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Comparative Literature Studies, Volume 37, Number 2, 2000, pp. 101-124

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DOI: 10.1353/cls.2000.0012

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 CHINESE AND WESTERN THEORIES OF THE WRITTEN SIGN 101

Reconceptualizing the Linguistic Divide:

Chinese and Western Theories of the
Written Sign1
MING DONG GU

At a time when cultural relativism has become the accepted paradigm

for cultural and literary studies, it seems increasingly difficult to find con-
ceptual premises upon which to build bridges across different traditions
and cultures. This is especially so in the areas of China and West studies.
Chinese literature and culture have been viewed by not a few scholars as
fundamentally different from their Western counterparts. The root cause
of the difference has often been traced to the difference in language and
writing, which has been further narrowed down to the nature of the writ-
ten sign. The difference of the written sign has, since medieval times,
been viewed as a conceptual divide that separates the Chinese and West-
ern Languages. This view seems to find support in linguistic science. In
his Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure divided world’s
languages into two large writing systems: the ideographic system in which
“each word is represented by a single sign that is unrelated to the sounds
of the word itself” and the phonetic system which “tries to reproduce the
succession of sounds that make up a word.”2 “The classic example of an
ideographic system of writing,” Saussure declared, “is Chinese”(26). Need-
less to say, the alphabetic European languages belong to the phonetic
system. Saussure further pointed out that in an ideographic system, “each
written sign stands for a whole word and, consequently, for the idea ex-
pressed by the word.” By contrast, phonetic systems of writing are “based
on the irreducible elements used in speaking.”
Saussure’s classification was not only a summary of the similar views
held by scholars in the field up to his time but also anticipated the domi-
nant theme in the repeated debates concerning the nature of the Chi-

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES, Vol. 37, No. 2, 2000.

Copyright © 2000 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

101
102 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

nese written sign in the twentieth century: whether the Chinese lan-
guage is semantically oriented in contradistinction to the phonetically
oriented alphabetic languages.3 While acknowledging similar character-
istics such as the substitution of written signs for the spoken ones in the
mind in both systems, Saussure considered the Chinese writing as having
a graphic quality that makes the substitution absolute. In a subtle way, he
implied that the Chinese written sign has a visual quality that sets it
apart from phonetic systems of writing (26). This subtle point was more
bluntly amplified by Fenollosa and Pound into a much-disputed “picto-
rial nature” of the Chinese written sign for the advancement of their
philosophical and aesthetic agendas.4 Perhaps because he was aware of
the gap between the two systems of writing, Saussure limited his linguis-
tic study to the phonetic system.
No one would dispute the claim that the Chinese written sign is
different from the Western written sign. The indisputable difference en-
tails a series of questions in cross-cultural studies: To what extent is the
Chinese written sign different from the Western sign? Is there a huge gap
between the Chinese written sign and the Western written sign? If the
answer is yes, is there a common ground that can serve as a bridge across
the gap? Or is there any conceptual tool that can be used to create a
bridge across the gap? And last but not least, what significance do the
gap and common ground have for cross-cultural studies? These questions
have attracted the attention of scholars in the field for several hundred
years and given rise to many heated debates and exchanges of ideas. In
this essay, I do not wish to revive the debates and take sides with any
school of thought because I believe that the issues in question are ame-
nable to investigations from multiple perspectives, and scholars in the
debates are prone to looking from one perspective to the neglect of the
humanly constructed nature of language and writing. Instead of tackling
the large issue of language system, I assign myself the modest task of ex-
amining the building block of writing, the written sign. In the process of
examination, I hope to bring theoretical discourses on the sign in Chi-
nese and Western thought into a meaningful dialogue that may yield some
useful insight for cross-cultural studies. I am fully aware that the topic I
am dealing with will inevitably involve a number of past controversies
which ended up inconclusively. Here I wish to throw in a caveate: my
study is not an attempt at a reassessment but represents a step to go be-
yond traditional considerations.
 CHINESE AND WESTERN THEORIES OF THE WRITTEN SIGN 103

Semioticizing the Origins of the Chinese Written Sign

In the Chinese tradition, there are a number of myths, legends, and records
about the origin(s) of the written sign: Fu Xi invented the eight trigrams
by observing shapes and patterns of the world around him; Shen Nong
(the Divine Farmer) pioneered the use of rope-knots to keep records for
his rule; the appearance of Hetu or the “Diagram of the Yellow River,”
and Luoshu or the “Picture of the Luo River” gave Chinese ancestors the
inspirations for creating writing symbols; and last but not least, Cang Jie
created writing symbols in imitations of objects in the natural world.5
All these myths and legends have elements of plausibility. However, the
legend of Cang Jie’s creation of writing symbols in imitation of natural
objects is the most plausible even though scholars of early China gener-
ally believe that most probably there was never such a historical person.
The rationale pertaining to Cang Jie’s legend is not only traceable in the
evolutionary history of Chinese writing system but also recorded in an-
cient treatises on the making of writing graphs. Xu Shen (58–147), com-
piler of the first Chinese dictionary, the Shuowen jiezi (Elucidations of
Characters and Words), states in his Postface: “When Can Jie first in-
vented writing symbols, he probably imitated the forms of things accord-
ing to their resemblances. Therefore, the created graphs were called wen
or patterns. Later, writings were increased by combining the form (picto-
graphs) and phonetics, the results were called zi or ‘compound graphs.’
‘Wen’ means the root of the forms of things. ‘Compound graphs’ means
reproduction and gradual increase. When they were put down on bam-
boo and silk, they were called shu or writing.” 6
Although I accept the mythic nature of Cang Jie legend, it is reason-
able to believe that the legend of Cang Jie’s creation of writing symbols
represents a revolutionary stage in the early development of Chinese
writing. The created graphs attributed to Cang Jie are imitations of ob-
jects, but they are not elaborate pictures. The principle for imitation is
not one of copying, as in the cave paintings by primitive people. It is one
of capturing the “resemblances” or essential features of objects to be rep-
resented. The product of such a principle is a material image with spiri-
tual likeness residing in it. Take the graph of bird for example, one
could draw an elaborate picture of a bird with all its minute details. One
could also draw in a few strokes the resemblance of a bird so long as the
drawing captures its birdiness. From this point of view, ideographical rep-
resentation is not total arbitrary representation. The signifier is moti-
vated by and related to the category of birds through condensation. Cang
Jie’s revolutionary move 7 not only avoided the inconvenience and con-
104 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

