Or, what kind of culture do you want to compare? More specifically, I have several papers.
Comparison of Chinese and Western Languages and Cultures
I mainly talk about how the differences between languages lead to the differences between cultures, as well as the inductive and suggestive functions of languages, and emphatically analyze the differences between China culture and foreign culture. First of all, I want to define culture. First, I mean culture in a broad sense, including people, environment, knowledge, scientific and technological achievements and all other distinctive material objects. Second, culture is determined by various factors. I personally think that culture is determined by nine factors, namely, environment, language, science and technology, material desire power, lust power, power desire power, aesthetics, yin and yang, and the choice of everything. Language is just one of them.
Then, how does language and writing play a longitudinal inducing or suggestive role in culture, and it is a restrictive factor in many places? To answer this question, we first face a challenge to the authoritative view of linguistics. The mainstream view in western linguistics holds that the formation of language (including words) is arbitrary and there are few inevitable factors. Calling people "people", "heaven", "men" and "women" are arbitrary and not inevitable. Almost all textbooks take "human beings are arbitrary" as an axiom, which is also considered by western linguists as the basis of linguistics. My personal opinion is just the opposite. I think the emergence of language shows a regularity, that is, language must be produced under the profound influence of specific occasions, specific times and specific factors. Of course, there are also arbitrary factors, arbitrary is relative, and non-arbitrary is relative, but which one is the main factor: in the early days, the inevitable factor is often the main factor, and with the enhancement of people's subjective initiative and subjective consciousness, arbitrary factors are gradually enhanced. The more ancient it is, the less likely it is for human beings to create a kind of writing or language at will. They can only "take things from far and near" and cannot think abstractly like modern people. The creative ability of ancient humans is very simple. For example, hieroglyphics are produced in pictures and characters. If we trace back to the languages and characters all over the world, we will find that they are produced in pictures and characters. The process of writing development shows that the track of human intelligence development is from concrete to abstract. Many things in western languages are borrowed from other cultures and are not directly developed. For example, the language of ancient Greece did not develop from hieroglyphics, but borrowed from the Phoenician writing system, rearranged it according to its own needs and improved it. Therefore, western linguists mistakenly believe that the generation of characters is arbitrary. In fact, Phoenician characters, if traced back, should also be traced back to hieroglyphics and pictographs. Primitive language is just a microcosm of the world in the human brain, which is often ignored by western linguists, thus drawing the conclusion that language is arbitrary. Some people in our country have also put forward unique views. For example, Wang Anshi put forward in 1076 that form and sound conform to the principle of everything in the world: "The suppression, opening, closing and dividing of its sound are vertical, straight, oblique, up and down, inside and outside, left and right, all of which are based on nature and beyond the reach of human private wisdom." People's abilities at that time could only produce languages and characters within their abilities, and it was impossible to produce a complete set of internally related language systems. Therefore, Wang Anshi's views should be taken seriously. He is the first person in the history of China language to put forward the view that language is not arbitrary.
I wrote an article called Homogeneity of Human Language and Culture and Human Cultural Model, and also put forward a linguistic viewpoint called "Interconstruction Linguistics", that is, the mutual construction of the external world and people's own world. Knowing this, we can know how language exerts a subtle and vertical influence on the development direction of culture. So when you go to any country, as long as you look at the language and listen to the sound, you will find that the pronunciation of this language is in line with its overall cultural state and spiritual outlook. Greek, Japanese, English and German have similar mental outlook and language pronunciation.
We try to explain that language is inevitable, which restricts the development of culture, including China culture and western culture. These are sometimes easy to express in spoken English, and a simple word can make the problem clear. For example, in English, you (you), he (he), she (she), we (we) and they (they) don't write much, only one pronoun is capitalized, that is, I (I), because "I" is the most important. The characteristics of English language fully reflect western individualism.
In China, the situation is just the opposite. The same address "I" is not written by China people's congress, but also expressed in other ways: I, my humble servant, and so on. When the emperor claims to be widowed or lonely, he puts himself in a position of disrespect and tries to respect others, which is a kind of mentality to restrain himself. Just the use of a pronoun shows that Chinese and western cultures have parted ways, and many things have opposite polarities.
Many scholars, especially those since the May 4th Movement, tend to go to extremes. For example, when writing a letter, I write the address first, and then the recipient; But if you want to write to westerners, turn all these things upside down, write the recipient first, and then write the address. I am used to writing in Chinese style, so I am not used to it when I go to the west. When going abroad, the relevant personnel in the West want to reverse your surname and first name, so I argued with him that China people's translation of foreigners' names doesn't change their position at all, while China people are forced to change their names when going abroad. Westerners do this because they don't think they are invading you. He thinks it's natural, because that's his values.
