symbolic goods (dress, speech patterns, language habits, attitude towards book knowledge, parental involvement, etc.) that signify his or her social background, and that then interact with those of others. Bourdieu’s own study of the French primary educational system found that those whose cultural capital and habitus aligned with the school culture tended to succeed academically whereas those

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with “defective” cultural goods were eventually excluded. Since all schoolteachers must be sifted through the same system, there is little doubt as to whose way of looking at the world gets perpetuated over the years. The same can be said about secondary and tertiary institutions of education, where only those socialized into the elite culture and corresponding habitus will gain the credentials to become “professionals” or “specialists” in a certain field. It is clear from Bourdieu’s analysis that power struggles in language should be interpreted as much more than verbal disputes between individual speakers or writers; they should also be viewed as related to the ideological presence that has infiltrated almost all social institutions we have designed for the “better” management of our society. Heeding the specific logic of each field of cultural production will, therefore, provide us with a means to avoid the brutal reduction of ideology to direct confrontations between different social classes without at the same time succumbing to the illusion of an ideal speech situation.

4 The Peircean Trichotomy

We showed earlier that the meaning of a linguistic sign has its source in a certain object or segment of our life experience and therefore corresponds to it in one way or another. For example, the principal meaning of /horse/ refers to the whole class of large, hoofed mammals that have been domesticated since ancient times for riding, pulling vehicles, and carrying loads. Saussure would have explained the formation of the concept as resulting from its being , , , and so on, but this explanation obviously does not fit the Chinese situation.

Figure 6. ൕ (horse) As can be seen from the evolution of the character, the meaning of

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/ma3/ does originate in a real-world object, not in structural articulation. Indeed, the “thing” or “object” is so indispensable to any explanation of the phenomenon of signification that it also forms the foundation of Saussure’s own theorization of meaning despite its professed exclusion of anything extralinguistic. Émile Benveniste (1971) summarizes the contradiction as follows: It is clear that the argument is falsified by an unconscious and surreptitious recourse to a third term which was not included in the initial definition. This third term is the thing itself, the reality. Even though Saussure said that the idea of “sister” is not connected to the signifier s-o-r, he was not thinking any less of the reality of the notion. When he spoke of the difference between b-o-f and o-k-s, he was referring in spite of himself to the fact that these two terms applied to the same reality. Here, then, is the thing, expressly excluded at first from the definition of the sign, now creeping into it by detour, and permanently installing a contradiction there. (1971, 44)

If we accept as true the schematic correspondence between the Chinese character and its referent, and if we accept Benveniste’s diagnosis as convincing, the question then becomes not whether the world of things furnishes the source of linguistic meanings, but how things are conceptualized in language. To better understand the process of concept formation, let us turn to Charles Sanders Peirce, the other founding father of modern semiotics. Only very recently have Chinese scholars begun to view the American as an important philosopher of the sign alongside his European counterpart. The latter has been studied so thoroughly in China that Paul Thibault, the author of Re-reading Saussure: The Dynamics of Signs in Social Life (1997), is considering including in his upcoming collection of essays on Saussure several contributions by Chinese theorists as recommended by Michael Halliday. Peirce’s ideas have not fared nearly as well in China in terms of serious academic discussion. Of the eight volumes of his Collected Papers, only a few essays have been translated into Chinese so far, which is very unusual for a thinker of his international stature. The oftentimes transdisciplinary scope of Peirce’s intellectual inquiries and his somewhat unconventional writing style are to partly blame for the lack of enthusiasm. Even so, many Western philosophers are just as challenging in terms of substance and manner of exposition (Hegel and Kant come readily to mind), yet most of their works have been rendered into Chinese, sometimes by way of English

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when no qualified translators of the original languages are available. This suggests a second and indeed more important reason for the lack heretofore of interest in Peirce among Chinese scholars. From the beginning, C.S. Peirce and William James were closely linked as American representatives of the philosophy of pragmatism, which – ironically – was one of the most influential schools of Western thought in China in the early twentieth century. James’s The Principles of Psychology, published in translation in the first issue of Education in Beijing in 1906, launched a long series of introductions to American pragmatists and their ideas, which played a visible role in the Chinese New Culture Movement1 of the ensuing two decades. The catalyst for the short-lived popularity of American pragmatism was Hu Shi, who between 1915 and 1917 had been a student of James at Columbia University. Hu returned to China to become a professor of philosophy at Peking University. In 1919 he invited his mentor to China. James accepted, staying for more than two years, during which he toured as many as thirteen provinces with his wife and gave lectures at numerous universities. It seems that during that time, he was the only nonnative philosopher who had been more or less accepted by the local intellectuals. This did not last long, however; some of the earliest Chinese communists sensed an unbridgeable gap between pragmatism as a philosophy and their kind of Marxism. In the third issue of New Youth of 1924, Qu Qiubai launched the first Chinese attack on American pragmatism with his article “Experimentalism and the Philosophy of Revolution,” in which he defined American pragmatic thought as “a philosophy that reflected the vulgarity of modern Euro-American capitalist societies.” The reputation of James and Peirce deteriorated further after 1949, when Soviet-style Marxism was declared the official philosophy of the People’s Republic of China. Over the following three decades, various schools of Western philosophy that had somehow seeped into the country were targeted for criticism; pragmatism in particular became a frequent scapegoat for almost everything deemed politically suspect. The 1950s witnessed the first political onslaught against pragmatic philosophy, launched mainly because of Hu Shi, who had at one time been a congressman in the ousted Nationalist government and later Taiwan’s Ambassador to the United States. An organized campaign was launched to criticize pragmatism, which was associated with Hu Shi’s “American master.” Hundreds of papers were published that revealed an appalling ignorance of the philosophical works being criticized.

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During the eleven years of the Cultural Revolution,2 successive power struggles were carried out at the uppermost levels of the Chinese government, all in the name of “countering pragmatism”: first Liu Shaoqi was accused of being the “number one capitalist-roader”; then Lin Biao was declared “an opportunist” and Deng Xiaoping “a man without principles.” Most of the time, “pragmatism” was crudely and superficially interpreted as a theory advocating the doctrine that “whatever is useful is true”; as such, the label was easy to impose on one political enemy after another. In the early 1980s, mainland China moved into an era of intellectual as well as economic liberalization, partly characterized by a re-evaluation and reappropriation of Western philosophical resources. In May 1988 the country held its first academic conference on American pragmatism since 1949, which drew participants from many parts of the world. Since then a fair number of monographs have appeared in this fresh field of research, nearly all of them containing long chapters on Peirce as a founder of pragmatism.3 But the discussions remained purely “philosophical” before early 1990s, when prominent semioticians from the West began coming to China to conduct lectures, in which they treated Peirce more as a theorist of the sign than as a pragmatic philosopher. This development spurred numerous articles and book chapters dealing specifically with the semiotic aspects of Peirce’s writings.4 Also worthy of notice are the contributions made by scholars from Taiwan,5 which gave the Chinese intellectual enterprise on Peirce a much needed semiotic turn, thus doing justice to him as a thinker who “spent the greater part of his mature intellectual life developing a ‘semiotic’ in the form of a methodologically aware, general, quasi-formal theory” (Innis 1985, 1) Unlike the earlier rejection, which was politically motivated, the revival of Chinese interest in Peirce – especially in his semiotic theory – has been driven by professional curiosity about a powerful theory. In contrast to Saussure’s structuralist approach to semiosis, Peirce’s semiotic scheme is known for its attentiveness to the world of things as well as to the human subject who speaks and writes about them. The following is how he defines the composition of a sign: A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all re-

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spects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of the representamen. (ibid., 5)

Peirce’s trichotomy of “representamen,” “interpretant,” and “object” is derived from his particular understanding of the three universal modes of Being. To help his followers understand his ideas better, he states in “A Guess at the Riddle”: “I make so much use of three-fold divisions in my speculations, that it seems best to commence by making a slight preliminary study of the conceptions upon which all such divisions must rest” (Hoops 1991, 188). First of all, he acknowledges the existence of things independent of human intervention and classifies these under the category of firstness. The first category of Being, according to him, is characterized by freedom, independence, and mere potentiality, but this world of pure nature disappears with the arrival of human beings, who react to things around them. From this follows a world of secondness, characterized by “experience in time and space.” In addition to this world of unreflected feeling, there is another mode of existence that Peirce calls thirdness, manifested in a multiplicity of symbolic forms that result from human faculties such as memory, synthesis, representation, and communication. Related to the three universal categories are the three kinds of signs, which Peirce considers indispensable in all reasoning: The first is the diagrammatic sign or icon, which exhibits a similarity or analogy to the subject of the discourse; the second is the index, which like a pronoun demonstrative or relative, forces the attention to the particular object intended without describing it; the third is the general name or description which signifies its object by means of an association of ideas or habitual connection between the name and the character signified. (ibid., 181)

We may, of course, choose to elaborate on Pierce’s three types of signs in a different order – that is, in relation to their emergence and evolution. Signs of the first type come into existence as a result of reasoning in terms of temporal and spatial contiguity. If event B consistently follows event A in time or vice versa, one of them could be interpreted as an indexical sign of the other. A good example of this is the coupling of fire with smoke, where the former is seen as leading to the latter. Contiguous connections can likewise be made from the spatial perspective, with one thing leading to another in its physical vicinity. For example,

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when one comes to a beach, he or she also sees the ocean alongside it. Here the beach can be interpreted as pointing to the nearby sea. Metaphysically or in terms of logic, temporal contiguity is known as the relationship of causality, with A being the cause of B and B being the effect of A; for its part, spatial contiguity overlaps with the relationship of part-and-whole or whole-and-part, with A being a part of B or B being a part of A. It is worth repeating here that the ability to establish a link between things or events on the basis of their temporal, spatial, and/or logical contiguity is not unique to humans. In most circumstances, a domestic dog gets excited when someone in the family picks up its leash, for its past experience tells it that A (reaching for the leash) is very likely to lead to B (taking it for a walk). Another way of making connections between things and events is through some kind of similarity that gives rise to “iconic signs.” Suppose one is assigned the task of meeting a colleague she will see for the first time at the airport. As long as she has been given a recent photo of that colleague, she will not have too big a problem locating the guest among the crowd in the arrival hall because certain features in the photo will direct her to the real person who looks similar. Here we may say that the photo has been used as an iconic sign of the real person. In a similar manner, acoustic similarity can help us make a connection between a particular sequence of sounds and an object that emits such a noise. If a child says /miao/ to her parents, the latter will likely think of a cat, which makes a similar sound. In both cases, similarity serves as a trigger for associations, even though such associations can sometimes be rather difficult to detect. Let us not forget that there is a secondary difference between indexical signs and iconic signs. The former do not have to be artificially made – that is, they can be natural objects or phenomena that are turned into signs through the act of human interpretation. A person’s birthmark, for example, is just a part of his or her body, and it is not normally viewed as representing the person who possesses it; but if this mark is what is left of a dismembered human body to be identified in a murder case, then the coroners, detectives, and judges involved will probably accept it as an index of the person in question. Iconic signs, by contrast, are always artefacts created by humans for the specific purpose of communication. In the examples of icons given earlier, the photograph has been artificially produced to tell the viewer it represents the real person whose appearance has been imitated; and the onomatopoeia /miao/ is uttered by the child to simulate the sound made by a cat.

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Clearly, then, indexical signs are subject to human simulation; but when that happens, they are no longer the products of “nature”; rather, they have become instruments made specifically for the purpose of communication. In other words, these indexical signs have been iconified. In A Theory of Linguistic Signs (1998), Rudi Keller provides the following illustration of the process of iconification, using the word “symptom” in the sense of the more popular term “index”: If I want to silently indicate to my companion during the course of a lecture that I find it deadly boring, I can do this by turning to her and simulating a somewhat exaggerated yawn. A slight deviation from an authentic yawn is necessary to make sure that it is not interpreted as a real one. The simulated yawn should be sufficiently salient to cause the addressee to judge it as an attempt at communication and search for an appropriate interpretation. Therefore, the simulated yawn must fulfill two conditions. (1) It must be recognizable as the simulation of a yawn. (2) It must be recognizable as the simulation of a yawn. Through simulation, the symptom becomes an icon. It undergoes a process of iconification, and this for the following reasons: a real yawn can be a symptom of a shortage of oxygen. A simulated yawn can never be a symptom of a shortage of oxygen. Only real symptoms are symptoms. Imitated symptoms resemble symptoms and are thus icons of symptoms. (1998, 144–5)

The same iconification process applies to other indexical signs. Blood test results, for instance, are possible indexes: they can be interpreted by a doctor as an index of disease (or of good health), but people can interfere with their bodies to induce certain responses, as in the case of attempting to dodge military service. In doing so, those people have turned “natural signs” into “true signs.” The conclusion to be drawn here is that humans share with other kinds of animals an ability to make inferences from perceptions, but they further exploit this interpretive ability for the purpose of influencing the feelings, thoughts, or behaviours of their fellow creatures. It is in the course of the latter that language emerges. The third way in which A and B can be connected is through convention – what Peirce elsewhere calls “symbols.” Words in language generally belong in this category; they are interpretable not because they

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are temporally or spatially contiguous to their referents or visually or acoustically similar to them, but because everyone else makes the connections. In other words, if someone says /goodbye/ to me, we can understand the expression because we have heard it being uttered so many times by people when they take leave of one another. Naturally, if we encounter a symbol for the first time, we will not be able to figure out the user’s intended meaning by making inferences based on contiguity or similarity. Just like indexical signs, which may be turned into iconic signs through human imitation, icons tend to become symbols as a result of familiarization on the part of sign users. For an example of symbolification of icons, let us turn to Keller once again: Consider this fictive example. During a walk through the forest, I want to make my companion aware of a wood pigeon sitting on a branch, but without scaring her away (the pigeon, that is). I could do this by pointing towards the pigeon and imitating its cooing sound. From my pointing gesture and similarity of the sound I make to that of a pigeon, my companion will infer: “Aha, this guy probably wants to show me a pigeon.” Let us assume that my communicative attempt is successful, and the situation comes up again the next day. My companion will now infer, on the basis of the successful communicative endeavor of the previous day, “Aha, he definitely wants to show me a pigeon.” By the fifth time, at the latest, I will not even bother with trying to produce the pigeon’s coo with any degree of authenticity. Just the start of an approximate coo will suffice to let my companion know that I want to point out a pigeon. She will no longer need to employ her associative abilities. The basis of her inference will be her knowledge. The moral of the story: anyone repeatedly faced with the same puzzle will not need to guess at its solution; she will know it. Over time, a recurring associative inference necessarily becomes a rule-based inference. (ibid., 150)

As is made very clear by the above illustration, whatever iconic origin a sign may have, it loses its motivating function as a result of repeated use over time. Such a change, according to Keller, offers at least two advantages for sign users. First, a certain degree of similarity between the sign and its referent is no longer required: even bad bird imitators are able to use the sign for communication. Second, a symbolized icon becomes less context-bound: a demotivated cooing sound uttered in any

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place at any time can be associated with its referent (pigeons) through the linguistic knowledge of sign users. The symbolization of icons as an inevitable stage in sign evolution is often neglected in discussions of the relationship between language and thought. In May 1996, Nanjing University hosted an academic symposium, “Cultural Dialogue,” which was attended by dozens of scholars from Europe, the United States, and various parts of China. Some of the participants from France maintained that Chinese modernization was being greatly hampered by the pictorial nature of Chinese language, which dictates a particular way of thinking. A group of local scholars disagreed, explaining that Chinese language is more ideographic than pictorial and hence capable of handling any form of abstract thinking. Indeed, it can be further argued – as Wee Lee Woon does in Chinese Writing: Its Origin and Evolution (1987) – that Chinese language as it now stands is neither pictorial nor ideographic, but phonetic, with the vast majority of its characters being picto-phonetic compounds.6 But that is not the issue here; the point that seemed to have been missed by both sides in the Nanjing debate is that Chinese language is as “symbolic” as its phonetic counterparts in the West in the sense that the interpretation of its meanings is equally rule-governed. This does not mean that the former iconicity of signs is no longer important as an aspect of Chinese language. On the contrary, it has always been part of the traditional discipline of Chinese etymology, whose aim is, to quote a native etymologist, to explore the links between the forms and meanings of characters, which hopefully can lead us to the connections between the birth of Chinese writing and primeval Chinese mentality and culture. Research in such an area can facilitate the exegeses of ancient texts and excavated scripts which form the basis of archeological and historical investigations, and the study of the structure of Chinese characters is also useful for processing the language on computers. (Zhan 1991, 151)

One can add to this another possibility – that knowledge of the structure of Chinese characters will greatly benefit non-native learners of Chinese, whose numbers are growing rapidly. True, Chinese language is as symbolic as any of its phonetic counterparts; but it can be “desymbolized” or “reiconified” for the purpose of overcoming the challenge of remembering massive numbers of characters in a short time. Even

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without subjective interventions by the teacher, disparities in sign recognition do appear in real communicative situations. Something that is a symbol for one person can be an icon for another, and vice versa. The deciding phenomenological factor is the technique of interpretive inference. Peirce’s unique insight into the relations between signs and extrasemiotic objects could throw some interesting light on the native study of Chinese writing. For nearly two millennia – from the Han dynasty to around the middle of the twentieth century – Chinese scholars relied mostly on Xu Shen’s shuo wen jie zi (c. 96–100) in their ongoing efforts to classify the characters of their language. According to Xu Shen (c. 58–147), Chinese characters can be divided into the following six major types, each the result of a distinctive method of character formation: 1. The first type are called “ቕኒᕈ” (pictographs), which physically resemble the objects they are supposed to denote. The examples given by Xu himself are /ྉ/ () and /ᐎ/ ().

Figure 7. ྉ (sun)

Figure 8. ᐎ (moon)

2. The second type are called “ᓈ်ᕈ” (ideographs), whose referents are not concrete objects that look very similar to their corresponding signs but abstract relations, which the characters hint at. Xu’s examples for this category include /࿥/ () and /ሤ/ ().

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Figure 9. ࿥ (upper)

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Figure 10. ሤ (lower)

3. The third type are what Xu called “છ፪ᕈ” (associative compounds) – that is, their meanings are derived from not one but two or more graphs, which combine to form a character. Two examples of this category are /ශ/ () and /採/ ().

Figure 11. ශ (bright)

Figure 12. 採 (pick)

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4. Characters of the fourth category are “ኒဏᕈ” (picto-phonetic complexes). Each consists of at least one semantic element and one phonetic element, the former being a rough indicator of meaning and the latter an approximation of pronunciation. We can see this “division of labour” in characters such as /ଫ/ () and /ਫ/ ().

Figure 13. ଫ (river) & ਫ (stream) 5. By the fifth category of “ᔜᔔᕈ” (synonymous characters), Xu Shen meant those which are similar in meaning and therefore can be used to explain one another. One pair of such characters given by him is /౳/ () and /௾/ ().

Figure 14. ౳ (old)

Figure 15. ௾ (advanced in age)

6. The final category consists of what Xu Shen called “૵୦ᕈ” (phonetic loans). These originally had no written forms and therefore had to be graphically realized by virtue of another character that sounded similar. The character for , for example, has been bor-

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rowed to graphically represent , which sounds more or less the same. Likewise, the character for has been borrowed to visualize , which otherwise would have no written form.

Figure 16. ड (phoenix)

Figure 17. ौ (father)

Despite their unparalleled historical significance, Xu’s categories7 contain some inconsistencies. The fifth and sixth categories, for example, point to the “connections between characters,” unlike the first four categories, which point to the “structure of characters.” In other words, Xu’s last two categories are not related to “the structural features” of Chinese characters that are the subject of his discussions. Xu Shen is also guilty of shifting the parameters in his discussions of different types of characters. He defined one category of characters as “pictographic” on the basis of the relationship between a sign and its referent (as in the cases of /sun/ and /moon/); but then he went on to describe another category as “ideographic” in terms of the degree of abstractness of referents (as in the cases of /upper/ and /lower/). These and other inadequacies in Xu’s categorization have prompted many fresh attempts to reclassify Chinese characters.8 In An Introduction to Chinese Paleography (1934), Tang Lan put forward his famous “three categories of characters,” which many came to view as a watershed between traditional Chinese philology and modern linguistic science. Tang’s new categories are “ቕኒ” (pictographic)

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characters, “ቕ፪” (ideographic) characters, and “ኒဏ” (picto-phonetic) characters. In effect, Tang eliminated the final two categories from Xu’s list for the reasons mentioned earlier; he then further reduced the number of categories by expanding Xu’s category of “pictographic” characters to include otherwise “ideographic” characters; in this way he reserved the word “ideographic” for Xu’s third category – associative compounds. The debate, of course, has not ended, and there have been other proposals to recategorize Chinese characters. Probably the most influential among these is a different set of three categories put forward by Qiu Xigui, another former linguistics professor of Peking University, who proposed grouping all Chinese characters into either “ideographic characters” or “picto-phonetic characters” or “loan characters.”9 More recently, there have even been attempts to expand the number of categories back to six, albeit a very different six from Xu’s original stipulations – hence the term “new six categories.” From a Peircean perspective, Qiu’s categorization seems to make the most sense, though the relationships among his different categories still require some clarification and minor adjustments. Recall from our reading of Peirce that the iconic interpretation is an associative inference on the basis of a relation of similarity, whatever kind it may be. In that sense, Xu Shen’s “pictographic” and “ideographic” characters are icons. Professor Qiu is correct to call them both “ideographs,” for they share the same interpretive movement from “graphs” to “ideas” about things and events. Besides, even the most “pictographic” characters are not interpreted on the basis of a perfect matching with their referents; rather, they are reminders of one or more features that are considered to be characteristic of the things or events, or ideas referred to, as in the case of /෤/ (), where the two dots do not resemble the breasts of a woman as they actually look but, in the context of a pictorial human chest, are sufficient reminders of the idea of woman and, by temporal contiguity, also the idea of a mother who breastfeeds her children.

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Figure 18. ෤ (mother) At the same time, Xu Shen’s “ideographic” characters can be shown to be pictorially similar to the events or situations in question, as in the case of /upper/ or /under/, where the “object” being represented is the spatial relation between two things, one on top of the other. Either way, we are led to eliminate the unnecessary distinction between “pictographic” and “ideographic” characters, both of which now fall under the same category: “icons.” Structurally speaking, icons can be further divided into “simple icons,” each consisting of a single graph, as in /ᕅ/ (); and “compound icons,” which are made up of more than one graph, as in /ਛ/ (mother holding child, which means ).

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Figure 19. ᕅ (child)

Figure 20. ਛ (good)

This distinction would not be of great significance except that some graphs are repeated in the formations of different characters carrying more or less the same “semantic value,” as can be seen in the character of /ቦ/ (child carrying elder which means ).

Figure 21. ቦ (filial)

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The transition from the isolated occurrence of a particular graph to a repeatable element of language called a “radical” is significant for the evolution of Chinese writing because it allows the previous association between a graph and its referent to continue to function long after the initial pictorial “prompts” have disappeared as a consequence of “symbolization.” The graph for water, for example, used to consist of a twisting line sandwiched by a few black dots signalling water drops:

Figure 22. ႈ (water) It later became a four-stroke semantic element, one that appears as a part of many other characters, as in /۟/ () and /พ/ (), indicating that the compound character is in some way related to the concept of liquid. This means that language elements themselves can serve as “reminders” of their referents, resulting in what may be described as “meta-icons” – that is, “icons of icons.” There is yet another way in which a single-graph character can be turned into a meta-icon. Apart from the semantic connection to its referent, a graph is also related through convention to a particular sequence of sounds that constitute its pronunciation. Not surprisingly, this aspect of Chinese characters has often been exploited in forming new characters. The graph /ᷯ/ meant and was pronounced as [bi4]; when it was borrowed to form the character /‫ڭ‬/ () so as to graphically distinguish the latter from another etymologically related

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character /ᕆ/ (), its semantic value was abandoned, leaving its phonetic value as an indicator as to how the new compound was to be pronounced. The outcome of such phonetic appropriations resulted in what was described by professor Qiu as “ኒဏߖ” (picto-phonetic characters). There are also occasions – albeit very rare – when the phonetic value of an existing character is appropriated to form a new singlegraph character, as in cases of onomatopoeia. This constitutes Professor Qiu’s third category of “loan characters,” where one character similar in pronunciation has been borrowed to form an entirely different sign in terms of its semantic value. But as mentioned earlier, this has more to do with the connections between characters than with the structure of characters, which makes it unsuitable to be listed as a major category of Chinese characters. We are thus left with only two categories: simple icons and compound icons. The former are not analysable into small components; the latter consist of a pair of meta-icons which, through their similarities to two individual icons, signal either a related semantic meaning or an approximate phonetic pronunciation.

5 The Poetic Logic

In our discussion of the evolution of signs in the previous chapter, we saw three different techniques of sense making at work. The first is based on the spatial and temporal contiguity between things and states of affairs that gives rise to “indexical” signs; the second is based on the similarity (of various kinds and degrees) that obtains between things and states of affairs, resulting in “iconic” signs; the third is based on the “symbolic” convention of a particular language community, which links ideas or concepts with images or sequences of sounds through social habit. What needs to be pointed out here is that long after humans have acquired the ability to use linguistic symbols, they continue to make use of the first two techniques, which, if they occur with the assistance of language, give rise to what are often referred to as “metonymy” and “metaphor.” Before George Lakoff and Mark Johnson published Metaphors We Live By (1980), metonymy and metaphor were studied within the field of rhetoric, where they were viewed as merely two among many figures of speech. Today’s scholars – especially cognitive linguists – continue to talk about language phenomena such as simile, conceit, personification, oxymoron, and paradox, but they do so under the all-encompassing term of metaphor, with one notable exception: metonymy. Let us begin with metonymy, which has long been defined as “use of the name of one thing for that of another associated or suggested by it” (Guralnik et al. 1972). The following are some examples (Danesi 2004a, 131–2): A. a body part for the person • Get your butt over here!