fusion of the trigrams but also spared the time and efforts poured into
drawing a picture. The created graph is still a picture of a sort, but it is an
abstracted picture with the maximum economy of representation. This
economy of representation underlies the deep structure of Chinese aes-
thetics. It is not only the principle of visual representation, but also of
verbal representation. Moreover, the pictograph is also a human con-
struct arbitrarily created to a degree. To take the graph of the bird again
for example, there are many kinds of birds. They are big and small, and
differ from each other in appearances. The bird graph, however, only
shows a constructed likeness with some salient features common to all birds.
It is a universal symbol grounded in particulars.
This abstract and totalized quality of the pictogram seems to warrant
the suggestion that Chinese written character serves the function of ideas
in the West, which fills the gap between alphabetic writing (sounds) and
things. As one scholar suggests, “We [Westerners] try to explain the se-
mantic relation between arbitrary sounds and things by postulating a
mediating representation via a mental likeness. Ideas represent things in
a way vaguely analogous to pictographic representation. Ideographic rep-
resentation should thus be nonarbitrary representation. Here we see an
obvious analogy between Chinese writing and ideas.... The characters do
the work in Chinese theory that ideas try to do in Western theory. Both
bridge between sounds and things as well as provide the interlinguistic
connection between the conventional sounds of different regions.”8 How-
ever, the ideograph has a different ontological existence from that of the
Western idea. The idea in its Platonic sense is a symbolic representation
of some universal transcendences. As a symbol, the idea “assumes that
the symbolized (the universals) is irreducible to the symbolizer (the mark-
ings).” 9 The Chinese character differs from the Western idea because it
is not a transcendental abstraction; it is an abstraction grounded in con-
crete details. In the case of “bird” it not only refers to the idea of bird,
but also to the image of bird that the character itself resembles. It signi-
fies like hieroglyphic script which, in Wittgenstein’s opinion, “depicts
the facts that it describes.”10 In other words, it refers back to itself, thereby
having what Peirce calls firstness of the icon.
By Cang Jie’s creation, the conception of creating wen (written sign)
underwent drastic changes. The wen rejected the absolute abstractedness
and arbitrariness of the hexagrams, which, some scholars believe, were
the precursors of pictograms,11 but does not abandon them altogether. The
pictograph is both imagistic and abstract, arbitrary and motivated. In this
gigantic leap, wen as a concept itself is no longer the perceived shapes
and patterns but has become a semiotic function which aims at a correla-
 CHINESE AND WESTERN THEORIES OF THE WRITTEN SIGN 105

tion between that which represents and that which is represented. “He
who talked of wen (patterns and patterning) promoted the teaching (of
wen) and illuminated (the use of wen for) transforming (people) to the
king.” (Xu shen, 15A, 1a-b). In this statement, there is already the con-
notations of the later concepts such as wenhua (culture), and wenming
(civilization).
Indeed, by this stage, wen had already become an abstract concept to
denote writing. Now wen was no longer a reference to the tracks and
markings left by birds and animals; nor was it a reference to patterns and
shapes. It had become a concept whose signified was multivalent and far
removed from its signifier. In this condition, wen stood for not only shapes
and patterns, but also writing, writing system, acculturation, ritualization,
and semiotics. But first and foremost, wen became synonymous with writ-
ing.

A Critique of An Old Controversy

About the nature of Chinese writing, there are basically two opposing
views in the West. One views argues that Chinese writing is a picto-
graphic language or a language using ideographs as linguistic symbols.
This is an age-old view that can be traced to medieval times. A number
of prestigious philosophers, linguists, and writers including G. W. Leibniz,
G. W. F. Hegel, A. V. Humboldt, Saussure, Fenollosa, Pound, and others,
either adopted or favored this view. The other view counters this argu-
ment, criticizing it as a silly and intolerable misrepresentation. Here, I
would just quote a few of the most vocal scholars in the most recent
debate. John DeFrancis, a noted Sinologist, dismisses the “ideographic”
view of Chinese as a myth in his book-length study of 1984.12 William
Boltz, another scholar of ancient Chinese, states in his review article of
DeFrancis’ book, “. . . the old drawing-room favorites about the quaintly
quixotic and ‘ideographic’ nature of Chinese character are so much eye-
wash, and can no longer be countenanced. . . . Silly and untenable no-
tions about the Chinese script are not limited, regrettably, to the bemused
proposals of the ‘ideographs’ of the 1930s.”13 In 1989, DeFrancis again
reiterates his view, “it is simply intolerable that Chinese writing contin-
ues to be misrepresented as ‘pictographic,’ a level of intellectual muddle-
headedness on a par with discoursing about astronomy in terms of
astrology. It is also intolerable that the nature of writing—of all writ-
ing—continues to be misunderstood in large part because of the misrep-
resentation of Chinese.”14 Chad Hansen, a scholar on Chinese language
philosophy, launches a counterattack and mounts a rigorous defense of
106 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

the “ideographic” view, “. . . the ideographic character of Chinese ex-

plains a sound insight found in the Chinese view of language. We have
good reason, therefore, to reject this prohibitionist analysis of ‘ideograph’
and to continue to call Chinese language ‘ideographic’” (375).
This recent debate is in fact a revival of a heated debate between
two renowned Sinologists, Herrlee Creel and Peter Boodberg, in the late
1930s.15 Despite the differences, the recent debate and its precursor are
essentially overshadowed and determined by still another older debate
over the nature of Chinese language between the detractors who view
Chinese as an inferior language and the upholders of Chinese as a lan-
guage richer than Western alphabetical languages. In the rank of the de-
tractors are found such venerable Western philosophers and linguists as
G. W. F. Hegel, A. V. Humboldt, Friedrich Schlegel, F. Bopp, A.
Schleicher, H. Humphreys, and W. A. Mason. Among the upholders, there
are G. W. Leibniz, Athanase Kircher, John Wilkins, Ernest Fenollosa,
Ezra Pound, and Ernest Cassirer. We may even include Derrida in the
rank of defenders.16 The overshadow of the older debate is clearly visible
in the background of the 1930 debate. Creel who started the debate ex-
pressed in no uncertain terms that his purpose was to correct the West-
ern prejudice with regard to the ideographic nature of Chinese: “It is a
further and even more curious fact that we Occidentals have come, by
long habitude, to think that any method of writing which consists merely
of a graphic representation of thought, but which is not primarily a sys-
tem for the graphic notation of some sounds, in some way falls short of
what writing was foreordained to be, is not indeed writing in the full
sense of the word.”17 In Creel’s statement, we could hear a distinct note
that anticipates Derrida’s deconstruction of phonocentric and logocentric
views of writing.
What is different in the most recent debate is that there are no de-
tractors; all are defenders of Chinese; all hold the view that Chinese is a
rich language. Despite their opposite orientations, the upholders and re-
jecters of the ideographic view were implicitly and explicitly having the
same objective: the demolition of the old prejudice that Chinese is a
writing system composed of picture-like characters and therefore inferior
to phonetic writing. Creel expressed the upholders’ position in an ex-
plicit statement: “It is as natural for the Chinese to write ideographically
as it is for us [Occidentals] to write phonetically” (160). The rejecters of
the ideographic view set to their task of demolition out of an implicitly
motivated reaction against a well-known linguistic “theory” in the West.
According to this “theory,” there were three stages in the development
of writing: 1) pictographic or iconographic writing; 2) ideographic or
 CHINESE AND WESTERN THEORIES OF THE WRITTEN SIGN 107

