On the traditions and trends of ethnosemiotics in China: an interview with Prof. Hongwei Jia

1 Background to the interview

Recently, I have been focusing on the research project “Exploring the Traditional Patterns of Oroqen Ethnic Group: A Semiotic Perspective” (2019-KYYWF-0443) funded by the Education Department of Heilongjiang Province, China. When drafting an outline for this research project from an ethnosemiotics perspective, I consulted Prof. Hongwei Jia, who is conversant with translation semiotics, sociolinguistics, overseas sinology, the history of modern Chinese linguistics, the history of modern semantics, the Chinese history of translation, translation security, and even the history of some Chinese ethnic groups. With regard to semiotics, Jia also serves as the leading professor in the Semiotics and Cultural Studies program at Shinawatra University.

Jia was the ideal figure to consult with, as he has vast experience in the field of semiotics in China. Regarding his educational experience, he obtained his PhD in linguistics from Beijing Foreign Studies University in 2011 and conducted his postdoctoral research at Minzu University of China from 2012 to 2014. Since 2016, he has been an executive director of Xu Yuanchong Institute for Translation and Comparative Culture based at Datong University of China. In addition, he is a member of several international journals on language, culture, and semiotics. To date, he has published more than 80 journal papers and seven books. His most recent major publications are Pragmaticism and translation semiotics (2019), Preliminary research on translation semiotics in China (2019), “Semiospheric translation types reconsidered from the translation semiotics perspective” (2019), and “Signs, language, and listening: a review” (Chinese translation version, 2020). Jia also has several forthcoming books.

Historically, ethnosemiotics has gone through 50 years of development in Western countries since it was put forward in the 1970s, and this development can be divided into three stages.

Its embryonic stage ranges from 1970 to 1980. It was at the beginning of the 1970s that Algirdas Julien Greimas (1917–1992), Yu. S. Stepanov (1967–2010), Mihály Hoppál (1942–), and Vilmos Voigt (1940–) simultaneously and independently defined “ethnosemiotics.”

Algirdas Julien Greimas and Joseph Courtés (1936–) dubbed this field “ethnosemiotics” for the first time in Semiotics and language: An analytical dictionary (1979):

Ethno-semiotics is not truly an autonomous semiotics. If it were, it would be in competition with a field of knowledge already established under the name of ethnology or anthropology, whose contribution to the advent of semiotics itself is considerable. Rather, it is a privileged area of curiosities and of methodological exercises […]. Given that general semiotics authorizes the treatment of non-linguistic (gestural, somatic, etc.) syntagmatic concatenations as discourses or texts, the field of ethnolinguistics can be enlarged to become an ethno-semiotics; analyses, still rare, of rituals and ceremonies lead us to suppose that ethnology can become, once again, the privileged locus for the construction of general models of signifying behavior. (Greimas and Courtés 1979: 108–109)

Stepanov stresses that ethnosemiotics is devoted to the study of a “hidden” level of human culture, and focuses on how a certain cultural phenomenon in the social sign system exists as a sign and its functions (Danesi and Sebeok 2010: 52). Therefore, cultural relativism forms the basis of different signs, so scholars of ethnosemiotics tend to conduct an interdisciplinary study which is intertwined with language, history, culture, and so forth.

Vilmos Voigt (1940–), the founding president of the Hungarian Association for Semiotic Studies, highlights the importance of the language modeling system in ethnosemiotics, which is a core conception for Moscow–Tartu school of cultural semiotics (2003: 15), and which was further developed by Thomas Albert Sebeok (1920–2001) and Marcel Danesi (1946–). As part of Tartu’s cultural semiotics, ethnological phenomena may be interpreted by means of language modeling systems, and is thus conducive to recognizing the cultural nature of a particular ethnic group – how traditional customs can be established and operated in the dual structure of everyday life and language. Accordingly, he has advocated two approaches for investigating ethnosemiotics, namely using semiotics for describing folk cultures, and examining ethnology in terms of signs and sign systems. In 1989, Voigt published Ethnosemiotics, which introduced the development of ethnosemiotics and was collected in Encyclopedia dictionary of semiotics (2010) compiled by Sebeok and Danesi.