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• The Yankees need a stronger arm in right field. • We don’t hire crew cuts. B. the producer for the product • I’ll have a Heineken. • We bought a Ford. • He’s got a Rembrandt in his house. C. the object for the user • My piano is sick today. • The meat and potatoes is a lousy tipper. • The buses are on strike. D. the institution for the people in the institution • Shell has raised its price again. • The church thinks that promiscuity is immoral. • I don’t approve of Washington’s actions. E. the place for the institution • The White House isn’t saying anything. • Milan is introducing new jackets this year. • Wall Street is in a panic. It is interesting that categories A, D, and E are different from categories B and C in the sense that they involve part/whole relationships: they are instances of what has long been called synecdoche, where a specific part of something is taken to refer to the whole, or vice versa. Thus /Hollywood/ is often used to synecdochically stand for , with the former being part of the latter. The other two categories contain instances of metonymy, where one thing is used for another through contiguous association. Thus /kettle/ in “The kettle is boiling” could be a seen as a metonymy for because neither is part of the other; the two are merely associated with each other through spatial proximity. Despite this minor distinction, however, most scholars now view synecdoche as a subspecies of metonymy because the part/whole relationship can be subsumed under a more general rule (that of contiguity) that characterizes all the cases presented above. From a semiotic point of view, metonymy is more than a rhetorical strategy that for the sake of stylistic variation describes something

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indirectly by referring to another. Consciously or not, this use of language reveals a fundamental characteristic of human cognition and communication. As is made abundantly clear by Denesi’s examples, it is extremely common for people to link two things or objects on the basis of spatial or temporal contiguity with or without the assistance of language. To illustrate the point, Rudi Keller (1998, 158–9) compares the interpretive process of an archeologist who comes across a keel at an excavation site with that of a reader who encounters the linguistic expression /A thousand keels approached the shore/. The archeologist would normally take the physical object in question as an indexical sign of a buried ship and would most likely continue digging the site to learn more. To reach this conclusion, though, he must have the general knowledge that a keel is part of a ship; he can then infer the whole from the part. The reader of /A thousand keels approached the shore/ employs the same interpretive technique as the archeologist. To understand the expression, she has to make two interpretive “moves” in succession: first, she must remember the meaning of the word /keel/, which is conventionally used to refer to ; then, on the basis of her knowledge that a keel is part of a ship, she can infer that the word /keels/ means in this particular context. We can see that the inference the archeologist makes on the level of objects is also made by the reader on the level of linguistic symbols, resulting in what is commonly called metonymy. In a similar fashion, metaphor has long been defined as “a figure of speech containing an implied comparison, in which a word or phrase ordinarily and primarily used of one thing is applied to another” (Guralnik et al. 1972). As an “abnormal” use of language, it has come to be seen either as a useful device employed by orators and writers to embellish their expression or as an unnecessary distraction that is the enemy of simplicity and straightforwardness. It is against this background of misunderstanding that Lakoff and Johnson wrote their nowfamous book Metaphors We Live By. The two authors open their first chapter as follows: Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish – a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in every-

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An important point being made here by Lakoff and Johnson is that metaphor is a matter not just of language but also of thought and action. In English-speaking culture, for example, oak can be interpreted as a symbol of steadfastness and reliability. When someone is described as an oak in his unit of work, those who are literate in English certainly know that the linguistic sign /oak/ is meant to be a metaphor for . And when they see a picture of an oak in an advertisement for life insurance, they associatively arrive at the same conclusion. In both cases, one is led from the attributes of oak tree to the qualities of the person in question on the basis of similarity.1 Throughout their book, Lakoff and Johnson insist that metaphor is more than simply an optional flourish of language – indeed, that it is one of the basic techniques of human sense making. Aristotle once said: “Midway between the unintelligible and the commonplace, it is metaphor which most produces knowledge” (Ross 1952, III:1410). In everyday language, the Greek philosopher is saying that a metaphor involves two items, one of which is more familiar to the user and thus throws light on the other. Take, for example, “All the world’s a stage,” a famous line from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Following the tradition established by I.A. Richards in The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1964 [1936]), we could conveniently break it down to two essential components: the “tenor” (the world) and the “vehicle” (a stage). That a stage provides a temporary venue where players perform their prescribed roles and then exit is well known to both Shakespeare’s readers and most contemporary users of English. By being linked to human life in general, this particular attribute of the stage is transferred or projected onto the topic under discussion. Lakoff and Johnson later replaced Richards’s conventional terms with a pair of their own: “target” and “source.” In the new nomenclature, the Shakespearean metaphor could be formulaically represented as “the world IS a stage,” with the verb in the middle always capitalized. Turning to the history of Chinese thinking on metaphor, we find fascinating parallel insights into the nature of metaphor. Mo Zi, for one, defines metaphor as a device that “seeks to understand one thing by dint of another” (‫ڿ‬ጺᒍĶஹጺ[ვ]ᇯࣈ፜ශᒾጺ) (Feng 2002, 20). Here, “one thing” and “another” are equivalent to Richards’s tenor and vehicle in the sense that the second item in each pair serves as a param-

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eter against which the first is to be understood. We even have a contribution from Confucius, who understandably was concerned mostly with how to make metaphors more effective in the service of disseminating benevolence. The Chinese master’s advice on this matter is that we should “select metaphorical vehicles from things in the vicinity” (จ ୺ཕນ) (ibid., 18). Brief as it is, this maxim reveals a clear understanding of how metaphors usually work – that is, they make sense of the abstruse with the assistance of things or states of affairs that are more familiar. There are, of course, many other Chinese theorists of metaphor – including those whose studies have become more systematic under the influence of Western scholarship – but none is comparable in depth to the late Professor Qian Zhongshu, whose “two handles and several sides theory of metaphor” (‫ڮ‬Ꮱೃ۠ࢰ‫ۅ‬ႏ) best complements what Umberto Eco in the West called contemporary “metaphorology” (1986, 88). As we pointed out earlier, metaphor is the result of making associative links between things or states of affairs on the basis of similarity. But association is essentially a creative process without restriction. The “free” nature of association is well demonstrated by Monroe Beardsley (1958) when he writes that “even if we put all English adjectives in one hat, and all nouns in the other, and drew them out at random, we would find that the strangest combinations yield possible meanings upon reflection” (1958, 143). This is so because a content word in language can be analysed into an unlimited number of semantic markers, and one can very easily find that some of these markers have commonalities with others that are contained in another word. In other words, “metaphorical association” is open ended and heterogeneous; often, one tenor is combined with a large number of vehicles, and vice versa. Lakoff and Johnson have discussed “LIFE IS A JOURNEY” as some kind of master trope, but the fact is that life as a topic can be discussed in relation to numerous other vehicles. Quite often (at least in Chinese) we hear metaphors such as these: • • • • • • •

life IS drama life IS a book life IS poetry life IS a song life IS tea life IS water life IS a lamp

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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

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life IS porcelain life IS a bridge life IS flax life IS flower life IS smoke life IS a dream life IS fantasy life IS a bubble life IS a shadow life IS a picture life IS a riddle life IS fog life IS huge waves life IS wine life IS electricity life IS wind life IS fire life IS a poker game life IS a chess game life IS a dinner party life IS stars and constellations life IS duckweed life IS stock market life IS dust life IS long-distance running life IS a bus ride life IS morning dew life IS flower in a mirror life IS moon reflection in water … (Ji 2002, 16)

Here, the items on the right side of the equation (drama, a book, poetry, a song, tea, water, a lamp, porcelain, a bridge, flax, flower, smoke, a dream, fantasy, a bubble, shadow, a picture, a riddle, fog, huge waves, wine, electricity, wind, fire, a poker game, a chess game, a dinner party, stars and constellations, duckweed, stock market, dust, long-distance running, a bus ride, morning dew, flower in a mirror, moon reflection in water) derive from highly diverse categories of things and ideas; but like planets orbiting the sun, they gravitate towards the one concept they are meant to illuminate: . Some of the connections between

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the tenor and the vehicle are easy to make because the relations between them are obvious; others are somewhat difficult for people who are less familiar with the vehicles involved. But either way, one is led from the latter to the former on the basis of a certain degree of similarity. and , for instance, seem far apart from each other at first, but they do have between them an interesting commonality – that is, both are fragile and easy to break, hence the collocation. The much discussed concept of can also be explained with the assistance of a wide range of vehicles. We could very well say that marriage is • a magician (who turns a freezing house into a warm home) • Santa Claus (who brings to the couple nice gifts in the form of children) • a judge (who while giving one partner life imprisonment makes the other a permanent warden) • a politician (who sometimes resorts to lying in order to keep a respectable façade) • a miser (who refuses to share any remnants of affection with a third party) • a beautician (who is capable of bringing youthful radiance back to a time-worn face) • a poet (except that his sentimental subject matters have become daily chores) • an actor (who always savours his own sadness and joy through other people’s stories) • a Confucian businessman (who inevitably engages in some selfish dealings behind the façade of respectability) • a thief (who steals every bit of love from the couple) • a philosopher (who often analyses himself like this: 99% of what flows in my body is the blood of a devil and the rest is the tears of an angel) • a pair of shoes (and only the feet that wear them know whether they are comfortable) • a book (that always begins with beautiful poems but fades into insipid prose thereafter) • monochromatic; if it is red, green is not tolerated; if it is yellow, blue cannot exist • a lottery ticket (with which the man bets on satisfaction and the woman on happiness)

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• a besieged fortress; (those who are outside it want to get in, and those who are inside want to get out) • a zipper (which always obtains harmony through friction) • a river (where there are beautiful waves that you can see as well as huge whirlpools that you cannot see) (ibid., 15) Like the first group of metaphors, the second group presents various connections between the tenor and the vehicle, which are achieved through the imagination of their authors. In the pre-metaphorical world, , , and are the last things we can think of as related to , yet the writers have brought them together on the basis of what they are perceived to have in common. As Qian Zhongshu puts it, “the essence of metaphor lies in making the dissimilar similar” (ນᏡ፜‫܃‬ᅊ಄ᆪ಄) (1979, 74). For a visual representation of the “associative structure” of metaphor, let us turn to Marcel Danesi, who offers the following diagram in Poetic Logic: The Role of Metaphor in Thought, Language, and Culture (2004b, 86):

Figure 23. Danesi’s associative structure of metaphor Note that Danesi borrowed the main title of his book from Giambattista Vico, author of The New Science (1984 [1725]). At the time of Vico’s writing, it was commonly assumed that only literature was characterized by the use of metaphors. In fact, as can been seen from the following quotation, which is taken randomly from a contemporary

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anthology of literature, many people continue to associate metaphor with poetry: Poems use figurative language much of the time. A poem may insist that death is like a sunset or sex like an earthquake or that the way to imagine how it feels to be spiritually secure is to think of the way a sheep is taken care of by a shepherd. The pictorialness of our imagination may clarify things for us – scenes, states of mind, ideas – but at the same time it stimulates us to think of how those pictures make us feel. (Booth et al. 2006, 703)

Vico rejects this narrow interpretation of metaphor. True, poets make extensive use of imaginative association to shed light on various aspects of human life, but that prerogative is hardly reserved for poetry. Being historically minded, Vico takes his readers on a journey through what he considers the three distinctive stages of culture and shows that metaphor is a universal intellectual phenomenon that reflects a generic faculty of the human mind: All the first tropes are corollaries of this poetic logic. The most luminous and therefore the most necessary and frequent is metaphor. It is most praised when it gives sense and passion to insensate things, in accordance with the metaphysics above discussed, by which the first poets attributed to bodies the being of animate substances, with capacities measured by their own, namely sense and passion, and in this way made fables of them. (quoted in Danesi 2004b, 56)

In other words, if metaphoric thinking is “poetic,” then all our primitive ancestors were poets. As Danesi’s diagram illustrates, a structural characteristic of poetic logic is that a single concept can be matched with a wide range of vehicles that serve as its frames of understanding. The letter “T” in the centre of the large circle stands for “target,” and the S’s in the small circles stand for “source” (note that these are Lakoff and Johnson’s terms for “tenor” and “vehicle” respectively). The “Sn” that follows the sequence “S1, S2, S3, … S9” indicates that in theory, the number of potential vehicles is unlimited. One advantage of vehicular multiplicity is that it enables a language community to look at things or states of affairs from multiple perspectives. The profession of teaching, for example, has often been compared by contemporary Chinese to the following:

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1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

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a candle a gardener an engineer of human soul an instiller of knowledge police

Each of the above vehicles throws a different light on the relationship between teachers and students: the first metaphor emphasizes that teachers bring knowledge (light) to students and are totally dedicated to them; the second sees learning as natural growth and teaching as careful nurturing; the third stresses the importance of spiritual health as well as teachers’ role in achieving that goal; the fourth emphasizes that teachers must possess sufficient knowledge to pass on to students; and the last views it as essential to always maintain discipline among students. Also made clear by Danesi’s diagram is that the comparison induced by any metaphor can be only partial. To go back to the examples given earlier, metaphor 1 neglects the fact that teachers need to further develop themselves and that there ought to be pleasure (not just sacrifice) in teaching; metaphor 2 seems to have forgotten that there are weeds in the garden that need to be eliminated (rather than nurtured); what metaphor 3 glosses over is that engineers tend to produce standardized machine parts that would lead to the neglect of students’ individualities; metaphor 4 does not consider the possibility that the student’s small container could overflow; and, finally, metaphor 5 does not mention that police do not teach school subjects. An important conclusion here is that metaphorical thinking goes deeper than simply comparing two things or concepts as totalities; instead, it involves “highlighting” one or several aspects of the vehicle that resemble or correspond to those in the target. Qian Zhongshu summarizes this point very well: When two things are similar, one is used as a metaphor for the other. However, the similarity between them is partial rather than complete. If they were completely alike, they would be two instances of the same thing; and if they were the same, there would be no need for metaphor. (1984 [1948], 51)

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Another structural characteristic of poetic logic is that one single cultural unit can be employed to illuminate more than one “tenor” or “topic.” Danesi (2004b) describes this structure as “radiation” because “it can be envisioned as a single source domain ‘radiating outwards’ to deliver different target domains” (2004b, 87):

Figure 24. Danesi’s radiating structure of metaphor In contrast to Danesi’s first diagram, his second one somehow fails to make visible the overlapping that exits between the circle in the middle (S) and those that surround it (T1, T2, … Tn). This omission must be rectified, because it is not the totality of attributes but one or a limited number of selected features that are transferred from the vehicle onto the tenor. Qian Zhongshu has this to say: Metaphors may have two handles, but they also have several sides. Now, a certain thing may be one, but its qualities and capabilities are likely to be many. Consequently, the one thing is not restricted to one use or one effect. Those who employ a figure of speech may do so with different aspects in mind or with a different feature in view, so that even when the denotatum is the same the significatum will vary. That is why a single image may fulfill several different purposes or meanings even while it remains the same. (Egan 1998, 125)2

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We will return to the concept of “two handles” at a later point. To illustrate Qian’s idea of “several sides,” let us turn to a table of water-related metaphors constructed by Tan Ruwei (quoted in Feng 2002, 309): Table 1 Water-related metaphors Examples

Tenor

Vehicle

Ground

The friendship of a gentleman is insipid like water. (Zhuangzi)

friendship

water

being clean and not sticky

Tender feelings are like water; good times are like a dream. (Qingguan, Song Dynasty)

affection, love

water

being inseparable

The long night is like deep long night water. (Qingguan, Song Dynasty)

water

being long and deep

It is a matter of common regret that human mind is not calm as water and great waves could suddenly arise for no good reason. (Liu Yuxi, Tang Dynasty)

human mind

water

being calm and level

He kept looking anxiously until the glistening autumn waters dried up. (Wang Shifu, Yuan Dynasty)

eyes

water

having sparkles and being crystal clear

Watery moonlight fell upon the black coat. (Lu Xun)

moonlight

water

being cold and bright

The nearly cloudless blue sky was water-like. (Liu Yong, Song Dynasty)

sky

water

being transparent

The bamboo mat looks like water bamboo mat and the mosquito net looks like smoke. (Su Shi, Song Dynasty)

water

undulating and creating ripples

Although silent, the strong cavalry looks like water. (Lu You, Song Dynasty)

columns of horses and soldiers

water

moving rapidly

Should I be asked how much anguish I have found, strange! It is like flowing water, eastward bound. (Li Yu, the Five Dynasties)

anxiety and distress

water

going a long distance

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In all of these examples, is used as a frame of reference for understanding another term, but each case involves only a portion of the qualities associated with the concept of water, be it “being clear” or “going a long distance.” “Several sides of metaphor” may not be the most elegant jargon available in the technical study of the subject, but it does signal the profound importance of the “multivalency” that exists in the operation of the vehicle. (Andrew Goatly suggested this term for “the multiple use of the same item to refer to different Topics” and its opposite: “diversification” for “multiple Vehicles with an identical Topic” [1997, 258–60].) Qian’s own examples regarding vehicular multivalency are related to the image of the moon. Our most popular notion about that celestial body is that it is both round and bright – that is, it has two qualities that exist alongside each other. /Moon-eyes/ (ᐎጁ) and /moon-face/ (ᐎ ධ) are two common expressions used to describe a person’s appearance, and each appropriates one “side” or aspect of the moon’s nature: the former is based on the brightness of the moon, the latter on its roundness. But other attributes have been attributed to the moon. For example, it can be interpreted (at least in Chinese culture) as containing the element of yin, which is related to the female sex. Thus we have two poetic lines from Chen Zi-ang’s (661–702) series: “A new moon emerges from the western sea / Replacing the yang force as it rises,” which is said to be a veiled reference to Empress Wu Zetian. According to Qian Zhongshu, in these words the poet cannot be thinking about roundness or brightness because it would be absurd to imagine the ruthless Wu Zetian as having a beaming face that shines on her subjects. These examples thus confirm that “a single thing may be viewed from different perspectives and will appear differently in each. When a writer uses a metaphor, he takes what he wants from it” (Egan 1998, 127). That the user of metaphor selects only a particular aspect of the vehicle as his or her “meaning focus” leads us to the other feature of metaphor that Qian Zhongshu touched on: its “two handles.” This concept involves a unique and sophisticated integration of the Chinese and Western traditions of metaphorical study, so let us hear what Qian himself has to say: A particular object or image, when employed as a metaphor, may be used positively as praise or negatively as censure, or it may be expressive of delight or revulsion, the connotation changing this way and that. Students of rhetoric and stylistics may want to take note of this. One of the Stoic

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Parallels, Interactions, and Illuminations philosophers observed, “Everything has two handles,” and people take hold of whichever suits their needs. Taking a clue from this, and mindful of early Chinese uses of the same phrase (to designate rewards and punishments, two devices used by the ruler to maintain order), I might call the concept I wish to discuss “the two handles of metaphor.” (ibid., 122)

In other words, the choice of a particular aspect of the vehicle as the meaning focus is closely linked to the aesthetic inclination of the metaphor user. According to Qian, the moon reflected in water has often been used in Buddhist texts to suggest the existence of a beautiful spiritual world that is beyond the reach of earthlings. But when the same image is used in non-Buddhist contexts, it usually alludes to the impermanence of things, thus suggesting the illusory nature of the moon. For another interesting illustration of this point, let us consider two excerpts from Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged: Finding himself pressured on both sides, Fang Hung-chien finally realized the importance of a foreign diploma. This diploma, it seemed, would function the same as Adam and Eve’s figleaf. It could hide a person’s shame and wrap up his disgrace. This tiny square of paper could cover his shallowness, ignorance, and stupidity. (2004 [1947], 12) He didn’t realize that a person’s shortcomings are just like a monkey’s tail. When it’s squatting on the ground, its tail is hidden from view, but as soon as it climbs a tree, it exposes its backside to everyone. (ibid., 221)

The first quotation compares a diploma from a foreign university to what Adam and Eve used to cover their private parts, thus revealing the author’s attitude towards the fashion among the Chinese urban elites of the time to send their children to the West to get “gilded.” It was no accident that Qian Zhongshu himself did not bother to obtain a PhD while studying at Oxford even though he knew English and other European languages extremely well and was more knowledgeable than all of his fellow students in several humanities subjects. The second quotation is a satiric comment on a character who not only has a diploma but also has moved up in his academic career. By linking this university president’s behaviour to the tail of a monkey, the narrator makes his attitude towards his topic quite clear. In fact, his aesthetic inclination is so obvious here and elsewhere in the novel that Qian Zhongshu provides a self-acquittal in its preface so as not to offend readers:

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In this book, I intended to write about a certain segment of society and a certain kind of people in modern China. In writing about these people, I did not forget they are human beings, still human beings with the basic nature of hairless, two-legged animals. The characters are of course fictitious, so those with a fondness for history need not trouble themselves trying to trace them out. (ibid., xi)

This is one more proof that a metaphorical vehicle can be interpreted as derogatory or commendatory, depending on the user’s aesthetic inclinations. Qian Zhongshu’s theorization on vehicular diversity and multivalency raises some serious questions about the currently dominant cognitive theory of metaphor championed by Lakoff and Johnson. According to these two American scholars, our conceptual system – which is largely metaphorical – structures what we perceive, how we navigate the world, and how we relate to other people. To illustrate their point, they choose the example of war, which is said to have structured our style of making arguments. Just as in a real war, they tell us, we see the person we are arguing with as an enemy; we plan and implement strategies; we attack our enemy’s views and defend our own; and, of course, we win or lose arguments. The warlike actions we perform while arguing are reflected in the following italicized linguistic expressions: ARGUMENT IS WAR Your claims are indefensible. He attacked every weak point in my argument. His criticisms were right on target. I demolished his argument. I’ve never won an argument with him. You disagree? Okay, shoot! If you use that strategy, he will wipe you out. He shot down all of my arguments. (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 4)

Though there are no physical fights, there are verbal battles in our everyday life. In this sense, people in Western culture live by the “ARGUMENT IS WAR” metaphor. As a contrary example to reveal how a metaphorical concept structures what we do in everyday life, Lakoff and Johnson urge their read-

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ers to imagine a culture in which an argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are seen as performers, and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way. In such a culture, they contend, people would view arguments differently, conduct them differently, experience them differently, and talk about them differently. As a result, people in that culture would probably not view themselves as arguing at all: they would simply be doing something different. Indeed, it would seem strange even to call what they were doing “arguing.” For lack of a succinct term to describe this phenomenon, Lakoff and Johnson make do with a general statement to the effect that Westerners have a discourse form structured in terms of battle, whereas people in that imaginary culture have one structured in terms of dance (ibid., 5). From this, it is not difficult to deduce that Lakoff and Johnson are of the opinion that the “ARGUMENT IS DANCE” metaphor would always lead to a conception of arguments as a kind of “aesthetically pleasing” activity, characterized by an atmosphere of friendly cooperation between conversation partners. From Qian Zhongshu’s perspective, however, this assumption is very much open to doubt, because the kind of conceptualization settled on in a given situation depends on which semantic features of the polysemic vehicle are selected for transfer onto the tenor. This in turn means that the “ARGUMENT IS DANCE” metaphor may have significantly different or even contradictory associations depending on which specific features from the source domain of dance are transferred onto the target domain of argument. Verena Haser (2005) offers the following analysis in her critique of the cognitive theory of metaphor: Speakers might very well single out for transfer a feature like “continual movement which leads to physical exhaustion.” In the target domain ARGUMENT, this might translate into the idea of exasperation, disappointment, or confusion. The conception of arguments which emerges from this construal of ARGUMENT IS DANCE differs significantly from the one proposed by Lakoff/Johnson. That such an interpretation is possible is shown by metaphorical expressions such as to lead a person a dance (“to lead him in a wearying, perplexing, or disappointing course; to cause him to undergo exertion or worry with no adequate result”). (2005, 152)

This analysis further validates Qian Zhongshu’s profound insight regarding the multivalent nature of metaphor and clearly points to a need for more specific explanations of how a metaphor actually works. In

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other words, the formula “X IS Y” is rather empty unless and until we single out particular features from the source that are transferred onto the target – thereby recognizing the possibility of various interpretations of the latter. The same problem arises when we check Lakoff and Johnson’s contention against the fact that oftentimes there are multiple metaphorical vehicles for the same tenor or topic. As was pointed out in our earlier discussion, the right side of Lakoff and Johnson’s famous equation “LIFE IS A JOURNEY” could be replaced with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and many more. The reason for such vehicular diversity is that a content word in any language can be broken down into an infinite number of semantic markers; as a result, it can be connected with one of the numerous semantic markers of another content word on the basis of similarity. Because of the openendedness of our metaphorical associations, we can easily find a person using hundreds if not thousands of different metaphors in his or her life, but can we safely claim that his or her behaviour and way of thinking are influenced by a particular group of metaphors? The answer to that question is no. The most we can allow for such a hypothesis is that language users are led into a highly specific view of reality each time a metaphor is employed. But by the time they encounter another metaphor at the next moment, the structure of the previous one has already been put aside. Furthermore, metaphors that seem ideologically inconsistent with one another can arise in a single text. Andrew Goatly, for example, has discovered the following “major metaphorical schemata” in his analysis of the Hong Kong government’s Review of Education System Reform Proposals – Consultation Document: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

acquisition of education as a commodity or as cultural capital education as construction educational assessment as a mechanism education as a journey education as nurture and growth (2002, 263–94)

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Goatly’s aim here is to criticize the ideological inconsistency in that document’s metaphors. He sees in those metaphors different ideological affiliations that conflict with one another, thus undermining the government’s original intention of encouraging internal motivation in students that will lead to their creating knowledge and to their allround development. The “acquisition of education as cultural capital” metaphor, according to Goatly, partly belongs with the business orientation of Hong Kong even though it could also be positively related to the educational task of trying to equip students for the future. The problem with the “education as a journey” metaphor is that education is often a predetermined track with goals and objectives set by society for society, which is against the spirit of exploring as yet undiscovered knowledge; conversely, in a more open system, where there is freedom and space to move, the “journey” metaphor would be rather in tune with the progressivism of the reform proposals. The “education as construction” metaphor appears to allow more creativity than the previous metaphor, but again it depends on how much the construction materials are ready-made. The “education as nurture and growth” metaphor is in line with the progressivist philosophy of motivating students, but it can also be developed along the traditional lines of training and providing. Finally, the “educational assessment as a mechanism” metaphor is deemed by Goatly to be very much in keeping with traditional regimes of thinking about education in Hong Kong in that it is “linked to the idea of getting grades and external rewards and qualifications for which assessment is necessary,” but it actually can be used to describe the machine-like accuracy and dependability needed for measuring students’ progress. To avoid these inconsistencies, Goatly goes so far as to suggest an alternative set of metaphors, as follows: Instead of the teacher being seen as providing resources or knowledge, as in the acquisition of commodities metaphor, the teachers could themselves be seen as a resource, available for the students to use for any educational purpose they choose. The same idea could be translated to the construction metaphor, in which case the teacher would be seen as a tool to be used for students to achieve their own aims, rather than as an architect or designer who predetermines those aims. Turning to the journey of exploration schema, rather than a guide the teacher could usefully be seen as a cartographer producing sketch maps, again with the implication that the direction of exploration will be freer, and students would be encouraged to revise or add to the map on their return. Indeed, instead of guid-

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ing, teachers might deliberately create obstacles for students to encourage “lateral” thinking, or explorations of unknown areas. In fact, assessment and examination could be seen, not as a mechanism for measuring students according to specifications, but the students’ own descriptions of the journeys of exploration. (2002, 292)

Though it is not Goatly’s intention, the above discussion actually reveals that no particular metaphorical schema can be said to claim a monopoly over the structuring or influencing of our thinking and behaviour. Whichever metaphor one uses when looking at the world, there is always second one with the potential to offset the first. Note also that our narrative texts do not always show an at-all-times coherent relationship between the source domain and the target domain of metaphor, nor do they have to. The author of Review of Education System Reform Proposals is not only tolerating but actively seeking out a diversity of perspectives in order to shed light on the different stages and various aspects of the process called education. The fact that semantic links can be established between one tenor and numerous vehicles raises serious doubts about “conceptual metaphor” as a plausible or efficient metalinguistic tool for studying metaphor. As we have learned from introductory courses on phonology, semantics, grammar, and other language-related subjects, linguistic units in a language can be grouped into different categories in relation to form, function, or meaning. Phonologically, for example, they can be grouped into monosyllabic, disyllabic, and polysyllabic words on the basis of similarity of form. Grammatically, they can be grouped into nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and so on, on the basis of similarity of function at the syntactic level. Semantically, they can be grouped into synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms, or other categories on the basis of their proximity, opposition, or subordination in meaning to one another. The notion of “metaphorical concepts” proposed by Lakoff and Johnson seems designed for the same purpose of categorizing linguistic units: they can be used to explain why several metaphorical expressions are placed in the same group. Let us go back to their earlier example. The conceptual metaphor “ARGUMENT IS WAR” can be used to capture what the subsumed metaphorical expressions (e.g., indefensible, attack, on target, demolish, win, shoot, strategy, wipe out, shoot down) have in common. In this case, they are all initially related to the concept of war, which is then metaphorically projected onto the domain of argument.

