Exploring the Language–Image Relation from the Perspective of Cognitive Semiotics

I.

Since the turn of the new century, the relation between literature and image has become a hot topic. Zhao Xianzhang’s edited A History of the Relation between Chinese Literature and Image and A Concise History of Chinese Literary Images, and his monograph On Literary Images, are landmark results. In the introduction to On Literary Images, Zhao Xianzhang says: “For the theory of literary images, semiotics is not only a method but at the same time an object of study.”

Human perception and sensation of any information are not confined to the sense organs; behind them there lies an extremely important “encoding.” Incoming information can be brought within the range of human perception and sensation, and grasped, only after being encoded—and what undertakes the work of encoding is the “sign.” The sign is the medium by which human and world establish a relation. By making a deep study of the nature and modes of operation of the various types of signs, therefore, the inner mechanism of the language–image relation can be revealed.

Yet the existing semiotics is not adequate to this heavy task. Saussure’s semiotics takes linguistics as its paradigm and is built on dualistic thought and linguistic centrism. In Peirce’s semiotic theory the sign is first regarded as the “representamen,” and the “representamen” must be a perceptible and interpretable form—that is, the “representamen” is first of all an object of consciousness, which already presupposes the dualistic framework. Unlike Saussure and Peirce, Sebeok proposed the “modeling-systems theory,” bringing all organisms into the purview of semiotics, expanding its scope and transcending the limits of consciousness—which gave him the opportunity to break through dualism. But by taking “imitation” as the most basic mode of “modeling,” he had already treated the “imitated thing” as the “representamen” to be interpreted, returning once more to Peirce’s sign “triadic structure” and in the end failing to escape dualism. Likewise, the existing cognitive semiotics has not leapt out of this conceptual cage. Cognitive semiotics intends to shake off dualism, yet it uses “scientific” methods to study the sign-process as an “object,” and the method itself belongs to dualism. The cognitive semiotician Per Aage Brandt points out: “Cognitive research and semiotic research … sound monistic in theory, but are dualistic in practice.” The relation between human and world is extremely complex; to interpret signs or the sign-process confined to a dualistic outlook inevitably obscures the diversity of the nature and modes of operation of signs, and obscures the multidimensionality and compositeness of the human-world relation. We should absorb the wisdom of Chinese culture and remold the research approach of existing semiotics. Here we shall propose a new, “Sinicized” cognitive semiotics.

Following Sebeok’s practice of bringing organisms into modeling-systems theory, we too begin our thinking from organisms that lack the capacity for consciousness. The most basic way an organism relates to the world is behavior. The organism joins itself to the environment through behavior; all the information received by the senses always arouses a corresponding behavioral response, and the mode of behavior is adjusted as the environment and the sensory information change. Behavior establishes a mutually adaptive, unified relation between organism and environment, and in continual repetition forms a structured behavioral pattern that sediments into unconscious experience. This is “behavior modeling.” On one hand, a particular behavioral pattern always corresponds to information received by the senses; on the other, these patterns continually sediment into the organism’s unconscious experience and form instinct. In this process the organism structures the external information received by the senses through behavioral patterns and takes it into its own body—that is, it “encodes” sensory experience with behavioral structures. Or, more precisely, through “behavior modeling” the organism unifies itself with the environment and grasps the environment through this relation. The information obtained by every sense—sight, hearing, smell, touch—is closely linked to the organism’s behavior and structured by behavior modeling. Modern neuroscience has found a close linkage between the sensory nerves and kinesthesia, which confirms this view. For an organism lacking the capacity for consciousness, although the information received by the various senses does not constitute a clear object of sensation, in fact it has already been felt by the organism through behavior modeling, and the organism swiftly makes a corresponding behavioral response; the environment thus becomes the organism’s “biological field” or “life-field.” Once it enjoys the various modes of modeling, the organism need not carry out actual behavior, but can grasp the external world by means of the modeling modes.

This mode of modeling is shared by all organisms, and humanity has inherited this instinct. Behavior modeling is humanity’s most primitive mode of modeling; the relational model it establishes can only be the “non-objective relation” in which human and world fuse into one, and it sediments into unconscious experience—this way of grasping the world is sensation, lived experience, and intuition. Zhuangzi recounts a series of parables such as “the cook carving the ox,” expounding again and again the same truth: each of them internalizes a particular behavioral pattern (skill) into instinct, and must enter the unconscious state in which “the faculties of sense stop while the spirit moves as it will” before reaching the realm of “matching Heaven with Heaven,” of embodying and attaining the Dao. Any intervention of the capacity for consciousness would disturb, distort, and repress instinct, splitting the unified relation of human and world into an objective relation and causing the human to lose the possibility of grasping the Dao. Not only skills acquired through later learning can grasp the Dao; all innate instincts do so as well. In fact, of the incoming information the human being receives, only a small part enters consciousness; the rest lies below the threshold of consciousness, yet it has already been received and grasped by the body through behavior modeling. Behavior modeling is therefore the human being’s most primitive way of grasping the world.

