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| Influences of Chinese Character Writing on the Way of Thinking |
| Jin Jianren1,2 |
1.Northeast Asia Research Center, Zhejiang Yuexiu University of Foreign Languages, Shaoxing 312000, China
2.Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Zhejiang University Hangzhou 310058, China |
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Abstract The root difference between Chinese and Western thinking modes has usually been attributed to the difference between Chinese and Western languages, i.e. to the difference between Chinese characters and alphabetic words. In fact, the modern Chinese character system is the same as the alphabetic system in that both of them have an established arbitrary relationship between the signifier and the signified. Furthermore, paratactic Chinese has the same function as hypotactic Western languages though they have different structures. That is to say, the languages and their writing systems are not the main causes of the difference between Chinese and Western ways of thinking, and Chinese characters and Chinese language are not the root causes of Modern China’s backwardness and suffering beatings neither.However, it was the way of writing that became the initial condition for the difference between Chinese and Western thinking modes. To be exact, it was the different limitations of writing objects, tools and materials of Chinese and Western languages that caused the difference. In ancient China, writings of intricate shapes of complicated radicals, tortuous strokes and changeable postures on oracle bones and seals were never easy. It was difficult to handle the soft writing brushes and freshly ground ink and even more difficult to write on wooden and bamboo slips. Compared with the Western way of writing in the corresponding period, Western people had already had hard-tipped pens, papyrus and parchment, which could basically meet the needs of writing of their alphabetic scripts. The speed and capacity of ancient Chinese writing, which lagged behind thinking seriously, could only record the results of thinking, but hardly the thinking process and thinking itself. Therefore, what people could see in later generations was mostly aphorisms, which resulted in a fragmentary and abstract-style writing type, and formed a jumping text style full of interpretation indeterminacies. This type of writing strengthened the expressive ways of analogy, example, comparison, symbol, metaphor and fable based on the characteristics of objects, and naturally formed the Chinese thinking mode of intuition, insight, wisdom and integration of everything in the universe, which was completely different from the Western thinking mode based on concepts, definitions, reasoning and deduction. The limitations of writing conditions thus discouraged Chinese people from formal thinking, analytical thinking, and mechanical thinking, but encouraged them to adopt dialectical thinking, holistic thinking, and organic thinking.The emergence and gradual popularization of paper broke off the restriction of heavy bamboo slips and precious silk as the materials of writing, and as a result China began to surpass the West in the way of writing. But why there had been few professional, logical and systematic works in China as it was in the Western countries until the end of the Qing Dynasty? This is because the way of writing is only one of the necessary conditions for shaping the way of thinking and cannot constitute its necessary and sufficient condition. Other important factors like social politics, history and culture are also involved in the necessary conditions. Since modern times, increasingly frequent exchanges between China and the Western countries have affected the use of Chinese characters and the development of Chinese language itself, and have been interacting with the Chinese way of thinking. After absorbing some grammar and expressions of Western languages, modern Chinese has now become an international language, which in principle can be translated into any foreign language and vice versa, i. e. it is easy to use any language to express Chinese thinking. A language is not a stereotyped product, but a kind of activity and a living organism. It not only presupposes people’s living conditions, helps or limits people’s understanding and grasp of the world, but also changes itself to adapt to and meet people’s needs. The different effects of different language characteristics on thinking mainly occur in people’s subconsciousness. Once people know the strengths and weaknesses of their own language, it will inevitably lead them to change their language, which in turn will bring about changes of their ways of thinking. To explore the initial causes of the differences between Chinese and Western ways of thinking can restore the innocence of Chinese characters and endow them with the same modern legitimacy as all other languages.
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Received: 21 December 2020
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2021, Vol. 51 