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What Lakoff and Johnson overlook, however, is that those linguistic expressions subsumed under this category can be, but need not always be, associated with the domain of war. This is because a host of crisscrossing links connect various lexical items on the basis of similarity, any of which could motivate a new classification. To illustrate this, let us borrow a diagram from Goatly’s Washing the Brain: Metaphor and Hidden Ideology (2007, 23):

Figure 25. Multiple possibilities for classification Here we have six squares with different symbols in them. There are, however, more ways of dividing them into groups. For example, we can use the property of “having only one letter” as a criterion for forming the first group:

Figure 26. Squares containing a single symbol Likewise, we can use the property of “having two letters” as a criterion for forming a group:

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Figure 27. Squares containing two symbols Or, we can put 1, 2, and 6 together on the grounds that they contain only os and no xs.

Figure 28. Squares containing the letter “O/o” Similarly, we can put 3, 4, and 5 together on the grounds that they all contain an “X/x.”

Figure 29. Squares containing the letter “X/x” Or, we can consider 1, 3, and 5 as a group because they have an uppercase letter in the centre.

Figure 30. Squares with an upper-case letter in the centre

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Correspondingly, 2, 4, and 6 can go into the same group because they have a lower-case letter in the centre.

Figure 31. Squares with a lower-case letter in the centre There are, of course, many other possibilities for combining the squares, such as 1 and 6, then 3 and 5, then 2, 3, and 5, then 2 and 5, all on the basis of similarities among members of the same group. One important point here (not mentioned by Goatly) is that no particular criterion for classification can claim priority over any other that results in a different combination. This is much the same as grouping linguistic expressions under disparate “conceptual metaphors,” except that the latter involves a much greater number of distinguishers or semantic markers. According to Haser, this creates “insurmountable difficulties” for Lakoff and Johnson’s theory of metaphor. Indeed, in chapter 7 of Metaphor, Metonymy, and Experientialist Philosophy, Haser offers a detailed and convincing analysis of her view, using “ARGUMENT IS WAR” as an example. As we can see there, given their polysemic nature, the lexical items subsumed under “ARGUMENT IS WAR” are closely related to several other semantic fields – hence the possibility of ascribing them to different source domains. The most obvious case is the expression /on target/, which according to Haser could be ascribed to the category of “ARGUMENT IS PLACEMENT” in the sense that something is positioned accurately or inaccurately. Also to that category belong the expressions /to the point/, /miss the point/, /beside the point/, /to hit the mark/, /to be out of place/, /to be on the right track/, /wide off the mark/, and /to sidetrack/, among many others. The categorization of /defend/ is equally free-floating. The item can be ascribed to the conceptual metaphor of “ARGUMENT IS PRESERVATION,” with the source concept used in the sense of . Lexical expressions that go into that category could include /uphold/, /vindicate/, /rescue/, /save/, and /fortify/. Or the word could be placed alongside /support/, /back/, /confirm

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(to make firm)/, and many others to form a new conceptual metaphor: “ARGUMENT IS PHYSICAL SUPPORT.” The expression /confirm/ is further related to /firm (argument)/, /strong/, /forceful/, /weighty/, /penetrating/, and others in the sense that they all indicate the idea of strength and are often employed in the target domain of , thus suggesting another conceptual metaphor “ARGUMENT IS STRENGTH.” /Penetrating/ is also related to /piercing/, /sharp/, and /cut into/ to form yet another group of similar expressions, yielding the conceptual metaphor “ARGUMENT IS HAVING A KEEN EDGE.” Lakoff and Johnson interpret the word /demolish/ as a manifestation of the conceptual metaphor “ARGUMENT IS WAR”; clearly, though, it could also be grouped alongside /construct/, /lay a foundation/, /structure/, and so on under the category of “ARGUMENT IS BUILDING.” In a slightly different direction, /demolish/, in the sense of , could join the company of /tear apart/, /take to pieces/, /dissect/, and /lay bare/ as a member in the family “ARGUMENT IS DECOMPOSITION.” Lakoff and Johnson cite the word /shoot/, together with /attack/ and /demolish/, as an instance of “ARGUMENT IS WAR”; however, it is related not only to words of violence but also to /put forth/, /utter/, /put forward/, /set forth/, /propose/, /go ahead/, and many more, resulting in a possible category of “ARGUMENT IS FORWARD MOTION.” The last item, /go ahead/, could then be placed alongside /arrive at (a conclusion)/, /move into (another topic)/, and so on to form a category “ARGUMENT IS JOURNEY.” Likewise, the word /win/ does not have to be a member of “ARGUMENT IS WAR,” as is suggested by Lakoff and Johnson. If we associate the term with /lay one’s card on the table (tell the whole truth)/, / trump card (the most important argument)/, /play along (not to object)/, then it becomes a member in the category of “ARGUMENT IS GAME PLAYING.” So far, we have been looking at lexical items in relation to the same target domain of argument. Actually, however, they can also be metaphorically employed across a wide range of contexts that once again force us to posit different conceptual metaphors if we wish to account for their different senses at this abstract level. Take, for instance, the sentence /His weight reduction efforts are right on target/, which has nothing to do with argument and therefore cannot be covered by the conceptual metaphor “ARGUMENT IS WAR.” To explain the relationship between X and Y, one has to propose a new conceptual metaphor

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“TO KEEP FIT/HEALTH IS PLACEMENT” or – to use Lakoff and Johnson’s formulation – “TO KEEP FIT/HEALTH IS WAR.” Similarly, if we are to explain /The government’s control of population is on target/ in the same manner, we have to devise yet another conceptual metaphor: “PURPOSEFUL ACTION IS PLACEMENT.” The conclusion to be drawn here is that all the lexical items cited by Lakoff and Johnson as instances of the conceptual metaphor “ARGUMENT IS WAR” can actually be ascribed to many alternative conceptual metaphors. Given that most words and expressions in a language can be analysed into innumerous semantic markers, the number of potential metaphorical concepts that can be posited on the basis of similarity is almost unlimited. This makes our effort of trying to understand the metaphorical meaning of words and expressions through conceptual metaphors cognitively unrealistic and implausible. Apart from this, it could also be argued that conceptual metaphors are rather unnecessary to our interpretations of figurative language despite their huge popularity with many contemporary scholars. As is shown by Haser’s analysis, one and the same lexical item can be subsumed under more than one conceptual metaphor. For example, /to win an argument/ is cited by Lakoff and Johnson as an instance of the conceptual metaphor “ARGUMENT IS WAR,” but we now know that it can at least be ascribed to another category called “ARGUMENT IS GAME-PLAYING.” A question then arises: If a person is faced with this expression in a real-life situation and does not access its meaning in the way suggested by Lakoff and Johnson, does it mean he will understand the phrase differently or inadequately? The answer is “no,” because the basic semantic information is already contained in the word /win/ and the only things needed to interpret the metaphor are the source concept and the figurative context in which it occurs. Likewise, if one encounters the English sentence /He bulldozed his way to the front/, to properly understand the metaphor, he or she must possess a general knowledge of (a) the literal meaning of /bulldoze/ and (b) the tenor or topic – someone pushing himself through a crowd with physical force – and then make a connection on the basis of similarity that will highlight the “salient features” involved. We are certainly entitled to think up many meta-metaphorical equations afterwards, such as “HUMAN IS MACHINE,” “HUMAN IS OBJECT,” and “FORCE IS CLEARING SPACE,” but they only constitute a superfluous detour that distracts rather than directs our effort at interpretation.

6 Metaphor and Culture

As theoretical constructs, conceptual metaphors are abstract by nature. What is more, they can be arranged hierarchically, with the categories at the top being more abstract than those at the bottom. Consider the following metaphorical expressions: 1. She is a lark. 2. He is a vulture. 3. Lorrita always keeps her children safely under her wing. All of these could be subsumed under the meta-metaphorical category “HUMAN IS BIRD,” which obviously is open ended. We could develop another list of metaphors that are slightly different but nevertheless related: 1. Lisa galloped through the book in two days. 2. He eventually collapsed under the heavy yoke of public opinion. 3. David Wong always wags his tail when his boss comes around. Examples 4, 5, and 6 are all related to big mammals and could form a category of their own in terms of conceptual metaphors. However, when they are placed alongside examples 1, 2, and 3, the six metaphors give rise to a more abstract category: “HUMAN IS ANIMAL.” And if we were to add to this a list of metaphors whose vehicles are not animals but plants, the resulting meta-metaphorical category would be “HUMAN IS LIVING ORGANISM.” It is not difficult to see that the more abstract the conceptual metaphor, the more likely it is to be found in more than one language. Comparing a crowd of people to a school of

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sardines might be a particular inclination of English speakers; comparing human beings to fish seems to be a cultural phenomenon in most if not all places where there are rivers, lakes, and seas. In other words, when it comes to the superordinate levels “HUMAN IS ANIMAL” and “HUMAN IS LIVING ORGANISM,” it is difficult to imagine any culture that does not employ this sort of metaphorical formula. Empty as it now sounds after our analysis, the cognitive theory of metaphor has made it its goal to discover universal or near-universal conceptual metaphors that underlie metaphorical expressions in different languages; in doing so, for the past two decades that theory has overlooked many cases of non-universality in metaphorical conceptualization. This is not to deny that there exist some metaphorical equivalents across languages and cultures. To confirm this phenomenon of cultural overlapping, one need look no further than the following sets of similes and metaphors from English and Chinese: Overlapping Similes to know something or somebody as a person knows his ten fingers/the palm of his hand ೑ྛᓈᑴ applause like thunder ᑴဏྛ౻ numberless as the sand ࢰྛ࿉ᕅ as light as a feather ༳ྛੀ൵ as black as a raven ቓᇚዡፃ٧ਲ as brave as a lion ဠᕅ٧Ꭼ० as busy as a bee ቓඥखፃጟ൰ഝ

Metaphor and Culture

as hungry as a wolf ࣆ౫٧࠲ as fast as lightning ૎ྛ࿗ࡕ as sharp as a winter’s morning ቓࡼᄨᐳ‫ݩ‬ፃጟድਆߘঽ (Li, 1999, 16–17) Overlapping Metaphors (in the narrow sense of the term) a bolt from the blue ༹ᄨງ⃸ castles in the air గᓠই഍ a square peg in a round hole ࣯᮸᏾ᐰ the spring/autumn of life တෆᒾ߆ཁ to hang by a hair ໹௛ፃࣔ to rest on one’s arms ᒛॾࠉࠗ WRVZLPZLWKWKHWLGH Ⴠ۰ᔀ೽ to be in the same boat ᅊᓫন૟ to trim the sail to the wind ௶ङေࢶ

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to add fuel to the flames પ࿥૯Ꮇ to sit on/ride the fence ໟ༏ to get wind of something ࠱ࠫෟ်࠲ङဏ Constant dripping wears the stone. ࠼ႈ޵ဧi A rat crossing the street is chased by all. ౳ၫ৳୔Ķཿཿਈ߾i You will cross the bridge when you get to it. ޸ࠫ༗ᅕᕆ཯ᓁi (Li 1999, 209) The important point to be emphasized here is that these metaphorical expressions are not concrete manifestations of some pre-existing universal conceptual metaphors; rather, they are the results of arbitrary pairing of a metaphorical signifier with a metaphorical signified that happen to be identical or similar across two languages. It is astonishing how Saussure’s principle of linguistic arbitrariness has taken root in our mind when we discuss the relationship between a signifier and a signified at the literal level but is completely forgotten when we talk about the link between a signifier and a signified at the metaphorical level. More often than not, the same life situation is metaphorically semiotized in different ways across languages and cultures. Let us look at two more sets of examples (with minor omissions) from Li Guonan: Similes Identical in Meaning but Different in Form like a drowned rat ቓൌჼૂፃጟ (like a drenched chicken)

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like a rat in a hole ྛᇍᓠᒾ‫( ۔‬like a turtle in a jar) like a duck to water ྛᏍ࠱ႈ (like a fish back in water) like a hen on a hot girdle ቓོ৮࿥࠲ൔፗ (like an ant on a hot pan) as stupid as a goose Ꮘߌྛᓽ (as stupid as a pig) as stubborn as a donkey/mule Ჩ࠱ቓᅕั (as stubborn as an ox) as timid as a rabbit ࠖብྛၫ (as timid as a mouse) as bitter as wormwood ఢྛ઀ಲ (as bitter as goldthread) (ibid., 17) Metaphors (in the narrow sense of the term) Identical in Meaning but Different in Form birds of a feather ፃགᒾ਩ (jackals from the same lair) to draw water in a sieve ᔁ౞߾ႈፃ‫݋‬గ (to draw water with a bamboo basket) to fish in the air ႈᓠ౰ᐎ (to capture the moon in water) to cry wine and sell vinegar ৈጘᅕ൜ভྖ (to hang up a sheep’s head and sell dogmeat) to go for wool and come back shorn ᅓૂ‫܃‬ᔷာٕඡ (to try to steal a chicken only to lose the rice bait)

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to squeeze water from a stone ࿉ᕅಓᑓᎷ (to extract oil from sands) to put all one’s eggs in one basket সᔔፃᓐ (to stake all on a single throw) to look for a needle in a haystack ৻ࡅ౰ᒙ (to retrieve a needle in the ocean) to kill two birds with one stone ፃଙႅ࡟ (to hit two hawks with one arrow) to kick a man when he is down ൌஎሤဧ (to drop stones on someone who has fallen into a well) Diamond cuts diamond. ໕जࢤ၎ (to meet one’s match in a game of chess) There is no smoke without fire. ᇞङ‫܃‬໠౯i (There are no waves without wind.) Justice has long arms. ᄨᆖઐઐĶၠࣈ‫܃‬഑i(The net of Heaven has large meshes, but it lets nothing through.) The burnt child dreads the fire. ፃ‫ݙ‬ᐮ࿵ጯĶྱถ๐‫ܥ‬နi(Once bitten by a snake, one dreads coiled rope for three years.) As you sow, you will reap. ᓦ৅࠱৅Ķᓦࢉ࠱ࢉi(Plant melons and you get melons; sow beans and you get beans.) As you make your bed, so you must lie on it. ᕩଇᕆ॓ (to spin a cocoon around oneself) He that has one servant has two, he that has two has but half a one, and he that has three has none at all. ፃঊਥ࿦ᄰႈਠĶೃঊਥ࿦უႈਠĶྱঊਥ࿦අႈਠi(One monk will shoulder two buckets of water for consumption, two monks will carry

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one bucket together, but if a third monk is added, none of them will have any water to drink.) (ibid., 210–12) These are just the tip of the iceberg as far as metaphorical non-coincidence across cultures is concerned. The reasons for such metaphorical disparity across languages are many, but the most important one derives from the fact that there are numerous cultural units available to the metaphor user, each of which consists of a huge bundle of semantic components that can be used to illuminate various aspects of social life. Which cultural unit is eventually chosen to serve as a metaphorical vehicle for a particular life situation is decided arbitrarily and therefore unpredictable. To vividly describe the state of someone being drunk, for example, English speakers can choose to compare the situation to that of a mouse, which often loses its sense of direction when chased, thus giving rise to the phrase /as drunk as a mouse/; Chinese speakers, however, perceive a similarity between and , hence the metaphorical expression /as drunk as mud/. In addition to this, a single identical lexical unit shared by two languages can be used for very different metaphorical purposes by highlighting its different semantic markers. Both /rabbit/ and /ᅡ/ have been employed by English and Chinese speakers as a metaphorical vehicle to describe human personality. The former have singled out the quality of shyness in the animal, giving rise to the simile /as timid as rabbit/; but the latter emphasize a different quality in the animal – that is, its swiftness in movement, hence the expression /ࡿྛᅯᅡ/ (as fast as a rabbit). It needs to be pointed out that not all metaphorical expressions are as easy to understand as /timid as rabbit/ or /drunk as a mouse/. As can be seen from some of the above examples, there are a fair number of metaphors where the connection between the vehicle and the tenor is made not on the basis of a common background shared by people across different languages but rather through some special knowledge about some unique aspects of the culture in which they appear. Specifically, some metaphors are difficult to understand because the vehicles used to illuminate the tenors belong exclusively to a particular way of living as manifested in social customs and textual traditions. Many culture-specific metaphors originate in the unique social customs of their users. Chinese people, for example, love watching Beijing

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Opera either in grand theatres or in small teahouses as a form of entertainment and know thoroughly the props and techniques involved. This widespread familiarity with the “national opera” has led to quite a few culturally unique metaphors in which certain details of the art serve as vehicles to illustrate other aspects of life: • ๪ഀᄓ – to appear in dragon designs worn by groups of soldiers or attendants in Beijing Opera • ‫੄ݔ‬ಹ – to wear the red mask of the hero in Beijing Opera • ‫ݔ‬ٛಹ – to wear the white mask of the villain in Beijing Opera The meaning of the first expression has been extended to include ; those of the second and third have acquired the metaphorical meanings and respectively. It is a popular belief among Chinese people that at least one of the parents in a family has to wear the white mask in front of their children so that the latter will be properly disciplined. Another example relates to the long tradition of Buddhism and monastic life in China. Despite official repression from time to time, this Indian religion has taken root in a land dominated by the worldly ideology of Confucianism and has become integral to Chinese life. It is no surprise that some aspects of monastic life have been employed to shed light on its secular counterpart, as can be seen in the following examples: • ๪೑ਥ࿦๪‫܃‬೑භi– The monk may run away, but the temple cannot run with him. (A fugitive must belong to some place that can provide clues to his whereabouts.) • ອဩ‫܃‬࿫ቅĶ೟ဩ‫ڍ‬ढୃi– Never burn incense when all is well but clasp to Buddha’s feet when in stress. (Make no effort until the last minute.) • ࣷሤᅞࠤĶನࡆ‫ݳ‬ढi– Drop one’s cleaver and become a Buddha. (Achieve salvation as soon as one gives up evil.) • ᕨፃᄨਥ࿦Ķᔤፃᄨᓣi– Go on tolling the bell as long as one is a monk. (Take a passive attitude towards one’s work.) • ᇥᄡᅔࡆ – To prostrate oneself before Buddha. (To admire someone from the bottom of one’s heart.) • ୦੢ሹढ – To present Buddha with flowers given by another. (To make a gift of something given by another.)