What distinguishes the human from other organisms is that the human is conscious—that is, besides establishing a non-objective relation with the world, the human can also remold the non-objective relation into an objective relation. Consciousness is always consciousness of an object. With consciousness there must be an object of consciousness, and the human-world relation splits into an objective relation. How, then, are consciousness and the objective relation generated? To explore the cause and process we should return to the domain of experience, return to behavior-modeling activity, and think it within group relations. The various behaviors (including action, posture, expression, and vocal behavior) jointly respond to external information and adapt to the external environment. Among all these behaviors, only vocal behavior has a dual character: it is bodily behavior, closely related to the body, yet its sound waves can leave the body and propagate. It is precisely this vocal behavior—at once embodied and disembodied, at once psychic and physical—that makes it the best medium for mutual communication within the group. As the group grew, communication became ever more important, and so vocal behavior, originally an “accompaniment” to other behaviors, became the dominant behavior of communicative activity. As noted above, behavior (including vocal behavior) structures the various sensory experiences and sediments them into the unconscious; behavior and vocal behavior therefore always express sensory and unconscious experience. Upright activity and the liberation of the hand brought an explosive growth of experience, and the principles of efficiency and economy demanded by group communication made vocal behavior, with its physical character, the stable carrier onto which the various kinds of unconscious experience are projected and condensed. In this continual projection and condensation of experience, experience is naturally and automatically screened, classified, gathered, and abstracted, thereby forming “intension” and “extension”—and thus the “concept” is born. This is the language of Saussure’s “concept / sound-image.” Language is differentiation. It distinguishes human from world, and distinguishes the myriad things. For the first time the world presents itself as the human being’s object-world, and at the same time consciousness too is born. Precisely because vocal behavior has a dual character and a physical carrier, it can develop into a relatively independent language, distinguish human from world, construct the objective relation, and itself stand out as a perceptible sensuous form. “To be precise, the utterance is two things at once: it is both pure language-play (langage) and the magic word (le mot magique) that opens all doors.” The birth of language is the birth of consciousness (the object of consciousness), and the birth of the human being; the world is at last opened to the human. One may say that the manifold objective relations are, in the end, all constructed by language.

Language constructed a brand-new relation between human and world—an objective relation at once differentiating and relating. The human capacities of perception, cognition, analysis, inference, reflection, and reason rest on this foundation. Language is the ground of the human being’s becoming human. Whereas the non-objective relation between human and world constructed by behavior modeling, being in the shadow of the unconscious, is irretrievably neglected and concealed.

By virtue of its relative independence and objectifying function, language can set up all things as objects and attempt to interpret their meaning, so that the thing becomes a sign. Language can also forcibly split the human being’s behavior off from the body, abstract it out, and attempt to interpret the meaning of the behavior; and because sensory experience has been structured through behavior modeling, the two are closely linked and sediment into unconscious experience. The behavioral pattern is therefore regarded as a sign representing unconscious and sensory experience—regarded as “behavior-language.” But this naming and interpretation carried out by speech-act has in fact already dissolved the unified relation of human, behavior, and world, and split the relation between the interpreter and the interpreted behavior; the meaning obtained by interpretation is bound to be distorted. As Fromm says: “The moment I express something with a word, alienation occurs immediately; the full experience is at once replaced by this word.” Although we are accustomed to naming and interpreting everything with language, and although language seems to clarify experience, in fact it has already distorted the meaning of behavior and obscured experience. Only behavior itself can interpret behavior-language truly and exactly. Only when the interpreter throws himself into it in person, fuses into one with it, takes the interpreted behavior-language as his own behavior, and constructs the lived experience of a non-objective relation, can he truly grasp the meaning of behavior-language. Just as Laozi, well knowing that the “Dao” cannot be spoken, was nonetheless compelled to “force a name upon it” as “Dao,” we too can only reluctantly regard behavior as a “sign” and call it “behavior-language.” Behavior-language is therefore a special “sign,” or “quasi-sign,” with a distinctive mode of interpretation. It is precisely here that we introduce the thought of Laozi and Zhuangzi to remold semiotics.

The other signs are likewise. Before the human being objectifies and interprets a thing through speech-act, it has already grasped the thing through behavior-language (behavior modeling); therefore all other signs must have two interpretants at once: behavior-language and speech-act—the former constructing a non-objective relation to feel and experience, the latter constructing an objective relation to perceive and cognize. The modes of operation of the two are utterly different and incommensurable, and together they constitute a tension field whose relation is in constant flux. Thus we have three types of sign: speech-act, behavior-language, and other signs. Speech-act chiefly constructs the objective relation to perceive, cognize, and state the world; behavior-language constructs the non-objective relation to feel and experience the world; behind the other signs two interpretants coexist, standing in the tension field constituted by the objective and non-objective relations. All signs jointly participate in constructing the human-world relation and in constructing the human world, thereby producing the manifold relations between human and world and the riotously colorful world. Because the other signs are jointly constructed by speech-act and behavior-language and can be interpreted through the coordination of these two, speech-act and behavior-language are the “primary symbolic system,” and the other signs the “secondary symbolic system.” Although human perception, sensation, thinking, and even cultural practice are encoded and shaped by the three types of sign, in the end they can be reduced to speech-act and behavior-language as the primary symbolic system. It is precisely these two that constitute the tension relation, ultimately determining the structure of human perception and sensation, determining the modes of interpretation and thinking, and determining the features of cultural practice. We may therefore also regard the tension structure formed by the primary signs as the human being’s “interpretive structure,” “mental structure,” and even “cultural gene.”

II.

As Arthur Danto says, “interpretation constitutes the artwork.” Only after understanding the various types of sign and their different modes of interpretation are we in a position to discuss in depth the relation between language and image. Language, one may say, is the most refined, most exemplary, and also the most complex symbolic system. Language is a “chameleon”: it is full of “multiple dialogue” (Bakhtin), laden with “infinite overtones and echoes” (Dewey) and “geological strata” (Foucault), and in its different uses it presents wholly different faces. Especially when language becomes the object of interpretation and the focus of attention, its richness, complexity, and compositeness are fully displayed. Austin divided the speech-act into three levels. John Searle interpreted the different modes of discourse produced by different uses, pointing out that fictional discourse is characterized by the suspension of the vertical link between language and reality. We may further interpret the various changes of language.