Mihály Hoppál (1942–), together with Voigt (1940–), established the disciplinary status of ethnosemiotics in Hungary and laid more emphasis on reflections over the semiotic communication process in folk cultures. These views could be found in his works “Structuralism in folklore” (1971) and translated and edited a voluminous collection of articles by Yuri Lotman “Text–Model–Type” in Hungarian (1973), both of which make great contributions to the study of ethnosemiotics in Hungary.

The second stage of ethnosemiotics is a phase of stable development from 1990 to 2000. In this stage, ethnosemiotics was highlighted with some prominent scholars’ efforts in promoting its development. Hoppál’s collection Ethnosemiotics was published in Estonian by the Estonian Literary Museum in 2008. John Fiske (1842–1901) published “Enthnosemiotics: Some personal and theoretical reflections” in Cultural Studies in 1991. Anthropologist Perle Mohl set out to study ethnosemiotics on the micro-level and published the work Village voices: Coexistence and communication in a rural community in Central France (1997).

The third stage of development is the blossoming of ethnosemiotics since 2000. More and more scholars are becoming involved in the study of ethnosemiotics, especially in Italy. Of them, Maurizio del Ninno, Tarcisio Lancioni, and Francesco Marsciani are well-known active figures. The Ethnosemiotic Centre of the Bologna University (CUBE) was founded in Bologna in 2007 under the direction of Francesco Marsciani. Since 2015, Bologna University has been conducting research on ethnosemiotics from both a theoretical and methodological perspective, especially multidisciplinary research.

From previous research, the marriage between ethnology and semiotics as an interdisciplinary study of signs used by ethnic groups in Western countries has provided us a clue on the sign activities occurring in ethnic communities. However, ethnology has not been thoroughly examined in terms of semiotics, nor has it has combined with semiotics effectively and efficiently in China either. To understand the lack of development of ethnosemiotics in China, or at least to provide some inspiration for building its strength for investigating semiotic phenomena in Chinese ethnic groups, the following questions are discussed in the form of an interview with Professor Hongwei Jia: What is the relationship between semiotics and ethnology in the framework of Chinese ethnosemiotics? When did Chinese ethnosemiotics begin? How did it develop? What are its specific characteristics? What will be the trend in Chinese ethnosemiotics development?

2 Interview

Hongwei Jia has contributed enormously to promoting the development of semiotics as a separate discipline in China. He developed translation semiotics with reference to semiotic transformations between tangible signs and intangible signs through the long history of China (Jia 2016a, 2016b, 2016c, 2017, 2018), as well as elucidating and elaborating sign lies in “On sign lies: An interview with Prof. Hongwei Jia” published in Chinese Semiotic Studies (2019a: 445–459). This interview, therefore, approaches the topic of “Tradition and trend of ethnosemiotics in China” in the hope of providing a better understanding of and new insights into the tradition and future development of ethnosemiotics in China.

Xiulan Ge: I really appreciate your accepting my interview. For the topic “The tradition and trend of ethnosemiotics in China,” I would like to advance a question on “ethnosemiotics” first. Literally, ethnosemiotics is the marriage between semiotics and ethnology. Could you please illuminate what the relationship between semiotics and ethnology is? In other words, what do you think of this interdisciplinarity?

Prof. Hongwei Jia: First of all, I guess you planned to discuss the respective role of semiotics and ethnology in ethnosemiotics as a subfield of semiotics in current Chinese scholarship. However, your questions do not simply concern ethnosemiotics as an interdisciplinary subject by combining semiotics and ethnology alone. If we examine semiotics in and of ethnology, i.e. general semiotics in and of the study of ethnic groups or simply ethnology, the subject we involve in this respect can be called ethnosemiotics as a subfield of semiotics or better the semiotics of ethnology. If we examine ethnology in terms of semiotics, i.e. semiotic approaches to ethnology, the subject we are developing can thus be called semioethnology or semiotic ethnology (also called ethnology of semiotics).