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• ढజ࿵ኈ – A Buddha’s mouth but a viper’s heart. (Honey words with evil intent.) • ढᅕᔷऒ – To smear Buddha’s head with dung. (To desecrate.) Obviously, all the metaphorical vehicles here are related to the monastic life of Buddhist monks – a life that has become familiar to most Chinese but not to people in a non-Buddhist culture. To be able to make sense of these expressions, foreigners must learn about Buddhism and its practice either in person or from reading. For a similar example on the English side, contrast the eating habits of Westerners, for whom bread is the staple, with those of Chinese, for whom rice is the staple (as it is for many Asians): • • • •

to earn one’s bread – to make a living bread and butter – basic means of income bread and cheese – the barest necessities of life to take bread out of another’s mouth – to take away another’s livelihood • to know which side one’s bread is buttered – to be mindful of one’s own interests • bread and water – a punishment meal Things that are taken for granted in the West (e.g., spreading butter on bread, using cheese to make a sandwich) are actually unfamiliar to most rice eaters in the East, thus making it difficult for them to comprehend many bread-related metaphors. This does not mean that Easterners and Westerners think differently as a consequence of not having a certain “conceptual metaphor”; on the contrary, the same analogies appear in both Chinese and English, as can be seen in /‫ډ‬ᔓ࣫ᆉ/ (to keep one’s rice bowl – to remain employed) and /༷ܰࠛ࣫/ (tea served without any refreshments and rice served without lavish dishes – a simple lifestyle). Culture-specific metaphors are generated not only from the unique behavioural patterns and material objects of their users but also from the users’ written records of real or fictional events and characters – records that are not shared with other nations. Here, the link between a current life situation and a metaphorical expression is provided by knowledge about a particular linguistic or pictorial text, be it from a history book, an ancient myth, folklore, literature, the popular media,

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or what not. We can glimpse the inseparableness of metaphor and culture in the following examples: 1. to meet one’s Waterloo  ౺‫܃‬႖ၩ (to have so much fun that one forgets about Shu) 3. Achilles’ heel  းᆀᄎ᐀ (the Land of Peach Blossoms) 5. Catch-22  ‫ئ‬Q (Ah Q) Examples 1 and 2 (one from English, the other from Chinese) are allusions to real historical figures and events, which are being used as metaphorical vehicles for similar life situations. /to meet one’s Waterloo/ was originally related to Napoleon, whose ousting of King Louis XVIII in 1815 made him an enemy of Great Britain, Prussia, Austria, and Russia. The four countries declared war to remove the common military threat against them, launching their troops in his direction. Napoleon wanted to crush the British and the Prussians before the Austrians and the Russians could arrive, so he moved his forces towards Waterloo, where his army was defeated by the allied armies. Because of its particular historical association, the metaphorical expression is unlikely to find an equivalent in another language or culture. Similarly, /౺‫܃‬႖ၩ/ (to have so much fun that one forgets about Shu) is related to the famous Chinese historical figure Liu Shan, who ruled the Kingdom of Shu during the Three Kingdom era in ancient China. Liu Shan was known to be a coward who cared only about having a good time rather than the well-being of his subjects. Not long after he succeeded his father Liu Bei as Emperor of Shu, his territory was seized by the Kingdom of Wei, where he was kept in custody as “Duke of Peace and Happiness.” One day, Sima Zhao, a powerful general of Wei, invited Liu Shan to a dinner at which the traditional songs and dances of Shu were performed. When Liu’s subordinates heard the music of their homeland, they all shed tears over the defeat and humiliation that their kingdom had suffered. Liu Shan, however, was completely unaffected and continued to enjoy the wine and food. Sima Zhao asked him, “Don’t you miss Shu?” Liu Shan replied, “I’m having fun here – why should I miss Shu?” Hence the expression /to have so much fun that one forgets about Shu/. The phrase is now used to refer to anyone who “is having so much fun that he has forgotten about his

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home and work”; but to understand its full import, one must be familiar with the historical anecdote that gave rise to the metaphor. Metaphorical allusions are not always related to real historical figures and events. Indeed, many such expressions can be traced back to fictitious worlds, which vary from one culture to the next. However pre-scientific or superstitious some of those texts seem, they do much to explain a large number of metaphors that are very much in use today. Thus, example 3 is related to an ancient Greek myth: Achilles’ mother Thetis took her son by the heel at the time of his birth and dipped him in the river Styx in an attempt to make him invulnerable. However, the heel by which she was holding him remained dry, and Achilles later died because one of his enemies knew of his weak spot and struck him there with an arrow. The story cannot be verified, of course, but it does provide a metaphorical vehicle whose present meaning is . Example 4 has its roots in an old Chinese tale about a fisherman of Wu Ling district. One day he went on a fishing trip that by chance brought him to a peach orchard on the far side of a mountain with a cave at its foot. The cave’s inhabitants were leading a quiet and happy life in perfect harmony. After entertaining the fisherman, they asked him not to tell others about what he had seen there when he returned to the outside world. The fisherman, however, told his fellow villagers, who followed him back to see with their own eyes but could not find the place. One can safely assume that no one in China actually believes in the existence of such a legendary place, but that does not prevent people from using the expression to mean metaphorically . Examples 5 and 6 reflect another important source of culturally unique metaphors – belles-lettres, which are often nationally based. / Catch-22/, as we know, is a term coined byJoseph Heller in his novel of the same name, describing a paradox in a law, regulation, or practice in which one is a victim regardless of the choice one makes. In the book, a U.S. Army Air Force bombardier wants to be excused from combat flight duty. In order to be excused from such duty, he must submit an official medical diagnosis from his squadron’s flight surgeon, proving that he is insane and therefore unfit. According to the Army regulations, however, any sane person would naturally not want to fly combat missions because they are very dangerous. By requesting permission not to fly combat missions on the grounds of insanity, the bombardier is actually demonstrating that he is sane and therefore fit to fly. Obviously,

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a certain degree of familiarity with this literary text is essential to an understanding of this metaphor. The same can be said of the final example. The metaphor alludes to an entire literary text titled The True Story of Ah Q by arguably the greatest of all twentieth-century Chinese writers, Lu Xun. Ah Q, the novel’s main character, is a peasant who is depicted as rather thoughtless and self-deluding. Whenever he is humiliated by his fellow villagers, he always manages to obtain a sense of victory by consoling himself one way or another. For instance, one time when he is doing well in a gambling bout, a skirmish erupts during which he not only loses his money but also is physically assaulted. But he is able to recover his peace of mind by slapping his own face, imagining that he is striking his enemies. Even when he is taken out to be executed at the end of the story, he consoles himself by thinking that “in this world probably it is the fate of everybody at some time to have his head cut off.” On the strength of this overall textual situation, the phrase /Ah Q/ can now be used to refer to any person who interprets his defeats as moral victories. Metaphorical Patterns From the examples given earlier, we can see that the relationship between metaphor and culture is mostly haphazard and therefore unpredictable. This, however, does not mean that we cannot find in a culture certain metaphorical patterns that are related to its members’ collective value orientations, which tend to highlight certain aspects of things and phenomena in the process of metaphorical conceptualization. To demonstrate the effect of social mores on the use of metaphors, let us consider in some detail what Vivien Sung (2001) calls “the five most sought-after values in Chinese culture” (2002, 11). Those values are luck (ष = fu2), rank (ണ = lu4), longevity (ၑ = shou4), happiness (ሔ = xi3), and wealth (܎ = cai2). For thousands of years the Chinese have generally believed that they can increase their chances of success in life – or at least make one another happier – by surrounding themselves with auspicious objects or their images. This has led to an enormous repertoire of verbal and non-verbal metaphors, all of which are related to the above-mentioned “five blessings”ᇥष . Auspicious objects can be natural as well as man-made. In themselves they do not possess any inherent “values,” but they become signs or symbols of such values once they are linked to human wishes and aspirations, mainly through proc-

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esses of iconicity and/or indexicality. The connection between salient cultural values and otherwise purely material objects is made through resemblance either in content or in form if those objects are already represented in language. In his seminal essay “The Semantics of Metaphor,” Umberto Eco has this to say about “contiguity by resemblance of signifieds”: A semiotic explanation of different rhetorical figures can be attempted through the development of the theory of interpretants as represented in the Model Q.1 Suppose a code is formed that posits a system of paradigmatic relations of the following sort:

where the horizontal line constitutes a paradigm of different sememes and the vertical correlation constitutes relations from sememe to seme or semantic mark (k is a semantic mark of A; obviously, according to the Model Q, k can become in its turn a sememe k to be analyzed through other semantic marks, among which even a could be considered). To name A by k is a case of synecdoche (the veil for the ship, pars pro toto). Since k could even be the seme characterizing the sememe , to name A by k can also be a case of metonymy (in traditional terms; in terms of our present approach, such a difference tends to disappear). But k happens to be also a seme of another sememe, namely, D. Therefore, by an amalgamation through k, one can substitute A with /D/. This is a case of metaphor. A long white neck being a property of a beautiful woman and of a swan, the woman can be metaphorically substituted for by the swan. Apparently, one entity is in place of the other by virtue of a mutual resemblance. (Innis 1985, 261)

A distinctly Chinese example of this would be mandarin ducks, which, because they usually live in pairs and mate for life, are often portrayed on pillowcases, bedcovers, and other Chinese household articles to signify a long and harmonious marriage.

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Figure 32. Ᏻጒ(mandarin ducks) It is not that people of other cultures have failed to notice the monogamous habits of this bird; rather, they do not make a point of linking it with conjugal life in its ideal state, thereby giving birth to the metaphor. Eco’s insight on “contiguity by resemblance of signifiers” is even more pertinent to the study of Chinese culture because a huge percentage of Chinese metaphors arise through phonetic analogy or slippage. As with content-based metaphors, the connection between the vehicle and the topic of a form-based metaphor was non-existent until it was initiated and then repeatedly reinforced through a mediator that sounded the same or similar. Umberto Eco thus explains: In truth, though, the force of the pun (and of every successful and inventive metaphor) consists in the fact that prior to it no one had grasped the resemblance. Prior to “Jungfraud” there was no reason to suspect a relationship between Freud, psychoanalysis, fraud, lie, and lapsus (linguae or calami). The resemblance becomes necessary only after the contiguity is realized. Actually (FW itself is the proof), it is enough to find the means of rendering two terms phonetically contiguous for the resemblance to impose itself; at best, the similitude of signifiers (at least in the place of encounter) is that which precedes, and the similitude of signifieds is a consequence of it. (ibid., 256)

This phenomenon occurs extremely often in the Chinese language, which is known for its huge number of homophones or near homophones. Many words sound exactly or almost the same but have entirely different meanings. Examples include /ഡ/ (deer) and /ണ/ (official’s emolument) = lu4; /Ꮝ/ (fish) and /Ꮚ/ (surplus) = yu2; and /০/ (cassia) and /৩/ (high rank) = gui4. Little wonder that in their pervasive well-wishing activities, Chinese people take full advantage of this rich resource of identical or similar sounds, which have given rise to a large number of blessing-related symbols.

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Symbols of Luck The Chinese character for is /ष/, as in /ष໨/ (good luck) and /षቂ/ (a face showing luck); or /ᐗ/, as in /ᐗ໨/ (good fortune). As early as the fourteenth century, /ष/ of various sizes could be found on the doors of many Chinese houses, expressing the desire of the inhabitants for a better future. It was usually placed upside down because the “reverse” of /ࠧ/ is a homophone of “to arrive” /ࠫ/ (both pronounced as dao4), thus signifying . This practice has continued into the present day, especially during the Spring Festival, which marks the beginning of the lunar new year. If the backdrop for the character is red, the entire poster then stands for , because /੄/ (red) is pronounced in exactly the same way – hong2 – as /ੁ/, which means .

Figure 33. षvࠫw(Luck Is Coming) One prominent Chinese symbol of luck is the bat, which in most other cultures tends to be associated with darkness and evil. The reason for this is that the Chinese character for bat is /Ᾰ/, which phonetically is the same as /ष/ (fu2). /Ᾰ/ is also used in combination with other objects or words to form propitious entities at a higher level. A picture of more than one bat, for example, means .

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Figure 34. ࢰष (multiple good luck) Another phonetically motivated symbol of luck is /ᐒ/ (cloud) = yun2, which sounds similar to and is therefore employed to signify /ᐗ/ (good fortune) = yun4. As with /Ᾰ/, /ᐒ/ is used mainly in visual contexts where patches of cloud overlapping one another stand for , with clouds of different colours implying multiplied blessings.

Figure 35. ቋᐒ (auspicious clouds) For a very recent use of the symbol, let us turn to the opening and closing ceremonies of the 29th Olympiad, held in Beijing between 8 and 24 August 2008. Among the many “obscure” signs that contributed to the exotic spectacle watched by billions of television viewers around the world was the pattern of clouds decorating the cauldron at the top of the Bird’s Nest Stadium, which carried the Olympic Flame for a fortnight.

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Figure 36. Olympic Torch above the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing For those familiar with the Chinese symbol, the overlapping clouds stood for the good wishes that the host was extending all athletes, spectators, and viewers. There are many content-based symbols of luck as well. One interesting example is the S-shaped itch scratcher called /ྛ፪/ (ru2 yi4), which literally means .

Figure 37. ྛ፪ (itch scratcher) At one point in history, this device was liberated from its utilitarian function of obtaining physical satisfaction and evolved into a gift between relatives and friends symbolizing . This explains why the earliest ru2 yi4 sceptres were made of wood or bamboo and later ones were made of jade, porcelain, silver, or gold:

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expensive materials certainly added to the symbolic meaning of . The most widely known Chinese symbol of luck is probably the dragon, which according to Chinese mythology is able to shrink to the size of a tiny worm or swell into a gigantic reptile with claws and scales. It is believed to reside either under the earth or at the bottom of the sea in winter and to rise into the sky in the spring, generating thunder and rain as it ascends.

Figure 38. ഀ (dragon) Initially the dragon was worshiped by Chinese commoners as a benevolent creature that prevented droughts and brought harvests. Gradually it evolved into a general symbol of protection and fortune. It is believed that the dragon was first symbolized in remote antiquity, though its specific meaning at the time is not clear today. Ju Yueshi and Qu Ming-an (2001, 696) tell us that in June 1993, during a dig near Zhangcheng village, White Lake area, Huangmei county, Chinese scholars from the Hubei Institute of Archaeology unearthed a giant dragon made of pebbles. Later they would date it to around 4000 BC. This dragon was 4.46 metres in length, 2.28 metres in height, and 0.3 to 0.65 metres in width. It was portrayed as a pinniped with a long neck raised as if in flight. By the Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220), the dragon had become a symbol of such positive force that the imperial courts attempted to monopolize it as a royal symbol. Everything sur-

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rounding the emperor was now linked to the dragon. The emperor’s countenance was called /ഀዻ/ (dragon’s face), the emperor’s body / ഀᄡ/ (dragon’s body), the emperor’s robe /ഀ๩/ (dragon’s robe), the emperor’s throne /ഀᕫ/ (dragon’s seat), the emperor’s bed /ഀ޾/ (dragon’s bed), and so on. As can be expected, the emperor’s children were called /ഀᓦ/ (dragon’s seeds). Some imperial families went so far as to intentionally mix up their genealogies with those of the dragon for the purpose of justifying their royal status. For instance, Liu Bang, the first Han emperor, needed to compensate for his peasant origins while competing for the throne against his rival Xiang Yu, who was from an ancient and renowned military family. It is said that Liu Bang invented the story that his mother, Madame Liu, was napping near a pond one day when she dreamed that she was copulating with a dragon. It was night at the time, with lightning and thunder across the sky. Worried about his wife’s safety, Liu’s father went looking for her and saw her being overpowered by a dragon. Madame Liu was thus impregnated and later gave birth to Liu Bang. That was why her son was so different from ordinary people (Yi Siyu 2005, 215). Despite having been expropriated by the Imperial Court, the dragon continues to be a very popular symbol of good fortune among China’s common folk. In the Chinese cyclic system of twelve animals indicating the year of a person’s birth, the dragon is perceived as the most propitious; many people hope to give birth to their children in that particular year. For the same reason, /ഀ/ is contained in the names of people, mountains, rivers, foods, plants, towns and villages, and virtually everything else. In rural China there used to be and still are many temples of the Dragon King (ഀᆓභ), where people burn incense to please this God of Rain for good harvests and a peaceful life. At the end of the Spring Festival every year, Chinese in some places continue to stage “dragon dances,” which evolved from the earlier worship of the mythological animal, in the hope of inducing rain. In other places people hold a Dragon Festival in the second month of the lunar year, during which they set off dragon-like strings of firecrackers as an appeal for good fortune in the coming year. Symbols of Rank The second category of the five blessings is /ണ/, which originally meant . From the Han dynasty down to the beginning of twentieth century, Chinese society, with occasional disruptions

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owing to social upheavals, always selected public officials through competitive civil service examinations. Those who passed the examinations even at the lowest level were usually guaranteed a stable and comfortable life. This kind of achievement was generally considered more honourable and respectable than becoming rich through other channels such as business; hence this was a separate category of blessing from /܎/ (wealth). One of the best-known symbols of rank is the image of a deer, because the Chinese character for that animal is /ഡ/, which, as mentioned earlier, sounds exactly the same as /ണ/. Used in combination with the symbols for and , it presents an extremely propitious message of triple blessings to its viewer.

Figure 39. षണၑ (luck, rank, and longevity) Another interesting symbol of rank is /ੇ/ (monkey), which happens to have the same pronunciation (hou2) as /੆/ – the rank of count in Chinese officialdom. Therefore, a picture of one monkey on the back of another indicates a wish to secure official posts across generations. /‫ڙ‬/ (back) and /‫ژ‬/ (generation) are both pronounced as bei4, hence the double connections. Similarly, a picture of a monkey riding a horse conveys the meaning of instant success in becoming an official, because /ൕ࿥/ (mounting a horse) means or .

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Two content-based symbols of rank are in order here. The first one is carp, as in the common Chinese phrase /ಔᏍᄴഀඏ/ (a carp leaping over the dragon’s gate). Chinese mythology has it that every year, carp swim upstream along the Yellow River to spawn; those who are able to leap the rapids towards the end of their journey are transformed into dragons. This feat is often compared to success in passing the state examinations and is often shown in New Year pictures as below:

Figure 40. ಔᏍᄴഀඏ (carp jump over Dragon Gate) The second content-based symbol of rank is /෡ࠒ/ (peony), which is widely appreciated by Chinese people for its huge petals and bright colours. During the Sui and Tang dynasties (581–907), the plant became popular in imperial palaces and thus earned the title /੢ᆓ/ (king of flowers). Since then, the peony has always been interpreted as a symbol of nobility. The image of a peony on a vase, for example, is used to express the wish for and , with the former coming from its past associations with rank and honour and the latter coming from vase /ຯ/, which is pronounced the same way as /ອ/, as in /ອ ‫ض‬/ (security).

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Figure 41. ॏ৩ອ‫( ض‬nobility and security) Symbols of Longevity To have a healthy body and a long life is the greatest wish of all people around the world, including the Chinese. Of the five blessings mentioned earlier, longevity is considered most important, so it has inspired a good many symbols . Two phonetically induced symbols in this category are /൲/ (cat) and /ࡩ/ (butterfly), whose pronunciations (mao4 and die2) are similar to and identical with /Ჽ/ and /Ὑ/ respectively. /Ჽ/ and /Ὑ/, of course, have the meaning , or more specifically, . A picture of a cat, a butterfly, and some peonies thus signifies , and a picture of a melon (which contains innumerable seeds inside it) and a butterfly stands for .

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Figure 42. ‫ݎ‬ၑॏ৩ (longevity and nobility) A more direct phonetic symbol of longevity is /ᭉ/ (flycatcher), which is a homophone of /ၑ/ (long life). Thus a picture of a flycatcher in conjunction with a camellia stands for , and a picture of a flycatcher and a bunch of bamboo /ᔁ/, which is a homophone of /ᔕ/ (to wish), signifies . The Chinese use many content-based symbols of longevity either in daily life or in art and painting. One of these is /ৠ/ (tortoise), which is widely admired for its extremely long life. There have been exaggerated Chinese records of the tortoise living for one thousand or even three thousand years (Williams 1976, 405). For this reason, /ৠ೪/ (tortoise age) is often used as a metaphor for long life. Indeed, the tortoise as a symbol for longevity was so popular during the Tang and Song dynasties that many people of that era incorporated the character /ৠ/ into their name, hoping to prolong their life (Ju et al. 2001, 714). Another very popular Chinese symbol of longevity is /ධᄱ/ (noodles), which take on this function on the basis of their extended length. When noodles are served on someone’s birthday, they are meant to wish the person a long life. A large number of things and objects are metonymically related to the idea of long life. For example, many Chinese believe that drinking chrysanthemum tea improves eyesight, alleviates dizziness, facilitates blood flow, and eases digestion; all of these things are essential to a long and healthy life. Thus, the chrysanthemum is often used as a symbol of longevity and has gained the nickname /‫ݎ‬ၑ੢/ (the flower of lon-

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gevity). It sometimes appears in conjunction with wolfberry (another Chinese plant said to possess multiple medicinal functions) to form a complex pictorial symbol that expresses a wish for long life. It is worth repeating that the attributes of things do not have to be testable in order to enter a metaphorical relationship. It is said, for example, that /೯ᒵ/ (fungus of immortality) gives eternal life to those who consume it and can even bring the recently deceased back to life. This certainly is scientifically untrue; even so, its supposed supernatural abilities have made it one of the most prominent symbols of longevity in Chinese culture. As such, it is often shown being held in the beak of a crane, creating a symbol of double longevity. The same is true with the use of the peach as a symbol of longevity. A Chinese legend has it that a magic peach can prolong by six hundred years the life of the person who consumes it. This supernatural quality is derived from the tale that magic peaches grow in the garden of the Queen Mother of the West and that the peach trees in her garden bear fruit once every three thousand years. Over the centuries, Chinese literary works have often alluded to this magic power, culminating in Wu Cheng-en’s novel Journey to the West, in which magic peaches are described as tiny in size and as conferring immortality on those who eat them. This is why peaches are so popular as birthday gifts for elderly people. A picture of peaches and bats thus signifies /ࢰᄎࢰष/, which means that constitute their specific social field.

Figure 43. ࢰᄎࢰष (a lot of luck and a very long life)

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Symbols of (Marital) Happiness Happiness as a general term runs across all the categories of human yearning mentioned above. This is why /ᇥष/ is sometimes translated as “fivefold happiness” instead of “five blessings.” But when used in the narrower sense, it specifically means the “conjugal bliss” that is essential to a contented life. Consequently, it is also related to the wish for fertility, which has been a central concern of Chinese rural society for thousands of years. A very common phonetically motivated symbol of marital happiness is /ሔཀྵ/ (magpie). Literally, the Chinese phrase means “happy bird,” and the adjective /ሔ/ is the same character used for happiness in general. Thus, a picture of two magpies facing each other stands for .

Figure 44. ႅሔ (double happiness)

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/ਡ/ (lotus) is another phonetically related symbol of marital happiness. Pronounced as he2, it generates a pun with either /ਥ/ (harmony) or /ਧ/ (togetherness), which are deemed important to a successful marriage. A picture of two lotus flowers, therefore, is used to wish the receivers a harmonious relationship (ਥ෬ቂ޲). Marital happiness would be incomplete without children, the fruits of a couple’s love. This aspect of family life was especially valued in the agrarian culture of China, where more offspring meant more labour power to work in the fields and to look after the elderly in the house. It is no surprise that this emphasis should find its way into the symbolization of objects. /ಙᕅ/ (chestnut), for example, is pronounced li4 zi3, which is identical to the pronunciation for /ನᕅ/ (to establish children). The fruit is thus often used as an auspicious gift for the newly wed in the hope that they will soon give birth to many children.

Figure 45. ᐲ + ಙᕅ = ᐳನᕅ (dates + chestnuts = to have many children soon)

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Content-based symbols of conjugal bliss also abound in Chinese folk culture. Mandarin ducks were mentioned earlier. In this vein, /ဧ೷/ (pomegranate) is a common wedding gift, not because it sounds similar to another word but because it directly conjures up a desirable state of things in relation to marriage. Specifically, that fruit contains a large number of seeds, analogous to having many children in the family.

Figure 46. ೷௬ٝᕅ (to have as many children as pomegranate seeds) Symbols of Wealth The notion of wealth in Chinese is expressed through the character /܎/, pronounced cai2. Except during ideologically sensitive times such as the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, the character holds no negative connotations; indeed, wealth is viewed as an important component of happiness. For centuries, the Chinese have surrounded themselves with a variety of symbols of wealth, which they hope will bring them profit in business and fortune in the family. One such symbol is /Ꮝ/ (fish), which is phonetically identical to /Ꮚ/ (surplus): yu2. For this reason, a picture of fish has become an extremely popular New Year decoration, for it wishes those who view it financial success in the coming year. When fish appears in connection with /ಱ/ (lotus), which is pronounced the same way as /ಲ/ (continuous) – lian2 – the semiotic complex means /ಲถᎺᏊ/ (successive years of surplus). If a real fish is served at a dinner table during the

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Spring Festival, it is usually left untouched to symbolize the wish for surplus wealth for the family.

Figure 47. ಲถᎺᏊ (successive years of surplus) Another phonetically motivated Chinese symbol of wealth is /ࣔ ‫ܓ‬/ (fa2 cai4), which is a kind of darkish grass that grows in the Gobi Desert of northwestern China. The plant is ugly and tasteless, yet it is highly valued because of its phonetic similarity to /ࣔ܎/ (fa1 cai2), which means . It is commonly served at New Year dinners to symbolize the wish for greater financial gain in the coming twelve months. As to be expected, some symbols of wealth are not phonetically induced. Shoe-shaped gold or silver ingots, for example, often appear in New Year pictures. Called /᏶‫ڌ‬/ (yuan2 bao3) in Chinese, they were a standardized monetary unit between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries, hence they are a metonymic sign of riches.

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Figure 48. ᏶‫( ڌ‬gold or silver ingot used as money) Another symbol to promote wealth on New Year’s Eve is a dumpling shaped something like the ancient Chinese money mentioned earlier. This particular food is served on the occasion to convey the wish for a better financial year. People in some regions of China go so far as to insert a real coin into one of the dumplings while making them. It is believed that the person who recovers that coin will enjoy a financially prosperous new year. The above cases of metaphor and metonymy reveal once again that almost everything in the world can be imbued with symbolic meaning. If we try to classify the numerous objects and phenomena that the Chinese use for symbolic purposes, we find that many of them are concerned with the same few fundamental themes. In other words, many Chinese symbols are related to pervasive yearnings for good luck and fortune, for high civic and social rank, for a long and healthy life, for a happy and harmonious marriage with many children, and for riches and wealth, constituting what can be called a folk culture of wish making. The Subcultural Dimension Every human being on earth lives in a complex society that can be analysed in more than one way. Different geographical regions leave their mark on the people who inhabit them; different ethnic groups follow dissimilar cultural customs and traditions; people of different classes and occupations hold diverse world views. These “subcultures” certainly have an impact on how people use metaphors in their everyday communication. As Zoltan Kovecses (2005) puts it: “Subcultures

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often define themselves in contradistinction to mainstream culture, and, often, they can in part be defined by the metaphors they use. And sometimes the self-definition of a subculture involves the unique metaphorical conceptualization of important concepts on which the separateness of the subculture is based” (2005, 97). Indeed, if we take a close look at the plant-related symbols that Chinese scholars often place in their homes and offices – be they as objects or as works of art – we soon find that they tend to be related to two predominant themes: overcoming adversity, and effacing the self as required by their profession. One such plant is the flowering plum, which traditionally has been viewed as a symbol of fortitude and intrepidness. This metaphor’s conceptual ground is that the plum tree is the first to bloom in early spring, when traces of snow are still visible. This aspect of “braving the frost and snow” (‫܃‬ᆷድਆh஍ႄ‫م‬ዏ) is deemed similar to an essential quality of the ideal Confucian scholar, who confronts bureaucratic bullies and social ills. In contrast to the plum, which is a flower of early spring, the chrysanthemum continues to blossom in late autumn, when nearly all other flowers have withered and died. Thus, many people use it as an emblem of patience and perseverance, both of which are viewed as indispensable qualities of the “superior man.” Next comes the orchid, which has been interpreted as a symbol of refinement and modesty. This symbolic significance has mainly to do with the flower’s scent, which is very mild but travels a long distance. Also valued is that the orchid can grow in desert lands or in deep valleys and that it blooms in total solitude. These are desirable qualities in the Confucian scholar, who enjoys a quiet but productive life far from the public attention. Then there is the bamboo, which has been entrusted to signify honesty and moral integrity and has become a favourite plant of the literati (Zhao 1996, 66). The centre of the bamboo (its heart) is hollow, and this links it to a Chinese phrase /ክኈ/ that means or . More important, the plant’s structure is such that it breaks rather than bends, which makes it a perfect symbolic vehicle for the upright character of the Confucian scholar. It is clear that the flowering plum, the chrysanthemum, the orchid, and the bamboo have come to signify various prominent virtues of the Confucian scholar. Collectively, they are known as /੢෪႞௝ᕅ/ (the Four Gentlemen among Plants, or the Four Noble Plants) and have served as a central motif of Chinese poetry and visual arts for well over a thousand years.