We divide the discourse-act into three mutually cooperating subtypes—the expressive act, the constructive act, and the referential act—and the referential act in turn includes external reference, internal reference, self-reference, intertextual reference, and the relation of denotation or exemplification. When discourse lays weight on the expressive act, reference correspondingly takes the form of external reference; for instance, news discourse stresses the “five Ws” to highlight discourse’s external reference and strengthen its link to reality, while the constructive act recedes to a secondary position, silently constructing and shaping reality, striving for “discourse adapting to the world” (Searle), so that the words themselves are “seen through” and their meaning “foreshortened” (Gadamer). The literary work, by contrast, lays weight on the constructive act; correspondingly, self-reference, intertextual reference, and internal reference replace external reference, suspending the vertical link between discourse and reality and jointly participating in the construction of what Searle calls the fictional world of discourse. Which type a discourse foregrounds depends mainly on genre features, or on what Jonathan Culler calls “convention” (for example, a story’s opening “Once upon a time …,” the meter and lineation of poetry, and so on). It is precisely genre or convention that cues the reader to adopt a certain reading attitude and that determines the overall structural form the discourse-act displays.

For poetry, the constructive act of discourse occupies the dominant position; correspondingly, self-reference and intertextual reference push the discourse itself to the focus of attention, and the complex dialogic relations of discourse, the overtones, echoes, and geological strata are displayed; together they construct and exhibit what Roman Ingarden calls “polyphonic ensemble”: the sounds contained in language (rhythm, stress, cadence), the complex and changeable connotations of words, metaphor, symbol, and the various rhetorical figures, as well as “intertextuality” (such as allusion) are all brought back to life. Internal reference, for its part, points to the various images and figures the text constructs, prompting them and the various strata to fuse, influence one another, and mutually generate, jointly constructing a “polyphonic harmony” (Ingarden) and creating a literary linguistic world of extremely rich connotation. Kristeva calls this state “a certain network structure of plural quantity.” Speaking of the relation between Chan and the unconscious, Fromm says: “The moment repression is removed, I am in touch with the deepest source of my own life, which means in touch with all humanity. If all repression is removed, there is no longer an unconscious opposed to consciousness; there is only immediate experience.” Because literary discourse constructs an independent world of words distinct from reality—a virtual world in which author and reader live in person—the various repressions of reality lose their force upon them, unconscious experience is released; they not only cast their own unconscious experience into the virtual world, participating in its construction through behavior-language and endowing it with a vigorous breath of life, but also use behavior-language to heal the distance between themselves and the virtual world, gaining firsthand experience. A hidden world is thus suddenly opened, and poetry becomes Heidegger’s poetic “Saying,” becomes “truth setting itself to work.” From this angle, “imagination” is the full activation of the semiotic potential of speech-act and behavior-language, the deep fusion of the two. Imagination opens up the human inner world and is deeply rooted in bodily experience.

The use of language determines its overall structure and thereby influences the generation of meaning. The interpretation of a literary work is extremely complex precisely because the interpreted discourse is itself many-faced, multi-layered, and many-changing, “cunning as a serpent” (Qian Zhongshu); its manifold modes of construction display ever-changing interpretive paths and rich, varied meanings, and the unconscious experience implicit within cannot be stated in language—it breaks the “prison-house of language” (Jameson) and opens onto the infinite. Among these, ancient Chinese poetry is the more distinctive. By comparison, Chinese poetry prizes aesthetic conception (yijing) and pursues reticence and meaning-beyond-words. Its essence lies in stressing, within the tension structure constituted by speech-act and behavior-language, the role of behavior-language. And behavior-language cannot be directly interpreted by speech-act; therefore ancient Chinese poetics rejects logical analysis of poetry and is the more unwilling to construct theoretical systems. In the eyes of the ancient Chinese, poetry and its images are like sound in the air, the moon in water, the image in a mirror—to be apprehended, not set before the eyes. That is, it is at once figure and object, and “great image,” “non-object”—that is, “image–great image”—radically resistant to logical analysis. Evaluation of a work is often likened to the appraisal of persons—that is, to the bearing and spirit displayed by bodily behavior. As for the interpretation of meaning, it stresses that the reader must immerse himself in person, chewing and savoring, so as to apprehend the true import. This mode of interpretation is no weakness, but is founded on the distinctive Chinese understanding of the “Dao” and on the emphasis on the role of behavior-language. Hence even the literary work, as an art of language, is interpreted not by relying on language alone; it too is inseparable from the participation of behavior-language—it is the primary symbolic system, speech-act and behavior-language together constituting the tension structure of interpretation.

