Grounding "Language" in the Senses: What the Eyes and Ears Reveal about Ming å’“ (Names) in Early Chinese Texts

Scholarship on early Chinese theories of " language " regularly treats the term ming 名 (name) as the equivalent of " word. " But there is a significant difference between a " word " and a " name. " 1 Moreover, while a " word " is often understood to mean a unit of language that is identifiable in its sameness across speech and writing, there is reason to believe that a ming was mainly used to mean a unit of meaningful sound. 2 Analyzing the function of ming is a prerequisite for understanding early Chinese theories of " language " —if such a term is even appropriate. Such an analysis will also clarify early Chinese views of the relation of speech to a nonalphabetic script. 3 I place " language " in quotation marks because notions of language are historically constructed and variably defined. Before the Common Era, Chinese people would perhaps have possessed a general concept of " speech " in addition to a concept of " Chinese speech. " But until their encounters with other cultures made familiarity with other scripts commonplace, there is little reason to suspect they operated with a similarly general concept of " writing. " 4 Thus, early Chinese attitudes about speech, writing, and " language " might be distinct enough to merit attention. It has been many decades since the publication of Jacques Derrida's Of Gram-matology, with its much debated references to Chinese " ideograms. " Derrida makes two controversial comments about Chinese writing. First, he challenges the assumption that writing has a historical telos in which phonetic writing is the normal " outcome. " And second, although he mocks the idea of a graph having a " symbolic " relationship to a " reality singular and unique like itself, " he seems to speculate without irony about Chinese writing as a " movement of civilization outside all logocen-trism. " 5 Derrida asks whether every language must involve a " heliocentric " model of speech and writing. He observes that privileging speech over writing (as in privileg-ing meaning over words or reality over appearance) portrays the latter as a surrogate that serves to indicate the superior status of the former. And he deplores the fact that writing always seems posed as such an " eclipse " of a direct experience of speech. In this way, Derrida encourages rethinking " language " at …