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Figure 49. ੢෪႞௝ᕅ (the Four Noble Plants in Chinese Painting) A good explanation for this “noble” use of plants is offered by Pierre Bourdieu, whose concept of “the economic world reversed” throws a fascinating light on questions of social distinction. According to Bourdieu (1984, 1993), the economic world in which we live can be broken into several subfields, each endowed with its own specific rationality; furthermore, agents in a given economic subfield function in a different way than in the others. Bourdieu himself studied most closely the economic world of artistic production, where the “common” economic law is reversed or rendered upside down. Specifically, artists are required by their internalized principle of art for art’s sake to disassociate themselves from the direct financial gains that ordinary people pursue openly and happily.

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Conversely, agents in the bureaucratic subfield are supposed to sacrifice their personal interests to those of the public. As Bourdieu points out: There exist social universes in which search for strictly economic profit can be discouraged by explicit norms or tacit injunctions. “Noblesse oblige” means that it is that noblesse or nobility that impedes the nobleman from doing certain things and allows him to do others. Because it forms part of his definition, of his superior essence, to be disinterested, generous, he cannot be otherwise, “it is stronger than him.” (1998, 86)

In other words, members of the noble class are forbidden to take lightly their collective ideals, which, in the case of the Chinese literati, tend to be represented by plants. Through these stable metaphorical representations they produce and reproduce at least the appearance of conformity to the behavioural rules that constitute their specific social field.

7 Myth Making and Its Socio-Economic Functions

In the previous chapters, we discussed meaning in its philosophical sense, meanings of words and sentences, and meanings of metonymy and metaphor. It this final chapter, our topic is meanings of media images. The cultural texts we have chosen for analysis are an extremely popular Chinese TV series titled A Native of Beijing in New York and the literary works of Gao Xingjian, the only Chinese recipient of Nobel Prize for Literature. Here we find ourselves engaged in a recently hot academic topic: Orientalism. This intellectual movement, initiated by the late Edward Said, amounts to a self-critique by some Western intellectuals of how the West has dealt with, restructured, and exerted authority over the Orient. The past four hundred years of world history have been basically a story of Western military conquest and trade expansion. Given that, Orientalism offers an important perspective in cross-cultural studies, in that it forces us to re-examine the Western episteme towards the East by laying bare the power relations that have long existed between the dominant and the dominated. Note, however, that while it emphasizes the impact of Western economic and military power in East–West relations, Orientalism tends to view the “distortion” of other cultures as a one-way cultural activity. Said has this to say in Orientalism (1979): Ideas, cultures, and histories cannot seriously be understood without their force, or more precisely their configurations of power, also being studied. To believe that the Orient was created – or, as I call it, “orientalized” – and to believe that such things happen simply as a necessity of the imagination, is to be disingenuous. The relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex

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hegemony, and is quite accurately indicated in the title of K.M. Panikkar’s classic Asia and Western Dominance. The Orient was orientalized not only because it was discovered to be “Oriental” in all those ways considered commonplace by an average nineteenth-century European, but also because it could be – that is, submitted to being – made Oriental. (1979, 5–6)

This short passage highlights two dimensions of the issue at hand. First, because Western nations want to acquire and maintain control over Eastern nations, they reconstruct the latter’s cultures in accordance with their imperialistic aims. This point is not difficult to make and is now widely accepted as valid. But such is not the case regarding the second point – which is, that in interactions or exchanges of various sorts between West and East, the former is stronger than the latter and for that reason is able to orientalize its opponent. This proposition seems valid, but only superficially, for once we transform this statement into its antithesis – if the West had not been the stronger of the two, it would not have orientalized the Orient – the logical necessity that the effect follow the cause no longer stands. Indeed, when we delve into any nation’s historical records about other cultures, we often find that they do not correspond to “realities,” and descriptions of dominant cultures offered by the dominated are no exception. The capacity to reconstruct, filter, and distort other people’s worlds in the interest of one’s own is hardly a monopoly of the strong; on the contrary, it is a universal meaning-producing mechanism – one that many semioticians refer to as myth making. The question to be asked, then, is how and why a particular people constructs another culture the way it does. As a case study, let us look briefly at the current cultural relationship between China and the United States. Despite its increased openness to the outside world in recent decades, China can still be regarded as fairly homogeneous in terms of its perceptions of the United States. It is true that more diplomats, journalists, business people, and students than ever are travelling from China to America, and these people inevitably develop their own views of that country; but compared to the population of China as a whole, their numbers are so small that their opinions have almost no impact at home. For the rest of the Chinese, who cannot afford to cross the Pacific, information about the United States still comes mainly from the official media, such as newspapers, books, and television programs.1 In the past twenty years or so, there have appeared in the Chinese public square a number of popular works that tell Chinese at home

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about life in other countries.2 The one that concerns us here is Cao Guilin’s A Native of Beijing in New York. This was the most successful of them all and was turned into a TV series of twenty-one episodes. It was shown on Chinese Central TV during prime time right after the evening news and was watched by millions of households. It was an immediate hit, and long after it was first shown, people were still talking about its vivid images of the United States. The program was later rebroadcast on various local stations, and the rights to it were sold to several Chinese communities across Asia. There are many explanations for the success of A Native of Beijing in New York, but as the following analysis will show, none of them is as convincing as this one: it has plucked a string in the Chinese “mythic unconscious.” The story is fairly simple: a Beijing artist named Wang Qiming goes to New York in search of wealth. To survive in a totally different culture, he must give up his music career and work first in a Chinese restaurant and then in a clothing factory. After a few twists and turns, he is finally able to defeat his American rivals and become a very successful businessman. The story is by no means extraordinary, for plenty of overseas Chinese have done much better in terms of social success. However, the way in which Wang Qiming’s story is presented is worthy of semiotic studies. Roland Barthes (1972) puts it very well in Mythologies: Psycho-analysis, structuralism, eidetic psychology, some new types of literary criticism of which Bachelard has given the first examples, are no longer concerned with facts except inasmuch as they are endowed with significance. Now to postulate a signification is to have recourse to semiology. I do not mean that semiology could account for all these aspects of research equally well: they have different contents. But they have a common status: they are all sciences dealing with values. They are not content with meeting facts: they define and explore them as tokens for something else. (1972, 111)

It is this “something else” behind the story of A Native of Beijing in New York that we explore next. As many semioticians have pointed out, myth usually works “in dichotomic fashion.” This certainly fits the structure of A Native of Beijing in New York. Throughout the series, New York is portrayed as a paradise full of wonders, in contrast to the anti-paradise of Beijing. This mythic signified is established by the director’s strong emphasis on certain aspects of New York life. Here we should not overlook one seem-

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ingly insignificant detail in the making of the program – that is, it is one of the few Chinese TV series or films ever to have been shot entirely outside China. It is said that the production crew was so “shocked” by what they saw in New York that “they were working under its influence virtually the whole time” (Zhongshan Bimonthly 1 [1994]: 128). In the series, the producers’ infatuation with New York comes through clearly. This is most noticeable in the way the camera lingers on the impressive evening skylines, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the city boulevards, and in the awe-inspiring American National Anthem that helps open each episode. It is precisely the grandiose American scenery that appeals most to Chinese audiences, who do not see human wonders of this kind at home. Consistent with this, the director does not waste many scenes on the real life of Wang Qiming, who in the beginning washes dishes twelve hours a day in a Chinese restaurant and who shares a small, dingy room with several compatriots – which is how most Chinese live when they come to America as overseas students. Instead, the audience sees close-up after close-up of the beautiful ingredients of a breakfast between Wang and his wife when she comes to join him from China, and the expensive gifts his daughter receives at her birthday party, and the luxurious style of the honeymoon between an American and Wang’s ex-wife. Also relevant to the image of America as paradise is Wang’s ownership of a factory, his Cadillac, and his house on Long Island. None of these can be accomplished in China, where money is short and technology backward. One thing that is neither lacking nor outdated in the series is the supposed Oriental moral strength, which Chinese immigrants to the United States have maintained, and which has proven to be very powerful, indeed, superior to the American capitalist spirit. This constitutes another mytheme in A Native of Beijing in New York. In the series, Wang is depicted as smart, hard working, and able to endure all adversity; these attributes enable him to succeed in the end. When he first arrives in New York, he can barely speak English, he lacks enough money to go to school (let alone start a business), and he faces racial discrimination because of his skin colour, but he manages to overcome these difficulties through hard work and unwavering perseverance, first in a restaurant and later in a clothing factory. In contrast, the American men in the series are generally depicted as self-centred and immature. For example, David, Wang’s American competitor in both business and love, is portrayed as a hot-tempered boss; indeed, his temper costs him his career by the end of the story.

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In the series’ portrayal of women, the contrast between Chinese and American is even sharper. Chinese women are always depicted as loving, sensitive, understanding, hard working, attractive, and morally upright; American women are usually portrayed as selfish, insensitive, and morally loose. There are two major female Chinese characters in the series, and both are presented as martyrs always ready to sacrifice themselves for their moral principles as well as for the people they love. The series’ central figure is Guo Yan, who epitomizes Chinese women’s decency. While her husband is struggling to survive in a new country, she stands beside him. Besides being a help and comfort at home, she works hard in a clothing factory run by David. Only after Wang stoops to the American way of running a business – that is, by seeking profit at the cost of human decency and moral values – does she leave him for David (with plenty of encouragement from David). Wang and David become business competitors, and the former faces bankruptcy because of the latter. Out of compassion, and without meaning to hurt David, Guo leaks some business information to her ex-husband. When David finds out, the couple quarrel and separate. But Guo does not go back to Wang, who is now a success; instead she works as a janitor in a university hospital while working towards a graduate degree. After that, she returns to China, where she has always belonged. The same can be said of the other female character: Ah Chun, a second-generation Chinese American. She speaks perfect English and knows American ways very well, yet she maintains many Oriental values, which she inherited from her ancestors. She is a good friend of Wang and is even willing to sell her own business to help him get back on his feet. She is also a very unselfish lover after Wang’s divorce, and their relationship displays more understanding than could ever exist between two human beings. There is no main American female character in A Native of Beijing in New York; this can be explained by the fact that it is a story about some Chinese living in America. However, the series does contain a short scene in which Wang is intimately involved with an American woman. But she is a prostitute who will do anything for money. In this case, he pays her to repeat over and over, “I love you.” Also worth mentioning is Linlin, Wang’s daughter, who comes to New York at a very early age and is soon Americanized. Like her American school peers, she is portrayed as sexually promiscuous, first losing her virginity to a schoolmate and then becoming a partner of that boy’s father merely for economic reasons. The entire story is much more complicated than what has just been described, but the audience is never left in doubt as to which side will

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get the upper hand in the West–East confrontation. There is a time when Wang becomes avaricious and his business practices are hardly distinguishable from those of his American counterparts. In that sense, he succumbs to the capitalist logic that businesses should be run with one’s mind, not one’s heart. Yet it is precisely this corruption in character that brings about his downfall. If not for his ex-wife, who out of compassion passes on to him some important information, and later his girlfriend, who out of devotion sells her own business and lends him a large sum of money, Wang would never have been able to stand up again. Apart from the two shining female characters who symbolize Chinese moral strength, the entire series seems to impart a pervasive sense of emptiness, just like in a casino, one of which Wang comes to visit often, and where the money flows but decent human beings are scarce. Against the magnificent high-rises, buzzing highways, and well-lit storefronts of New York, one sees the ruthless schemes of business people, the endless arguments in almost every family that eventually lead to divorce, and, above all, the almost unbearable pressure that the capitalist system exerts on every individual who lives within it. As the scriptwriter expresses it in the opening caption of each episode: “If you love him, send him to New York, for it is Paradise; if you hate him, send him to New York, for it is Hell.” Paradise here certainly refers to the material aspects of the United States; Hell clearly refers to its debased moral condition. Needless to say, A Native of Beijing in New York does not present to its Chinese audience at home the “reality” of life in New York. First, not all buildings in the city are as impressive as those repeatedly shown on the TV screen. Chinese who go to Queens or the Bronx, where the buildings are dilapidated, will certainly gain a very different impression of that city. Second, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for a new immigrant who has little knowledge of the language and culture and zero capital to start a business and succeed financially in his or her lifetime. Many first-generation immigrants have never purchased a new car of any kind, let alone a Cadillac or a Mercedes. This makes unconvincing Wang’s ability to purchase a house on Long Island within a few years. Third, there are good people and bad people everywhere in the world, be they Chinese or American, businessmen or peasants, men or women. For example, the Chinese view prostitution as a symptom of Western moral corruption, yet it is less of a social problem in the United States than in China and many other Asian countries. Clearly, then, A Native of Beijing in New York distorts American realities.

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The next question is why the United States is presented the way it is. The answer to this is to be found in the particular social and psychological functions of mythology. In terms of etymology, a “myth” is a story about gods that has evolved from ancient religious rituals, and many theories have been built on the premise that early humans were ignorant and superstitious. But in recent years, scholars have expanded the definition to include stories that concern the more practical side of human life. For example, Joseph Campbell (1970, 138–41) suggested the following as the functions of what he called “mythologies”: 1. The reconciliation of consciousness with the preconditions of its own existence. 2. The formulation and rendering of an image of the universe, a cosmological image in keeping with the science of the time and of such kind that, within its range, all things should be recognized as parts of a single great holy picture. 3. The validation and maintenance of some specific social order, authorizing its moral code as a construct beyond criticism or human emendation. 4. The shaping of individuals to the aims and ideals of their various social groups, bearing them on from birth to death through the course of a human life. In Semiotics of Consumption (1993), Morris Holbrook and Elizabeth Hirschman borrow these four mythic functions for analytic purposes, providing their own categorical names: “metaphysical, cosmological, sociological and psychological” (1993, 147). The motives behind A Native of Beijing in New York belong clearly to the latter two categories, and it is the task of semioticians to trace the link between the myth in question and its ideological background. As Algirdas Greimas (1987) put it: The interpretation of myths brings into being a new “ideological” language, because this is indeed what happens: An analysis of signification must necessarily lead to a new “terminology,” a new metalanguage. In other words, mythologists translate mythological language into “ideological” language. (1987, 3–4)

From the textual analysis presented above, a dominant theme seems to emerge from the series: America is a paradise full of material riches, but it is inhabited by less than perfect people – less than perfect in the

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sense that their lives are characterized by excessive sensuality and lack of human warmth, which together will eventually cause America’s downfall. Given China’s current political and economic position relative to the West in general and the United States in particular, it is not hard to glean the ideological purposes underpinning A Native of Beijing in New York. On the one hand, China’s economic and technological backwardness must be emphasized if the government hopes to instil in the minds of its people the need to open their country to the outside world. As recently as thirty years ago, China was totally isolated from the international community and the country’s official ideology was that the Chinese were the luckiest of all peoples while “two thirds of the world population lived in misery.” Inheriting a country on the verge of collapse, and facing massive discontent among the citizenry, the new leaders adopted an open-door policy to court Western money and technology in an effort to revive its own economy – hence the much repeated mytheme that the United States and other Western countries are paradise. Yet the national pride of the Chinese, who see themselves as the greatest of all peoples on earth, must be maintained – hence the mythic stereotype of Westerners as intellectually immature and emotionally insensitive. Myths for the International Market At one time, myth making was confined within the borders of a particular nation, where its main purposes were, as Campbell pointed out, to validate and maintain “some specific social order, authorizing its moral code as a construct beyond criticism or human emendation,” and to shape “individuals to the aims and ideals of their various social groups, bearing them on from birth to death through the course of a human life.” With the arrival of an active global cultural market over the past few decades, this semiotic mechanism has been expropriated by commerce. Quick to notice this has been Arjun Appadurai, a prominent theorist of cultural globalization, who takes global migration as a major diacritic and explores its impact on the imagination. At first glance, this proposition looks like a return to the traditional doublet of life versus literature, with the latter believed to be either a reflection of the former or an escape from it. Appadurai, though, is no orthodox Marxist operating within the simple binary opposition of base and superstructure. Instead, he views the imaginary as a field of social practices whose forms and strategies vary with the sites and aims of the particular agents involved. As he himself puts it,

Myth Making and Its Socio-Economic Functions 141 The image, the imagined, the imaginary – these are all terms which direct us to something critical and new in global cultural processes: the imagination as a social practice. No longer mere fantasy (opium for the masses whose real work is elsewhere), no longer simple escape (from a world defined principally by more concrete purposes and structures), no longer elite pastime (thus not relevant for new forms of desire and subjectivity), the imagination has become an organized field of social practices, a form of work (both in the sense of labor and of culturally organized practice) and a form of negotiation between sites of agency (“individuals”) and globally defined fields of possibility. (1996, 31)

“Negotiation,” among other terms, suggests a clear departure from the traditional dichotomy of writing and society. No longer a parasitic phantom, the former is conceived as an active part of the latter (writing in society), one in which feelings and ideas of all sorts are confirmed, contested, and sometimes commodified. Take, for example, the works of Gao Xingjian, a diasporan writer who was born on the mainland of China and spent nearly five decades of his life there before leaving the country in 1987 to live in France. In 2000, when it was announced that he had received the Nobel Prize for Literature, reactions varied from extreme pride among many overseas Chinese (including in Hong Kong and Taiwan) to utter indifference among most if not all mainland agencies. These two opposed attitudes clashed when Gao Xingjian visited Hong Kong less than two months after giving his acceptance speech to the Swedish Academy. Hong Kong was familiar territory to Gao: he had conducted many of his modernist dramatic experiments there, published several of his books with the Hong Kong publisher Cosmos, and held numerous painting exhibitions in the city. This time he was invited by the Chinese University of Hong Kong to speak about his “literary” creations; however, the questions he was asked after his talk were mainly political, despite his repeated efforts to shun the topic. One question that kept arising and that was taken up in the local media over the next few days was whether Hong Kong’s chief executive had yielded to pressure from the central government in deciding not to grant an audience to Gao Xingjian. Underlying this question was, of course, the assumption that any achievement by a Chinese individual reflected on all Chinese – a view this author strongly rejected. Many critics have used a well-known Chinese saying to describe Gao Xingjian’s newfound fame: “༏ฆ௬੢༏ᆀቅ” (a tree blossoms in the yard but its fragrance is noticed only from outside). But that is not ex-

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actly the case, for the tree of Gao Xingjian branches out far beyond the borders of the People’s Republic of China and continues to grow in the territory of France. We were wryly reminded of this by then Chinese premier Zhu Rongji, who commented thus on Gao’s Nobel award during a visit to Japan: I am happy that literary works written in Chinese were awarded the Nobel Prize … and I believe that more works written in Chinese will win prizes in future. It is a pity that the prize winner this time is a French citizen, not a Chinese one. Nevertheless, I want to extend my congratulations to the winner and the French Minister of France. (Lin 2000, 98)

Premier Zhu may not be a professional literary critic, but his intuition as a statesman has helped him detect the chasms that are broadening among national, ethnic, and personal identities caused by the globalization of literary markets. “Market” is not a word that Gao Xingjian wants to see his name associated with. He has often maintained that literary writing should strive to be “disinterested,” especially in today’s consumer society, and for that he has invented the term “cold literature.” The following is an extract from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: Literature that has recovered its innate character can be called cold literature. It exists simply because humankind seeks a purely spiritual activity beyond the gratification of material desires. This sort of literature of course did not come into being today. However, whereas in the past it mainly had to fight oppressive political forces and social customs, today it has to do battle with the subversive commercial values of consumerist society. For it to exist depends on a willingness to endure loneliness. (trans. Mabel Lee, Sydney University)

But for Pierre Bourdieu (now Gao’s fellow countryman), all human activities – including cultural production – are in the final analysis interest-oriented. On entering a field, be it trade or anything else, one tries to apply his or her knowledge, skill, and intelligence in the most advantageous way possible, just as in a game. In normal circumstances, no one enters a game to lose. By the same token, no one writes a novel or a play with the goal of receiving bad reviews or, in the words of Gao Xingjian, “to ramble to oneself (ᕆዺᕆᏙ).” This is not to accuse Gao Xingjian of lying in making such a disavowal

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of interest, but his proclamation of “disinterestedness” does suggest where he stands in relation to other competitors in the field of literary production. According to Bourdieu, literary production, like all other fields of cultural production, is structured by an opposition between two subfields: the field of large-scale production and the field of restricted production. The field of large-scale production involves what is sometimes referred to as best-sellers or “popular” readings, and the producers there usually measure their success by the number of books they sell. But in the field of restricted production, the economy of practices is based on a public inversion of the fundamental principles of all ordinary economies. It is a game in which one must disavow immediate economic interest in order to win literary prestige and consecration, which in certain conditions and always in the long run can be converted into “economic” profits.3 As was mentioned earlier, Arjun Appadurai also views literary writing as a social practice, but there is an important difference between him and Pierre Bourdieu: for him, the labour of imagination – or at least a large portion of it – now takes place in the “globally defined fields of possibility,” which can no longer be understood in terms of existing national paradigms. This means that Bourdieu’s field of literary production needs to be further divided into national and transnational subfields if we wish to fully understand the new cultural phenomenon of narrating across borders, which is Gao Xingjian’s métier. During an interview with Jin Siyan and Wang Yipei in Paris on 18 January 2001,4 Gao divided his creative writing career into two principal phases: “twelve years in France and those eight to nine years after the Cultural Revolution” (on the mainland of China). In these terms, one can say that the first phase of his writing was part of the “national” project of popularizing and at the same time enhancing art, in the course of which the Chinese state commissioned him to work on several theatre projects. The results were Absolute Signal (1982), Bus Stop (1983), and Wilderness Man (1985). Having earned a university education in French language and literature, however, Gao Xingjian dedicated himself more to the enhancement of theatrical art than to its popularization, and this gained him a reputation as an “experimenter.” It is no exaggeration to say that all the works he produced during this period were experimental, in that they explored various aspects of dramaturgy as they caught his attention at the time. Absolute Signal, for example, was the first play ever performed in a “small theatre” in modern China; its aim was to test a different kind of theatricality (ே‫݋‬ኘ);

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Bus Stop, with its emphasis on symbolism, was an attempt to construct characters through universal categories rather than particular stories; and Wilderness Man contained multiple overlapping themes. Whatever the contentions of many foreign critics, Gao Xingjian did gain for his artistic experiments moral encouragement from many leading literary figures of the time as well as grassroots support from his colleagues at the Beijing People’s Art Theatre. Indeed, he was time and again entrusted to write for China’s most prestigious theatrical institution, and his plays were widely anthologized as representing Chinese modernism. So there are very few grounds for the popular belief that he left the Chinese mainland in order to escape political persecution arising from his artistic innovations. If we take a closer look at Gao Xingjian’s various experiments in Chinese theatre, we may come to a different explanation for this author’s lack of success in the Chinese literary market. Let us start with Absolute Signal, which thematically speaking is about a fallen young man who finally corrects his own mistakes and is rewarded with the girl and the job he fervently desires. For this stage production, the playwright as well as the director, Lin Zhaohua – who shared the former’s views on drama – chose an empty hall with the audience on three sides of the stage. The rationale behind such a mise en scène is that closing the distance between performers and audience can more effectively bring out the mental activities of the characters, thereby generating empathy between the two. But can we really say there is better communication between actors and audience when the two are allowed to mingle during a show? The answer is no if we reject the argumentative leap from a certain way of performing to a particular desired aesthetic effect – a fatal leap that is central to Gao Xingjian’s theory of drama. In fact, a completely opposite conclusion could be drawn from the same premise – that is, removing the frame and filling the orchestra pit may reduce the physical space between actors and audience, but these steps also increase the psychological distance between the two, because with the actors moving among them, the audience members must constantly remind themselves that this is a performance, not a real-life situation. True, “small theatre” creates a different kind of theatricality, but being different does not mean being better and should not in itself serve as a criterion for creative success. Bus stop,5 a non-realistic work about a group of people waiting for a bus that never comes, was Gao Xingjian’s first play, though not the first to be staged. When the time came, Gao demanded of his cast “cat-

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egorical” rather than “individualized” performances in an effort to differentiate his new art from the old theatre, which he contended was in thrall to Stanislavskian realism. Again, note the broad chasm between what the playwright hoped to achieve and what the play actually is. Apart from a few absurdist touches – such as making ten years equal ten minutes – the play relies heavily on traditional interactions between plot and character. Though not named by the author, each character in the play has a unique past, which is revealed and transformed by the specific event of waiting for the bus. The dialogues between the characters are manifestations of various personal responses to a life situation and cannot but be highly individualized. In other words, without traditional devices such as plot and character development, it is impossible to encode and decode the correlations between theatrical signs and the ideas the writer wants to convey. Wilderness Man, Gao Xingjian’s third and last stage production before he left the Chinese mainland, features a plethora of masked ceremonies, wedding rituals, folk songs, and dances. These are meant to symbolize the earth, floods, and forests as well as a wide range of subjective emotions. At the time, the play was considered by some to be the pinnacle of experimental drama in China; today it is credited mainly for being a relatively complete polyphonic play containing more than one theme. Before we discuss the significance of this “breakthrough,” we must ask an important question: What do we mean when we say “more than one theme” or “multiple themes”? Does it mean that a play can relate to several areas of life at once? If so, how do we distinguish this from the traditional proposition that a strong literary work should be “multidimensional” or “multifaceted”? Shakespeare’s Othello, for example, is widely known to be about the “dangerous passion” that leads the tragic hero to kill his beloved Desdemona; but that play touches on many other important issues, such as “the lack of correspondence between appearance and reality” as manifested in the character of Iago. One can even argue that Shakespeare was equally interested in presenting a character who succeeds in preserving an appearance of honesty. Traditional critics do not use the term “multithematic” to describe this work; for them, only the most important message is called the “theme” and the rest are “thematic elements” that contribute to the piece’s desired overall effect. In Othello the disparity between appearance and reality is one of several factors that make our passions so dangerous, and that specific danger is the main theme of the play. Viewed in this light, a “polyphonic” play is no different from any traditional work except in