Compared with poetry, the reference of fictional discourse leans more toward internal reference. Fiction jointly constructs the fictional world through the constructive act of discourse and internal reference, foregrounding the depiction of characters’ personalities and displaying the conflicts among them, the plot, and the detail. In the very process of narrating characters’ behavior and constructing the fictional world, behavior-language and unconscious experience are aroused, thereby endowing the fictional world with sensuous color and the characters with a living breath of life. It is precisely this feature of fiction that draws the reader to throw himself in, healing the distance between reader and characters and fictional world. Our evaluation of fiction therefore depends both on whether the characterization has individual richness and, more, on the degree to which the characters touch the depths of our unconscious experience and shake our souls. In fact, in the reception and interpretation of fiction the mode of reference is not constant; in different situations it continually shifts. When we are absorbed in the fictional world, internal reference holds the dominant position, participating in constructing the virtual world and focusing our attention on it, drawing us to live in it, to associate with the characters, even directly to become a character. We not only participate in constructing the virtual world but experience the life within it, experiencing the characters’ joys and sorrows and forgetting our own real existence. At that moment behavior-language constructs a non-objective relation between us and the virtual world, and we often grasp the fictional world through this lived experience. When the reading is interrupted or ends, our conscious intention turns again to reality, and external reference in the discourse-act regains dominance; but this reference generally takes the form of what Goodman calls the “exemplification relation”—exemplifying reality through the characters and events, so as to fulfill the function of knowing and critiquing reality, while the unconscious and behavior-language are again repressed. Because the exemplification relation does not refer to some fixed social phenomenon, the critique thereby acquires universal significance. Throughout the interpretive process, the tension relation constituted by speech-act and behavior-language is in continual adjustment, the one waxing as the other wanes, and the relation between human and work is in a marginal, transitional state of continual shifting between objective and non-objective relations.

Unlike traditional fictional fiction, non-fictional fiction wears another face. It often stands in a state where the constructive act of discourse (coordinated with internal reference) and the expressive act (coordinated with external reference) pull against each other, the dominant side continually alternating. Its external reference often takes the form of “denotation,” directly referring to real people and events in actual life, distinct from the “exemplification relation” of fictional fiction. Non-fictional fiction at times draws the reader, with vivid description, to be absorbed in the fictional world, at times sends the reader back to reality to attend to real people and events. The intertextual relation between the fictional world and some particular real-life phenomenon makes the fiction richer and gives the reader a sense of immediacy. As for postmodern metafiction, it stresses the intertextual reference of discourse, so as to refer to and reveal the creative process and ideological features of the original fictional text. In sum, judging from the overall trend in the evolution of fiction’s “interpretive structure,” the speech-act within it grows ever stronger, and the “referential play” of language is increasingly valued—which is precisely the latent reason for the flourishing of the various avant-garde fictions and postmodern metafiction.

III.

As a visual art, painting has its visual signs participate directly in interpretation; we can intuitively grasp certain visual signs, but in the end we still return to the two interpretants of speech-act and behavior-language. Facing an oil painting, for instance, we are in an instant seized by its color, composition, and brushstroke; they move our hearts and shake our bodies, producing in us an indescribable emotion. It is precisely color, composition, and brushstroke that directly trigger our unconscious and behavior-language. “Before the explicit recognition of all the depicted materials, there already exists a total effect. As the painter Delacroix said of this first, pre-analytic stage: ‘Before you know what the picture represents, you are seized by its magical harmony.’ … Although the first shock and the later critical discrimination each have their fully developed rights, we should not forget that what comes first is the immediate, non-rational impression.” This “immediate, non-rational impression” is the fruit of behavior-language’s “encoding,” appealing to our unconscious experience and arousing a response. As for a portrait, the figure’s gaze and expression are most able to attract and move us, and only by fusing into the figure do we seem truly able to understand him. On one hand, people always try to give a determinate interpretation of gaze and expression in language; but, just like the Mona Lisa’s smile, any linguistic interpretation can only carry one away from the true meaning. On the other hand, our behavior-language has already grasped its meaning—only this is a dim sensation—so that we feel the gap between linguistic interpretation and our actual experience and sensation, and discover the imperfection and impotence of linguistic interpretation. Molino says: “Living art springs from the experiential arousal of the body; before the body, through the body, within the body, stances, impulses, and sensations are automatically produced.” The “bodily experience” of which Molino speaks is precisely behavior-language and the unconscious experience it sediments—an experience that can be lived in person only by means of bodily behavior.

This is only one side of interpretation; on the other side, the human longing for vivid sensuous images and determinate meaning always prompts him to do everything possible to bring language to bear on interpretation. Gombrich summed up an important feature of Western representational painting, pointing out: “All art is ‘conceptual.’” Representational painting itself presupposes the dualistic split of subject and object, and requires the painting-subject to bring his pictorial talent fully into play so that the painting can perfectly re-present the object, thereby foregrounding the painted “object,” strengthening “what is painted,” that is, strengthening the “conceptuality” of painting. For “conceptual” art, of course, speech-act is needed to interpret. Although appreciating painting requires intuition and lived experience, requires the activation of behavior-language, we are always accustomed to using speech-act to interpret, hoping to find a clear answer and make a rational judgment. Narrative painting in particular cannot do without speech-act interpretation. To be sure, this interpretation is directed mainly at the content of the painting (“what is painted”) or the form (“how”); whereas the connotation that truly moves the heart and shakes the body cannot be expressed in language and requires behavior-language to experience in person. But without the intervention of speech-act there would be no appearing of the figure as object. Speech-act plays the role of triggering, gathering, and organizing unconscious experience and foregrounding the sensuous figure. Throughout appreciation the interpreter cannot but stand in the tension field constituted by speech-act and behavior-language, always unconsciously using the coordination of the two to interpret—within which behavior-language makes an indispensable, important contribution. To resist the conceptualization of painting, modern Western art sought every means to empty out the content of painting, attempting to bar the invasion of linguistic concepts. Kandinsky’s abstract paintings, Mondrian’s “grids,” and the like, with “what is not painted,” reject the real objects to which concepts refer, eschew any practical purpose, foreground the color and structure of the picture, and express a freedom of inner necessity, so as to arouse the appreciator’s unconscious experience and behavior-language.

