Ideographic Myth: Interpreting Chinese Characters

Keywords: Ideographic Myth, Chinese characters,

interpretation, Victor Mair, Lawrence J. Howell

Adherence to principles underpinning the Critique of the Ideographic Myth has a

deleterious effect on interpreting Chinese characters.

Consider what we may observe in this exchange between Victor Mair and Professor

Wolfgang Behr of the University of Zurich (from a Language Log post of Mair's

dated 7 January 2009).

Mair: “... the earliest form of 年 depicts a man carrying a bundle of crops on his back

(the original meaning of the graph was 'harvest').”

Behr: “(W)hile it is true that the character for nian2 年 'year' in oracle bone writing is

composed from ren2 人 'man' below he2 禾 'panicle, millet, crop', I doubt that the

primary role of 'man' was semantic in this case: ren2 < Old Chinese *nin is simply

phonophoric in nian2 < OC *nnin (reconstructions according to the Baxter-Sagart

system).”

Mair: “The current trend in studies of the construction of Chinese characters is that

there are essentially no pure ideograms, or — if there are any ideograms — they are

exceedingly rare. Scholars who subscribe to this point of view include Peter Alexis

Boodberg, the late and much lamented John DeFrancis, William Boltz, J. Marshall

Unger, and David Prager Branner.”

To make a slight digression, the notable aspect of Mair's response is that Mair does

not address Behr's point. In fact, he isn't addressing Behr at all (not unless Mair

believes that the eminent Wolfgang Behr stands in need of an update on trends in

studies of the construction of Chinese characters). Instead, Mair goes off on a tangent

to pitch the Critique of the Ideographic Myth to the general readership.

There are several ways to interpret this refusal to engage: 1) Mair thinks Behr's

suggestion is best ignored. 2) Mair likes to talk but not listen. 3) Mair subordinates

constructive dialogue to other considerations.

I'm not in a position to speak to 1) or 2), but 3) certainly applies. There can be no

constructive dialogue when proponents of the Critique engage in personal attacks and

misrepresent other scholars' positions, much less when they demonize unnamed

opponents for spreading “pernicious lies.”

To return to the topic, the theme is the detrimental effect of adherence to the Critique

with respect to interpretations of the Chinese characters. Let me reprise what we

learned in my response to Mair.

First, while Mair acknowledges that approximately 85% of Chinese characters offer

hints about their pronunciations or meanings, he insists these are “vague and

imprecise hints only.” I countered with a number of examples suggesting that, with

respect to meanings, these hints are anything but hazy: they are distinct and

consistent.

Second, on the subject of 方 as what Mair denotes a “radical” (preferable terms here

are “classifier” or “header”), Mair makes the unbelievably rudimentary mistake of

confusing 方 with a completely different character, 㫃. Ironically, given the attention

Critique adherents place on the phonetic aspect of the characters, this error could

easily have been averted had Mair paid adequate attention to the respective

pronunciations of 方, 㫃 and the characters listed under the classifier 方.

Third, Mair writes, “In a couple of these characters where páng 旁 is the

phonophore, one may with effort detect the secondary semantic notion of "side", but

the overall meaning is more often than not vaguely related to the various radicals

under which these characters fall.” However, as I indicated, it is already a mistake to

be looking for the semantic notion “side” in characters such as 坊 芳防昉房放紡

or 訪: the common link is the concept “spread right and left.” With respect to

characters with the element 旁 ( 傍滂搒徬榜牓膀 etc.), the common link is the

concept “both sides” (not simply “side”).

Because one meaning of 方 is “side” while the conceptual function of 旁 in

compound characters is “both sides,” the distinction may not be entirely clear. A half-

dozen additional examples of character formation will help. (Note that present

meanings of the characters are often associated or extended senses of the original

ones.)

干 Forked stick or thick bar pressed against a combatant → 幵 Grind the tops of

aligned pieces of wood to make them even/level → 栞Align wooden pathmarkers

along the ground

行 Straight, crossing roads → 衍Water crossing over/transgressing the banks

of a straight waterway and flooding surrounding lands → 愆 Transgress; err

臣 Blade adhering to the eye it is gouging out → 臥 Lie face down, adhering

to the ground/bedding below → 監 Lie face down to observe one's reflection in a

bowl of water → 覽/ 覧 Transfer one's vision from high to low → 攬 Take hold of

objects and transfer them from a higher place to a lower one

丨 Curved line penetrating from top to bottom → 尹 Ruler who brings heaven

(top) and earth (bottom) into harmony → 君 Ruler whose commands impose

harmony on a group → 群 Flock of sheep

口 Rounded cavity (of the mouth) → 谷 Cavity (of a valley); empty space → 容

Empty building into which voluminous goods are placed → 溶Melt/dissolve

voluminous objects in liquid

云 Vapors rising from a heat source → 雲 (Vapor-filled) cloud → 曇 The sun

obscured by dense cloud cover → 壜 Dense, earthen container

To summarize this point, Mair would have us look for the semantic notion of “side”

running through 方 and 旁 to 傍滂搒徬榜牓膀 etc. However, as the additional

examples above demonstrate, conceptual influences must be sought directly, not at a

remove. To focus on the final example, the “vapors” influence of 云 is key to

understanding 雲, but drops before reaching 曇 (dense cloud cover), which in turn

influences 壜 (dense container), by which time “vapors” is nowhere to be seen.

Fourth, Mair claims that “In the final analysis, one must still rely on brute

memorization to master the sounds and the meanings of the characters, though in

some cases the radical may provide a slightly useful jog to the memory in recalling

roughly what the character means.” On the contrary, once we understand the function

of a character's phononoemaphore (the sound/concept-bearing element of a

character), we find it is often highly suggestive of a character's meaning. However,

the notion of concepts pervading the characters is something the adherents of the

Critique of the Ideographic Myth cannot acknowledge, for the Critique would

collapse immediately. And that is why they have so little to offer when it comes to

interpreting Chinese characters.

Lawrence J. Howell

7 April 2012

Adapted from a post originally uploaded to the Kanji Networks Blog