Modern Novel Language: Between Power And Freedom

A novel history is also a vivid language history. It isn't only the history of language rhetoric or language style, but also a kind of history of literary mark. It includes the forms and its ethical meanings of the novel's language, that is, the relations among novel and history, politics, culture and other social ideology and so on, and various language power comes from these relations, such as various ideological power, and traditional tendency which comes from literature itself, or the power and influence in the lingual structure constructed by novelists etc. Therefore, the Chinese novel language in the 20th century is the stagger region between power and freedom.From the perspective of ontology, literary language including novel language is the impact to fixing"chess rule"of cognitive language, and the break-through to all sneak regulations of language, it is the language following the calling of people's inherent soul and advancing on the free way. As a kind of symbolic form, the literary language's essence is freedom, that it"should be right", but it's in the comfortless situation, which is"already becoming a fact". Language and man are walking on the way of unlimited possibility from"already becoming a fact"to"being right". Freedom of literary language is found by a succession of constant"rebel"to all power, stipulations, orders, and"rebel to itself"such as instrumental and vassal nature. This kind of subversion makes old norm of language to disappear, and forms new norm by the new language quality. Once the norm established must be disintegrated. Then freedom of literary language is constant constructing and disintegrating, demanded by inherent free nature of language, literature and man.Chinese novel language and freedom in the 20th century are in the pattern of experienced freedom and ideology, not in ontology relations. At the same time, the situation of Chinese literature of the 20th century determines exactly this question is most worth discussing deeply, because it's very difficult to find out the other literature being in so fierce, overall, long ideological power. Therefore it's extremely meaningful to probe into the freedom and power of the Chinese novel language. Neoteric literary improvement and"the May Fourth Colloquial Movement"break classical language system indicating the general spirit and the unity of politic and culture, and emphasize the ethics value of language. So various ideology intervening literature make a certain language mode which occupies the major position have potential power. From the idealistic writing of"the May Fourth Movement", the revolutionary writing in the thirties, to Marxist writing and political writing in forty and fifty times and 17 years after founding the state, value language occupies the leading status in whole Chinese literary. It forms one tight language system, thought pattern, writing mode and fixed corresponding relations in mean and name. The individual style becomes the lonely tower of ivory. Its glory of inherent freedom has illuminated various uncertain and possible relations of novel words and phrases, and is closed in the prison of history as a kind of remote enlightenment. On the other hand, the novel language regards setting up a norm with Europeanized rational logic as the criterion after"the May Fourth Movement". It has shaken off the natural and free state of the traditional literary language. But in the sequel, the novel language must shake off this Europeanized constraint, and get back to the warm native land of national spoken language and dialect. The appearance of"pioneer's literature"marks the beginning of new literary era in middle period of the eighties. The noumenal status of the novel language is generally approved, and"writing novels is writing language" is announced. So the freedom of language is emphasized to an unprecedented stage. But with the arrival of so-called"modern"or"after the modern"and"globalization"times, with more and more generalization in the civilized society day by day, literature undertakes more and more complicated social cultural functions. So its freedom and the freedom of language are unimaginable. This seemingly free state that"pioneer's literature"opens, exactly is the sign of the further collapse of value within whole and global world. It even expands the duplicating function of language greatly, and takes in various power words. Therefore, from"thought"of ideology to"technology"of pioneer's literature, the crisis of the Chinese novel in the 20th century changes a kind of form, but likewise a crisis about"poem", namely the crisis of supreme freedom of language. But we have reasons to believe: Everything is"on the way". The freedom of language is inherent tendency of literature .The writing of novel remains a kind of earnest imagination to the good fortune of the language. No matter it can be realized or not, our expectation and ideal should be: The novel should become Utopia of the language.