As elaborated above, your questions involve two subjects, the first of which is semiotics, while the second is ethnology. In terms of interdisciplinarity, though derived from the combination of semiotics and ethnology, ethnosemiotics is an entirely new emerging subfield of general semiotics, but only focusing on sign activities and semiosis peculiar to given ethnic groups, not all people on the planet, while semioethnology is also a totally new subfield of general ethnology, adopting semiotic approaches as new visions or a new methodology to both the old and new research objects.

In terms of their interdisciplinary significance, ethnosemiotics can not only enrich general semiotics in terms of the types (and tokens) of ethnically semiotic resources as well as the visions of special semiotics, but also provide for general semiotics the principles, rules, and laws derived from research on ethnosemiotics at the micro-level, as well as the maxim abstracted from the semiotic phenomena of given ethnic groups worldwide. Equally, semioethnology can not only better explore existing ethnic sign activities from the perspectives of semiotics or semiotic methodology, thereby providing new research visions and a methodological toolkit for existing ethnological research, but also promote the application of semiotic methodology or applied semiotics in ethnology, thus advancing interdisciplinary research on ethnology in general.

As you introduced at the beginning of this interview, ethnosemiotics was officially established by the joint efforts of Algirdas Julien Greimas, Yu. S. Stepanov, Mihály Hoppál, and Vilmos Voigt in the 1970s. In this sense, it is still a young discipline in terms of theoretical production and contributions, academic achievements, discipline building, academic journals, and disciplinary autonomy. However, compared with ethnosemiotics, semioethnology is still in its embryonic stage, because fewer ethnologists worldwide have adopted semiotic approaches to ethnological problems, especially in China. What is worse, both semioticians and ethnologists consciously or unconsciously confuse ethnosemiotics and semioethnology as two newly emerging interdisciplinary fields.

Xiulan Ge: As previously stated, the term “ethnosemiotics” was introduced and defined in the 1970s, does it mean that the history of Western ethnosemiotics started then? In the process of my reading the pertinent literature, I have been wondering whether we perhaps have our own tradition of ethnosemiotics through Chinese history, and if so, how ethnosemiotics is presented through Chinese history.

Prof. Hongwei Jia: Regarding the question of whether the history of Western ethnosemiotics started in the 1970s, I think it is better to start with its definition and how historiographers do their writing. As revealed in your cited definition of ethnosemiotics at the beginning of this interview, at the end of the 1970s ethnosemiotics, had not yet developed into an autonomous semiotics; Greimas and Courtés (1979: 108) wrongly assert that the autonomy of semiotics would put it in competition with established fields such as ethnology or anthropology, inevitably confusing the boundaries between ethnosemiotics and ethnology, between ethnosemiotics and anthropology, as well as between ethnosemiotics and semioethnology. We do not deny the contribution that ethnology and anthropology, among other disciplines, have made to semiotics, but we should not stop just because of the intersection of ethnology, anthropology, and semiotics in terms of research object, research scope, and research content.

As clearly evidenced in the history of semiotics, semiotics as an autonomous subject developed from the semiotics of Peirce (1839–1914) and intersected with logic, just as the significs of Lady Victoria Welby (1837–1912) intersected with communication and translation studies. General semiotics defined as “the treatment of non-linguistic (gestural, somatic, etc.) syntagmatic concatenations as discourses or texts” (Greimas and Courtés 1979: 109) is language-based in terms of Saussure’s semiology and lingüiculture-based in terms of the Moscow–Tartu tradition of cultural semiotics, so it is not a universally-accepted definition. Thus, built on this language-based definition, it is natural to enlarge ethnolinguistics to have ethnosemiotics as its main research content, of course, with general models of signifying behavior by means of ethnic rituals and ceremonies, but the case herein shall not be such, because Chinese ethnolinguists would like to be simply called ethnosemioticians, and semioticians would also like to accept this term.