hieroglyphic writing; 3) phonetic writing.18 This theory entails a preju-

dice explicitly expressed in Rousseau’s words: “These three ways of writ-
ing correspond almost exactly to three different stages according to which
one can consider men gathered into a nation. The depicting of objects is
appropriate to a savage people; signs of words and of propositions, to a
barbaric people; and the alphabet to civilized people.”19 Since Chinese
writing consists of ideographs, it was considered to belong to the second
stage and hence inferior. It seemed that the root cause of the misconcep-
tion lay in the ideographic view of Chinese. To demolish the old preju-
dice, what can be more effective than destroying the premise that Chinese
is an ideographic language belonging to a different way of classification.
Boodberg who engaged Creel in the 1930 debate implied that it was not
enough to state that ideographic writing is as good as phonetic writing,
for he detected in the ideographic view something that we might term an
“Orientalist strain”: “[O]ne must deplore the general tendency. . . of in-
sisting that the Chinese in the development of their writing, as in the
evolution of many other of their cultural complexes, followed some mys-
terious esoteric principles that set them apart from the rest of the human
race.”20 He categorically stated: “The term ‘ideograph’ is, we believe, re-
sponsible for most of the misunderstanding of the [Chinese] writing. The
sooner it is abandoned the better.” 21 For a most recent example, one
scholar, after deconstructing various Western myths about the Chinese
language, has to adopt Western approaches to language to argue that
Chinese has more or less the same linguistic mechanisms of an inflec-
tional language.22
Outside the linguistic domain, the upholders of the ideographic view
found some unexpected allies in some Western artists and philosophers
who self-consciously claimed that Chinese is a rich language precisely
because it is made up of pictograms and ideographs. It is unnecessary to
recapitulate Fenollosa’s and Pound’s famous or notorious views in this
connection. Even some postmodern theorists have found in the ideo-
graphic view some revolutionary potential for the advancement of their
theoretical agendas. Derrida, for example, views Chinese writing as mark-
ing a “break” from the logo-centric Western metaphysical tradition which
arose from the metaphysical reflections on the nature of alphabetic lan-
guages (92). His deconstructive view in this regard is obviously predi-
cated on Fenollosa’s and Pound’s glorification of ideographic Chinese
character as a superior medium of poetic representation.
I believe, we must get out of the beaten track and engage in a truly
meaningful comparative study based on a scientific approach to language
that takes into consideration the internal similarities and differences of
108 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

the Chinese and Western languages. Otherwise, we will forever be bogged

down in long and protracted seesaw debates, of which I have only given
a brief account, and unable to see the significant insight that may be
brought forth by the debates, still less to exploit it for cross-cultural stud-
ies. For any serious study of the differences of different writing systems, it
will not do if it does not start its exploration from an examination of the
written signs of each system. Since semiotics or semiology is a science of
signs, I will, in the next section, engage in a detailed analysis of the Chi-
nese theories of the written sign in conjunction with Western semiologi-
cal theories.

A Comparison of Chinese and Western Theories of the Sign

The most fundamental difference between Chinese writing and Western

writing is that the former employs characters or ideographs as linguistic
sign while the latter uses alphabets to form words as linguistic sign. To
have an adequate understanding of the difference between Chinese writ-
ing and Western writing, we cannot avoid comparing and contrasting
the inner mechanism for making linguistic signs in terms of modern
semiotic theories. For this purpose, what comes into our mind immedi-
ately is Saussure’s theory of the linguistic sign. Although his famous model
of the sign is for phonetic signs, we may accept his claim that it is also
applicable for written signs. At any rate, it can be used to analyze the
structure of the Chinese character:

At first glance, the Saussurean model seems to apply well in the analysis
of the Chinese character, but if a reader is careful enough, he will notice
that the Chinese character resembles, or to be more exact, captures the
image of a tree. Here is the fundamental difference between the alpha-
betic word and Chinese character. While the “tree” is a phonetic sign
which is meant to be read aloud or subvocalized and heard as an acoustic
event, the Chinese character is an image, a visual sign which is meant to
represent the visual appearance of “tree,” in addition to a sound assigned
to it.
 CHINESE AND WESTERN THEORIES OF THE WRITTEN SIGN 109

In analyzing the conventional view of the opposition between word

and image as the basic division in the human experience of representa-
tions, presentations, and symbols, W. J. T. Mitchelll invokes the
Saussurean diagram of the dual structure of the linguistic sign to argue
that the picture of the tree in the diagram is not a mere place-holder or
token for an ideal entity; nor is its pictoriality a merely accidental or
conveniently illustrative feature; but rather “the rendering of the signi-
fied concept as picture or what Saussure calls a ‘symbol’ constitutes a
fundamental erosion in the Saussurean claim that ‘the linguistic sign is
arbitrary’ (that is, the linguistic sign is ‘empty,’ ‘unmotivated,’ and with-
out any ‘natural bond’ between signifier and signified.”23 By quoting
Saussure’s second thought on the linguistic symbol, “One characteristic
of the symbol is that it is never wholly arbitrary, it is not empty; for there
is the rudiment of a natural bond between signifier and signified,” (68)
Professor Mitchell concludes, “The word/image difference, in short, is
not merely the name of a boundary between disciplines or media or kinds
of art: it is a borderline that is internal to both language and visual repre-
sentation, a space or gap that opens up even within the microstructure of
the linguistic sign and that could be shown to emerge as well in the mi-
crostructure of the graphic mark” (54).
I agree with Mitchell’s argument in general but have found two is-
sues which may have far-reaching significance. First, in Saussure’s theory
of linguistics, the linguistic sign is a sound. We can use Saussure’s meta-
phor of a sheet of paper to cut the sign into two sides: a sound and a
concept. Even if we treat sound as an acoustic image, we have to admit
that the image is auditory and hence invisible. It can never appear on
paper or in other visual representation. Secondly, post-Saussurean theo-
rists have argued that Saussure was wrong to equate the signified with
the thing or concept which the signifier is meant to represent. Lacan’s
famous analysis of the toilet signs, “Ladies” and “Gentlemen,” argues that
the signs on the toilet doors do not stand for the content of the signifier,
which is the toilet, but for the chain of associative signifiers assigned by
history, culture and social mores separately and reciprocally to the sexual
differentiation implied in them.24 What Lacan insists on seems to be that
not only is the relation between signifier and signified arbitrary, but there
is no one-to-one correspondence between them at all, still less between
the signifier and the thing referred to. As He puts it, “no signification
can be sustained other than by reference to another signification” (150).
In other words, the content of the signified is determined only by its
relation to other signifiers on the signifying chain. Thus, in the process
of signification, the sound of “tree” may not refer to the acoustic image
110 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

of a real tree or any tree. For these two reasons, the irreducibility of “word”
into “image” is present, not only in speaking but also in writing. The
horizontal bar in the Saussurean model separating word and image repre-
sents the resistance to signification, in Lacan’s view. In Mitchell’s more
positive view, it is a Peircean index, an indicator of the relationship in
conceptual space which unites word and image. Either way, the gap be-
tween word and image is unbridgeable. The unbridgeability is illustrated
by Mitchell with the following sketch of the empirical model of cogni-
tion:

