Keywords in Western Literary Criticism and Contemporary China

Volume 1

Yamin Hu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429826849
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Since the reform and opening up of China in 1978, Western literary criticism has begun to flourish and gain in popularity within the country's academic literature community. These two volumes meticulously select and examine nine of the most influential keywords from Western literary theory while identifying the intricate historical sources of these terms and analyzing their relevance to other disciplines and ideas. The result shows how these words function as heterogeneous cultural contexts in the complexity of experience

but also how they function within the context of Chinese culture as well as Chinese literature and criticism. In this volume, the editors focus on discourse, text, narrative, literariness and irony from the perspectives of etymology, documentation, meanings and other core factors.

Students of literature and languages, and especially Chinese literature, will benefit from this two-volume set.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

1 Discourse

Written by Yuan Ying, translated by Yuan Ying

From the perspective of etymology, “discourse,” in modern English, is derived gradually from “discursus” in Latin, “discours” in old French and “discours” in Middle English (also in the form of “discors”). The Latin word “discursus” is derived from its verb form “discurrere”, which means “moving back and forth”, “running around”, or “going back and forth”. This meaning has been embedded in the English word “discourse” as the language evolves. It can be said that the word “discourse” embraces all the connotations implied by its Indo-European root (“kers”) and its Latin form (“dis-”, meaning “in different directions”; “+currere”, referring to “run”), including “ringlike form”, “back and forth movement” and so on (White, 1987:106). According to the definition in the Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition), “discourse” is often used to refer to “utterance”, “speech”, “talk” and “conversation”. Later it is more frequently used to describe a formal speech or narrative, or an oral or written discussion of a topic of a certain length. Since the second half of the 20th century, “discourse” has become the object of study for linguists, and in “discourse analysis” it refers to “texts or utterances longer than one sentence” that constitute its analysis unit. As a linguistic term, “discourse” contains both the spoken language that is mainly denoted by “utterance” (translated into Chinese as “Yuduan”) in the past and the written language that is denoted by “text” (translated into Chinese as “Yupian”, “Pianzhang” or “Wenben”) (Harris, 1992:66–67).

With the expansion of the research horizon of linguistics and the changes to the concept of theoretical construction of knowledge in a broader sense, discourse has increasingly been going beyond its original disciplinary boundaries, extending to literary criticism, anthropology, psychoanalysis and social psychology, sociology and politics, culture, gender and post-colonial studies. Up to now, the frequent appearance and prominent significance of this term in the field of humanities and social sciences has been the consensus of the academic circle. However, contrary to its increasingly important position, the meanings of “discourse” in various disciplinary contexts remains rather vague and unclear. It seems to have a broader semantic meaning than any other term in literary and cultural theory, but it is the least defined term in many theoretical texts, as if it is already a self-evident concept, a common sense. What matters is its function as a weapon of analysis and criticism, and it is not necessary to trace its origin and past life. Then the questions come to us: Where does “discourse” come from? What are its functions and utility? In what directions does it move and travel? Is there any change or increase in its meanings during this travel, due to difference in time and space? It is the pursuit and exploration of these issues that constitutes the starting point of this chapter questioning a term that has been fully naturalized in its frequent use and re-defamiliarizing and problematizing a term which people are quite familiar with so as to bring it back to history.

Genealogy of “discourse” in Western literary theories

Since the 1960s, it is initially in France that

certain shifts took place in the ways of considering how meanings are constructed. The resulting work on discourses and the questions posed by that work have radical implications not only for the disciplines of the humanities, literary studies and the human sciences, but for all knowledge.

(Macdonell, 1986:1)

The theoretical construction of discourse originated from French structuralism and post-structuralism. The structuralist anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and the linguist Emile Beveniste played an important role in the early theoretical planning of the turn from language to discourse.

The turn from language to discourse

Saussure’s demarcation of langue and parole not only establishes the only real object of linguistic study—the forever “constituted” language structure—but also excludes all factors unrelated to linguistic organization and system. More importantly, it has provided a methodological orientation and scientific innovation for literary studies, anthropology and other fields of the humanities and social sciences in the 20th century, and the linguistic model has increasingly become a paradigm of scientific research. However, does langue always take precedence over any specific individual utterance? Is language really irrelevant to human subjects and their intentions? Can people really turn a blind eye to all the social and cultural factors that play an active role in actual discourse? The exploration of these questions makes it possible for us to question and transcend Saussure’s structural view of language. Claude Lévi-Strauss found in the study of mythology that there exists a third level beyond the binary opposition of langue and parole, and analyzed the constituent units of mythology as discourse. Emile Benveniste turned from the abstract and systematic language world to the vivid and realistic discourse world, and devoted himself to discussion of the way of discourse realization, the meanings of discourse and the subject, which exerted an important influence on the school of French discourse analysis.