Referring to special semiotics focusing on either the particular aspects of general semiotics (such as syntactics, pragmatics, and semantics; semiosics; among others) or the given fields of general semiotics (such as advertisement, translation, education, communication, folk arts, art design, fashion, witchcraft, literature, theater, drama, medicine, anthropology, folk culture, religion, among others), general semiotics is a study of all kinds and forms of signs, linguistic and non-linguistic, verbal and non-verbal, and tangible and intangible. Based on this general definition, ethnosemiotics can be defined as “a systematic and scientific study of all signs (linguistic and non-linguistic, verbal and non-verbal, tangible and intangible) used by and in ethnic groups,” of which a systematic and scientific study of linguistic signs is called ethnolinguistics with a longer history worldwide. A systematic and scientific study of linguistic and non-linguistic – or better tangible and intangible – signs used in clinical practice is called medical semeiotic or medicosemiotics, tracing back to ancient Greece and the Warring States period in China respectively, so ethnosemiotics is a general semiotics involving all aspects of sign activities and all types of sign activities occurring in the arena of ethnic groups. As thus defined here, all that ancient Roman scholars ever studied about the ancient Greek language, logic, categorization, orthography, etc. has touched on ethnosemiotics as it is called today.

In terms of historiography, a historiographer usually takes into account the historical facts and typical events in one field instead of the establishment of ethnosemiotics as an autonomous discipline or the official definition. In this sense, as I have just outlined, what is involved in the content of ethnosemiotics may at least be traced back to ancient Rome instead of recent times.

With regard to the tradition of ethnosemiotics through Chinese history, we still need to refer to the general working definition given above. Concerning ethnolanguage as ethnolinguistic signs, mainly focusing on characters used by Chinese ethnic groups scattered across every corner of the country, Literary expositor or Er-ya (尔雅), the first dictionary compiled in China (during the time between the Warring States period [c. 475–221 BCE] and the Han Dynasty [c. 202–220 BCE]) as well as the world at large began its pioneering efforts, recording many ethnic words corresponding to common words in the official language at that time.

Considering ethnic songs, dances, customs, rituals, painting, etc., Chinese tradition can be traced back to the Zhou Dynasty (c. 1046–256 BCE). As Jia (2012: 10; 2016d) recorded, a damaged text on Chinese ethnic sign activities, recording the results of the general survey on ethnic languages conducted every August, was recovered in the Royal Library of the Zhou Dynasty. Based on this damaged scroll fragment, Xiong Yang (扬雄, c. 53 BCE–18AD), a royal surveyor and scholar, continued to compile his Fang-yan or Dialects (方言). In his fieldwork, as a daily routine, he used white cloth as recording medium and walked to the trading stations and inns, noting down their languages, behavior, stories, customs, songs, dancing styles, musical instruments, legends, drinking styles, religious and/or philosophical beliefs, etc. In order to meet the needs of the then emperor to know about all his people in his reign, Yang arranged the collected data according to a given order when he returned home each day.

Concerning the Chinese tradition of ethnosemiotics, The epistle to Liu Xin (答刘歆书, around c. 14 A.D.) recorded this case: “I was once told that linguistic fieldwork notes by Light-Carriage Messengers had been deposited in the Zhou and Qin Royal Libraries.” In the Preface to Anthology of customs (风尚通义序, around c. 194 A.D.), Shao Ying (应劭, c. 153 AD–196 AD) notes that in the era of Zhou and Qin, imperial emissaries were sent on chariots every August to make annual surveys of regional speeches, customs, and songs throughout China and from neighboring states. Both these archival works more or less take account of Chinese ethnosemiotics in the times of Zhou and Qin. According to Chinese historical reports, ethnosemiotics then was conducted under by royal decree. In order to strengthen the power of the royal house and the bilateral relations between the royal court and other states around by learning their languages and customs, the Royal Houses of Zhou and Qin sent off their imperial emissaries in every August to collect relevant data throughout China and from neighboring states and arrange the fieldwork notes into books accordingly. This historical picture is also demonstrated in the tenth volume of A chronograph of South-West China (华阳国志), noting that the messengers in the Zhou and Qin Dynasties were doing ethnological fieldwork by gathering a record of customs and linguistic data throughout China as it was at that time and in other lands to inform the lords in the Royal Houses the customs under Heaven (cf. He 2006: 52–53).