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name, and its aesthetic qualities ultimately depend on how well those structural elements are interrelated. Wilderness Man is said to contain seven to eight “themes”: environmental protection, with the Ecologist doing field studies in a remote mountain region; the preservation of primitive cultures, through a revisiting of the Old Singer’s ritual services and folk songs; the conflict between career and family, manifested in the separation of the Ecologist from his wife; the harmony between man and nature, with the Wilderness Man providing the missing link; and so on. But how successful the play is still hinges on how these various elements are knitted into a unified whole. According to Xu Guorong, a Chinese critic, Gao Xingjian did not do a terribly good job in this respect. The following is what Xu has to say about the structure of Wilderness Man: Here, instead of coming from one unified meaning-rich plot, multiple themes are obtained by the writer’s touching on different issues and piling several plots on top of one another. Such a structural arrangement makes it impossible to fully develop any single plot. Nor does it allow sufficient space for the development of characters who now come and go at a rush. Being so thin and conceptual, the “themes” in which the characters are involved are therefore too sketchy; they are nothing more than a sum total of a group of unrelated ideas. (1989, 116)

From the results of Gao Xingjian’s literary experiments up to 1987, one must hesitate to attribute his departure from the Chinese mainland exclusively to “lack of freedom of expression,” as has often been alleged. It is true that the mainland Chinese literary market was tightly controlled by the state, which did not permit the publication of works it viewed as undermining the socialist cause, but this control of the market was motivated by economics as well. Not just in China but around the world, it is too much to expect the government to support a line of literary experimentation that has repeatedly been shown to have no commercial or aesthetic value. In fact, there is a liberal aspect of the current Chinese state policy on art and literature – an aspect that is often neglected in the discussions of the subject. China’s Ministry of Culture was well aware that its art workers were underpaid; thus it encouraged them to tap the higherpaying Western art markets whenever such opportunities presented themselves.6 Being bilingual, Gao Xingjian was quick to learn that there is a huge need for things Chinese in the international art market. As

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noted by Xu Guorong (ibid., 257–8), Gao made his first trip to Europe as Ba Jin’s interpreter in 1979 and established contacts with his European counterparts; through them, he learned that many of them were turning to traditional Chinese culture for inspiration. This discovery led to the second phase of his creative career, which can be described as “the phase of transnational literary production.” In the years after his departure from the Chinese mainland, Gao Xingjian has continued his literary production at a rapid rate, but for entirely different readers and audiences that require different enunciative strategies. Among the works written during this period are a number of plays (Between Life and Death [1991], Dialogue and Rebuttal [1992], Nocturnal Wanderer [1993]) and two novels (Soul Mountain [1992] and One Man’s Bible [1999]). In terms of subject matter, his later plays evidence an abrupt shift away from contemporary Chinese life towards more abstract and universal concerns such as “life versus death,” “man versus woman,” “language versus reality,” and “good versus evil.” The settings of his new plays are mostly unspecified, nor can the audience get much indication of the nationalities of his characters, who are named categorically: “Woman,” “Young Girl,” “Middle-Aged Man,” “Monk,” “Traveller,” “Sleepwalker,” “Tramp,” “Prostitute,” “Ruffian,” “Thug,” and the like. But despite this superficial distancing from China, his approach to universal human predicaments remains consistently Chinese or Oriental, for that is where his “cultural capital” lies in relation to other producers in European literary production. Typical of his dramatic works of this period is Dialogue and Rebuttal, which explores the relations between the sexes. The play is a series of dialogues between two characters, Man and Woman, before and after their deaths. While they are alive, their relationship is characterized by a lack of genuine communication: the Woman is obsessed with her fear of aging, while the Man is interested solely in gratifying his carnal curiosity. In the absence of understanding, their physical existence leads to boredom and a bizarre game of sexual perversion in which the two partners stab each other to death. Communication continues to be impossible after death because the ghosts of Man and Woman are engaged in entirely different activities: the former is intent on escaping from his current predicament, while the latter is preoccupied with reminiscences of her past suffering. At the end of the play, both Man and Woman become crawling worms, which serves as a revelation of their true “wordless” nature. Witnessing this drama of futility is the allimportant Monk, who is similarly trapped in this world but makes no

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effort to communicate. In the words of the English translator of Gao’s plays: He is transcendental but not totally otherworldly, his antics being the follies of his own humanity. He listens carefully (this is symbolized by cleaning his ears, a gesture imbued with Buddhist meanings), and he observes with indifference that he has seen through the emptiness of human desires and sufferings. Perhaps the personification of Gao Xingjian’s idea of “indifferent observation,” he is content in the wordless wisdom accorded to him by his attainment of the state of Zen. (Fong 1999, xxxv)

Similar characters, though less prominent in their respective contexts, can be found in almost all of the other plays Gao wrote in his post–Chinese mainland period. In Between Life and Death, we encounter a nun who, while disembowelling herself and cleansing her intestines in front of the protagonist, offers a trace of Zenist meditation on the meaning of human existence as opposed to “the interminable analyses, the possibilities and conclusions built upon voluminous hypothetical premises and deduced through thousands of inferences and conclusions which are not necessarily reliable” (ibid., 77). In Nocturnal Wanderer, Gao’s transcendental figure takes the form of a Tramp, who is modelled after Jigong, a living Buddha in Chinese folklore. After a brief meeting with him, the Sleepwalker comes to this realization: “Happiness is only when you’re contemplating things by yourself. You contemplate and you wander without any worries, between heaven and earth, in your own private world, and in this way you acquire freedom” (ibid., 150). In the above textual details, we detect a pattern in Gao’s plays of this period: he is fond of impersonating on stage the direst of the universal predicaments of human existence, and to that purpose, he injects the intellectual resources (such as Buddhism) that he has drawn from Chinese culture – resources that are “in demand,” so to speak, on the European literary market. Gao is well aware of this demand for a different way of viewing the world, and for that reason he tinges nearly all of his cultural goods with Oriental intuitivism, which to many is a “Chinese characteristic.”7 Acknowledging as much, he tells us in one of his “suggestions for production” that he is “interested in nudging the audience into contemplation, so that they can come to the state of wordless and unspoken wisdom” (Gao 2000 [1996], 196). Similarly, Gao’s full-length novels were written with an internation-

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al readership in mind, including readers in Hong Kong and Taiwan, whose curiosity about mainland China is quite similar to that of Western readers. Indicative of this intention is the fact that as soon as he completed the manuscript of Soul Mountain, he passed it to a Swedish friend (a member of the Nobel Prize Committee) for translation. This resulted in an interesting event: the book’s translation came out before its Chinese version was published in Taiwan. Nevertheless, for this Nobel Prize–winning book and One Man’s Bible, Gao Xingjian employed a different set of cultural resources, which were dictated partly by the transnational literary market and partly by the requirements of long prose fiction. To a large extent, Soul Mountain amounts to an ecological as well as a cultural tour of China – not, however, of its cosmopolitan cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou, which have lost much of their “exoticness” for the outside world owing to the growth of tourism in the post-Mao period, but rather of its rural villages and remote towns, which few foreigners ever visit. By making Soul Mountain, in the wilder reaches of Sichuan province, the traveller-narrator’s final destination, Gao Xingjian treats his readers to a feast of premodern natural landscapes and indigenous peoples not yet polluted by modern civilization. Being a painter, he is able to fill the book with vivid descriptions of the mists, crags, and dark forests of western China, such as the one quoted below, which comprises the whole of chapter 77 (a sure headache for any translator): I don’t understand the meaning of these reflections. It isn’t a large stretch of water, the leaves of the trees have all fallen and the branches and trunks are grey-black. The one closest seems to be a willow, the two further off but closer to the water could be elms. The slender branches of the willow in front are loosely tangled and the bare branches of the two at the back have only small twigs on them. I can’t tell if the water with the reflections in it is iced over, in cold weather sometimes there is a layer of ice. The sky is grey and gloomy and it looks as if it is about to rain, but there is no rain, no movement, the branches do not sway, there is no sway, there is no wind. Everything is frozen as if dead. There is only this faint trace of music, wafting and intangible. The trees all have a slight slant. The two elms slant, one to the right and the other to the left. The trunk of the slightly larger willow slants to the right and three branches of virtually the same thickness growing from it all slant to the left, so there is a sort of

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balance. Thereafter, it is fixed and unmoving, like a stretch of dead water, a finished painting which will not be further changed, devoid of any wish for change, devoid of disturbance, devoid of impulse, devoid of desire.

Even more interesting to foreign readers than undisturbed Nature is the “traditional” way of life of the peasants in those mountainous regions. Gao in Soul Mountain presents fire dancers, shamans, folk singers, and monks, all of whom have disappeared in the West. Chapter 69, for example, describes the rituals of the Tiantai Sect, “whose incense burners have been burning for over a thousand years”: Behind the huge incense burner at the top of the stairs the sound of the giant bell pours out of the hall lit with a blaze of candles. The monk in the black cassock is striking this enormous bell with a big wooden pole suspended from the ceiling. It does not so much as quiver but, as if in response, from the ground beneath, the sound of the bell slowly ascends to the rafters and fills the hall – booming reverberations gush through the doorway, engulfing my body and mind in its sound waves … At the back and the front of the palace are two tablets, one inscribed with the words “Majestic Land” and the other with “Profit and Pleasure is the Existence of Emotion,” and from the ceiling hang layers of curtains in the midst of which sits Buddha, with such dignity as to immediately banish vanity and with such kindness as to induce indifference to the point of absence of emotions so that the cares of the world of dust are extinguished in an instant, and time in that instant becomes frozen.

It is descriptions like these, spiced by a romance between the narrator and a lustful woman whom he takes on his journey and by tall tales such as cutting off one’s own arm after being bitten by a Qichun snake in a forest, that capture the interest of non-Chinese readers. As one Western reviewer put it, though “lacking in plot ... and character development,” “somehow [the novel] is still both engaging and elegant” (New York Times Sunday Book Review, 24 December 2000). Some critics have read the narrator’s journey to Soul Mountain as a metaphysical one, basing this largely on the now famous biography of the writer. Gao Xingjian emerged on the Chinese literary scene as a modernist shortly after the Cultural Revolution, but he is said to have constantly run into trouble with state officials because of his anti-establishment views. When persecution was rumoured during the “Anti-Spiritual-Pollution Movement” in 1983, he left Beijing to spend

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six months travelling in the mountains of Sichuan and exploring the western reaches of the Yangtze River. The diaries he kept on that journey, both on paper and in his memory, became the raw material for his first full-length novel. Interpreted in this light, Soul Mountain is a story of one man’s quest for inner peace and freedom – things that are hard to come by in China’s collectivist society. Whether this is the novel’s dominant theme is open to debate, but the oppressiveness of a grouporiented culture is definitely an issue that Gao Xingjian develops to the full in his next novel, One Man’s Bible. Though the second novel is set in Hong Kong during its last days as a British colony, it is mostly about life on the Chinese mainland after the Communist takeover in 1949 as refracted in the personal experiences of an intellectual. Through the narrator’s reminiscences, which are again interspersed with lascivious descriptions of his sexual encounters with various women, Gao Xingjian leads his readers through a succession of political movements – the Great Leap Forward, the Anti-Rightists Campaign, the Cultural Revolution, and so on – presenting the entire nation as having lost its reason and humanity under the proletarian dictatorship. Prominent members of the society are portrayed as living in constant fear of being paraded in front of a mob, their arms twisted painfully behind their backs and their colleagues, friends, spouses, and even children denouncing them as spies, traitors, reactionaries, or “stinking intellectuals.” As such, One Man’s Bible clearly echoes what is often referred to as “the literature of the wounded” or “trauma literature,” which flourished on the mainland of China from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. But there is an important difference between what the likes of Zhang Xianliang and Yang Jiang did there and then and what Gao Xianjiang does here and now. The former were raking up old grievances for the purpose of rebuilding a civil society – a rebuilding that is now well under way – and have since turned their pens to the more secular concerns of a people adjusting to a new market economy. As professor Zhang Yiwu (1997) of Peking University points out: Different from those in cross-national cultural field, cultural products such as television soap operas, best-sellers of fiction, popular songs, and entertainment movies targeted at domestic consumption construct their own discourse by relating to hot current issues facing the Chinese and by utilizing resources in mass culture. Such a discourse dovetails with the emerging civil society on the mainland of China, her changing cultural and ethical orientations, as well as the development of the media and cul-

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tural markets. Its aim is not to present a total image of “China” by dint of “allegories”; rather it situates itself in our immediate language/existence and seeks to attract local readers and audiences through its grasp of the current “state of affairs.” It provides imaginary solutions to our urgent problems and puzzlement and mobilizes our unconscious and desire. (1997, 87)

But if contemporary China’s “literature of the wounded” has been left behind by the sufferers themselves and by the next generation, who are more interested in moving forward, it still holds the attention of a large international audience, who look upon it as a unique cultural experience. In sharp contrast to Western culture, in which individual rights are sacred, Chinese culture is group oriented and calls on its individual members to sacrifice for the collective good. Readers in Europe and the United States have always been fascinated by this. Thus there is a large international cultural market for tragic stories set in the various historical eras of modern China – a demand testified by the fact that, wherever Gao Xingjian lectures and whenever he publishes a new book, his publisher describes him as a victim of “a repressive cultural environment.” Such is the market force behind One Man’s Bible, in which the tension between the group and the individual is dramatized to the extreme. As mentioned earlier, Gao Xingjian’s literary career can be divided into two phases characterized by vastly different narrational strategies. In his early plays, benefiting from his university education in French language and literature, he applied various European modernist writing techniques to Chinese subjects for a largely “traditional” domestic audience. In the second phase of his writing, he has aimed mainly at audiences outside the Chinese mainland, for whom he imagines solutions to existential problems through the mysterious “Oriental wisdom,” serving as their cultural guide through as yet unmodernized regions of China as well as its repressive past. We may call this “a shift from Modernism to Primitivism.”

Epilogue Semiotics as an Interdisciplinary Enterprise

To conclude our journey back and forth between Chinese and Western theories of the sign, we now return to the very first paragraph of chapter 1, which stated that our discussion and investigation of meaning would be conducted “in a theoretical framework in which the unifying point is no longer the ontological reality presumed by so many classical theories of meaning, but rather signs and their interpretations, which involve human participation.” This initial point of departure makes it sound as if one could still approach the issue of meaning from a nonsemiotic perspective, one that is not true and therefore needs to be modified. It must be emphasized here that meaning, in its enormous variety of forms, always depends on the use of signs. We can think and speak vaguely about an autonomous world that exists independently of our semiotic representations, but as soon as we come down to specifics and details, we find that we must articulate them in language or other types of signs. Whether we are investigating the significance of melting glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctic, the function of windows in architecture, the meaning of a particular plant, the style of a particular dress, or the content of a book, we will never be able to reach the wordless realm of “brute facts.” In other words, the semiotic perspective forces itself upon us no matter what the object of our investigation. Apart from this contradistinction to ontological realism in terms of epistemological stance, the semiotic perspective also stands for a particular discursive tradition that was developed by Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce at the beginning of the twentieth century. Such a discourse is characterized first and foremost by its interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary approach towards semiosis. The following is how Saussure himself tried to define the emerging discourse in relation to others, especially the science of language:

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It is therefore possible to conceive of a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life. It would form part of social psychology, and hence of general psychology. We shall call it semiology (from the Greek semeion, “sign”). It would investigate the nature of signs and the laws governing them. Since it does not yet exist, one cannot say for certain that it would exist. But it has a right to exist, a place ready for it in advance. Linguistics is only one branch of this general science. The law which semiology will discover will be laws applicable in linguistics, and linguistics will thus be assigned a clearly defined place in the field of human knowledge. (1989 [1916], 15–16)

Peirce held a similar vision with respect to the relationship between semiotics and other branches of knowledge. For him, because all human thoughts and experiences were dependent on the use of signs, the study of any cultural phenomenon would eventually lead to investigations into signs and their functions. He thus wrote to Lady Welby on 23 December 1908: “It has never been in my power to study anything – mathematics, ethics, metaphysics, gravitation, theomodynamics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, psychology, phonetics [sic], history of science, whist, men and women, wine, metrology – except as a study of semiotic” (quoted in Todorov 1979, 85). 1 For an illustration of the interdisciplinary nature of semiotics, we may turn to what Thomas Sebeok called “ten little dramas,” which he presented in the opening chapter of his book A Sign Is Just A Sign (1991): • A radiologist spots a silhouette on a chest X-ray photograph of a patient and diagnoses lung cancer. • A meteorologist notes a rise in barometric pressure and delivers the next day’s forecast taking that change into account. • An anthropologist observes a complex of ceremonial exchanges practiced among members of a tribe; she draws analytical insights into the polity, economy, and social organization of the people she is studying. • A French-language teacher holds up a picture of a horse. His American pupil says “horse.” The teacher shakes his head and pronounces “cheval.” • A historian takes a look at the handwriting of a former President and therefrom gains insight into her subject’s personality. • A Kremlin watcher observes the proximity of a member of the Polit-

Epilogue: Semiotics as an Interdisciplinary Enterprise

• •

•

•

155

buro to the Party Secretary on May Day and surmises the member’s current status. A compromising fingerprint is introduced as evidence in a trial; the defendant is convicted on the evidence. A hunter notices in the snow sets of rectangular tracks of pointed hoofs with an impression of dew claws; the forefoot track is 15 cm long and 13 cm broad, and the corresponding measurements for the hind-foot track are 15 cm and 11 cm. There are spherical droppings on the trail 20–30 mm long and 15–20 mm broad. The hunter surmises, with a high degree of probability, that a fully grown elk is trotting ahead of him. A man finds himself being stared at by a dog, growling, barking, head held high and neck arched, lips contracted vertically and teeth bared, ears erect and turned forward. The man concludes he is in danger of immanent attack and takes evasive action. A peacock displays to a susceptible peahen; she circles rapidly and squats. Coition ensues. (1991, 11–12)

These vignettes of semiosis or sign activity have things in common and therefore come under the purview of semioticians. Specifically, they all contain a relationship of a signifier pointing to a signified or one thing standing for something else – which constitutes the subject matter of semiotics. It is true that “semiotic imperialists” often impinge on other disciplines in the sense that they study more or less the same things, but no one can deny that many of the issues being tackled in various disciplinary areas can be viewed as special cases of one general set of problems. As has been shown in chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7, when a linguist analyses the structure of Chinese characters, when a rhetorician studies metaphor and metonymy, when an anthropologist explains the well-wishing customs of Chinese people, when a sociologist elucidates the Chinese scholar’s penchant for certain plants in home or office decoration, when a scholar of cultural studies investigates the mythic functions of a particular text, they are all confronted with the same general semiotic questions: Is this a sign? What kind of sign is it? How does it work? Once we recognize the commonalities among these seemingly disparate intellectual efforts, the existing disciplinary barriers can be removed so that scholars of different backgrounds can communicate across boundaries and share valuable insights. It is in this interdisciplinary spirit that the present book has been conceived and written.

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Technical Glossary

This glossary contains only those technical terms that have appeared in this book. For a comprehensive list of terms used in semiotics (with detailed illustrations), we refer readers to Marcel Danesi’s Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics, Media, and Communications, to which the present section and the next are much indebted. Some technical terms of Chinese origin are also provided by this glossary. They are listed separately. adjective

adverb

aesthetic alphabetic language alterity analogy

anthropology

antithesis antonym

The part of speech used to modify, limit, qualify, or otherwise affect the meaning of a noun or noun phrase. The part of speech used to describe or limit an adjective, a verb, another adverb, or an entire sentence. Concerning the appreciation of beauty or good taste. A written human language in which symbols reflect the pronunciation of the words. The state or quality of being other. 1. Similarity in some respects between things. 2. A comparison based on such similarity. The formal study of the origin, the behaviour, and the physical, social, and cultural development of humans. Direct contrast or opposition. A word having a meaning opposite to that of another word.

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Technical Glossary

arbitrariness archaeology

art

artefact

base

bilingual case

character code communication conceit concept conceptual metaphor

connotation consonant

The accidental relationship between a signifier and a signified. The systematic study of past human life and culture through the recovery and examination of remaining material evidence, such as graves, buildings, tools, and pottery. 1. The conscious production or arrange ment of sounds, colours, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty. 2. The product of these activities; human works of beauty considered as a group. An object produced or shaped by human craft, especially a tool, weapon, or ornament of archaeological or historical interest. The lowest part of a structure, such as a wall, used in Marxist theory as a metaphor for the direct social relations of material production and economics as opposed to the ideologies or institutions of a society. Said of a person or speech community that uses two languages. A grammatical category (in some languages) that shows the function of the noun or noun phrase in a sentence. A person portrayed in an artistic work, such as a play or novel. A system of signs for transmitting messages, now usually called a sign-system. Exchange of messages and meanings. A fanciful poetic image, especially an elaborate or exaggerated comparison. An abstract or general idea. A generalized metaphorical formula that underlies a group of metaphorical expressions. An association implied by a sign in addition to its literal or primary meaning. A speech sound produced by a partial or complete obstruction of the air stream by

Technical Glossary

consciousness

context cultural capital cultural studies

culture

decoding deconstruction

diachronic determinism

159

any of various constrictions of the speech organs. A characteristic of the mind generally regarded as comprising qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment. The circumstance in which a sign or a message occurs. Cultural knowledge that confers power and status to its possessor. An interdisciplinary field concerned with the role of social institutions in the shaping of culture. Originally identified with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham (founded 1964) and with such scholars as Richard Hoggart, Stuart Hall, and Raymond Williams, today cultural studies is recognized as a discipline or area of concentration in many academic institutions and has had broad influence in sociology, anthropology, historiography, literary criticism, philosophy, and art criticism. Among its central concerns are the place of race (or ethnicity), class, and gender in the production of cultural knowledge. Patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give significance to such activity. The deciphering of a sign or message. A term in contemporary literary criticism that refers to a particular kind of interpretive practice by which the texts we read appear to shift and complicate in meaning without finality. Said of the study of a phenomenon (especially language) as it changes through time. The doctrine that all events are inevitable effects of underlying causes.

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Technical Glossary

discourse drama ego empiricism encode epistemology essentialism etymology figure figure of speech fiction

firstness folklore form globalization

grammar

grapheme

A formal treatment of a subject in speech or writing. The art of writing, producing, or acting in a play. The self, especially as distinct from the world and other selves. The doctrine that experience, especially of the senses, is the only source of knowledge. To put a message into a particular semiotic system. The branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge. A philosophical doctrine that metaphysical essences are real and intuitively accessible. The history or derivation of words and its study. Illustration, diagram, picture, or drawing. A rhetorical device used to produce a special effect or shed new light. 1. A literary work whose content is pro duced by the imagination and is not directly based on fact. 2. The entire category of such works. In Peirce’s semiotic theory, the term refers to the universe of possibility. The body of customs, legends, beliefs, and superstitions passed on by oral tradition. Outward appearance or structure of a sign or text. The worldwide integration of economic, cultural, political, religious, and social systems. Broadly, structures of language and their study. Narrowly and more often, grammar is synonymous with syntax (including morphology), one of the three main categories of linguistic analysis (the other two being phonology and semantics). A written symbol used to represent a phoneme (or a seme in pictorial languages).

Technical Glossary

gesture ground habitus Homo habilis

homophone hyponym icon iconicity iconification idealism

ideology illocutionary act

image index

indexicality inference information

161

A movement of the hands, head, or body to express or emphasize an idea or emotion. The meaning of a metaphor. The disposition of an individual. An extinct species of humans considered to be an ancestor of modern humans and the earliest hominid to make tools. This species existed between 1.5 and 2 million years ago. One of two or more words that are pronounced the same but differ in meaning. A word that is more specific (less abstract) than a given word. A sign that resembles its referent in some aspects. Having or showing the characteristics of an iconic sign. The process of being turned into an iconic sign from an indexical sign. The doctrine that material objects and the external world do not exist in reality, but are creations of the mind. An orientation that characterizes the thinking of a group or nation. In Austin’s theory, the illocutionary act is defined as an act performed in saying something, as contrasted with a locutionary act, the act of saying something, and also contrasted with a perlocutionary act, an act performed by saying something. The opinion or concept of something that is held by the public. A sign that signifies by virtue of its spatial, temporal, or logical contiguity to its referent. Having or showing the characteristics of an indexical sign. The sense-making activity of listeners, readers, and viewers. A collection of facts and data.

162

Technical Glossary

intersubjective interpretant

interpretation

language

langue

legend

lexeme lexical item lexicon linguistics literature Marxism

materialism

Said of something that is shared or agreed upon by two or more subjects. For Charles S. Peirce, an interpretant is the effect of a sign on someone who reads or comprehends it. An explanation or conceptualization by a critic of a work of literature, painting, music, or other art form. 1. The notional totality of all verbal systems. 2. The nominal identity of particular languages such as English, Russian, and Chinese. 3. Loosely, of any communication or sign system such as “body language” and “the language of music.” A French word used by Saussure to refer to language as a system – including vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation – of a particular community. A popular story, handed down from earlier times, that may or may not be true, or a body of such stories. A minimal unit (as a word or stem) in the lexicon of a language. An alternative to “word” or “phrase.” The vocabulary of a language or of an individual. The formal study of language. Imaginative or creative writing, especially of recognized artistic value. The doctrines developed from the political, economic, and social theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their followers: dialectical materialism, a labour-based theory of wealth, an economic class struggle leading to revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the eventual development of a classless society. The philosophical theory that regards matter and its phenomena as the only reality

Technical Glossary

meaning medium

message meta-

metaphor metaphorology metaphysics

metonymy

modernism

myth

mytheme mythologies

163

and that explains all occurrences, including the mental, as a consequence of material agencies. The sense or significance of a word, sentence, metaphor, or image. 1. A means for communicating information or news to the public. 2. A surrounding environment in which something functions and thrives. The meaning of a text or picture. A Greek-derived prefix meaning “above,” as in “meta-language,” “meta-icon,” or “meta-metaphor.” One thing conceived as resembling another. The formal study of metaphor. A branch of philosophy concerned with being, first principles, and often including aspects of cosmology and epistemology. Talking of one thing in terms of another that is physically or logically connected with it. The deliberate departure from tradition and the use of innovative forms of expression that distinguish many styles in the arts and literature of the twentieth century. 1. A traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the world view of a people – for example, by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society. 2. Such stories considered as a group. 3. A fiction or half-truth, especially one that forms part of an ideology. The essential kernel of a myth. 1. Myths collectively, especially those associated with a particular culture or person. 2. A body of stories about a person, institution, and so on.