The third level beyond langue and parole: Claude Lévi-Strauss’s study of mythology

Structural anthropologist Lévi-Strauss applies the method of structural linguistics to the study of anthropology and mythology. He discovers the third level of language beyond the binary opposition of langue and parole, and analyzes the constituent units of myth as discourse, thus developing much of the pioneering research on structural narrative analysis. However, his role “as precursor in the terminological transformation of the term ‘discourse’ into a term which contains within it a complete theoretical programme has been underestimated” (Frank, 1992:100).

In his essay The Structural Study of Myth, Lévi-Strauss focusses his attention on the relationship between myth and language. He points out that myth is language, and it must be narrated if it is to be known by people; myth is a part of human speech. However, due to the particularity of myth itself, myth and language are both similar to and different from each other. In order to explain this relationship between “similarity and difference”, Lévi-Strauss uses Saussure’s differentiation of langue and parole, structure and individual events in the temporal dimension, as a reference with which to investigate the unique temporal feature of myth. Saussure believes that language is reversible in time, while parole has an irreversible linear time. On this basis, Lévi-Strauss finds that myth has a third time dimension, that is, it combines the two temporal characteristics of language and parole. On the one hand, myth always points to events that happened in the past and are told by people, with the linear temporal characteristics of “parole”. On the other hand, events that happened in the distant past are told in the present and will be repeated in the future, so they are simultaneously related to the past, the present and the future, moving back and forth in time, and can thus be taken as a “structure” with reversible temporality. Therefore, mythological time has special dual nature: both irreversible and reversible, diachronic and synchronic. This double structure, both historical and ahistorical, explains why myth,

while pertaining to the realm of parole and calling for an explanation as such, as well as to that of langue in which it is expressed, can also be an absolute entity on a third level which, though it remains linguistic by nature, is nevertheless distinct form the other two.

(Lévi-Strauss, 1963:210)

The third level of language involves the level of discourse, which transcends Saussure’s dualism of langue and parole. Though myths can be regarded as “effectively linguistic forms (and are as such likely to be encompassed by the concept of language), they are still events at the level of parole: they arise out of discourse” (Frank, 1992:101).

Lévi-Strauss further clarifies that myth, as mode of discourse, is a speech act operating at a very high level which has special properties and more complex characteristics. From the perspective of constituent units, the constituent units of mythology are different from phonemes, morphemes and semantemes in language structures because of their higher level of complexity. Lévi-Strauss called them “gross constituent units or mythemes”, and identification and separation of these “mythemes” can only be carried out at the sentence level. In his analysis of myths, Lévi-Strauss broke them down into the shortest possible sentences, identified the same “mythemes” and ordered them with numbers (See Howarth, 2000:23–26). In this process, he found that “the true constituent units of a myth are not the isolated relations but bundles of such relations, and it is only as bundles that these relations can be put to use and combined so as to produce a meaning” (Lévi-Strauss, 1963:211). Thus myth always contains all its different narratives, and like the score of an orchestra, it always operates simultaneously on both diachronic and synchronic axes.

Lévi-Strauss’s insights in the study of mythology, namely the third level of language beyond langue and parole, and the introduction of “mythemes” as mythological constituent units, make the structural analysis of “discourse” possible. Saussure’s structural linguistics can thus be extended to discourse analysis at a broader symbolic level. In this sense, it can be said that Lévi-Strauss is the precursor to a clear concept of “discourse” in the field of humanities and social sciences (Howarth, 2000:32). Myth as discourse and its unique “gross constituent units” urge Roland Barthes to advocate establishing a new form of linguistics based on discourse studies: Namely “the linguistics of discourse”. He points out that as the research object of this new form of linguistics, discourse has its own constituent units, “its rules, its ‘grammar’; going beyond the sentence and yet composed uniquely of sentences” (Frank, 1992:103–104). It should be noted, however, that Lévi-Strauss failed to develop an in-depth theoretical exposition at the third level of language beyond langue and parole. In addition, the concept of “discourse” is limited to oral, written or spoken language, which fails to fully reveal the practical and contextual dimensions of discourse analysis (See Howarth, 2000:34).