Of course, this phenomenon is commonplace now, and all foreign language majors in China hold this feature. We should respect foreign countries, but have foreigners respected our values? Language and writing, a seemingly simple thing, contains very important value. If foreigners control our destiny through language and transform our language, they can transform our character and our future. They have this power.
Let's further talk about the basic differences between Chinese and western languages. It's easy to know this difference when you learn a foreign language, but I want to make the problem clear, or highlight this difference, and then see how this difference induces culture and what kind of cultural effect it causes. It can be seen from the differences in pronunciation, morphology, semantics and grammar.
First, the differences in pronunciation. Language is language and words are words. We shouldn't combine them, but we are used to this statement, so we should respect our habits. One of the most obvious characteristics of Chinese is monosyllabic, one word at a time, or one word at a time, and most of them are open syllables. What do you mean by opening syllables? For example, "kai" is an open syllable, while "kait" is a closed syllable. If it is a closed syllable, the phonetic symbols of China cannot be realized. In addition, every word of Chinese characters has rhyme, a sound of "1234", which is very regular and loud. Western languages are mainly monosyllabic and polysyllabic, and these polysyllabic words are the key features that distinguish them from China languages. In addition, western languages have light syllables or heavy syllables, and tones are expressed with light syllables.
The difference between Chinese and western languages seems very small, but what influence has it caused? This influence is that it affects the way we look at the world. Since we have been speaking a language, we have to accept it every day since birth. Language has given us a set of practical models and a brand-new world view, and we are unconsciously influenced by it, and we unconsciously look at the outside world in this way. When using this phonetic effect to create poetry and other literary works, rhyme is also related to pronunciation. China's poems are different from those of foreign countries. Phonologically speaking, when western poetry rhymes, there are many rhyming places, that is, the first two lines rhyme, or alternately rhyme. For example, the rhyme of Shakespeare's sonnets is ababcdcdefefgg. Polyrhymes are not the advantages of western languages (especially Indo-European languages), but their inherent defects. Because this way of writing has many syllables and few rhyming words, the poet created methods such as rhyme transfer and interlining. China's poets don't have to worry. One voice can express many words. For example, "Jia" can be "home" or "Jia", "Jia" and "Jia", which is easy to rhyme. It is impossible to find so many homophones in English, which will inevitably lead to the formation of multiple rhymes in English literature. The handy rhyme of China's language and writing enables poets to write unit poems with a rhyme to the end, such as four-character, five-character, seven-character, and later words and songs. The artistic effect of unitary rhyme is very strong, and if the artistic effect is to be infectious, it is necessary to make the rhyme foot single, the ever-changing rhyme foot is not impressive, and the musical sense of poetry is relatively weakened. French writer Sasse said that the appeal of a work of art depends on its one-sided emphasis.
Second, the differences in language forms. Language form is the shape of words. Oracle Bone Inscriptions, bronze inscriptions and seal script all have different shapes. What factors in these words touched us? We have noticed that the structure of Chinese characters is square, architectural and three-dimensional, and the strokes can be connected up and down, left and right. The pictographic flavor is very strong, which induces us to associate the text itself with the external nature. So we say that Chinese characters are condensed and simplified forms of representations existing in nature.
Indo-European languages are different. For example, Greek letters, including English, German and Latin, are all symbolic. It is not a three-dimensional structure, but a flat streamlined structure with no pictographic flavor. What kind of effect does this have? That is, when you see this passage, you can't immediately connect it with nature, and you lose the connection between human subject and natural object. But this writing also emphasizes some factors and the trajectory of human intelligence. Symbolized characters bent like earthworms are actually a kind of logical connection, that is, the connection between things, which has strong humanity and puts people's trajectory on the characters. Chinese characters are not humanistic, but they are natural. The differences between Chinese and western language forms have caused the potential factors of different cultures.
So what impact does glyph have on culture? First of all, in China, Chinese characters have brought strong emotional effects, such as the emergence of calligraphy. The characteristics of landscape writing in poetry are very prominent. Ideographic characters are pictures, and a Chinese character is a picture and a poem. American poet Pound said that Chinese characters can't help turning into poems at first sight. "The desert is lonely and straight, and the long river sets the yen", so the poem about scenery is beautiful, and it will enter that realm when you read it. It is illogical to logically reason that "the cock crows in Maodian and the common people first frost". First of all, the "chicken sound" attracts people's attention from the sound, giving people a sense of space. It was implicated in Maodian by Chicken Sound, and then the moon on Maodian suddenly opened the space and created an atmosphere. Then there is Travel Notes with Frost on Banqiao, but the author does not write "Frost" first, but writes people first, just like a close-up, magnifying people's footprints, then "Banqiao" and finally saying "Frost". This expression means of reversing the order of personal feelings is similar to montage in movies. Eisenstein, a master of montage techniques, said that montage is borrowed from China's poems, and China's poems are like close-ups one after another. In this way, the superiority of Chinese characters is suddenly reflected, while the Indo-European language family is inferior in this respect.