164

Technical Glossary

name narrative

narrator nasal natural sign

nominalism notional word noun

novel

number

object

objectivity onomatopoeia

A word that identifies a person, object, place, or abstract entity. An account, presented in writing or drama or cinema or as a radio or television program, that tells the particulars of an act or occurrence or course of events. An entity within a story from whose perspective the story is unfolded. Said of a sound that is pronounced with air passing through the nose. A sign produced by nature as opposed to one that is produced by humans with the intention to communicate. The doctrine that abstract words or ideas do not represent objectively existing entities. A word to which an independent meaning can be assigned. That part of speech that refers to and names a person, place, thing, concept, entity, or action. In an actual sentence, a noun can function as the subject or object of a verb, as the object of a preposition, or as an appositive. A fictional prose narrative of considerable length, typically having a plot that unfolds through the actions, speech, and thoughts of the characters. A grammatical distinction that determines whether a noun, verb, adjective, etc., in a language is singular or plural. 1. A noun, pronoun, or noun phrase that receives or is affected by the action of a verb or is governed by a preposition in a sentence. 2. Philosophically, something that is intelligible or perceptible to the mind. 3. What a sign refers to. Knowledge corresponding to external or material reality. A word that imitates the sound it represents.

Technical Glossary

ontological opera

Orientalism

oxymoron paradigmatic

paradox parole

parts of speech performance performative perlocutionary act

perspectivism

person

165

Of or relating to essence or the nature of being. A drama set to music and usually characterized by elaborate costuming, scenery, and choreography. Originally, the study of Near and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, and peoples by Western scholars. In recent years, the term has come to acquire negative connotations in some quarters and is interpreted as referring to the study of the East by Westerners who have been shaped by the attitudes of the era of European imperialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A rhetorical device by which two seemingly incongruous concepts are combined. Said of a set of substitutional or oppositional relationships that a linguistic unit has with other units. A statement that contradicts itself. A French word used by Saussure to refer to the actual realizations of a language structure. A traditional term for “word classes.” The act of presenting a play or a piece of music or other entertainment. An utterance that overtly performs an action or that constitutes a transaction. In Austin’s theory, a perlocutionary act is an act performed by saying something, in contrast to a locutionary act (the act of saying something), and also in contrast to an illocutionary act (an act performed in saying something). The philosophical view developed by Friedrich Nietzsche that all ideations take place from a particular cognitive perspective. A grammatical category that determines the choice of pronouns in a sentence.

166

Technical Glossary

personification phenomenology

phoneme phonology phrase

pictograph Platonic forms (ideas)

plot poetry

polysemy popular culture

The attribution of personality to an inanimate object or abstraction. A philosophical doctrine proposed by Edmund Husserl based on the study of human experience in which considerations of objective reality are not taken into account. The smallest unit of sound in a language that can distinguish two words. The sound system of a particular language, and also its study. A cluster of words grammatically smaller than a clause, often taking the form of a noun or adverbial group. A word made of a picture. Plato’s view that ideas or forms exist by themselves and that objects and linguistic representations are only their imperfect copies. The arrangement of actions or events in a play, novel, or a film. A form of writing that often employs rhyme, meter, and unusual word order and that calls for an intense or heightened awareness of language. A multiplicity of meanings for a given word or expression. Or pop culture. The widespread cultural elements in any given society that are perpetuated through that society’s vernacular language or lingua franca. It comprises the daily interactions, needs, and desires and cultural “moments” that make up the everyday lives of the mainstream. It can include any number of practices, including those pertaining to cooking, clothing, consumption, mass media, and the many facets of entertainment such as sports and literature. Popular culture is often contrasted against a more exclusive, even elitist “high culture” – that is, the culture of ruling social groups.

Technical Glossary

post-structuralism

postmodernism

pragmatism

predicate

primitivism proper name rationalism

realism

reality

167

A movement in literary criticism and philosophy that begun in France in the late 1960s. Drawing from the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure, the anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss, and the deconstructionist theories of Jacques Derrida, it held that language is not a transparent medium that connects one directly with a “truth” or “reality” outside it but rather a structure or code whose parts derive their meaning from their contrast with one another and not from any connection with an outside world. Any of several artistic movements since about the 1960s that have challenged the philosophy and practices of modern arts and literature. In literature this has amounted to a reaction against an ordered view of the world and therefore against fixed ideas about the form and meaning of texts. The doctrine that the meaning of an idea or a proposition lies in its observable practical consequences. That part of a sentence which states or asserts something about the subject. It usually consists of a verb either with or without an object, complement, or adverb. The self-conscious return to the archaic forms produced by non-Western cultures. A noun (usually capitalized) that denotes a particular person, thing, place or event. The doctrine that knowledge is gained only through reason, which is a faculty independent of experience. 1. The philosophical doctrine that universals have a real objective existence. 2. The representation in art or literature of objects, actions, or social conditions as they actually are, without idealization or presentation in abstract form. That which exists objectively.

168

Technical Glossary

reference

representamen representation

rhetoric secondness semantics

seme sememe semiology

semiosis

semiotics sense

sentence

setting sign signal signification

The capacity of language to “name” and thereby categorize phenomena in the extralinguistic world. What is referred to is called the referent. A term used by Charles S. Peirce to refer to the expression plane of a sign. The use of signs to capture and relay impressions, sensations, perceptions, or ideas that can be identified. The study of the techniques and rules for using language effectively. In Peirce’s semiotic theory, refers to the universe of brute facts. Verbal meanings and their study. Along with phonology and syntax, semantics is one of the three main areas of traditional language study. One of many “semantic markers” of a sememe. An established unit of meaning. Saussure’s term for the study of science. The alternative term semiotics is more widely used. Any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, including the production of meaning. The formal study of signs. 1. The meaning of a word or expression. 2. One of the meanings of a word or expression. A grammatical structure containing at least a subject and main verb (except when used in imperative mood, where the subject can be omitted). The time, place, and circumstances in which a narrative, drama, or film takes place. Something that stands for something else in some capacity. Anything that causes immediate action. 1. The established meaning of a sign. 2. The act of signifying.

Technical Glossary

signified signifier simile

sociology

source domain speech

speech act

structuralism

structure subject

subjectivism

169

The concept denoted by the signifier of a sign. That part of a sign which signifies. An explicitly marked comparison of one thing with another, typically involving such linking words as “like,” “as,” “seem,” “in the manner of.” The scientific study of human social behaviour and its origins, development, organizations, and institutions. The conceptual domain from which we draw metaphorical expressions. 1. Something spoken; an utterance. 2. The language or dialect of a nation or region. In Austin’s theory, performatives whereby the person using certain words is deemed to be performing an action. A theory that uses interconnected signs to reconstruct systems of relationships instead of studying isolated things in themselves. This method found wide use beginning in the early twentieth century in a variety of fields, especially linguistics, particularly as formulated by Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobson. Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss used structuralism to study the kinship systems of different societies. For him, no single element in such a system has meaning except as an integral part of a set of structural connections. These interconnections are said to be binary in nature and are viewed as the permanent, organizational categories of experience. The pattern of interrelationships within a system. 1. The grammatical subject – that is, what controls the verb. 2. The mind or thinking part as distinguished from the object of thought. The doctrine that all knowledge is limited to

170

Technical Glossary

superordinate superstructure

syllable symbol

symbolic power symbolification symptom synchronic

synecdoche synonym

syntagmatic syntax

system

experiences by the self and that all transcendent knowledge is impossible. Said of a word that is more generic than a given word. 1. The part of a building or other structure above the foundation. 2. In Marxist theory, the ideologies or institutions of a society as distinct from the basic processes and direct social relations of material production and economics. A single pulse of speech sound, typically built round a vowel. 1. Something that represents something else, usually an bject used to represent something abstract. 2. In Peirce’s semiotic theory, symbols signify by virtue of a convention, as opposed to indexes and icons, which function on the basis of contiguity and similarity respectively. The exercise of power through representational practices. The process of being turned into a symbol from an index or an icon. A bodily sign indicating the presence of an illness or disorder. Concerned with phenomena (especially language) at a particular period without considering historical antecedents. A figure of speech in which a part is substituted for a whole or a whole for a part. A word that may be substituted for another word and, in context, has broadly the same meaning. Said of the relationship between linguistic units in a construction or sequence. The grammatical rules whereby words are used in phrases and sentences to construct meaningful combinations. A group of interacting, interrelated, or in-

Technical Glossary

171

terdependent elements forming a complex whole. target domain The conceptual domain we try to understand. tense The relationship between the form of the verb and the time of the action or states it describes. tenor The word, phrase, or subject with which the vehicle of a metaphor is identified. text Something, such as a literary work or other cultural product, regarded as an object of critical analysis. theatre Dramatic literature or its performance. thirdness In Peirce’s semiotic theory, refers to the realm of habits and laws. topic An alternative term for “tenor,” which is the subject of a metaphor. trope Figure of speech. translation The activity of transforming texts or utterances between one language and another and, by extension, between different varieties of what is normally the same language; also, what results from this activity. unconscious In psychoanalytic theory, a hypothetical region of the mind containing wishes, memories, fears, feelings, and ideas that are prevented from being expressed in conscious awareness. unvoiced Said of a sound produced without vibration of the vocal cords. utterance The general term for a stretch of spoken language or a speech act. value Ferdinand de Saussure’s term designating the relation that holds between signs. vehicle The word or phrase that is applied to the tenor of a metaphor and that gives the metaphor its figurative meaning. vehicular diversity The use of multiple vehicles with an identical topic. vehicular multivalency The use of the same item for different topics.

172

Technical Glossary

verb

verbal sign voiced vowel word

word class

The part of speech that expresses action, existence, or mode of being. Verbs are highly complex in form and subtle in function. Nonetheless, it is possible to identify the basic form and function of a verb at any one time using the following criteria: tense, aspect, modality, active or passive, non/finite, in/transitive, dynamic or stative. Linguistic sign. Articulated with vibration of the vocal cords. A speech sound made with the vocal tract open. The general term for items separated by spaces in writing and, at least potentially, by pauses in speech. A set of words that show the same formal properties and that fulfil the same grammatical functions; traditionally termed “parts of speech.”

Technical Terms about Chinese Writing han4 yu3 ci2 yuan2 xue2 ਒Ꮩߖ᐀ው

The study of the sources and development of Chinese characters.

Chinese etymology han4 yu3 gu3 wen2 zi4 xue2 The study of ancient Chinese writing. ਒Ꮩ঻ᇄᕈው

Chinese paleography han4 zi4 ਒ᕈ

Chinese writing or Chinese characters

Chinese writing refers to the written symbols used to represent spoken Chinese, along with rules and conventions about how they are arranged and punctuated. These symbols are commonly known as Chinese characters, many of which have been definitively traced back to the Shang Dynasty of 1500 BC. Instead of an alphabet or a

Technical Glossary

173

compact syllabary, Chinese characters are built up from simpler components representing objects or abstract notions, though most characters do contain some indication of their pronunciation. he2 ti3 zi4 ਧᄡᕈ

A character consisting of more than one graph.

compound character hui4 yi4 zi4 છ፪ᕈ associative compound

In Xu Shen’s exposition, refers to those characters whose meaning is derived from more than one graph.

jia3 jie4 zi4 ૵୦ᕈ phonetic loan

In Xu Shen’s exposition, refers to those characters that originally had no written forms and therefore had to be graphically realized by virtue of another character that sounded similar.

liu4 shu1

Traditional Chinese lexicology grouped Chinese characters into six categories. This classification is often attributed to Xu Shen’s second-century dictionary shuo wen jie zi. Though still a perennial academic topic, Xu’s classification is no longer the focus of modern lexicographic practice. Some of Xu’s categories are not clearly defined, nor are they mutually exclusive. The first four types of characters refer to structural composition; the last two refer to usage. For these and other reasons, modern scholars have proposed a number of new ways to classify Chinese characters.

೿ၡ

the six categories of (Chinese) characters

san1 shu1 ྱၡ

the three categories of (Chinese) characters

The “Six Categories of Chinese Characters” had been the standard classification scheme for Chinese characters since Xu Shen’s time. Generations of scholars

174

Technical Glossary

modified it without challenging the basic concepts. Tang Lan (1902–1979) was the first modern scholar to dismiss Xu’s classification, offering his own “Three Principles of Character Formation” – namely, “pictographic character,” “ideographic character,” and “picto-phonetic character.” Likewise, this new classification has since been criticized by many, each offering his or her own version of the classification. sheng1 diao4 ဏࡥ

tone

sheng1 fu2 ဏभ

phonetic element or sound-indicator xiang4 xing2 zi4 ቕኒᕈ

pictograph xing2 sheng2 zi4 ኒဏᕈ

picto-phonetic complex or picto-phonetic compound Yi4 fu2 ፪भ

semantic element or meaning-indicator

A very important supersegmental element in the Chinese language. As a picto-phonetic system, the Chinese language can generate a much smaller number of potential syllables than its alphabetic counterpart, so it has to resort to four different tones to make further semantic differentiations among words that otherwise sound the same. A graph in a compound character that gives an approximate indication of how the word is pronounced.

In Xu Shen’s exposition, refers to those characters which are graphical depictions of concrete objects. In Xu Shen’s exposition, refers to those characters in which one part is a rough indicator of meaning and the other an approximation of pronunciation. A graph in a compound character that roughly indicates the meaning of the word.

Technical Glossary

zhi3 shi4 zi4 ᓈ်ᕈ

ideograph zhuan3 zhu4 zi4 ᔜᔔᕈ

synonymous characters

175

In Xu Shen’s exposition, refers to those characters that represent an abstract notion rather than a concrete object. In Xu Shen’s exposition, refers to those characters which are similar in meaning and therefore can be used to explain each other.

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Biographical Sketches

This section provides biographical sketches of the intellectual “giants” mentioned in this book. As with the Technical Glossary, there is a separate section for Chinese thinkers and writers. Aristotle (384–322 BC)

Austin, John L. (1911–1960)

Barthes, Roland (1915-1980)

Greek philosopher. His works on logic, metaphysics, ethics, natural sciences, politics, and poetics have profoundly influenced Western thought. He criticized what he saw as Plato’s metaphysical excesses and advocated empirical observation using the logic of syllogism. British philosopher of language. He is widely associated with the concept of the speech act and the idea that speech itself is a form of action. His best-known work is How to Do Things With Words, published in the mid-1950s. French critic and semiotician. In his numerous publications, he followed a structuralist approach to the study of cultural objects or texts of all kinds, ranging from toys, advertisements, and wrestling to socalled high-brow literature. His aim was to expose the bourgeois values and ideology that he saw as implicit in the “natural” and innocent language of everyday life.

178

Biographical Sketches

Beardsley, Monroe (1915–1985)

Benveniste, Émile (1902-1976)

Bloomfield, Leonard (1887–1949)

Bourdieu, Pierre (1930–2002)

Campbell, Joseph (1904–1987)

Cassirer, Ernst (1874–1945)

American philosopher of art. He is best known for two essays co-authored with W.K. Wimsatt, “The Intentional Fallacy” and “The Affective Fallacy,” both of which were key texts of New Criticism. French linguist. He is known outside France for his important book Problems in General Linguistics, which was translated into English by Mary Elizabeth Meek and published by the University of Miami Press in 1971. American linguist. He is best known for his book Language (1933), which heavily influenced the development of linguistic studies in America for two decades. His thought was characterized by its behaviouristic principles for the study of meaning and by its insistence on formal procedures for the analysis of language data. French sociologist and public intellectual. He is credited with introducing the concept of cultural capital and for the insight that success in school and society depends largely on the individual’s ability to absorb the cultural ethos of the dominant class. His major works include The Algerians (1962), Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977), Distinction (1984), and Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the Market (1998). American scholar of comparative mytholgy. His major works include The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) and The Masks of God (4 vols., 1959–67), in which he explored the common functions of myths in human cultures, examining mythic archetypes in folklore and literature from around the world. German philosopher. His major work, Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (3 vols., 1923–29) is considered a benchmark for a philosophy of culture. Influenced by his prede-

Biographical Sketches

Chomsky, Noam (1928–)

Deleuze, Gilles (1925–1995)

de Man, Paul (1919–1983)

Derrida, Jacques (1930–2004)

Eco, Umberto (1932–)

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cessor Immanuel Kant, Cassirer held that the thing-in-itself cannot be known and that human understanding of the world is shaped by our means of coping with this. American linguist. He proposed a theory of transformational generative grammar, which attracted widespread interest because of the claims it made about the relationship between language and the mind and the universality of an underlying language structure that may have a biological basis. French philosopher and literary critic. He is the author of a series of influential works: Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962), Difference and Repetition (1968), Anti-Oedipus (1972), and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), in which he argued against the devaluation of “difference” in Western metaphysics and condemned all rationalist metaphysics as “state philosophy.” American literary theorist. He was considered one of the leading figures in the deconstructionist movement of the late 1960s and early 1980s. French philosopher and literary critic. He is known as the principal exponent of the Deconstructionist theory. His widely influential books include Speech and Phenomena, Of Grammatology, and Writing And Difference, all published in 1967. Italian semiotician and writer. The bestknown English translations of his semiotic works are A Theory of Semiotics (1976), The Role of the Reader (1979), Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984), and The Limits of Interpretation (1991), in which he tries to explore the possibility of a unified approach to every phenomenon of signification and/ or communication.

180

Biographical Sketches

Feuerbach, Ludwig (1804–1872)

Foucault, Michel (1926–1984)

Freud, Sigmund (1856–1936)

Greimas, Algirdas (1917–1992)

Habermas, Jürgen (1929–)

Halliday, Michael (1925–)

German philosopher. He is best known for his criticism of idealism and religion and for his efforts to develop a materialistic humanism. French philosopher and historian. He is best known for his critical studies of various social institutions, most notably psychiatry, medicine, the human sciences, and the prison system, as well as for his work on the history of human sexuality. His theorization on the close relationship between power and knowledge has been widely discussed and applied. Austrian thinker and psychiatrist. He is best known for his theory of the unconscious mind and his redefinition of sexual desire as the primary motivation of human life. French semiotician. He is credited with proposing a structuralist model of textual explication called “the semiotic square” – a way of analysing texts in relation to a given opposition of concepts, such as feminine–masculine, beautiful–ugly, and so forth. German philosopher and sociologist. He is best known for his work on the public sphere, which is based on his theory of communicative action. His intellectual efforts are mostly devoted to revealing the capacity of humans to pursue their interests rationally, resulting in a notion of truth that is not a metaphysical fiction but a regulative ideal. English linguist. He is associated mainly with a particular school of language study called systemic functional linguistics. Influenced by his teacher J.R. Firth, he examines how human language acts on and is constrained by its social context.

Biographical Sketches

Hjelmslev, Louis (1899–1965)

Husserl, Edmund (1859–1938)

James, William (1842–1910)

Kristeva, Julia (1941–)

Lacan, Jacques (1901–1981)

181

Danish linguist. He was the founder of the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen, which provided an important forum for discussion of theoretical and methodological problems in linguistics. His best-known work in English is Prolegomena to a Theory of Language (1943), in which he critiqued the then-prevailing methodologies in linguistics as being not systematizing and proposed a new view of language as a system of figurae or ultimate small units. German philosopher and founder of phenomenology. His chief works include Logical Investigations (1901) and Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology (English translation 1952), in which he went against the positivist orientation of his day and argued for greater weight to be given to subjective experience as the source of our knowledge of the objective world. American philosopher. He is associated mainly with the school of philosophical thought called pragmatism, which maintains that consciousness is essentially interest-driven. For him, in other words, truth is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief. French psychoanalyst and semiotician. The English translations of her books include Revolution in Poetic Language (1984), Time and Sense: Proust and the Experience of Literature (1996), and The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt (2000), in which she analyses the relations among language, society, and the individual self. French psychoanalyst. In his psychiatric practice, Lacan emphasized the primacy of language as the mirror of the unconscious mind. Though notoriously difficult to understand, the English translation of his

182

Biographical Sketches

Lakoff, George (1941–)

Lyotard, Jean-François (1924–1998)

Marx, Karl (1818–1883)

Morris, Charles (1901–1979)

Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900)

book Écrits (1977) has been highly influential in many related fields such as linguistics, film theory, and literary criticism. American linguist. He is associated mainly with that particular approach towards language study called cognitive linguistics and is credited with introducing the notion of fundamental “conceptual metaphors” which are thought to influence how we think and act in everyday life. French literary theorist. He is well-known for his report on the contemporary situation of knowledge, which is characterized by what he called the collapse of the grand narrative. That work was translated into English as The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, published by the University of Minnesota Press in 1984. German philosopher and political economist. He rejected Hegel’s idealism and turned towards materialism partly through the influence of Feuerbach. But Marx is better known as a political activist who believed that capitalism would eventually be replaced by a classless society. American semiotician. He is best remembered today for his Foundations of the Theory of Signs (1938), in which he proposed a threefold approach to semiotics: “syntactics,” which studies the relations among signs themselves, “semantics,” which studies the relations between signs and their referents, and “pragmatics,” which studies the relations between signs and their users. German philosopher. He was a critic of religion, science, and culture in his own time, but his ideas are strongly influential even today, notably in postmodernism. This can be attributed to his radical questioning of

Biographical Sketches

Peirce, Charles Sanders (1839–1914)

Piaget, Jean (1896–1980)

Plato (c. 428–347 BC)

Richards, I.A. (1893–1979)

Said, Edward (1935–2003) Saussure, Ferdinand de

183

the value and objectivity of truth – an approach that has great relevance to the postmodern intellectual ambiance. American semiotician and philosopher. He considered himself a logician first and foremost, but he also saw logic as a branch of semiotics, of which he is now recognized as a co-founder alongside his Swiss counterpart, Ferdinand de Saussure. Different from Saussure’s dyadic model of the sign, Peirce’s approach to semiosis is triadic, resulting in – among numerous other categories – a threefold division into “representamen,” “object,” and “interpretant.” Swiss psychologist. He is known for his theory of cognitive development and for his epistemological view referred to as “genetic epistemology,” which attempts to explain knowledge on the basis of its sociogenesis. Greek philosopher. His teachings have been highly influential in the history of Western civilization. Among them is his theory of forms, according to which objects in the physical world are imitations of the perfect forms in the ideal world. English literary critic and rhetorician. He is associated mainly with the school of literary study called New Criticism, which prospered in the first half of the twentieth century. In the fields of semiotics and rhetoric, he is remembered chiefly for introducing a pair of terms that are now widely used to explain the constitution of a metaphor: vehicle and tenor. Palestinian-American literary theorist. He is regarded as a founding figure in postcolonial theory. Swiss linguist. He is regarded as a co-

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Biographical Sketches

(1857–1913)

Sebeok, Thomas (1920–2001)

Vico, Giambattista (1688–1744)

Volosinov, Valentin (1895–1936)

Welby, Lady Victoria (1837–1912)

Whitney, William D. (1827–1894)

founder of modern semiotics along with Charles Sanders Peirce. Saussure’s most influential work is Course in General Linguistics (1916), in which he emphasized the arbitrary relationship of the linguistic sign to that which it signifies. American semiotician. He is credited with expanding the scope of semiotic studies to include non-human signalling and communication systems. Italian cultural historian. His best-known work is New Science (1725), in which he attempted to combine history with other branches of knowledge into a single science of humanity. He put forward a theory that civilization develops in a recurring cycle of three ages (the divine, the heroic, and the human) each of which can be identified by its unique master tropes or metaphorical language. Russian linguist. His is known in the West for his book Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, which has been highly influential in the field of literary theory and Marxist theory of ideology. English semiotician. Though herself a prolific writer publishing such scholarly works as What Is Meaning? Studies in the Development of Significance (1903) and Significs and Language: The Articulate Form of Our Expressive and Interpretive Resources (1911), she now is mostly remembered for her eight-year-long correspondence with Charles Sanders Peirce, which has become an important source for understanding the latter’s theory of the sign. American linguist. He is remembered for his outstanding work in Oriental philology and for editing the six-volume Century Dictionary (1889–91).