Turn to discourse: Emile Benveniste’s discourse theory

French structural linguist Emile Benveniste pointed out the limitations of structural linguistics and revealed the important category that Saussure neglected—discourse—thus launching the turn to discourse from language (See Zhou Xian, 2008:10; Eagleton, 1996:100). In his definition and theoretical interpretation of discourse, the core concepts of discourse, statement and subjectivity run through the whole process and constitute his pioneering ideological system of discourse.

Saussure divides language into basic units, such as phonemes, morphemes and words. Benveniste finds that the principles of structural linguistics only apply to these levels: Once they reach a level higher than words, namely, the sentence level, they do not work, and the strictness and universality of scientific paradigms will be questioned. Benveniste explains that sentence is a dividing line which leads to a new field. “We leave Saussure’s language system at the sentence level and enter the world of discourse” (Zhao Yifan, 2006:255). Different worlds of language and discourse produce two different kinds of linguistics in the face of the same reality. The former is the combination of formal symbols into structures and systems following strict procedures, and the latter is “the manifestation of language in fresh and vivid communication” (Benveniste, 2008:197). The unit of discourse is sentence, which is a complete unit with two attributes of meaning and reference. Only when referring to a specific situation can communication proceed smoothly.

Benveniste then makes a distinction between histoire and discours. According to Glyn Williams, it is this famous distinction that clearly illustrates his unique views of discourse (William, 1999:30–31). In his opinion, histoire is a third-person account of events that happened in the past, and the speaker does not intervene in this process; the meaning of discours, however, should be grasped in the broadest sense, and there is a presupposition of a speaker and a recipient, the former of whom intends to influence the latter in a certain way. Histoire is mostly limited to written language, while discours includes both oral discourse and written works imitating oral discourse.

Since discourse involves the subject of speech and writing, it highlights the subjectivity of language and discourse. Different from the definition of phenomenology and psychology, “subjectivity,” as discussed by Benveniste, refers to “the embodiment of a basic feature of language on human body” (Benveniste, 2008:293). Only in language and by means of language can people establish their own subjective identity, and the use of language constitutes the basis of subjectivity. Benveniste employs “the ‘self’ of speech is the ‘self’ of existence” to sum up the essence of subjectivity, which contains two meanings: “the first is the speech itself, and the second is the commitment of such a speech act” (Wang Lunyue, 2008:358). The experience of subjectification is closely related to the experience of its language form. On the one hand, the subject can only live by and in speech activities; on the other hand, each speaker calls himself “I” while taking himself as the subject, and “I” presupposes the existence of another person: Namely “you”. This polarite of person forms the basic condition of speech activities. Therefore, speech activities are made possible only when the speaker confirms himself as the subject. Benveniste further discusses the relationship between language, speech and subjectivity. “Language makes subjectivity possible because it always contains the language form suitable for the expression of subjectivity, while discourse triggers the emergence of subjectivity because it is composed of discrete time positions” (Benveniste, 2008:297). In discourse, the speaker defines himself as “I” and the person he is addressing as “you”, thus forming the coordinates that define the subject. In such interactive communication between “you” and “I”, the two are complementary, indispensable and interchangeable with each other, and “discourse” refers to “the language undertaken by the speaker under the condition of intersubjectivity, and only under such condition can linguistic communication become possible” (Benveniste, 2008:301).

Benveniste’s descriptions of the discourse world, his distinction between histoire and discours, and his discussions on the subjectivity of discourse indicate that he changes his position from the abstract language structure and rules under Saussure’s tradition to the language communication undertaken by the speaking subject. The turn to discourse means the establishment of new research objects and leads to the discussions of new theories and methods. Here, it is discourse, not language, that occupies the central position, so Benveniste is called the founder of “discourse linguistics”. Paul Ricoeur points out that the transition from linguistic or symbolic linguistics to discourse linguistics has essential significance. “Whereas structural linguistics simply places speech and use in parentheses, the theory of discourse removes the parentheses and proclaims the existence of two linguistics resting upon different principles”(Ricoeur, 2016:95). In addition, the return of the absent subject and the attention to discourse indicate the departure from structuralism. In this sense, Benveniste’s theoretical contribution to post-structuralism has so far not been widely recognized (William, 1999:175). In fact, the shif...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Discourse
• 2 Text
• 3 Narrative
• 4 Literariness
• 5 Irony
• Afterword
• Index