Human sensation and feeling are limited not only by the senses themselves but also by the sign’s mode of “encoding” information, and ultimately by the interpretive structure constituted by speech-act and behavior-language. Behind the evolution of painting lies the contest between speech-act and behavior-language. Painting now stresses rational form, now stresses the unconscious, and in this process speech-act often plays an important and even guiding role. Fundamentally, human conscious intention is coordinated with linguistic signification; the essence of conscious intention is linguistic signification. The important impetus to pictorial change is, first of all, a shift in the mode of linguistic signification—for instance, attending to “what is painted,” that is, referring to subject matter, content, and the concept of the painted object; or attending to “how to paint,” that is, referring to the use and organization of such elements as light, color, form, line, structure, brushstroke, and brush-and-ink. Because light, color, line, brushstroke, and brush-and-ink are directly linked to human unconscious experience, when the focus of a painting falls on these elements, painting often strengthens the unconscious, prompting a corresponding adjustment of the tension structure of speech-act and behavior-language behind it.

In the process of selecting and organizing the various elements, painting forms all manner of artistic conventions. These conventions are not rules that language can summarize and state, but norms learned by bodily behavior (behavior-language), to be apprehended and grasped only in the process of artistic practice. The mastery and internalization of conventions form artistic technique. When the painter, on the basis of his own firsthand experience, deliberately alters and reshapes certain conventions and displays a new mode of expression, artistic innovation appears. When this innovation is recognized and accepted by other artists, an artistic school is brewed. And when the painter neither passively accepts the discipline of convention nor merely consciously reforms it, but, while reshaping convention, prunes the complex into the simple, making convention fit human instinct to express deep unconscious experience, returning to human nature and uniting with life, attaining “law without law”—at that moment the painter transcends “skill” and grasps “the Dao.” Like Woodworker Qing carving the bell-stand, he enters the peak state of creation. The painter not only “takes nature as his teacher without” but also “attains the source within his heart,” gaining the wellspring of creativity from the depths of the soul. It is not hard to see, in the history of painting’s evolution, the shift of linguistic signification behind painting, and the consequent adjustment of the tension structure of speech-act and behavior-language, as well as the change in the normativity of pictorial behavior itself.

In Chinese painting, the most typical is the literati ink landscape (shanshui). Landscape painting most fully embodies the spirit of Chinese traditional culture and the “unity of Heaven and humanity” view of nature. “In all landscape painting, what matters most is to grasp the disposition of the mountains and waters. Grasp their disposition: then the mountains attain a posture of embracing rise and fall, as if leaping, as if seated, as if bowing and rising, as if hanging by a foot, so that the nature of the mountain is naturally my nature, the feeling of the mountain my feeling, and the brush does not fall lifeless. The waters attain a posture of winding waves, like silk, like cloud, like galloping, like rage, like a ghost’s face, so that the nature of the water is naturally my nature, the feeling of the water my feeling, and the brush does not fall stiff and dull.” Here, what Tang Zhiqi describes is not what Westerners call “empathy,” but the fusion of human with landscape—the human is the landscape, the landscape is the human. Landscape is not the object of painting but the human being’s space of existence; the human lives within the landscape, fused with it into one, transforming together with it, and from within apprehends the “true import.” Landscape painting fully embodies this pursuit. It does not seek the verisimilitude of imitation but seeks a realm in which one may “dwell here, roam here,” experiencing and apprehending a vivid spirit-resonance (qiyun) and an atmosphere that cleanses the breast. In the picture, peaks loom and vanish, mountain clouds breathe in and out, water and sky merge in light, forests and springs echo, the distant view is veiled in mist—as if present, as if not. This as-if-present-as-if-absent state lies precisely between being and nothing, yang and yin, clarity and chaos, image (form) and great image (the formless), the two together breeding endless transforming aspects. In landscape painting, figures are often sketched in a few strokes of posture, their features unclear—even “the distant figure has no eyes.” That is, the figure in the painting is not an “object” to be looked at and appreciated, but is given a position within the painting and a certain posture, leading one into the painted realm, into the landscape, to experience and savor its supreme scenery in person.

What Chinese painting attends to most is brush-and-ink, and brush-and-ink is itself the extension of bodily behavior, directly linked to the human unconscious—which produces the distinctive individuality of Chinese painting: “counting the blank as black,” “conveying spirit through form,” and the pursuit of “spirit-resonance and life-movement” (qiyun shengdong). The “blank” is not empty nothingness but chaos, the “non-object,” harboring the infinite. Like the “Dao,” “spirit” (shen) and “qi” are both “non-objects.” Only when the human constructs a non-objective relation with nature and with the painting, fully releasing the potential of behavior-language, can he experience and grasp “spirit” and “qi”; and this “spirit” and “qi” cannot be stated in any language—it endows the painting with a vigorous spirit-bearing and a misty atmosphere. In The Great Image Has No Form, Jullien expounds the “non-objectivity” of Chinese landscape painting. Comparing the Western “landscape” (paysage) with the Chinese “mountain-water” (shanshui), he says: “In European semantics, ‘landscape’ is a single term, and its unfolding of the world concerns a perceptual function that projects its viewpoint; whereas ‘mountain–water’ is not confined to stating the relation completely—it equally dissolves every viewpoint directed at it.” Jullien keenly discovered the “non-object” feature of Chinese painting, holding that its viewpoint is neither the Western “stereoscopic perspective” nor the often-mentioned “scattered-point perspective,” but “the dissolution of all viewpoints.” This insight is apt. In Chinese painting it is not that the human is absent but that the subject is absent. The human no longer stands external to the landscape as a subject, depicting the object by stereoscopic or scattered-point perspective, but melts wholly into the landscape, dissolving the objective relation and uniting with natural mountains and waters. When the painter becomes the landscape itself, he has already grasped the landscape and needs no external viewpoint. Any viewpoint is a perspective external to the object, splitting human from nature.