Biographical Sketches

185

Biographical Information about Chinese Thinkers and Writers Ba Jin ّ୮ (1904–2005)

Confucius (Kong Zi) ఙᕅ (551–479 BC)

Gao Xingjian ॳኔଟ (1940–)

Gongsun Long ড჉ഀ (c. 325–250 BC)

Hu Shi ੒၂ (1891–1962)

Lu Xun (1881–1936)

Chinese writer. His real name is Li Yaotang (ಒጪᄀ), which is known only to specialists in the field of modern Chinese literature. Though a prolific writer, he is best remembered for his trilogy: The Family, Spring, and Autumn. Of the three novels, only the first has been translated into English. Ancient Chinese thinker and educationist. As a moral philosopher, he emphasized the importance of harmonious social relations. His teachings were later recorded in a book titled Analects, which is available in English and many other languages. Contemporary Chinese writer and translator (especially of Samuel Beckett). He was known as a pioneer of absurdist drama in China before he emigrated to France in 1987. There he produced his first novel, Soul Mountain | ( ೯࿓}), which is believed to have contributed significantly to his being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000. Ancient Chinese thinker. He was a member of the famous “School of Logicians” in the intellectual history of China and is best known for his tract “On the White Horse,” which is structured as a dialogue between two parties, with one of them proclaiming truth and the other questioning it. Modern Chinese philosopher and cultural reformer. He is widely recognized today for introducing William James’s pragmatic philosophy into China and for being one of the initiators of the Chinese New Culture Movement of the 1920s. Modern Chinese writer. His real name is Zhou Shuren (ᓬၯཿ), which is known

186

Biographical Sketches

Mao Zedong ൵ᐿࡻ (1893-1976)

Mo Zi ෗ᕅ (c. 476–390 BC) Ouyang Jian ๅጚଦ (c. 267–300) Qian Zhongshu ༀᓣၡ (1910–1998)

Wu Cheng-en ᇢ‫ࣇݺ‬ (1500–1582) Xu Shen ኱ဍ (c. 58–147)

Xun Zi ᝓᕅ

only to specialists in the field of modern Chinese literature. He helped establish the modern Chinese vernacular literature and is greatly appreciated for his scathing critique of “the Chinese national character.” Modern Chinese statesman. His reputation as a revolutionary and political leader has eclipsed his philosophical ideas, which he expounded in occasional essays, such as “On Contradiction” and “On Practice,” which can be said to constitute a Chinese variant of Marxist dialectical materialism. Ancient Chinese thinker. In contrast to those of Confucius, Mozi’s teachings emphasized self-reflection and authenticity rather than obedience to ritual. Ancient Chinese scholar. He is known for his only treatise, “On the Fullness of Speech in Expressing Ideas.” Modern Chinese writer and scholar. Among the general public, he is best known for his satiric novel Fortress Besieged | ( ᆧ‫)}ݱ‬, but among scholars of literary criticism and language studies, he is greatly admired for his formidable erudition, including his “Two Handles and Several Sides Theory” of metaphor. Chinese novelist. He is known for his fantastic novel Journey to the West | ( ᇷᎸૣ}), which is among the four most popular classical Chinese novels. Ancient Chinese lexicographer. He compiled shuo wen jie zi | ( ႏᇄୠᕈ}), the first etymological dictionary of Chinese characters. His “Six Categories of Characters” has influenced nearly all subsequent attempts to explain the structure of Chinese writing. Ancient Chinese thinker. Unlike the aphoristic style of Analects, Xu Zi wrote a good

Biographical Sketches

(c. 298–238 BC)

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number of rigorously argued essays. Apart from discussions of such moral issues as “Heaven” and “ritual propriety,” he commented on the proper use of terms where the objects signified were considered real.

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Notes

1 The Platonic Triad and Its Chinese Counterpart 1 The Arabic numerals 1, 2, 3, and 4 immediately following the Pinyin of Chinese characters are used here and afterwards to indicate the four basic tones that exist in the Chinese language. As a picto-phonetic system, the Chinese language is able to generate a much smaller number of potential syllables than its alphabetic counterpart, so it must resort to different tones to make further semantic differentiations among words that otherwise sound the same. The following table (using /da/ sound as an example) describes how the four tones are distinguished from one another: TONE

MARK

DESCRIPTION

1 2 3 4

daf dá dam dà

sounds high and level. starts medium in tone, then rises to the top. starts low, dips to the bottom, then rises towards the top. starts at the top, then falls sharp and strong to the bottom.

2 In the late 1970s there began a heated debate among Chinese intellectuals over whether truth is “absolute” or “local.” Most if not all discussions tended to one or the other of two extremes: if a “non-subjective” criterion is insisted on, one must rely – consciously or not – on an omnipotent agent who is capable of knowing a reality-in-itself that is historically impossible; if “objectivity” is viewed as a “thing of this world,” one is usually forced to abandon all distinctions between truth and falsity. There is also a theoretical variant of the first perspective that seems to have the most followers in China – that is, the theory of praxis, which holds that “practice is the only measure of truth.” Understandably, the authority comes from Marx, who includes in his early notebooks a critique of abstract materialism in the

190

Notes to page 19

name of active human practice: “The chief defect of all materialism up to now (including Feuerbach’s) is, that the object, reality, what we apprehend through our senses, is understood only in the form of the object of contemplation [anschauung]; but not as sensuous human activity, as practice; not subjectively. Hence in opposition to materialism the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which of course does not know real sensuous activity as such” (McLellan 1977, 156). This is to say that human praxis is the guarantee of cognition as well as its point of departure. The world exists independently and attains its qualities and meanings for humanity by means of a mediating relationship of human labour, but besides serving as the mediating link between the world and human thinking, praxis also provides a means through which the latter can be measured against the former. As Mao Zedong put it in one of his philosophical essays: Marxists hold that man’s social practice is the criterion of the truth of his knowledge of the external world. What actually happens is that man’s knowledge is verified only when he achieves the anticipated results in the process of social practice (material production, class struggle or scientific experiment). If a man wants to succeed in his work, that is, to achieve the anticipated results, he must bring his ideas into correspondence with the laws of the objective external world; if they do not correspond, he will fail in his practice. After he fails, he draws his lessons, corrects his ideas to make them correspond to the laws of the external world, and can thus turn failure into success; this is what is meant by “failure is the mother of success” and “a fall into the pit, a gain in your wit.” The dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge places practice in the primary position, holding that the human knowledge can in no way be separated from practice and repudiating all the erroneous theories which deny the importance of practice or separate knowledge from practice. (1971, 67) Here, true and objective knowledge is defined as that which brings fruits in praxis. However, the proposition constitutes at most a theoretic postponement, but not a solution, for in the end one still has to presuppose the existence of a super-subject (the working class, the proletariat, the Party, or the great leader) who is capable of correctly measuring the result of “industry and experiment” against an independent reality. 2 Ontological Realism under Fire 1 Other approaches to literature often anthologized in contemporary collections on literary criticism include the following: the “traditional” method, which emphasizes the relationship between the literary text and its author

Notes to pages 19–56

191

and the time in which he or she lived; the formalist or new-critical method, which focuses on the literary text itself with its multifarious stylistic features; the psychological method, which mainly explores the subconscious of the characters as well as the writer; the mythological or archetypal method, which endeavours to uncover through literature the “collective unconscious” of a particular people and their culture; feminist criticism, which offers a female perspective on social issues as well as women writers’ position in history; and cultural studies, which seeks to reconnect literature with history on such important issues as race, class, gender, and the environment. Of the critical schools listed here, the first two pretty much dominated the study of literature up until the 1970s, when an “explosion” of theories occurred on European and American university campuses, making the scene of literary criticism much more pluralistic than before. For a brief and lucid account of the evolution of contemporary literary theories and the political as well as philosophical differences among them, readers are referred to Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory: An Introduction (2008), Raman Selden’s A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Theory (1997), and Wilfred Guerin and colleagues’ A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature (1999). 2 One essay is not included here because it is a philosophical article on Nietzsche by Paul de Man; thus it does not quite fit the category of literary criticism to which the other three pieces belong. 3 For more examples of linguistic “incommensurability” between various languages, see the first part of Umberto Eco’s Experiences in Translation (2001). 4 For other passages, see Ellis (1989, 50–1). 3 The Return of the Subject(s) 1 The authorship of Marxism and the Philosophy of Language is disputed. Vyacheslav Ivanov, an eminent Russian semiotician, attributes the book to Mikhail Bakhtin, author of Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics and Rabelais and His World, which exerted an enormous impact on humanistic studies in the West in the second half of the twentieth century. Both writers moved in the same intellectual crowd – the “Bakhtin Circle,” whose members were highly active in Russia in the early 1920s and who had fairly similar views on the study of language and culture. However, apart from his declaration during a celebration of Bakhtin’s seventy-fifth birthday in Moscow that Voloshinov’s Marxism and the Philosophy of Language could have been written by Bakhtin himself, Ivanov has provided no substantive proof, and Bakhtin himself never officially acknowledged authorship of the text. Thus Marxism and the Philosophy of Language continues to be associated with Voloshinov as its official author.

192

Notes to pages 57–80

2 Foucault also studied those social institutions in which power and knowledge assume and reinforce each other. His History of Sexuality, for example, is a masterful project that analyses various discourses about the human body as locales where the “microphysics of power” are played out. However, his perspective is different from that of Bourdieu in that his conceptualization of power is very much pan-humanized and thus cannot be related to the specific positions of different social groups. 4 The Peircean Trichotomy 1 The New Culture Movement was a movement of cultural renewal in China that began in 1915. In the wake of the defeats that China suffered at the hands of several imperialist powers in recent decades, many Chinese intellectuals of the time blamed their own cultural heritage for the country’s current woes. 2 A political campaign in China launched by Mao Zedong in 1965 to eliminate counterrevolutionary elements in the government. It was characterized by ideological zealotry, social chaos, and economic stagnation throughout the country. 3 Among them: Modern American Philosophy by Wang Shouchang and Yu Sukun (1990); The Development of Pragmatic Thoughts: From Peirce to Quine by Peng Yue (1992); and Affect and Effect: A Study in American Pragmatism by Wang Yuanming (1998). 4 For specific discussions of Peircean semiotics written in Chinese, see relevant chapters in Introduction to Theoretical Semiotics by Li Youzheng (1993) and The Sign-Character of Language by Ding Ersu (Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press 2000). 5 Two monographs on the subject published in Taiwan are Peirce by Zhu Jianmin (1999), and Peirce by Gu Tianhong (2001). 6 For details, refer to Chinese Writing: Its Origin and Evolution by Wee Lee Woon (1987). 7 For details, refer to shuo wen jie zi by Xu Shen, with annotations by Xu Xuan (2003). 8 For a historical survey of the discipline, refer to chapter 3, “The Structures of Chinese Characters,” in On Chinese Characters by Zhan Yinxin (1991). 9 For details, refer to Essentials of Philology by Qiu Xigui (1988). 5 The Poetic Logic 1 For an extensive discussion of pictorial metaphor, see Forceville (1996).

Notes to pages 87–146

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2 Professor Qian was an erudite man who knew quite a few Western languages, including English. “Denotatum” and “significatum” were the words he himself placed alongside their Chinese equivalents. 6 Metaphor and Culture 1 For a detailed explanation of Model Q (The Quillian model), see Innis 1985, 271. 7 Myth Making and Its Socio-Economic Functions 1 With the emergence of the Internet in China in the early 1990s and its rapid development in subsequent years, information about the West from the outside world has become much more accessible to the Chinese public. There have been complaints that the Chinese government is employing tens of thousands of cyberpolice equipped with highly sophisticated technologies to censor politically sensitive texts on the Internet. Actually, a greater barrier to the free flow of information through the Internet is the limited number of English speakers in China (estimated at less than 1 per cent of the total population); this has greatly reduced the impact of the new technology on cross-cultural communication. 2 The American Dream of Illegal Immigrants (Wu Yong), Moon Is Brighter in the Homeland (Li Huixin), Studying in America (Qian Ning), Green Card – A Native of Beijing in New York (Cao Guilin), Selling Flesh in New York (Xiao Qing), Sights and Sounds in Small American Hotels (Zhang Suoshi), My One Time Appearance in a Hollywood Movie (Qi Tianda), and others. 3 For a more detailed elaboration of this point, see Bourdieu, “The Market of Symbolic Goods” in The Field of Cultural Production (1993). 4 The interview is carried in Twenty-First Century 62 (December 2000), Institute of Chinese Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong. 5 Gao Xingjian had been a student and scholar of Western literature, and his writing has clearly been influenced by a number of European and American modernist writers. In particular, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot seems to have cast a shadow over Bus Stop. Gao himself has always resisted this comparison, but even a quick reading of the latter yields images of the former. True, there is more character and plot development in Bus Stop than in Waiting for Godot, but the basic structures of the two plays are quite similar. 6 For a comprehensive discussion of the split taking place in Chinese cultural production between writing for domestic readers or viewers and writing

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Notes to pages 148–54

for foreigners, see Zhang Yiwu, “‘Split’ and ‘Shift of Orientation,’” in From Modernity to Postmodernity (1997, 74–94). 7 “World Literature with Chinese Characteristics” is the title of an essay on Gao Xingjian by Torbjorn Loden, published in Issues and Studies: A Journal of East Asian Studies 4 (1993). Epilogue: Semiotics as an Interdisciplinary Enterprise 1 For a historical comment on the terminology of “semiology” and “semiotics,” see page 48 of Marcel Danesi’s Analyzing Cultures (1999).

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Index

Achilles, 110–11 actualities, 13–17 aesthetic: effect, 92, 144; inclination, 90–1; quality, 146 agnosticism, 52 allusion, 110–11 alterity, 31 analogy, 25, 52, 63, 114 Appadurai, Arjun, 140, 143 arbitrariness, 23–4, 26, 104 Aristotle, 15, 80 art, 40, 57, 123, 130–1 articulation, 32, 33, 38, 41, 56, 60 association, 63, 64, 75, 78, 81, 85, 92, 93, 110 associative structure, 84 auspicious objects, 112 Austin, John L., 11 Barthes, Roland, 135 Beardsley, Monroe, 81 Beijing Opera, 107, 108 belles-lettres, 111 Benveniste, Émile, 23, 60 Bloomfield, Leonard, 36–7, 39 Bourdieu, Pierre, 57–8, 131–2 Buddhism, 108, 109, 148

Campbell, Joseph, 139, 140 Cassirer, Ernst, 36, 37, 40, 42, 46–7 Chomsky, Noam, 36, 37, 39, 45, 46 code, 9, 33, 113, 139, 140 cognition, 17, 50, 53, 79, 190 communication, 11, 13, 18, 28, 32, 38, 50, 51, 53, 56, 63, 64, 65, 66, 79, 129, 144, 147; means of, 32, 42; model of, 31–2 communicative: action, 51, 52, 57; praxis, 49, 50, 51, 53 community, 20, 22, 49, 50, 51, 56, 77, 85, 140 complex, 40, 70, 124, 127, 154 compound, 67, 69, 72 conceit, 77 concept formation, 40–2, 60 conceptual metaphor, 95, 98–100, 101–2, 104, 109 conceptual: correspondence, 24; difference, 26, 27; entity, 9; plane, 25, 32, 41; range, 24; system, 80, 91; unit, 41 Confucius, 81 connotation, 89, 127 consciousness, 13, 17, 18, 33, 40, 49, 54, 56, 139

206

Index

contiguity, 63–4, 66, 72, 77, 78, 79, 113, 114 convention, 23, 65, 75, 77 Culler, Jonathan, 24–6 cultural capital, 57, 93, 94, 147 cultural overlapping, 102 Cultural Revolution, 62, 127, 143, 150–1 customs, 107, 129, 142, 155 Danesi, Marcel, 77, 84–7 deconstruction, 19, 28 deconstructionism, 21, 22, 36 Derrida, Jacques, 13, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 27–35 differance, 19, 34–5, 42 difference: chain of, 33, 36; negative, 32, 33; play of, 27, 28, 35, 36; principle of, 25, 27, 32, 34, 36; structural, 27 differentiation, 16, 27, 28, 35–6, 42, 57 dualism, 17 Eco, Umberto, 11, 81, 113–14 essence, 17, 18, 25, 41, 51, 84, 132 essentialism, 18 evolution, 17, 38, 59, 63, 67, 75, 77 fantasy, 11, 141 firstness, 63 five blessings, 112, 119, 122, 125 Foucault, Michel, 54, 192 Four Noble Plants, 130–1 Galileo, 42 Gao Xingjian, 133, 141–52 gesture, 66, 148 globalization, 140, 142 Gongsun Long, 14 grammar, 44, 95

graph, 69, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76 grapheme, 20, 27 Greimas, Algirdas, 139 Habermas, Jürgen, 48–54, 56–7 habitus, 57, 58 Halliday, Michael, 60 hallucination, 11, 49 Heller, Joseph, 111 Hjelmslev, Louis, 16 Homo habilis, 38 homophone, 114, 115, 123 Hu Shi, 61 Husserl, Edmund, 12–13 hyponym, 96 icon, 63–8, 72–6; simple, 73, 76; compound, 73, 76 iconicity, 67, 113 iconification, 65 ideas, 8, 12, 26, 29, 37, 39–41, 48, 63, 72, 77 identity, 18, 25, 33–4 ideograph, 68, 72 ideology, 55, 56, 58, 108, 140 illocutionary force, 11, 52 image, 12, 27, 43, 48, 77, 87, 89, 90, 112, 120, 121, 133, 135, 136, 139, 141, 152 imagination, 79, 84, 85, 133, 140–1, 143 index, 63–5 indexicality, 113 inference, 65–6, 68, 72, 79, 148 information, 15, 37, 40, 51, 100 interpretant, 62–3, 113 intersubjective: communication, 13; recognition, 52; relationship, 51, 53 James, William, 61

Index Lacan, Jacques, 19, 21, 22 Lakoff, George, 77, 79–80, 81, 85, 91–3, 95–6, 98–100 language: constitutive role of, 36, 40; instrumental conception of, 18; referential function of, 8; representational function of, 51 langue, 34, 54 legend, 111, 124 lexical incompatibilities, 24 lexicon, 9, 24 lifeworld, 49–51, 53, 57 linguistic value, 27, 29–32 linguistics, 23, 36–7, 42, 46, 154 literary criticism, 19, 135 literature, 19, 84, 85, 109, 140, 142, 151–2 loan character, 72, 76 logic, 13, 20, 64; of deconstruction, 28; of presence, 34; poetic, 85, 87 Lu Xun, 112 Mao Zedong, 190 Marxism, 15, 16, 56, 61, 140 materialism, 189–90 meaning: deconstructionist theory of, 20, 21, 36, 46; realist theory of, 14, 15–16, 18, 27 media, 109, 133, 134, 151 medium, 38, 39, 50 memory, 18, 43, 63 meta: -icon, 75–6; -linguistic tool, 45, 95, 139; -metaphorical category, 100–1 metaphor, 48, 77, 79–81, 84–100, 101–14, 123, 129, 130, 155; contentbased, 114; form-based, 114; culture-specific, 107–12 metaphorical: allusions, 111; association, 81, 93; concepts, 91, 95, 100;

207

disparity, 107; equivalents, 102; expressions, 92, 95, 101–4, 107; formula, 102; patterns, 112; signified, 104; signifier, 104; vehicle, 81, 91, 93, 107, 109–11 metaphorology, 81 metaphysics, 12, 21, 35, 85, 154 metonymy, 77–9, 113, 129, 155 Mo Zi, 8, 14, 39, 80 modernism, 144, 152 Morris, Charles, 3 multiaccentuality, 55 myth, 40, 109, 111, 133, 134, 135, 139, 140 mytheme, 136, 140 mythic: function, 139, 155; signified, 135; stereotype, 140; unconscious, 135 mythology, 118, 121, 139 name, 13–16, 19, 23–4, 37, 44, 63, 77 neostructuralist, 22 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 48 nominalism, 18 non-coincidence, 25, 107 non-universality, 102 object, 9–13, 17–18, 25–6, 47, 48, 50, 53, 59–64, 68, 73, 79, 89, 109, 113, 123, 126, 129, 130 objectivity, 48–53 onomatopoeia, 64, 76 Orientalism, 133 Ouyang Jian, 15–16 oxymoron, 77 paradigmatic relation, 18, 43–6, 113 paradox, 21, 77, 111 parole, 34

208

Index

Peirce, Charles Sanders, 60–3, 65, 68, 72, 153–4 perceptions, 17, 65, 134 perlocutionary force, 11 personification, 77, 148 perspectivism, 48, 52 phallogocentrism, 21 phenomenology, 13 philology, 71 philosophy: of consciousness, 50, 52; of pragmatism, 61; of symbolic forms, 36 phoneme, 27, 44 phonetic: analogy, 114; element, 70; unit, 41 phonology, 44, 95 Piaget, Jean, 50, 51 picto-phonetic characters, 67, 70, 72, 76 Plato, 8–9, 11–12, 16, 19, 39; doctrine of shadows, 12; semiotic triangle, 8, 11, 47; theory of ideas, 12 plot, 145–6, 150 Poe, Edgar Allan, 19, 21 poetry, 81, 82, 85, 93, 130 postmodernism, 37 post-structuralism, 21, 37 power, 55–8, 62, 133 pragmatism, 61–2 praxis, 50–1, 189 primitivism, 152 proper name, 9–10 pseudo-statement, 11 pun, 114, 126 Qian Zhongshu, 81, 84, 86, 87, 88–91, 92 Qu Qiubai, 61 rationality, 20, 48, 53, 131

realism, 16, 145, 153 realists, 18, 39, 52 reality, 8, 12, 15–17, 18, 23, 29, 37, 39– 40, 47–53, 56, 60, 93, 138, 145, 153 reference, 10, 18, 19, 21, 22, 31–3, 41, 48, 54, 63, 89 referent, 9, 10, 11, 18, 32, 45, 60, 66, 67, 68, 71, 72, 75 representamen, 62–3 representations, 13, 48–9, 53–4, 132, 153 resemblance, 113–14 rhetoric, 77, 89 Richards, I.A., 80 Said, Edward, 133 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 21–6, 27, 28, 29–30, 31–2, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37–41, 42, 43, 45, 47, 59, 60, 62, 104, 153 Saussurean: linguistics, 21, 27, 28, 36, 43; semiotics, 26; theory, 22, 24 School of Logicians, 14 Sebeok, Thomas, 38, 154 secondness, 63 semantics, 36, 44, 51, 52, 95, 113 semantic element, 70, 75 semantic markers, 81, 93, 98, 100, 107 semiology, 135, 154 semiosis, 62, 153, 155 semiotics, 16, 60, 154–5 sensations, 17 Shakespeare, 42, 80, 145 sign, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 20, 36, 47, 54–6, 60, 62–3, 66–8, 71, 76, 77, 79, 112, 116, 153–5; iconic, 64, 66, 77; indexical, 63, 64, 65, 66, 77, 79; linguistic, 9, 14, 15, 18–19, 21–7, 29–35, 38–9, 41–2, 45–6, 59, 80; metonymic, 128; natural, 65; picto-phonetic, 68, 71, 76; theatrical, 145; true, 65

Index signal, 22–3, 26, 32, 39 signification, 19, 21, 22–3, 26, 27, 30–2, 38, 43, 60, 135, 139 signified, 20, 21, 22–7, 30–3, 63, 104, 113, 114, 135, 155 signifier, 19, 20, 21, 22–7, 30–3, 60, 104, 114, 155 similarity, 46, 63–4, 66, 72, 77, 80, 81, 83, 86, 93, 95, 96, 100, 107, 128 simile, 77, 102, 104, 107 simulation, 65 social: distinction, 131; habit, 77 sound, 8, 9, 15, 24, 26, 27, 32, 38–9, 42, 47, 48, 64, 66, 114; plane of, 24, 41, 43; sequence of, 22, 29, 30, 31, 32, 40, 41, 47, 64, 75, 77 source (domain), 80, 85, 87, 92, 93, 95, 98, 100 speech act theory, 11, 52 structural characteristic, 25, 26, 85, 87 structuralism, 21, 22, 36, 42, 135 structure: of Chinese characters, 67, 71, 76, 155; of language, 23, 25, 33, 34, 35, 38, 39, 42–3, 45; of metaphor, 84, 87 subculture, 129–30 subject, 21, 48; acting, 49, 50, 51; solitary, 51, 53; speaking, 42, 51, 62; thinking, 40; will-exercising, 48 subjectivism, 48 superordinate, 102 symbol, 15, 47, 65–6, 68, 77, 79, 80, 112, 114; plant-related, 130–1; of happiness, 125–7; of longevity; 122–4; of luck, 117–19; of rank, 119–22; of wealth, 127–9 symbolic: capital, 57; convention, 77; forms, 57, 63; function, 40, 46;

209

meaning, 118, 129; order, 21, 36; power, 57; system, 47 symbolification, 66, 67, 75 symptom, 65, 138 synchronic system, 33, 34, 35, 42 synecdoche, 78, 113 synonym, 44, 70, 95 synonymous character, 70 syntagmatic relation, 18, 43, 44, 45 system, 9, 13, 24–8, 29–35, 38, 41, 42, 43, 55, 57, 80, 91, 94, 113 Tang Lan, 71 target (domain), 80, 85, 86, 87, 92–3, 95, 99 tenor, 80, 81, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 92, 93, 95, 100, 107 theatre, 108, 143, 144, 145 theory: of communicative action, 51, 53; of ideas, 12; of reflection, 48, 56; of language, 22; of metaphor, 81, 91, 92, 98, 102; of the sign, 12, 13 thing-in-itself, 48 thirdness, 63 thought, 12, 17, 30, 38–42, 46, 65, 67, 79, 80, 154 three correlates, 8, 12 topic, 80, 81, 87, 89, 93, 100, 114 trace, 18, 19, 27, 30 trichotomy, 63 trope, 20, 81, 85 truth, 10, 12, 13, 21, 48, 51–3 universal, 9, 12, 15, 40, 102 utterance, 11, 37, 43, 52 validity, 51, 53, 54 vehicular: diversity, 91, 93; multivalency, 89, 91

210

Index

Vico, Giambattista, 84–5 Volosinov, Valentin, 41, 55–6

Wu Cheng-en, 124 Wu Zetian, 89

Whitney, William D., 23 word. See name

Xu Shen, 68, 70–3 Xun Zi, 14–15