1. The Contemporary Semiotics Movement     

     Based on the currently available literature of semiotic studies we can roughly   include all contemporary semiotic achievements of various kinds into two large   categories: the 'direct'(or professional) and the 'indirect' (or unprofessional).   It is generally accepted that Pierce, Saussure, Jakobson, Hjelmslev, Sebeok,   Greimas, Eco, Lotman and many others belong to the first category. While in   the second category we can not only include a number of representative   scholars who do semiotic researches in their respective concrete fields, but   also a lot of philosophers and other theoreticians who are engaged in   inquiring into sign problems in their own theoretical frameworks. Semiotic   studies are not new things; they have had a long and rich history in the past,   but it is this century which is uniquely characteristic of its unprecedentedly   wider and deeper interest in the problems of sign, signification and   communication. And since the early sixties the contemporary semiotic   movement has developed into a fresh new stage. Only since then semiotic   studies have begun playing an important role in the academic world.   Furthermore, it is just in this new period its historical origins and traces have   been systematically investigated.      

     In its strict sense Pierce and Saussure are called the 'founders' of   contemporary semiotic movement. However in a broad sense many other   parallel efforts had been made by the people in the phenomenological,   analytical and hermeneutical trends during the same period too. For the sake   of thoroughly grasping the impulse and potential of this great intellectual   movement, we should take account of the center and the periphery at the same   time. In addition, the new semiotic movement is not merely a result of the   efforts of those individual pioneers. The cause of the success of semiotics on   the new stage is more complicated than that a semiotic historiography could   explain. In fact, without the new academic ambiance of the sixties the new   movement of semiotic studies could not be formed. Therefore we may safely say   that the current semiotic movement is at least partly due to the general   tendency at the human, social and natural sciences in the sixties. Or in other   words, beside its brilliant historical origins the current semiotics is also the   product of our times which strongly emphasizes the interdisciplinary   perspectives and the theoretical attitude in doing research of any category. Despite the remarkable achievements of semiotics in this century, we still   need to deepen and enlarge our understanding of all problems concerned.   Thus any present effort at a general theory can only be temporary in nature.   Evidently it is easier to be finished if we build up a general framework based on a   special chosen perspective. It means that we would at the same time leave out   many other relevant aspects in our own generalization. But if we try to be   more comprehensive and exhaustive we must unavoidably be involved into a   great number of theoretical nexus and difficulties connected with other   disciplines. In other words, any general theory needs more dialogues with the   related subjects of other fields, particularly those concerning epistemological   problems. Understood this way, we can say the study of general theories of   semiotics must be frequently improved and enriched following the   development of sciences of mankind. Generally speaking, more useful and   reliable achievements have been gained in the fields of the applied and   theoretically applied semiotics, producing a lot of approaches and models of   cultural analysis which have already substantially enhanced the academic level   of our research.       

     We Asian semioticians should also keep another warning in our mind.   Owing to the wide spread of the current semiotic studies all over the world,   people are inclined to include everything in the world of semiotics, therefore   bringing about confusions in the proper academic demarcations. In any case   the interdisciplinary character of semiotics should not lead to the so-called   imperialism of semiotics. In most disciplines of human knowledge there are   some semiotic aspects, that is one thing; while including all other disciplines   into a utopia of the semiotic empire, that is quite another thing. The   privilege of the current semiotic drive doesn't lie in rashly spreading its   territory but in offering reliable methodologies with more explanatory and   interpretative potential. As we said above, the most remarkable contributions   of semiotics are mainly manifested in its various methodological approaches   which can be directly applied into the cultural and intellectual phenomena  in   human societies. In fact its privilege lies in that compared with other   methodologies semiotics is evidently less axiologically committed and thus   more safely applied in descriptions of cultural facts. We will talk more about   the problem later.     

2. Modernization of the Investigations of Traditional Chinese Thoughts     

     Fast Asian civilizations, including China, not only have their long histories   but also show a strong substantial and stylistic unity. After her encounter with   the modern Western world the Chinese civilization has begun a period of   modernization touching on all aspects. But from the very beginning of her   modernization China has undergone an unavoidable tension between her   traditional scholarship and her modern new orientations. In other words,   while keeping her traditional heritage China must at the same time absorb all   useful modern academic achievement of both natural and social sciences.   Generally speaking, modern China has been faced with two parallel and   internally connected tasks: establishment of a number of modern disciplines and the   modernization of the investigations of traditional culture and thoughts. In fact   without the stress of the former the latter cannot be effectively realized. In   the fields of social sciences in the narrow sense we have less difficulty in solving our methodological problems, that is because we had no similar   studies like political science, economics and sociology even in a traditional   term. Therefore the related historical documents can be somewhat   satisfactorily dealt with by dint of he modern approaches. But the situation of   human sciences is quite different. For we indeed have our own traditional   types of the humanities which actually have been the very core of the Chinese   intellectual life for a span of thousands of years. Just in these fields we have   met many serious epistemological and methodological questions when we   have to promote their modernization. And also in these fields our   Western colleagues feel it more difficult to grasp the meanings of   the traditional Chinese intellectual manifestations.      