Our way of interpreting painting always stands in the tension field jointly constituted by speech-act and behavior-language, in a marginal, transitional state, producing the continual shifting between objective and non-objective relations, producing an aesthetic community in which “image–great image” coordinate, producing an aesthetic conception of vivid spirit-resonance. Unlike Western painting, which now stresses conceptualization and foregrounds speech-act, now rejects conceptualization and resists speech-act, the two always in a tense opposition, Chinese painting stresses the mutual coordination of speech-act and behavior-language and attends to the importance of behavior-language and the non-objective relation. Jullien discovered this feature and summed it up as “non-objectivity.” This feature of Chinese painting is founded on the thought of “the unity of Heaven and humanity” and on the distinctive understanding of the “Dao.” It is precisely this traditional cultural soil that produced the distinctiveness of ancient Chinese aesthetic thought: Western aesthetics stresses the priority of the two senses of sight and hearing and the importance of “distance” in aesthetic activity, which already presupposes the dualistic split of subject and object and destines the unshakable status of speech-act; whereas ancient Chinese aesthetics often speaks of beauty from the angle of “flavor,” “lingering flavor,” and “savoring,” stressing immersion and chewing in the aesthetic process—and this healing of distance precisely betrays a tendency to attend to behavior-language. Compared with Jullien’s one-sided emphasis on the “non-objectivity” of Chinese painting, Jiang Kongyang’s exposition is more apt. On one hand, Jiang Kongyang stresses the important role of subjectivity in artistic activity. He holds that beauty is the image of freedom, and only when the human gains self-independence and subjectivity can he truly transcend the natural state and gain freedom, and have the capacity to engage in artistic creation and appreciation. On the other hand, he also affirms “de-subjectification.” Whether facing nature or engaging in artistic creation, the painter stands between subjectivity and “de-subjectification”: he must, as a subject, fully exert his initiative and creativity, and yet must abandon the self, abandon subjectivity, merge into nature, await things in emptiness, and be identical with the Great Thoroughfare. Artistic creation and appreciation stand in the marginal, transitional state of continual shifting between subjectivity and “de-subjectification,” between objective and non-objective relations—in the continual change of the tension relation constituted by speech-act and behavior-language, and the continual generation of meaning.

IV.

Whether literature or painting, their interpretation requires the coordinated participation of speech-act and behavior-language. From this interpretive structure, there is commonality and complementarity between literature and painting; the two can communicate, cooperate, and integrate. Moreover, all human sensations—sight, hearing, touch, taste, and so on—can, so long as the structure of the behavior-language (unconscious experience) behind them is identical or similar, mutually convert; this is the ground on which “synesthesia” and “heterogeneous isomorphism” (Arnheim) are formed. Behind sensation, both interpretants of speech-act and behavior-language are simultaneously latent. For the sensations of different senses, the tension relation constituted by these two primary symbolic systems is unbalanced: by comparison, touch and taste are directly aroused by bodily behavior and inseparable from the body, and behind them behavior-language is bound to occupy the dominant position, so they contain more unconscious experience and corporeality. Vision inevitably has a sense of distance and generates the objective relation, which necessarily foregrounds the speech-act interpretant and so contains more rational factors. Hearing, because vocal behavior originally belongs to behavior-language and has a dual character, has an interpretive structure between touch and vision. Only when these interpretive structures—that is, the tension structures constituted by the primary symbolic system—are suitably adjusted can they fuse with one another.

But because the media of language and image differ, there are also marked differences: language, after all, is the condensation and abstraction of experience and cannot, as the image can, restore sensuous concreteness. And speech-act and behavior-language are incommensurable; although the interpretation of an image requires the coordinated participation of speech-act, to interpret an image by speech-act alone is bound to distort, obscure, and abstract its meaning: on one hand, language estranges actual bodily sensation and vitality; on the other, language, with relatively clear semantics, limits the polysemy of the image. Language can only conjecture and track the meaning of a painting by way of “différance,” and cannot capture the painting’s rich connotation. “The relation of language to painting is an infinite relation. It is not that words are imperfect, or that, when confronting the visible, they prove insurmountably inadequate. Neither can be reduced to the other: it is in vain that we say what we see; what we see never resides in what we say.” In interpreting painting, what is more involved is behavior-language’s direct grasp and unified lived experience; the interpretation of painting therefore has a sensuous immediacy. Conversely, interpreting literature by painting likewise has its limits. Although painting enjoys sensuous figurality, it deprives one of the possibility, available to language, of constructing a multi-layered “network structure of plural quantity.”

Unlike painting, because literature takes language as its medium and textual interpretation pushes language to the foreground, the indirectness, complexity, and changeability of language itself are fully displayed, thereby increasing the space and difficulty of interpretation. Relative to painting, the psychic intensity expended in interpreting literature is often greater. This is also why we feel that viewing images seems more direct and easy, and are more willing to view images. The advantage of literature lies precisely in language. Precisely because language generates the objective relation and thereby creates distance between human and thing, human and human, human and language, the human can, in the process of linguistic intercourse, gradually cultivate self-consciousness and subjectivity, cultivate human reason and the free spirit, and most effectively expand the human spiritual space. Although literature too produces an immersive effect, so long as language and the written word exist as a medium, they must constantly impede this immersion, forming an “alienation effect” (Brecht) and leaving a space for thought. Therefore, even though images bring us convenience and enjoyment, literature remains an irreplaceable art form.