However, the then Chinese scholars did not have a name to designate this subject, despite there having been such professional commitment to ethnosemiotics, as it is called today. Later, this tradition has extended into many branches, such as ethnolinguistics, sociology, sociolinguistics, ethnology, among others.

Xiulan Ge: Just as you mentioned above, the Chinese tradition of ethnosemiotics can be traced back to the very early days. However, it is a pity that nobody has summarized the general development of ethnosemiotics in China so far. Could you please talk about its general development in China?

Prof. Hongwei Jia: Just now I talked about the origin of ethnosemiotics in China. Now I turn to the general development of ethnosemiotics in China. As I mentioned above, the Chinese practice of ethnosemiotics can be traced back to the Warring States period, even the time of the Zhou and Qin Dynasties. As this period spans more than two hundred years, it is difficult indeed to determine a specific point of time as a starting point for ethnosemiotics.

To better serve the task of tracking the development of ethnosemiotics through Chinese history, I need to give a working definition for ethnosemiotics. According to Jia (2016d), semiotics is a study of meaning, especially sign processes signifying meaning. Based on this definition, I generally divide the general development of ethnosemiotics into three major stages, namely: the ancient stage, from the Warring States period to the end of Qing Dynasty; the near-modern stage, from the end of the Qing Dynasty to 1949, when New China was founded; and the modern stage, from 1950 to 2020.

In the ancient stage, in order to learn about the ethnic groups and to better communicate with them in local governance, the royal courts appointed a number of officials to conduct general surveys of ethnic songs, dances, customs, ethnic languages, totems, among others. All these surveys since Zhou times constitute the source of ethnosemiotics, laying the foundations for the Chinese tradition of ethnosemiotics. Historically, based on field research, ancient Chinese ethnosemioticians published love notes, songs, customs, totems, etc. in the Book of poems, the Book of rites, and Anthology of customs, among others.

In the near-modern stage, ethnosemiotics in the Chinese tradition began to borrow modern subjects such as linguistics, anthropology, etc. In 1906, Taiyan Zhang (章太炎, c. 1869–1936) published his article “On the studies of languages and characters” in volume 24–25 of the Japan-based Journal of Chinese Quintessence (国粹学报), introducing Indo-European linguistics into the studies of Chinese languages and characters. In 1912, Yilu Hu (胡以鲁) published Essentials of Chinese linguistics (国语学草创), introducing the view of languages as signs (Hu 1912: 4–6), arbitrariness of signs (Hu 1912: 7–9), signifiant and signifié (Hu 1912: 52), etc. This was followed in 1923 by the publication of General introduction to linguistics (语言学大意) by Sibing Yue (乐嗣炳, c. 1901–1984), which introduced the view of language structure being composed of meaning presented in the inner forms and signs presented in the outer forms (Yue 1923: 17). In 1926, Yuenren Chao (赵元任, c. 1892–1982) published his article “Outline of symbology,” delineating the nature and boundaries of signs, proposing its appellation “symbolics” or “symbology,” dealing with the referential relations and constitutive elements of signs, and thus constructing its research framework. In 1930, I. A. Richards (1893–1979) published his article “The meaning of The meaning of meaning (1923)” in Tsinghua Journal, introducing semasiology. In the meantime, Gulu Wang (王古鲁, c. 1901–1958) published his Chinese version of A general coursebook of linguistics (Waseda University, 1927), written by Ahn Shoji, introducing semantics as an aspect of semiotics and a dimension of semiosis as well as Saussure’s semiology. Meanwhile, Yuenren Chao and Fangkuei Li (李方桂, c. 1902–1989) published their field research report “Notes on Yao songs in Guangxi,” introducing modern linguistic field research methods into the Chinese tradition of ethnosemiotics. In 1931, Anzhai Li (李安宅, c. 1900–1985) published The magic of languages with Peking Associated Press. Then, in 1934, Li published Semantics, combining modern semantics with Chinese languages, dialects, witchcraft, Tâoist magic figures or incantations, etc., which was then renamed and republished by Li in 1936 as Witchcraft and language with Commercial Press. In 1942, Gongwan Xing (邢公畹, c. 1914–2014) published his Bouyei (布依族) ethnic field research report “Notes of Zhong Songs in Yuanyang village.” Then, in 1945, Bianming Zhou (周辨明, c. 1891–1984) and Diancheng Huang (黄典诚, c. 1914–1993) published Essentials of linguistics, introducing semiotic terms such as symbol, referent, and mind, and a semiotic triangle composed of symbol, referent, and mind. It was in this phase that semiology was introduced into China, but it was not yet thoroughly understood.