He states the relations among the three categories as such, “A word is an

image of an idea, and an idea is an image of a thing.” On account of this
model, “we are to think of a word (such as “man”) as a “verbal image”
twice removed from the original that it represents.” 25 Citing Witt-
genstein’s claim that the really important verbal image is the “picture” in
“logical space” that is projected by a proposition, Mitchell replaces the
captions for the same illustration with three words, “Picture,” “Picto-
gram,” and “Phonetic Sign.” As though conscious of the yawning gap
between the pictogram and phonetic sign, he adds one more item to the
illustration:

Mitchell suggests that we read this tableau “not as a movement from world
to mind to language, but form one kind of sign to another, as an illus-
trated history of the development of systems of writing” (Iconology 27).
This illustration fully accords with the development of the Chinese writ-
ten sign except for the last stage. Although he tries to smooth out the
transition from the image to the phonetic sign with the displacement of
 CHINESE AND WESTERN THEORIES OF THE WRITTEN SIGN 111

the original image by a synecdoche or metonymy,26 the gap between the

image and word remains as wide as ever. It seems as though the gap had
no possibility of being bridged in a phonocentric writing system.
The unbridgeable gap in alphabetical language, however, is consid-
erably reducible in Chinese writing symbols. Talking about the arbitrary
nature of the writing symbol, Charles Sanders Peirce uses the English
word “man” as an illustrating example. “These three letters are not in the
least like a man;” he says, “nor is the sound with which they are associ-
ated. Neither is the word existentially connected with any man as an
index.” 27 His view is certainly right with regard to alphabetic language.
But in Chinese, the character for “man” is causally connected to the
image of a man and is also a writing symbol for “man.” Likewise, the
Chinese character for tree represents both the word of tree and the
image of tree, for it evolved from the mental image of tree. Even in its
present form, we can still discern the form of a tree. It is truly a case of an
image turning into a word, or an illustration of the borderline case be-
tween word and image. Thus, if one wants to argue against the absolute
division between word and image, the Chinese character is an excellent
example. Indeed, throughout Chinese history, the accepted notion about
the relationship between writing and painting is that writing and paint-
ing originated from the same source, which is pictorial representation.
Zheng Qiao (1104–1160) made this representative statement: “Writing
and painting came from the same source. Painting imitates shapes while
writing imitates images; the former is elaborate while the latter is sketchy.
All characters created with the pictorgraphic principle can be drawn. If
they could not be drawn, their written forms would not have come into
being.”28 Liu Shipei made a similar remark: “Pictograms are ancient paint-
ings.”29 In the light of this notion and the above analysis of the Chinese
character in terms of Saussure’s theory of the linguistic sign, it is reason-
able to say that the pictographic quality of the Chinese character is not
to be doubted.
Saussure’s theory, which has proved useful for us so far, cannot help
us any more, for in his study the linguistic sign is a phonetic sign rather
than a written sign. In Saussure’s classification of writing systems, the
Chinese language belongs to the ideographic and has a stronger tendency
for the written word to replace the spoken in a speaker’s mind. Because
of the difference in writing system, Saussure limits his study to phonetic
systems (25–26). Although he claims that his theory on the phonetic
sign is applicable to written signs, I have demonstrated that it is inad-
equate. Since the Chinese linguistic sign originated from pictographic
imitation, Saussure’s theory has another insurmountable limitation.
112 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

Saussure’s theory deals only with linguistic sign and does not include
imagistic signs. In this connection, Peirce’s theory of the sign has an ob-
vious advantage for it furnishes us with ways to deal with linguistic signs
as well as visual signs such as paintings, photographic images, and signifiers
generated by high-tech media.

From Picture to Word: Six Graphic Principles

Chinese written signs were made with six methods of formation called
“liushu or six graphic principles.” Although the six principles have been
accepted over history as the guiding theory and practical methods for
making Chinese characters, opinions differ considerably as to how to draw
a line between some of them. Later scholars have always complained that
scholars before them had made faulty explanations. Sometimes, differ-
ences in opinions have led to confusion. I believe that this confusion
may be resolved if we examine the six principles in relation to the West-
ern theories of the sign, especially Peirce’s theory. Xu Shen’s discourse
states, when Cang Jie first started to create writing symbols, his chief
method was one of pictographic imitation. This is the first of the so-
called “six writing principles.” And it is also the mother of other five
principles, as Zheng Qiao put it: “The six writing principles all evolved
from pictographic imitation” (11). In terms of Peirce’s theory of the sign,
it is a principle of iconic representation. How did the other five writing
principles came about? There is no indisputable historical data. But in
Xu Shen’s account, there is some hint. We may recall that Cang Jie, “on
looking at the tracks of birds and animals, realizing that certain patterns
and forms were distinguishable” (15A, 1a). The bird has flown, but it has
left behind its footprints. The animal has fled, but it has left behind its
tracks. These footprints not only show the erstwhile presence of the bird
and animal, but also tell what sort of bird or animal used to walk here. In
other words, by observing the different shapes of the footprints, one can
tell which bird or which animal had once passed by. In a semiotic way,
the birds are the cause; and the footprints are the effect. Because of the
cause and effect relation, the footprints serve as indices. This indexical
nature of the footprints may have inspired the Chinese ancestors to at-
tain another leap in representation: the principle of indexical represen-
tation. Of the other five writing principles, three are of indexical nature.
Xu Shen describes the six graph-making principles in the order of
zhishi (indicate-condition), xiangxing (imitate-shape), xingsheng (shape-
and-sound), huiyi (grasp-meaning), zhuanzhu (interchangeable notation),
jiajie (loan-borrowing) (15A, 1a-b). In later versions, the order of the six
 CHINESE AND WESTERN THEORIES OF THE WRITTEN SIGN 113

principles is slightly different. Most often xiangxing (imitate-shape) is listed

as the first principle. I think it justifiably should occupy the first place;
Xu Shen’s ordering may have been due to the fact that he had already
mentioned the principle earlier in his text and regarded it as the cardinal
principle for creating graphs.
In terms of Peirce’s conception of the “icons,” “indices,” and “sym-
bols,” we may see how the six principles correspond with and differ from
the Western writing systems and to what extent the Western theory of
the sign falls short of Chinese writing symbols. According to Peirce, the
iconic sign is a sign which resembles its conceptual object in certain ways.
It may carry with it certain of the properties which the object possesses,
or it may duplicate the principles according to which that object is orga-
nized. The most common iconic signs are photos, paintings, sculptures,
cinematic images, graphs, diagrams, and even algebraic equations. Since
Chinese graphs formed in accordance with the principle of “imitating
the form” are obvious images resembling the conceptual objects, they are
iconic signs. A comparison with Xu Shen’s elucidation testifies to the
validity of this idea: “The second is called xiangxing (imitate-form). For
this type one draws a picture of an object; thus the lines follow the natu-
ral shape. Ri (sun) and yue (moon) are of this sort.”
The indexical sign is defined by Peirce as “a real thing or fact which
is a sign of its object by virtue of being connected with it as a matter of
fact and by also forcibly intruding upon the mind, quite regardless of its
being interpreted as a sign” (4:359). Indices are easily confused with icons.
For the sake of distinction, Peirce makes these observations: “Indices may
be distinguished from other signs, or representations, by three character-
istic marks: first, that they have no significant resemblance to their ob-
jects; second, that they refer to individuals, single units, single collections
of units, or single continua; third, that they direct the attention to their
objects by blind compulsion” (2:172). Some of the indexical signs Peirce
cites are weathervane, a pointing hand, and a symptom. In his explana-
tion of the indices, Peirce stresses the existential bond (contiguity, asso-
ciation, cause and effect) between the indexical sign and its object. Kaja
Silverman makes an apt explication of the existential bond,