The appearance and spread of writing broke the state of balance among the senses. For McLuhan, the various human senses were originally fused with one another; only after the appearance of writing, and especially printed writing, did vision—with its rational character and relative coolness—truly differentiate and become independent from sensory fusion. McLuhan’s view has its reasonableness. The information received by an organism’s different senses must all undergo the structuring of behavior modeling, so the various sensations, having a common foundation, are fused with one another. Only at the generation of human language did language, while differentiating objects of sensation, also gradually clarify the cleavage among the senses. Writing, with its materiality and visibility, further strengthened this cleavage, strengthened vision, and strengthened reason. Compared with oral language, which takes fleeting sound as its carrier, writing has a more stable material carrier, gaining solidity and durability. In particular, writing isolates language from the one who utters it, stripping it away and abstracting it from the context constituted by the utterer’s behavior-language (action, posture, expression, intonation), and fixing it, compelling writing to rely solely on its own signifying function and to strengthen the self-sufficiency and rigor of expression. This almost severs its direct link with the body, granting it stronger independence and reflexivity. Owing to the alienation of writing, the human not only loses face-to-face communication with the utterer and gains distance from the meaning the writing states, expanding the space for thought and freedom, but can also, in repeated reading, continually ponder its import—thus cultivating the human capacity for reflection and judgment. It is precisely in reflection and judgment that human subjectivity and reason are constructed.

In The Second Media Age, Mark Poster analyzed the influence of media on the human. He held that the intellectual tradition of the Enlightenment has deep-rooted origins in print culture. The linear arrangement of sentences, the stability of the written word, the orderly intervals of black-on-white—this spatial materiality of the publication enabled readers to keep their distance from the author and think independently, which promoted the development of individual consciousness. Such an individual could stand outside the various political and religious factors to make independent judgments and construct himself as a subject. McLuhan and Mark Poster both point out that writing effectively promoted the development of human reason. This implies that, in the overall structure of the human primary symbolic system, because writing strengthened the independence of language and gave speech-act a greater advantage, it changed the tension relation between speech-act and behavior-language and promoted the development of subjectivity and reason.

But the degree of development of subjectivity and reason is closely bound up with the form of writing. We have noted that language is constructed by the projection, condensation, and abstraction of unconscious experience. By comparison, Western phonetic writing has greater abstractness. Phonetic writing is itself the carrier of oral language and the record of speech-sound; it is merely a “tool,” existing in dependence on language, with almost no independent value of its own. As a tool, ease of use is its basic requirement, which all the more drives writing to evolve toward abstract, simplified letters. The more abstract and simplified the writing, the further it departs from the body and unconscious experience, and the more language enjoys independence, differentiating capacity, and objectifying capacity—which powerfully advances the human process of subjectification and rationalization. The independence of speech-act and the advantageous position it attains win it greater freedom, enabling it not only continually to expand the spiritual space, to differentiate and interpret natural phenomena, but also reflexively to think the human being itself, to reflect on the rationality of human behavior, and to reflect on language itself. It is precisely in this self-reflection on language that, for the sake of the precision and normativity of linguistic expression, rigorous logic and grammar are formed, later producing numerous linguistic theories and even a philosophy of language. At the same time, the limited number of abstract letters, lacking independent value, are almost “transparent,” hard to become a focus of attention, and lack the ever-changing scripts of the Chinese character, unable to constitute an aesthetic object expressing complex feeling. Phonetic culture can hardly escape rational centrism, linguistic centrism, and phonocentrism; even Derrida’s attempt to invert the relation of speech-sound and writing cannot in fact shake the status of speech-sound.

Chinese, as a pictographic script, has its own distinctiveness. “In olden times Cangjie, seeing the tracks of birds and beasts, made forms according to kind and created written signs, whence the ‘six categories of characters’ arose and the ‘eight scripts’ began.” As a pictographic script, the Chinese character has greater sensuous intuitiveness than Western phonetic writing. One may say that “pictography” refers chiefly not to the imitation of a static object-image but, more, to the imitation of dynamic action and posture—that is, to the imitation of behavior-language—and therefore enjoys a more marked “embodiment” and is entangled with unconscious experience. As a pictographic script, it evolved from images; at first it was not born as the phonetic symbol and carrier of oral language, but only later merged with oral language and was demoted to its carrier—yet it was never a mere appendage of oral language. A fissure always existed between the two, producing the cleavage between the writing-dominated “literary language” (wenyan) and the speech-dominated “spoken language,” so that Chinese long had a great disjunction between “script” (wen) and “speech” (yan), and written script always enjoyed its own independent value. On Xu Shen’s “Postface” to the Shuowen Jiezi, Lu Zongda explains: “‘Wen’ and ‘zi’ are two developmental stages of the Chinese character; that is, the Chinese character underwent a historical process of transition from pictographic signs to phonographic signs. ‘Making forms according to kind’ depicts the form and state of external things. ‘Form and sound augmenting each other’ is the radical plus the phonetic—that is, the development from pictographic writing to phonographic writing.” “Pictographs,” of course, need no further comment. Even “phono-semantic” characters differ from phonetic writing, for they are merely a borrowed “phonetic indication,” not a straightforward “pronunciation,” and still cannot fully heal the fissure between written script and spoken language. Written script always preserves sensuous concreteness and holds fast to its own independent value, providing favorable conditions for written script to gain an independent artistic identity. Equally important: the difficulty of using a pictographic script long confined it to a small number of privileged persons, shutting the great majority out of writing, which seriously affected the rationalization of the populace. At the same time, the privileged also needed to strengthen the mystery and sanctity of writing in order to manifest their own sacred, authoritative status; so that even for them writing still had a mysterious, sacred character, impeding the unity of “script” and “speech.” This also made it hard for them themselves thoroughly to transcend poetic thinking (Vico) and move toward rationalization. This script, relatively close to behavior-language, destined behavior-language to a strong position in the tension structure of the primary symbolic system—and this is the very root of the distinctiveness of the structure of sensation, the structure of thinking, and culture.