The modern stage can be further divided into the four successive phases, namely: the embryonic phase of modern semiotics, from 1950 to 1966, introducing Moscow–Tartu semiotics, and Peirce’s semiotics by way of Soviet scholars; the stagnation phase, from 1967 to 1978, which saw much of this study suspended in China due to the political situation; the progressive development phase, from 1979 to 1990, introducing Euro-American semiotics on the large scale; and the rapid development phase from 1990 to 2020, introducing ethnosemiotics into Chinese semiotics and ethnology, and promoting the disciplinarity of ethnosemiotics as well as interdisciplinarity between ethnology and semiotics. Since the early 1950s, Chinese ethnologists and Chinese ethnolinguists have been trained to conduct serial large-scale field surveys on ethnic identity, ethnic language vitality, typology of ethnic languages, language use, language identity, ethnic identity, language attitude, among others. Now, the surveys have developed into regular field investigations involving language use, new and old versions of the ethnic characters, witchcraft, religions, building styles, farming skills, fishing skills, arts, ancient inscriptions, intangible cultural heritages, etc.

However, Chinese ethnosemioticians and even semioticians have not started to think about the nature, scope, task, objects, and boundary of Chinese ethnosemiotics, as well as its relation to Chinese ethnology. Furthermore, we have not begun to explore Chinese ethnosemiotics in terms of totems, customs, patterns, traditional clothes, rituals, and ceremonies, languages still used by ethnic groups in China and those of foreign residents in China.

Xiulan Ge: Your ideas on the origin and development of Chinese ethnosemiotics are very inspiring and innovative, which provides us with the insight that we should not just unquestioningly accept ready-made theories or rationales and that we should conduct glocal research on the basis of ens reale and ens rationis alike. Could you please succinctly sum up the typical characteristics of Chinese ethnosemiotics in its journey from ethnology to ethnosemiotics or from semiotics to ethnosemiotics?