The signifying value of the weathervane resides not in its physical

relationship to the wind, but in the concepts “wind” and “direc-
tion” which it permits the observer to link up. Similarly, the point-
ing finger functions as a sign not because of its adjacency to a
given site, like Boston, but because it generates in the mind of the
walker or the driver the conceptual terms “Boston” and “turn right.”
114 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

Finally, the signifying capacity of the symptom inheres not in its

physical residence within the patient’s body, but in its ability to
assist the physician in making a diagnosis.30

When we compare Peirce’s definition and examples with Xu Shen’s elu-

cidation of the principle of “indicate-condition,” it is clear that this Chi-
nese principle is a principle comparable to Peirce’s conception of the
indexical signs: “the first is called zhishi (indicate-condition). When one
sees a graph of this type it may be understood on seeing it; by inspection
one sees the meaning. The graph “up” and ‘down” are of this
sort.”31 Characters formed with this principle are symbols of abstract no-
tions, not pictures of concrete objects. Ma Xulun, synthesizing various
interpretations of this principle, points out, “characters formed with the
principle of ‘indicate conditions’ are those to which something is added
so as to indicate what has happened in an object.”32 This interpretation
may be viewed as a footnote to Peirce’s definition of indices. A
weathervane can stand for wind because wind has caused it to make
changes in directions. A pointing hand can stand for the direction pointed
at because the direction has made it necessary to point in the indicated
direction. A symptom is a sign of sickness because it indicates the sick-
ness has caused certain changes in the physical body.
The third of the Peirce’s triad is the “symbol.” Peirce defines the
symbol as a sign whose relation to its conceptual object is entirely arbi-
trary: “a Symbol is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes by
virtue of a law, usually an association of general ideas, which operates to
cause the Symbol to be interpreted as referring to that Object” (2:143–
44). Peirce’s “symbol” is more or less the same as Saussure’s conception of
the “sign” whose referential relation to the objects referred to is purely
arbitrary, unmotivated by any other associations. In terms of this con-
ception, I must say that of the six principles, only Zhuanzhu and Jiajie are
comparable:

The fifth is called zhuanzhu (interchangeable notation). For

this type, one establishes a category, then puts other graphs with
similar meanings under the category. [The two graphs for] kao
(aged) and lao (old) are of this sort.
The sixth is called jiajie (loan-borrowing). These are for words
which originally had no graph of their own, and depend on the
sounds to stand for something else. Ling (command) and chang
(leader) are of this sort.33
 CHINESE AND WESTERN THEORIES OF THE WRITTEN SIGN 115

At the heart of Xu Shen’s conception of zhuanzhu (interchangeable

notation) is the notion that a graph borrowed to refer to another spoken
word does not have any relation to the object or condition which needs
to be represented. This fits Peirce’s conception of the “symbol” which is
designated to refer to a relationship between two dissimilar elements.
(We must not confuse Peirce’s symbol with Saussure’s symbol.) The “loan-
borrowing” principle is, without much explanation, a principle for creat-
ing symbols, because the borrowed graphs have no resemblance whatever
to the represented object or condition except similarity in sound.
Ma Xulun observes, “picture is the essence of writing, especially of
pictorial writings” (12). This is an apt observation. Two of the four Chi-
nese graphical principles we have discussed so far are pictorial, or to be
more exact, iconic or imagistic. This gives a salient feature to the Chi-
nese writing system. Because of the iconic nature of the Chinese written
sign, Chinese language is endowed with some qualities which set Chi-
nese language, signification, and representation apart from those of the
West. These unique features are theoretically supported by Peirce who
sets great store by the vital role played in all communication by the icon:

The only way of directly communicating an idea is by means of an

icon; and every indirect method of communicating an idea must
depend for its establishment upon the use of an icon. Hence, ev-
ery assertion must contain an icon or set of icons, or else must
contain signs whose meaning is only explicable by icons. (2:158)

Moreover, Peirce claims that the richest signs or signifiers are always
those which combine iconic, indexical, and symbolic functions (4:361).
Most of Chinese written symbols are precisely this kind of signs. From
this point of view, Peirce’s claim seems to support Fenollosa’s and Pound’s
much-disputed assertion. Although Chinese written language has evolved
from a highly pictorial sign system to an abstracted writing system, much
of the iconic and indexical nature remains. The fact that some scholars
insist on calling the Chinese writing system ideographic is another way
of saying that the Chinese written symbols retain the original qualities of
icons and indices.

Juxtaposign: A New Category of Written Sign

Peirce’s theory of the sign has been recognized by some scholars to have
an advantage over Saussure’s theory of the sign, for the latter’s theory
does not furnish us with ways to distinguish between linguistic signifiers,
116 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

photographic signifiers, and signifiers generated by high-tech codes

(Silverman 22). By contrast, Peirce’s theory enables us to make valuable
distinctions and to cope with the postmodern multi-medium representa-
tion. Peirce’s theory, however, is inadequate in another way. When I com-
pare his theory of the sign with the Chinese theory of the sign, the making
of wen, his theory is found to be wanting in one aspect. In my above
analysis, I have only dealt with four of the six writing principles. The
remaining two, huiyi and xingsheng simply cannot be put into the Peircean
pigeonholes of icon, index and symbol. We have to find new ways to deal
with the two.
Although Peirce stresses the fluid roles of icon, index, and symbol in
performative situations, his functional classification of signs is concerned
with the mutual support of icons and indices for the making of linguistic
syntagms. In other words, his emphasis only deals with discourse com-
posed of individual icons, indices, and symbols. When his theory is ap-
plied to individual Chinese characters, it is found to be inadequate in
explaining two other Chinese writing principles. Here is Xu Shen’s ac-
count of the two principles:

The third is called xingsheng (shape-and-sound). For this type,

a name is made after considering (a relation of ) things, i.e., a
comparison is made by combination (of phonetic and classifier).
Jiang (stream) and he (river) are of this sort.
The fourth is called huiyi (grasp-meaning). For this type, suit-
able figures are compared and meanings joined, whereby appears
what is indicated. Wu (warrior) and xin (trust) are of this sort. 81