     Beside the above mentioned cultural and scholarly divergencies of various   kinds between Chinese and Western histories we Chinese scholars working   in these fields have also to consider all related Western discussions   concerning epistemology and methodology in human sciences. That has   already become one of our tasks to build up modern disciplines. Following the   development of comparative studies in various fields many methodological   approaches in the Western human sciences have been applied in treating the   scholarly problems of the traditional Chinese humanities. For the past ten   years even some recently fashionable approaches have been tentatively   applied by the comparative scholars of various Chinese communities such as   analytical philosophy, phenomenology, hermeneutics and others. On the   other hand, in the former time Hegelianism and Kantianism of some types   had been also appealed to. It is no doubt that those Western methodologies   would be useful in modernizing our scholarship, but disharmony always   exists in the intellect encounter between the Western and the Chinese because   at their linguistic and epistemological heterogeneity, although the   terminologies of both sides lack more communicable to each other owing to   their being more connected with the traditional ways of discussions.      

   Compared with those Western philosophy-oriented methodologies, the   semiotic approaches are essentially different in their academic   character and function. As an intellectual tool of description and analysis,   semiotics can be concerned merely with the exact an detailed reformulations   at the static and dynamic, inner and exterior structures of the object   concerned. And the epistemological and axiological implications of the   applied terms and concepts can be minimalized with a purpose to more   objectively disclose the significant and communicative networks of  the object.   Or metaphorically speaking, semiotics can be taken as, at least at some stages   of analysis, a microscopic procedure through which the microcosmic   constructions of cultural phenomena become more clearly known without   creating some additional interpretations upon the observed object. Although   the normal, traditional or common sense aspects of some object must have a   different appearance from their corresponding microscopic ones, nevertheless the   former and the latter should be still homologous in their constructions.  

     Therefore if we apply these procedures into the parallel cultural manifestations   belonging to the different cultural histories, we could probably obtain some   commensurable formulations through the same “Esperanto”—semiotics. In   other words, by dint of these deconstructive and then reconstructive   procedures the formalist and structural redescriptions, the different cultural   phenomena can be represented by a 'universal“ vocabulary and grammar   which will make possible the mutual understanding between the different   cultures.      

     However on the other hand, the frequent warning against the simplest   notion of neutrality of the semiotic methodology makes us aware that semiotic   methodologies should have a reasonable limit. It cannot be a futurist panacea.   We should be conscious of its academic frontier.   Therefore for any research project concerning a total topic we'd better   combine several related approaches to solve our problems on the several   dimensions. In this effort semiotic analysis of some type can be only one step   in the whole process of our project. Keeping these epistemological and   methodological limitations in mind we could more freely apply semiotics in    our cultural investigations.     

3. An Intellectual Bridge Between the Western and the Chinese Mentalities     

      The process of modernization of the investigations of Chinese cultures and   thoughts and that of enhancement of mutual understanding between the   Western and the Chinese cultures are the same one. The possible   contributions of semiotic approaches to cultural communications are   numerous. Here we can only enumerate some examples. The first important   task of the present semiotic studies of China is the reflections on the Chinese   language itself. As we know dearly that Chinese language has quite different   morphological and semantic structures from those of the Western   languages. Regarding the      natural signifier,        for example, differently from   the binary parallelism in the phonetical and alphabetical lexical systems in the   Western languages, the Chinese written units are largely separate from their   corresponding phonetical units. This unique phenomenon considerably   increases the functioning of the written system in Chinese language which   can somewhat independently be applied in signification and communication.   Secondly, because of its pictographic nature the Chinese character can keep   more independently its innate meanings from the contextual determinations.   These characteristics of Chinese linguistic constructions lead to a special   Chinese semantics which is determinative of the character of Chinese cultural   manifestations. Another example is about the traditional rules of construction   of' new words based on the old words. These special ways of constructing   new words have made Chinese characters contain in the individual written   unit the      pictographic,     phonetical and morphological elements at once. The   result is that semantical structures of Chinese characters and character-combinations become very complicated, making this language rich with   amazing connotative potential and associative possibilities. On the other hand,   also because of this structural uniqueness of Chinese characters, the abstract   semes and the concrete semes are variably mixed in the individual units.   Consequently the Chinese linguistic traits strongly influence the traditional   ways of imagination and reasoning of the Chinese mentality. Based on the   above explanations of Chinese language we can point out that some traditional   Chinese philosophical concepts like “tao”, “jen” (kindness), “yi” (justice) and   many others shouldn't be taken as some well-defined notions which could be   universally applied into various contexts. In fact they look more like some   pragmatical operators with heterogeneous implications determined by the   traditional life-form of China.        

     China is an empire of signs and symbols, abounding with numberless   cultural sign systems in her long continuous history. The various cultural   fields of China are the great sources of sign adventures for our modern   people. After the semiotic rearrangement of those sign systems the structures   and significations of the traditional Chinese cultural life could become more   readable and intelligible to both the Chinese and foreign people. In   this sense semiotics can become a convenient bridge of mutual understanding   between the East and the West.    

* The paper was read at the round table “Possibilities of Eastern Asia”, the Fourth

   Congress of International Association of Semiotic Studies, Perpignan, March 1989

   and published in the Proceedings.