China's poems are very neat, like dried tofu. Western poems are long and short, but not very neat. Neatly implies that this poem itself is very philosophical and regular, suggesting that this poem is not an ordinary thing, not casually played, but a poem with very strict constraints. In addition, from the perspective of arrangement, Chinese characters are very easy to arrange and print.
Many linguists in the west believe that Chinese characters or Chinese are descriptive and artistic. Therefore, the differences between Chinese and western writing systems are obvious in poetry. Poetry is about feelings, and poetry should be sincere, which is a heartfelt expression of feelings. Chinese characters will induce poets to write about scenery, feelings, scenes and forget themselves. Shakespeare's poems are great and beautiful, but compared with China's poems, Shakespeare's poems are not called poems at all, and they are boring. The reason is the congenital defects of western languages. This is also caused by the gap between Chinese and western languages.
Third, semantic differences. The semantic differences between China characters and Indo-European characters come from the differences in pronunciation and language forms. Chinese characters can be polysemy, which will inevitably lead to ambiguity, but at the same time, it has a high degree of generality and comprehensive ability. There are relatively few polysemous words in Indo-European languages. Why? Westerners can invent a new word when they need to express more exact meaning, which is very accurate. A word is a meaning, but relatively speaking, the classification of words will be more. What does this do? Or take poetry as an example, the fuzziness of China's writing has resulted in the strong generality and comprehensiveness of China culture. Western languages and characters have relatively strong defining functions. Because of their strong ability of meticulous analysis of things, they will urge people to go to the road of seeking truth and imitate nature as much as possible. Therefore, the ideographic accuracy of western characters is relatively high, which also causes the accuracy of western culture.
Fourth, the differences in grammar. Grammatical differences can be divided into two aspects, namely lexical differences and syntactic differences. Morphologically, Chinese has no gender, number, case, tense, prefix and suffix, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage is that the positioning function of Chinese characters is more flexible, and even there can be "palindrome poems", which have both mindfulness and inversion, which also makes Chinese characters very creative. Indo-European language family has strict gender, number, case, tense, prefix, suffix and subject-predicate-object definite complement. Although it seems that the positioning function is very strong, it also means more mechanical. For example, in Latin, every word is followed by a symbol to indicate its part of speech and state. Chinese characters in China are absolutely free, so you can arrange them at will. So the Indo-European language family has too many restrictions. In this way, Chinese and western languages are bound to lead the two cultures in different directions. The defect of Chinese is that the lexical structure and grammatical structure are underdeveloped and there are relatively few prepositions, but what can Chinese do to make up for this deficiency? That is, through morphology and pronunciation. For example, the word "mountain" looks like a mountain and its meaning is very vivid. If anything is defective in one respect, it can find another factor to make up for it; Or conversely, Dallas goes to the auditorium. Therefore, the development of everything is self-coordinated, self-organized, and self-ordered. China culture and western culture will inevitably be restricted by these laws when they first develop.
Finally, it combines the characteristics of Chinese and western languages. Chinese is a three-dimensional architectural factor, while western languages are a one-dimensional streamlined factor. There are many pictographic factors in Chinese, while western symbolic factors are heavier; Chinese is more natural and comprehensive in many directions, while the west is one-way reasoning; At the same time, because of the communication between language and nature, China's language is easy to communicate with nature, which is an emotional culture, while western language is often induced by rational factors; The scientific nature of China culture is relatively weak, while the scientific nature of western culture is relatively strong, which makes westerners have a strong sense of track. China's culture is actually visual culture, while western culture is accurate culture; China's culture is dominated by morphology, while western culture is dominated by grammar, so for thousands of years, China's philology is particularly developed, and western grammar is particularly developed; China culture is flexible, while western culture is rigid and easy to go to extremes. China culture is a culture dominated by characters, while western culture is a culture dominated by languages. This is the basic difference between Chinese and western languages and cultures.
On another level, we can explain the functions of language and words. First, language itself has the function of thinking mode. From China's words, we can explore a thinking mode of complementary yin and yang, which is constantly changing; Western writing pays attention to binary opposition, and the two must be one. Because western language elements put too much emphasis on grammar, they can't unify opposing things like China.
Combine specific cultural aspects, such as philosophy. When a philosopher thinks, the first element he needs must be language, and what kind of language and writing there will be. For example, China's Chinese character is "the unity of heaven and man", so people naturally feel the existence between heaven and man; Westerners, on the other hand, must distinguish which is the first and which is the second, because that is their mode of thinking.
From the artistic comparison, China's language is dominated by "I", while the West is dominated by "things". Even a set of lexical structures must find a neutral factor. If we extend this factor to science and technology, we will find that the influence of language is a key factor for China's lack of science. China is well-developed in science and technology, but weak in scientific theory. Theoretical things are very logical, and western languages themselves have a lot of logic.