Phonocentrism and the Concept of Volk: The Case of Modern China

Abstract

This essay explores the shaping of modern identities and identity theories by interactions and contradictions between different semiotic orders. By semiotic order is meant here a mode of sign representation within which a particular group identity or ethnicity is understood or presented. The focus here is on “phonocentrism” as the fundamental semiotic order of vernacular nationalism and one of the primary elements of the modern concept of Volk. Early modern European writings on China identified it as the domain of the written character and offered an “iconographic” understanding of Chinese culture and civilization. By the late nineteenth century, mainstream linguistic methodology put the Indo-European languages at the center both methodologically and ideologically: the Chinese language was entirely marginal. Nineteenth-century Protestant missionaries saw the Chinese character as an unnaturally “petrified” form of writing, and sought to provide an alphabetic (i.e. phonocentric) basis for a dynamic, modern Christian China. After 1949, with the founding of the People’s Republic of China, linguistic identity became the primary criterion for identifying ethnic minorities, and a national spoken standard, Putonghua, was institutionalized, along with a Romanization system, Pinyin. Chinese characters were simplified, in part on phonocentric lines, though not abolished. The notion of Volk is central for understanding modern China, and the key to the reception and adaptation of Western identity theorizing, including ideas of race. To understand the history of race theory we need to read it in parallel with the history of linguistics.

This is a revised version of the paper delivered at the conference “Concepts of ‘Race’ in the History of the Humanities,” University of Haifa, Bucerius Institute, Israel, October 26–28, 2010. My heartfelt thanks go to the organizers. Acknowledgment is hereby given to Hong Kong RGC-GRF grant, The Languages of Race 1789–1945: A Historical–Comparative Analysis of Racial Classification, no. 10208496.