In the xingsheng category, as the name indicates, a graph is made of two

component parts: one is a shape, the other a sound. The shape is a radi-
cal, or significant, which is often an iconic image while the sound is a
phonetic. The juxtaposition of the two parts results in a new graph, a
composite phonogram which uses the significant to indicate its meaning
while using the phonetic to indicate its pronunciation. A character com-
posed with the huiyi principle is also the result of sign combinations. A
huiyi symbol combines two or more simple graphs to form a new charac-
ter. The meaning of the new symbol is synthesized from the unity of the
two graphs juxtaposed. Ma Xulun employs the metaphor of child-birth to
explain how this principle works. Just as an embryo is conceived in the
union of a seaman and an ovum from both parents, so the meaning of a
huiyi character signifies as a crystallization of the essence of the compo-
nent parts (29).
 CHINESE AND WESTERN THEORIES OF THE WRITTEN SIGN 117

In a way, xingsheng may also be viewed as a huiyi principle, because it

involves the juxtaposition of component parts and the meaning of a
xingsheng character depends on a synthetic understanding of the two com-
bined parts. For this reason, I would like to classify the two principles
under the category of juxtaposition, or rebus. If the two remaining Chi-
nese graphic principle are not compatible with any of the three Piercean
signs, the Western word game “rebus” provides a similar signifying mecha-
nism. Indeed, the mechanism for these two graphical principles is quite
similar to that of a rebus. This is the most interesting and most artistic of
all the six graphic principles. It has exerted the most profound impact on
the development of Chinese signification, representation and aesthet-
ics. 35 It has attracted the attention of some Western scholars who, in
their turn, made revolutionary leaps in their approaches to literature and
art. Here I just want to mention in passing the montage technique of cin-
ematography created by S. M. Eiseinstein, and the idiogrammic method
by Ezra Pound.
Having examined the six Chinese graphical principles in conjunc-
tion with Peirce’s triad of icon, index, and symbol, it is clear that we
need to add a new category of signs. This is the huiyi-wen—characters
created with the method of synthesized juxtaposition. For the sake of
convenience, I have coined a neologism, juxtaposign. The following chart
offers a complete overview of the Chinese and Western theories of the
sign:

As individual unit, words of alphabetic languages can only fit into the
symbolic signs on the left column. Chinese characters spread over the
three Peircean categories and the newly coined category. Icons and indi-
ces are perceived through the visual channel. Symbols may be seen or
heard. Phonetic symbols are to be perceived more through the auditory
channel than the visual channel, hence phonocentric. This chart shows
118 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

that Chinese characters are to be perceived somewhat differently from

the alphabetic symbols. This insight has been confirmed by neuroscience.
Modern neuroscientific research has ascertained that human beings use
different regions of the brain to process visual/spatial and auditory/tem-
poral functions. Although it takes the coordination of many regions in
the brain to perform perception, cogitation and motor function, the left
hemisphere of the brain is largely responsible for recognition and pro-
duction of sounds and sequences while the right hemisphere is largely
concerned with the perception and creation of shapes and patterns. Some
neuroscientific studies of aphasia carried out in Japan not only confirm
the neuroscientific findings in the West but also facilitate our under-
standing of the nature of Chinese writing. They have discovered that the
mastery of Chinese written sign is causally different from that of alpha-
betical sign.36 The Japanese writing system consists of two systems. One
is the system of Chinese characters; the other a phonetic system using
two sets of alphabets called respectively hinakana and katakana like the
alphabets of the West. A patient suffering from Broca’s aphasia37 cannot
spell a simple word like ink in the Japanese alphabets, but he can write
the Chinese character “ink” standing for the same word. On the other
hand, a patient inflicted with Wernicke’s aphasia38 has no problem in
producing discourse using phonetic alphabets, but can only produce gib-
berish using Chinese characters. This finding suggests that Chinese char-
acters still retain much of the original visual and spatial qualities of the
picture. This finding may also find support in computing word process-
ing. Chinese characters are processed like graphics.

Reconceptualizing the Picture/Word Divide

My comparative study in terms of linguistics, semiotics, and neuroscience

has made it necessary for us to offer a different grouping of the linguistic
signs, Chinese and Western. The iconic signs and indexical signs belong
to one big category whose coding and decoding operate largely on the
visual function of the mental apparatus. The symbolic signs are a cat-
egory whose mental function is largely localized on the auditory plane.
The juxtaposign is a special category which integrates the visual and au-
ditory functions of the brain. It shares the basic composing principle of a
rebus, which has been extensively explored by Freud in his interpreta-
tion of dream formation.39 Juxtaposign is artistically a richer sign than
the other categories of signs because it embraces denotation and at the
same time presupposes connotation. Its coding and decoding require a
cooperation of the visual and auditory functions of the brain and an inte-
 CHINESE AND WESTERN THEORIES OF THE WRITTEN SIGN 119

gration of the paradigmatic and syntagmatic associations. This regroup-

ing is in keeping with the statistical data which tells us that a great ma-
jority of Chinese characters are composed with the xingsheng
(shape-sound) principle. If we include characters composed with xiangxing,
zhishi and huiyi principles, an overwhelming majority of Chinese charac-
ters are imagistic in nature.
The above summary may show how the Chinese linguistic sign is
different from the Western counterpart and why Western semiotic theo-
ries, especially Saussure’s theory of the linguistic sign is inadequate to
explain the mechanism of Chinese characters. In his Course in General
Linguistics, Saussure posits the first principle of linguistics, “the linguistic
sign is arbitrary” (67). Saussure defines arbitrary nature as: “it is unmoti-
vated, i.e. arbitrary in that it actually has no natural connection with the
signified” (69). He further postulates that the arbitrary nature of the sign
applies to not only phonetic signs but also to written signs: “the signs
used in writing are arbitrary” (119). This claim does not fit the condi-
tions of Chinese written signs. As I have demonstrated, of the six prin-
ciples for graph-making, only two of them can be said to show no
motivated, natural connection between the signifier and the signified.
The largely motivated nature of Chinese writing sign is the most signifi-
cant feature of Chinese written language and has affected Chinese con-
ception of signification, representation, and aesthetics.
The summary may also show why the upholders of the “ideographic”
view of the Chinese character and rejecters of it are both partially cor-
rect. Since the Chinese linguistic sign is both visual and aural, both im-
agistic and conceptual in nature, the Chinese writing is both ideographic
and phonetic. The extent it is ideographic or phonetic, depends on how
one looks at it. If one stresses the phonetic part, he would agree with
Karlgren (and Boodberg) and say: nine tenths of Chinese characters are
phonetic. If one stresses the imagistic part, he would side with Creel and
say: nine tenths of Chinese characters are ideographic. Or if he accepts
Zheng Qiao’s view that all six writing principles evolved from pictographic
imitation, he may even say that all Chinese characters are ideographic.
The dual nature of the Chinese written sign may be illustrated with a
look at the central issue in the debate between Creel and Boodberg. Creel
challenged Karlgren’s claim that “nine-tenths of Chinese characters con-
sist of one ‘signific’ and one ‘phonetic.’”40 The claim refers to xing-sheng
characters, characters formed with a sound and an image. Since the for-
mation is half and half, one could in principle stresses one half and sub-
ordinates the other half.
120 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

