The Representation Of Modern Chinese In Modern Linguistic Texts

With all the connections between structuralism and modern linguistics, a most dubious thing about our linguistic knowledge today is its total indifference—indifference, rather than objection—to any change of idea underlying the transition from structuralism to post-structuralism. Such indifference, to be sure, may be explained by the simple fact that linguists need not be philosophers and that philosophers need not be post-structuralists. However, if we recall the even simpler fact that ideas came earlier than such differentiation and that modern linguistics relies heavily on structuralist ideas, we should see how imprudent it will be to accept the above explanation too readily. As Hartmann says,"the history of language research shows that progress comes from shifting and enriching the problematics."This rings all the more true today (and all the more as a warning) when we come to observe linguistics in the present ideological environment where real thinking is gradually giving way to solidified knowledge, and where, on the other hand, post-structuralist reflections on the canons of such knowledge are trying to bring us back to where everything started.In reflecting on the canons of what knowledge we have come to assume today, post-structuralism is not alone. Actually, we can well relate it to some other important schools of Western philosophy insofar as they all attempt to address the genealogical question about discourse and to overcome certain essentialist failings in the various former answers to the question. These schools, first and foremost, include phenomenology and the historicist philosophy of science. Their connection to post-structuralism, besides the above description, could also be identified with what Husserl calls"the objection to the natural attitude in human thinking". In this paper, we have tried to reach a unified theoretical framework based on this connection and to apply it to the deconstruction of the modern linguistic discourse on Modern Chinese.To deconstruct linguistic discourse, in a sense, means to deconventionalise the notions, theories and methodologies of certain linguistic traditions so that we can see the perspectives and the historical nature thereof. Drawing on the theories we have mentioned, we proposed a procedure for the deconstruction of the modern linguistic discourse on Modern Chinese: 1) a macroscopic investigation of the discourse foundation where the contrastive (or comparative, but to be distinguished from historical comparative) method and the fundamentals of scientific research are predominantly at work; 2) a microscopic inquiry into some elementary local texts—from textbooks in principle, and in this study, from the"phonetics and phonology"parts in some three Modern Chinese textbooks for university students on the Chinese mainland specialised in Chinese language and literature—which further includes a structural and a historical analysis of the texts. In the macroscopic investigation, we found two major paradoxes at the foundation of Modern Chinese linguistic discourse. These paradoxes, grounded on the traditional philosophical ideas the discourse follows, concern the contrastive method and the scientific universalist claim respectively, and express themselves in two conventional concepts, namely,"tertium comparationis"—the universally acknowledged basis of all comparison, and"scientific universality"—the claim of all normal sciences which is believed to bear nothing on the independent being of their objects of study. In opposition to these conventions, we pointed out that"tertium comparationis", subjected to the essentialist failings at the basis of traditional thinking, provides but a seemingly plausible foundation for the representation of Modern Chinese, and could by no means, in final effect, be exempted from an intrinsic arbitrariness. As a result, the representation of Modern Chinese in its modern linguistic discourse deduced through various"tertia comparationis"is characterized by a universalist scientific being rather than its own. Such representation, though not typically"Orientalist", has turned out to be a testimony to Heidegger's observation that in being grasped through its substantial Wesen (being; essence), language could be anything but itself.In the microscopic inquiry, we found that all the dual relations in the fundamental linguistic dichotomies—typically,"sound / concept","phonetics / phonology"and"writing / sound"—must infinitely turn around and consequently collapse. That means, the various "centre / periphery"distinctions in the Modern Chinese linguistic discourse are prone to serious internal subversions. To demonstrate how this could be the case, we pointed out first that sound is actually the only unsuspensible and irreducible phenomenon that all linguistic representations—including divisions, groupings and generalisations at all levels—are ultimately confronted with. Then, we drew upon the phenomenological distinction between Leib (body) and K?rper (corpse) to show how linguistic sound, being represented with an orientation towards K?rper, has gradually retreated from the real"body"of language to its (so-called)"shell". Concerning this, we analysed in detail how phonetics and phonology have joined in (actually initiated, to a large extent) such representation by means of their arithmetic (in phonetics) and algebraic (in phonology) processing of linguistic sound. This also proved helpful to our understanding of what has been going on in the relations between phonetics, phonology and other areas of linguistic study ever since modern linguistics began. Finally, by deconstructing the"signifier / signified"dichotomy in modern linguistics, we highlighted the significance of the Derridean notion of"writing"to the validity of sound. This led us to conclude that Chinese characters and the modern linguistic discourse on Modern Chinese stand in opposition to each other in that both, by nature, are spatial writings of linguistic sound and that neither conforms to the other so long as it attempts to preserve the way it writes.Following the structural analysis of the texts, we tried further to view Modern Chinese linguistic discourse against a larger historical background. As we found out in this part of our inquiry, yinyunxue (traditional Chinese phonology) was closer to modern linguistics than to Chinese characters in the way it approached the Chinese linguistic sound. That means, yinyunxue must have played an important, though largely unnoticed, role in the generation of the modern linguistic image of Modern Chinese—a plausible evidence to Derrida's conjecture that phonocentrism might exist in the Chinese culture without the company of logocentrism. Besides, we also analysed the power of Modern Chinese linguistic discourse with respect to its establishment and its connection to some other discourses. In the light of what we had already found in the structural analysis of the texts, we highly stressed the interactions between the representation of linguistic sound and that of the human body. It turned out that these interactions evolved not only from the rise of the anatomic description of the human body, but from the very import of linguistic sound itself through which a linkage is made between concepts on the one hand and body (as Leib) on the other. In other words, sound is the one incarnation of our body as the ultimately unsuspensible and irreducible origin of meaning in language, and it is precisely for this reason that sound has to be represented with an orientation towards K?rper in modern linguistics. By so doing, linguistics has made it possible for concepts to be"freed"from the always ambiguous body and to remain stable, seizable and presently useful. This explains why the modern linguistic discourse on Modern Chinese used to be highly intertwined with political power and has gradually entered into a fixed modern institution where it coexists with the latter. On the other hand, it also gives us a clue as to how some serious problems and conflicts in the teaching and the actual use of Modern Chinese have been caused.Besides the above findings, our deconstruction of the modern linguistic discourse on Modern Chinese, in its"macroscopic-microscopic"procedure of inquiry, has also led us to the reflection on some more general questions which actually underlie all our discussions. These are:First, what kind of philosophical ideas are working at the basis of modern linguistics which is defined as a modern science? We believe that empiricism and mentalism are the two most important philosophical bases for modern linguistics, and they both fall into the essentialist tradition of Western philosophy. Philosophies of this tradition, drawing on the fundamental distinction between mind and matter and between body and soul as their defining principles, are prone to certain problems which modern existentialist philosophy is trying to resolve.Second, can the contrastive (or comparative, but to be distinguished from historical comparative) method account for the validity of cross-linguistic studies? We believe that so far, no contrastive theory, not even the one proposed by Andrew Chesterman which has received much favorable attention in recent years, has substantially overcome the essentialist failings in traditional Western thinking or, in particular, the paradox of"tertium comparationis"which actually resulted from those failings. That means, the contrastive method, under the present philosophical paradigms that modern linguistics assumes, cannot be as responsible a method for the validity of any linguistic study as LüShuxiang and many other linguists have contended.The third question that runs through the best part of this dissertation concerns the relationship between thinking, language, sound, and writing. As we have mentioned, all the dual relations in such linguistic dichotomies as"sound / concept","phonetics / phonology"and"writing / sound", as we found out, must infinitely turn around and consequently collapse. That means, the various"centre / periphery"distinctions in the Modern Chinese linguistic discourse are superficial and even false if examined from a strict phenomenological perspective. All our discussions about phonetic arithmetic, phonological algbra, Chinese characters and yinyunxue (traditional Chinese linguistics) are actually based upon this point.