将“语言”植根于感官之上——早期汉语文本中目与耳对“名”的揭示

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

本文旨在回应德里达在《论文字学》中对汉语书写的评论。德里达反对所有语言皆遵循一种“日心说”模型这一假说,即言说(于此,[Logos]理性,逻辑,王,父)作为太阳,被书写作为“日蚀”所威胁。他提出如下反问:“在什么情况下文字会威胁这种类比系统的脆弱的、隐秘中心呢?在什么情况下文字会表示善和父亲的黯然无光呢?我们不应停止将文字看作令人惊奇并有损于这个字的光荣的黯然失色状态吗?如果存在某种被遮蔽的必然性,存在着阴影与光线的相关性、文字与言语的相关性,它本身不应该表现为另一种样子吗?”我对此问题的回答是,就中国这个案例而言,德里达并未走错方向,但个中原因并非他所认为的缘由,自先秦时期直至宋朝,无论是在“名”与视觉事物相比中,亦或是“名”与声音的一致性中,我认为,中国早期的文本通常将视觉与听觉作为平行的感官模式。鉴于这一模式,在早期中国的文本中书写与言说也具有平行的地位。从先秦时期到宋代的文本,其关切点俱在于平衡语音与文字。然而由于将“名”与语词相提并论的错误认知,即“名”成为与“语言”相似的术语,它在视听平衡的两边便会没有特定的排布。换言之,早期的中国文本注重与可听项与可见实体之间的平衡,甚至于其“语言学的”关切也不例外。只有当言说被认为是“语词”、“logos”、太阳时,言说的“日蚀”才会发生。由于言语和书写的关系类似于“可听”与“可见”的关系,即无情的平行关系(此言论并未否认对在特定情况下可能发生的平衡倾斜),故德里达对日蚀模型不能作为一个合理模型的推测正确。

This article responds to Derrida's comments about Chinese writing in Of Gram matology.Derrida rejects the assumption that all human language follows a heliocentric model according to which speech(logos[i.e.reason,the Word],king,father)is the sun that is threatened by an eclipse from writing.He asks,“Should one not stop considering writing as the eclipse that comes to surprise and obscure the glory of the word?And if there is some necessity of eclipse,the relationship of shadow and light,of writing and speech,should it not itself appear in a different way?”My answer is that,in the case of China,he is not entirely wrong,but not for reasons of which he was aware.I argue that texts from Early China generally treat sight and sound as parallel sensory modes.For this reason,in early Chinese texts,writing and speech also have a parallel status.A habit of balancing speech and script is evident in texts from the pre-Qin period through to the Song.However,a misunderstanding of the term ming—the assumption that ming resembles a word,or a type with tokens in speech and writing—has rendered it difficult to grasp the auditory alignment of ming(best understood as“name”or“fame”).Were we to assume,incorrectly,that mingis like the term“word,”then ming would seem resemble a term like“language,”which has no particular alignment on either side of an aural/visual balance.I show that ming(and yan,which should be interpreted to mean“speech”rather than“language”)is consistently aural in recurring aural/visual contrasts.In other words,early Chinese texts concerned themselves with balancing a variety of audible items with a number of visible entities,and their“linguistic”concerns were no exception.An eclipse of speech can only occur if speech is thought of as“the Word,”logos,the sun.Because the relationship of speech and writing resembles that of audible and visible,and because the audible and visible are relentlessly parallel(which is not to deny that one or the side might tip the balance in any given circumstance),Derrida was correct to speculate that an eclipse of the sun might not be an apt model.