It seems that the nature of Chinese character with the evolutionary

history of Chinese writing system would subvert not only the Saussurean
phonocentrism of the sign but also the logocentrism of transcendental
metaphysics. Most important of all, it questions the post-Saussurean theory
about the signified as one of the endless series of signifiers on the signify-
ing chain by casting a great doubt on the origin and nature of words and
ideas. This great doubt is, as Mitchell aptly puts it, “the suspicion that
beneath words, beneath ideas, the ultimate reference in the mind is the
image, the impression of outward experience printed, painted, or reflected
in the surface of consciousness” (Iconology 43). In an attempt to find a
suitable model for historical criticism of the word-image difference,
Mitchell cites Freud’s dichotomy between the manifest dream image and
the latent, hidden meaning in dream interpretation as a possible choice
(Iconology 45). I wish to suggest that the graphic principles of Chinese
character would qualify as an appropriate model.
More significantly, the six graphic principles confirm from a con-
scious perspective what Freud has discovered in the unconscious mind.
In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud demonstrates that the dream lan-
guage, as any primitive drawings, cannot express abstract ideas and logi-
cal connections. It has only one mode of expression, i.e. juxtaposition.
To produce the pictographic script of the dream, dream work employs
four major techniques to distort the psychic content: condensation, dis-
placement, considerations of representability, and secondary revision.41
A collation with the six principles of Chinese character formation re-
veals that Freud’s four techniques of dream representation are all used.
The principle “imitate-form” produces characters which resemble dream
images in such a way that it copies from reality but highlights the salient
features to achieve representability. The principle of “indicate condition”
resembles the techniques of dream distortion for emphasis and of second-
ary revision for clarity. The principle of “grasp-meaning,” like a dream
scene, uses the dream technique of condensation by juxtaposing related
elements to create an abstracted meaning. The principle of “shape-sound,”
working like a rebus, employs the technique of juxtaposition, but what
are juxtaposed are auditory and visual elements. The principle of “Inter-
changeable notation” employs the technique of displacement, and comes
close to a dream’s representation by symbols. The principle of “loan-bor-
rowing” employs the technique which works like a dream’s klang associa-
tion through homophones. In this connection, the consciously derived
six principles also confirm the correctness of a radical claim by Jacques
Lacan that the two fundamental laws of the psyche, “condensation” and
“displacement,” operate in the same way as every day discourse.42 Herein
 CHINESE AND WESTERN THEORIES OF THE WRITTEN SIGN 121

lies the common deep structure upon which we may build a bridge across
the picture/word divide and the conceptual divide between Chinese and
Western Languages.

Concluding Remarks: Beyond the Picture/Word Difference

The Chinese written sign is a borderline sign in which the visual and the
aural, the ideographic and phonetic intermingle and interpenetrate. To a
much diminished extent, the alphabetic languages share this character-
istic feature. A purely phonetic writing system is impossible, for once a
word is recorded in signs (alphabetic or ideographic), it ceases to be en-
tirely an acoustic sound. Linguistic signs in both ideographic and pho-
netic languages might have started with the same pictographic origin.
Although they were set apart in their separate evolutionary processes,
they all developed into highly sophisticated linguistic signs. While in
the phonetic sign, visual representation was consistently downplayed over
history until the “pictorial turn” in modern times, in the ideographic
sign, pictographic qualities have been emphasized uninterruptedly from
high antiquity to the present day. The Chinese linguistic sign, despite a
series of mutations that it has undergone over history, has successfully
resisted efforts at alphabetization and retains some fundamental charac-
teristics of the picture: the visual and graphic qualities. It is truly a case
in which picture evolved into sign.
The Western fascination with Chinese language may in great part
be attributed to a strong interest in the visual and graphic qualities of the
Chinese linguistic sign. The fascination, which culminated in high mod-
ernism, has been accused of adopting an essentialist, aestheticized, and
even distorted view of the Chinese language with little regard for its
modern and present-day conditions. But we must admit that it does lo-
cate something in the Chinese linguistic sign for revolutionary innova-
tions in poetry, arts, film, philosophy and critical methodology. Fenollosa,
Pound, Eisenstein, Wyndham Lewis, Henri Gaudier, and Derrida, all were
able to make use of the ideographic difference to radicalize their poetic,
artistic, critical, and philosophical undertakings with considerable suc-
cess. In varying degrees, they found in the ideographic sign some prin-
ciples that served as catalytic inspirations. If there were no pictographic
elements in the ideograph, their innovations would have had no relation
with the Chinese written sign. Take the graphic principle of huiyi or
juxtaposign for example. It is a principle which appeals to both the eye
and the ear and gestures beyond both. That the huiyi graphic principle is
122 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

found (by some visual and plastic artists) to inhere in artistic techniques
and forms like montage, vorticism, collage, and ideogammic method sug-
gests the Chinese ideographic sign does have some visual qualities which
have been minimized in the phonetic sign. It is worthwhile to point out
that the ideas mentioned came under direct or indirect influence of the
Chinese linguistic sign. Eisenstein acknowledged his indebtedness to
Chinese character formation for his invention of the montage technique;
Pound got the inspiration for his ideogrammic method of poetic compo-
sition from his study of Chinese characters, and Lewis’s idea of vorticism
was indebted to the same source of inspiration. 43 In a larger psycholin-
guistic context, the huiyi principle is compatible with the structuring prin-
ciple found in the Western word game “rebus” and Freud’s psycholinguistic
study of dream formation and interpretation.
The Chinese written sign is a double face. One face is that of the
articulate sign in language utterances; the other is that of a visual and
aural Gestalt on the page. It is an imagistic fabric woven with optical and
acoustical images. The consistent emphasis on both the visual and aural
aspects of the linguistic sign differentiates Chinese language thought from
Western language philosophy in their respective developments. Because
of the different degrees of emphasis on the visual, Western language phi-
losophy traversed on a road from symbol to sign while Chinese language
theories traveled on a road from picture to sign. The Chinese discourses
on wen, through the shift in perception from images to words, reveals
with remarkable clarity the transition from natural patterns to human
constructs. In this essay, I have only touched on some significance that
the study of the Chinese written sign in relation to Western theories of
the sign may yield. If we look beyond the conceptual divide and conduct
our future research in conjunction with present-day linguistics, psychol-
ogy, neuroscience, and computer science, we may open up a new vista
with unpredictable potentials.
Rhodes College

NOTES
1. I am most grateful to Professor W. J. T. Mitchell of the University of Chicago,
who read and commented on this paper and suggested ways to improve it.
2. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, translated with an introduc-
tion and notes by Wade Baskin (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), 25–26.
3. I will only give a brief account of the debates in this paper. For detailed informa-
tion, the reader can refer to the relevant articles and studies that I have documented in
the endnotes.
 CHINESE AND WESTERN THEORIES OF THE WRITTEN SIGN 123