But in the pre-Qin period, the various schools of thought did not lack rational reflection on language; the Daoists and the School of Names made profound speculation about it. In the Wei–Jin period people reflected on language and script in every dimension: Mystery Learning made fairly deep philosophical speculation on language, with Wang Bi an important figure; the successively appearing “rhyme books” and Shen Yue’s “four tones” carried out detailed inquiry into phonology; and written script too received unprecedented attention, with many treatises on calligraphy appearing, the status of calligraphy seeming to rival that of the literary essay. It passed through Qin seal script and Han clerical script, evolving into regular, running, and cursive scripts; in the Wei–Jin period Zhong Yao, Wang Xizhi, and Wang Xianzhi had already become famous calligraphers. Although, compared with painting, writing is an abstraction, it is the flowing transformation of lines, the direct extension of behavior-language. With the wide use of the brush and paper, written script broke free of the bondage of the tool and the status of carrier, gained its own freedom, and through long evolution gradually formed an endlessly changing technique of brush-and-ink, finally winning artistic self-consciousness and becoming a mature art. Written script no longer aimed merely to express “semantics”; the literati’s gaze turned to the “brush-idea” (biyi) contained in calligraphy itself. “In all calligraphy what is prized is calm and stillness, letting the idea precede the brush and the character come after the mind; before the writing begins, the conception is already formed.” Calligraphy should take the mind-idea as its “general,” commanding the brush-and-ink technique, the structuring of characters and composition, the entering, exiting, bending, and turning. When writing can express “brush-idea” and become “mind-painting,” it is transformed from a practical tool toward aesthetic self-consciousness. “In the Southern Dynasties, the artistic criticism and connoisseurship of calligraphy already flourished—an important mark of calligraphy’s movement toward self-consciousness; the involvement of a great many literati further promoted the maturing of calligraphic technique and the establishment of aesthetic standards.” After calligraphy became a self-conscious aesthetic form, the literati looked back over history, seeking, discovering, and learning the archaic aesthetic import in the various scripts—bronze inscriptions, seal, clerical—and expanding the domain of calligraphic art.

If a fissure still exists between “semantics” and “brush-idea,” then the pictographic character of the Chinese script becomes the bridge between them. Pictographic writing itself attends to the visual representation of written form and to the writing process, naturally developing the “brush-idea” of calligraphy. Just as Western painting moved from realism to abstraction, the calligraphy of abstract meaning bred from pictographic writing likewise has continuity and necessity. Although Mystery Learning exerted an important influence on the inner spirit of calligraphy, vaunting aesthetic individuality and creativity, in the holistic poetic-cultural background philosophical speculation on language could only be a flash in the pan, while the beauty of sound-and-rhyme and the beauty of calligraphy were widely favored, fueling the realms of poetry and art respectively, becoming a magnificent spectacle and further promoting the aesthetic development of culture. Thus calligraphy became an art form unique in all the world, an independent aesthetic phenomenon—this is what Zhao Xianzhang calls the “calligraphic image” (shuxiang). In the “Preface” to the Ballad of Watching the Disciple of Lady Gongsun Perform the Sword Dance, Du Fu speaks of how Zhang Xu, watching Lady Gongsun perform the sword dance, made great progress in cursive script. This shows that calligraphy—especially cursive script, the most embodying of the Chinese artistic spirit—is closely related to dance, itself embodying “flowing, halting” action and posture and expressing a lively life and overflowing feeling. “Calligraphy begins from nature; once nature is established, yin and yang are born; once yin and yang are born, form and momentum emerge … When momentum comes, it cannot be stopped; when momentum departs, it cannot be checked …” Calligraphy is the extension of bodily behavior, a creation that gives free rein to feeling and nature, a “dance of life” embodying the “Dao” of nature—hence the “way of calligraphy” (shudao).

Because the Chinese character serves the double duty of language and image, calligraphy was destined to become a basic skill the ancient Chinese literatus had to possess; when he wrote poetry and rhapsody, he combined poetry-and-rhapsody with calligraphy. Even in copying out another’s poems and rhapsodies, he could, after apprehending their aesthetic conception, wield the brush and splash the ink, achieving the harmony of poetry and calligraphy. As a visual art, the brush-and-ink of calligraphy interpenetrates with painting, which makes calligraphy the bridge fusing poetry and painting. In particular, the common pursuit of aesthetic conception (yijing) by poetry, painting, and calligraphy, and their shared emphasis on meaning-beyond-words, make the three enjoy a similar interpretive structure: within the tension relation constituted by speech-act and behavior-language, foregrounding the status of behavior-language. This lays a common foundation for their mutual interpretation and mutual illumination, fusing them further into a multimodal art form of abundant meaning, lasting flavor, and distinctive character.