A Comparative Study Of Cultural Activities Of Language In The Wei, Jin And Six Dynasties And The Later Roman Empire

During the Wei, Jin and Six Dynasties in China and the Later Roman Empire in the West, roughly between the2nd and6th century, great changes took place in ideological cultures. Traditional thoughts transformed; new ones grew and prospered; different ideological cultures communicated, conflicted and integrated together to form a new pattern. This historic period of cultural development certainly affected language development, especially language activities related to ideological cultures. Hence, this dissertation will concentrate on the contents, forms and relevant views of this cultural activities of language.To study cultural activities of language,"the classic" can be adopted as the key, for classics are the combination of ideological cultures and languages. The ideological cultures refer to three players in China:Confucianism, the Metaphysics in the Wei and Jin Dynasties (or Daoism), and Buddhism; in the West, refer to Christianity and minor roles such as Hebrew, Greek and Roman cultures. For language, the literature system of classics consists of the main body and its varieties, through which all kinds of cultural activities are carried. These activities can be examined according to an ideological culture’s lifecycle, because the culture may have different tasks in different stages, different ways of language application, and different influences on language. Therefore, according to the five stages from inheritance, development, dissemination, conflict to integration, five linguistic activities of classics are studied, i.e. annotation, interpretation, translation, argument, and establishment of new language pattern. To offer a panorama of cultural influences on language, a holistic-corresponding comparison between Chinese and Western background, practice and theories can help revealing the parallel motivations of ideological cultures to language activities and relevant linguistic views.To be specific, this dissertation consists of seven chapters. Chapter1is an introduction to account for the research background, methodology, thinking, detailed contents, literature review, key words’definitions and supplementary explanations.Chapter2studies annotation, which is viewed by cultural development to show how new ideological culture promoted annotation practices and philology. For Buddhism, its sutra annotation enriched China’s traditions and exported new skills such as paragraph analysis ("Ke-Pan"). In the West, the maintenance of literal interpretation helped improve Christian literacy and enhance the accumulation and development of Christian learnings. Section Two studies Confucian hermeneutics, which learned from Buddhist strong points and developed a new model of annotation ("Yi-Shu"). While in Rome, the focus transfer of hermeneutics towards Christian scriptures gave birth to a Christian hermeneutics and laid the foundation of Christian learnings. The study of language for classics also led to philology, so Section Three deals with traditional Chinese philology and Grammaticus in the West. These two studies aimed at classics reading and interpretation; hereby their development of linguistic practice and theory was also stimulated by ideological culture development.Chapter3focuses on interpretation, or exegesis. It describes how interpretation and development of language were influenced by culture. Compared with annotation, exegesis pays more attention to meanings beyond language, and it can influence language in three aspects:exegesis activities, which is the exploration to language and thought; views of exegesis, which is the philosophical thinking of language; and affluent materials of exegesis, which show the linguistic features of exegesis. For the first aspect, a general picture of the common features of exegesis in China and the West is depicted; for the second, the discussion focus on the representative similarities of Wang Bi’s "Catching the meaning while forgetting the words" and Origen’s allegorical interpretation; for the third, Wang and Origen’s linguistic features of exegesis are studied according to hermeneutic theory. Chapter4aims for translation. As the main stimulus of religion diffusion, translation can supplement and promote annotation and interpretation each other. The first section talks about scriptural version studies of Dao’an and Origen. Their compilation and comparison of different versions fostered the breakthrough in translation practice and theory, so this work could be regarded as the germination of translation studies. Further investigated are the translation views of theorists such as Dao’an and Augustine. Their source-version-oriented view and preference for free translation are analyzed respectively. As for the translation views of practitioners, Kumarajiva and Jerome were target-version-oriented. An extensive comparison of the two may reveal that their translation accommodated guest culture to host culture so as to comply with the requirements of religious diffusion and cultural integration.Chapter5talks about discourse, or treatise, which is the linguistic representation of cultural dialogue and conflict. In the first section, the similar contents and forms of Chinese and Western treatise in this period are described. The other two sections deal with two topics:apology and doctrine. For apology, Hui’yuan and Tertullian are taken as examples to illustrate linguistic similarities of treatise between Buddhism and Christianity. For doctrine, the linguistic similarities of Chinese treatise affected by Buddhism and Latin by Christianity are expounded. This chapter intends to show how cultures were integrated by way of linguistic activities, and how languages were developed in virtue of ideological cultures.Chapter6mainly deals with the establishment of culture and formation of new language pattern. As the cream and main part of language, as well as major component of ideological culture system, literature’s configuration represented the status of ideological cultures’development. Besides cultural integration, there were cultural conflicts, which could be represented in the linguistic controversy between elegant and simplicity in sutra’s and Biblical translations. Through the controversy, understanding of language was promoted and a basic consensus on language culture was reached; thus, the language foundation of new culture pattern was established. Finally, the linguistic views of Liu Xie and Augustine are analyzed and compared in terms of linguistic nature, morality, rhetoric and varieties. These four aspects in nature were classics-oriented.Chapter7is a summary, review and prospect. It further explains the significances of this dissertation in practice and theory.