4. See Ernest Fenollosa, The Chinese Written Character as A Medium For Poetry, ed.
Ezra Pound (San Fancisco: City Lights Books, 1968).
5. For these myths, legends, and records, one can start with a standard Chinese col-
lege textbook, Gu wenzi xue gangyao (Outlines of Ancient Chinese Philology), by Chen
Weizhan and Tang Yuming (Guangzhou: Zhongshan daxue chubanshe, 1988) 19–20.
6. Xu Shen, Shuowen jiezi (Elucidations of Characters and Words) (Shanghai: Shang-
wu yinshuguan, 1937), Juan 15A, 1b.
7. When I refer to Cang Jie’s name in this essay, I use it as a convenient marker. I do
not mean that there was once a historical person by this name.
8. Chad Hansen, “Chinese Ideographs and Western Ideas,” Journal of Asian Studies
52 (1993): 388.
9. Julia Kristeva, “From Symbol to Sign,” in The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril Moi (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1986) 64.
10. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, translated by D. G. Pears and
B. F. McGuinness (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961) 4.106.
11. Liu Shipei, for one, holds this view. See his Jingxue jiaoke shu (Textbooks of Clas-
sics), Liu Shenshu xiansheng yishu (Posthumous Writings of Mr. Liu Shenshu) (Taipei:
Daxin shuju, 1965), 4: 2387.
12. John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (Honolulu: U of Hawaii
P, 1984), 130–48.
13. William Boltz, “Review of The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy by John
DeFrances,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 106 (1986): 405–7
14. John DeFrancis, Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems (Honolulu:
U of Hawaii P, 1984), xi.
15. For detailed information, see Creel’s “On the Nature of Chinese Ideography,”
T’oung Pao 32 (1936): 85–161; Boodberg’s “Some Proleptical Remarks on the Evolu-
tion of Archaic Chinese,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 2 (1937): 329–72; Creel’s
“On the Ideographic Element in Ancient Chinese,” T’oung Pao 34 (1938): 265–94;
Boodberg’s “‘Ideography’ or Iconolatory?” T’oung Pao 35 (1939): 266–88. In spite of its
scholarly intensity and vigor, the debate ended inconclusively. In 1984, John DeFrances
revives the debate in his book-legnth study of the Chinese language. He sides with
Boodberg and rejects Creel’s view. See The Chinese Language: Fact And Fantasy (Hono-
lulu: U of Hawaii P, 1984), 85–88; 133–148. Chad Hansen criticizes DeFrances’ view.
See his “Chinese Ideographs and Western Idea.”
16. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammotology, translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins U P, 1974), 76–93.
17. Herrlee Creel, “On The Nature of Chinese Ideography,” T’oung Pao 32 (1936): 85.
18. See W. A. Mason, The History of the Art of Writing (New York: 1920) 49–50.
19. J. J. Rousseau, Essai sur l’origines des langues. The translation is requoted from Of
Grammatology, 3.
20. Peter Boodberg, “Some Proleptical Remarks on the Evolution of Archaic Chi-
nese” 330.
21. Peter Boodberg, “Some Proleptical Remarks on the Evolution of Archaic Chi-
nese” 332.
22. Q. S. Tong, “Myths About the Chinese Language,” in Canadian Review of Com-
parative Literature (1993), 41–45.
23. W. J. T. Mitchell, “Word and Image,” in Critical Terms for Art History, ed. Robert
Nelson and Richard Shiff (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996), 54.
24. Jacques Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, trans. by Alan Sheridan (New York: Norton,
1977) 150–152.
25. W. J. T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986), 22.
26. He says, “If we read the circle and arrow as pictures of a body and phallus, then
the symbol is synecdochic, presenting part for whole; if we read it as a shield and a
124 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

spear, then it is metonymic, substituting associated objects for the thing itself.” See
Mitchell, Iconology, 27.
27. C. S. Peirce, Collected Works, ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, 8 vols. (Cam-
bridge: Harvard U P, 1931–58) 4: 360.
28. Zheng Qiao (1104–1160), “Liushu lüe (Outlines of Six Graphic Principles),” in
Tongzhi lüe (Outlines of General Records) (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1933) 11.
29. Liu Shipei, Liu Shenshu xiansheng yishu (Posthumous Writings of Mr. Liu Shenshu)
4: 2387.
30. Kaja Silverman, The Subject of Semiotics (New York: Oxford U P, 1983) 19.
31. Adapted from K. L. Thern’s translation, Postface of the Shuo-wen Chieh-tzu, The
First Comprehensive Chinese Dictionary, Wisconsin China Series, (Madison: Wisconsin
UP, 1966) 10.
32. Ma Xulun, Zhongguo wenzi zhi yuanliu yu yanjiu fangfa zhi xinqingxiang (The Ori-
gins of Chinese Writing and New Tendencies in Research Methods) (Hong Kong:
Longmeng shudian, 1969) 29.
33. Adapted from K. L. Thern’s translation, Postface of the Shuo-wen Chieh-tzu, The
First Comprehensive Chinese Dictionary, 10–11.
34. Adapted from K. L. Thern’s translation, Postface of the Shuo-wen Chieh-tzu, The
First Comprehensive Chinese Dictionary, 10.
35. Since this is not the place to discuss such an important principle, I will leave it to
another paper.
36. Ruth Lesser, Linguistic Investigation of Aphasia: Studies of Disorders of Communica-
tion (London: Edward Arnold LTD, 1989) 181. For details, see also S. Sasamura, “Kana
and kanji Processing in Japanese Aphasics,” Brain and Language 2: 369–83.
37. For a patient with Broca’s aphasia, spontaneous speech is non-fluent and slurred,
with short sentences consisting mainly of nouns and main verbs. Comprehension is
relatively well preserved except with sentences which can only be understood with
syntactic analysis. The underlying disorder is believed to be mainly syntactic. Broca’s
aphasia is associated with lesions in the inferior part of the left frontal lobe, supposedly
responsible for auditory representation.
38. For a patient with Wernicke’s aphasia, speech is fluent with correctly used gram-
matical structures, but auditory language comprehension is severely affected. The defi-
cit is believed to be mainly at a semantic level, and the lesion usually involves the
superior part of the left temporal lobe, supposedly responsible for visual representation.
39. See Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. James Strachey ( New
York: Avon Books, 1965) 312.
40. Bernhard Karlgren, Analytic Dictionary of Chinese and Sino-Japanese (Paris, 1923), 4.
41. Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 311–73, 526–46.
42. Jacques Lacan, “The Agency of the letter in the unconscious or reason since Freud,”
in Écrits: A Selection (New York: Norton, 1977) 159–71.
43. Hugh Kenner gives a detailed study of these cases in his monumental book, The
Pound Era. I just want to quote one passage here, “A Russian mind, applied ideographs
in a time of Revolutionary propaganda, in conceiving montage has altered our under-
standing of ideographic potentialities. An American mind, brought to ideographs by
an art historian of Spanish descent who had been exposed to Transcendentalism, de-
rived Vorticism, the Cantos, and an ‘ideogrammic method’ that modifies our sense of
what Chinese can be.” See The Pound Era (Berkeley: U of California P, 1971) 162.