Prof. Hongwei Jia: As far as the Chinese tradition of ethnosemiotics through history is concerned, Chinese scholars have achieved a lot in the sense of today’s ethnosemiotics. In terms of research objects, the previous research has covered almost all ethnic groups living in China, such as Tibetan (藏族), Yao (瑶族), Bouyei (布依族), Miao (苗族), Mongolian (蒙古族), Korean (朝鲜族), etc. In terms of research methods, field research has been adopted by scholars in both ancient and modern times, but in the period of near-modern, the methods of structural linguistics were introduced, thus bringing about the methods of dynamic description, static description, and contrastive analysis. In terms of research content, five aspects are involved. Firstly, ethnic languages as its major content (of linguistic sign activities) have been explored thoroughly through history, as evidenced in Literary expositor, Analytical dictionary of characters, Dialects, or Fang-yan, etc. Secondly, ethnic songs, opera, and drama as the mixed linguistic and non-linguistic sign activities have been collected and analyzed in the literature compiled through Chinese history (such as Yilin, Yao Songs, Zhong Songs, etc.), as recorded in the Book of poems (诗经), Dialects or Fang-yan, Injustice to Dou’E (窦娥冤), The orphan of Zhao (赵氏孤儿), Three hundred Yuan Songs (元曲三百首), among others. Thirdly, customs have also been explored as non-linguistic sign activities, as revealed in Dialects or Fang-yan, Book of rites, Anthology of customs, etc. Fourthly, witchcraft, religions, and totems have been involved as non-linguistic signs, such as witch-doctors treating diseases by prayer recorded in the volume of Inquiring into the ultimate source in Huangdi canon of inner meridians (皇帝内经), A complete collection of ancient and modern medical systems (古今医统大全), Book of rites in the Zhou Dynasty (周礼), General medical records of royal benevolence (圣济总录), etc. In modern times, Li also published Witchcraft and languages in the 1930s. Fifthly, dictionaries on ethnic languages, customs, and songs have been compiled, such as A dictionary of Turkic languages (c. 1072–1074), Dialects, or Fang-yan (c. 58 BCE–18 AD), Literary expositor, etc.

Reading carefully through these literary sources reveals that the Chinese tradition of ethnosemiotics has explored linguistic and non-linguistic signs involving anthropological, cultural, and folk aspects of semiotics. In summary, the Chinese tradition of ethnosemiotics is characterized by a long history, a variety of ethnic groups, a wide range of influence, and rich achievements involving languages (regional dialects, ethnic languages, and characters), totems, witchcraft, religions, songs, operas, dramas, and customs, among others. What is more, Chinese ethnosemiotics is most saliently characterized by the penetration and integration of Han culture into Chinese minority culture, namely the penetration and integration of Han semiotics in Chinese ethnosemiotics and ethnosemiosis, with Confucianism and Tâoism as the striking evidence, supplemented by Buddhism. Last but not the least, the systematisms and disciplinarity of ethnosemiotics needs to be built by referring to modern ethnosemiotics as established in the Western tradition of modern sciences.

Xiulan Ge: Taking “ethnosemiotics” as the key word in the search criteria (dated on July 20, 2020), I found only few articles in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database of academic journals. However, there are some articles that explore ethnic culture or customs using the method of semiotics, such as “A survey of ethnosemiotic research” (Peng 2013: 97–101), “Aesthetic characteristics of headwear art from the perspective of semiotics” (Guan 1997: 52–57), “The pattern art of Southwest ethnic groups from the perspective of Semiotics” (Xie 2018: 10–114), and “A semiotics-based exploration of the design path of hand-drawn maps in ethnic areas” (Li 2020: 147–152). Understanding what is going on in ethnosemiotics would help us to provide a better insight for our research today. What will be the trend of ethnosemiotics in China in the coming years? What are the main challenges for Chinese ethnosemiotics as a result?

Prof. Hongwei Jia: Actually, I am not the right person here to predict the trend of Chinese ethnosemiotics in the coming years (and I believe nobody can do it in a precise way), so I will just present my personal ideas on what needs to be done in this field at the moment. In terms of verbal signs, Chinese ethnosemiotics needs to explore the constitutive elements, structural modes, semiosis, ideology, intertextuality, rhetoric, values, customs, etc. of oral literature, ethnic songs, and ethnic drama, among others. In terms of non-verbal signs, Chinese ethnosemiotics also needs to focus on totems, pictures, patterns, religions, arts, handicrafts, and dietary culture. For instance, how foregrounding and backgrounding function in the configuration of artwork design layout. In addition, the interactions and transformations between verbal signs and non-verbal ones will be also another alternative; the exploration of ethnic sign resources and the application of these resources into modern fashion design will be a new departure point as well.

Concerning the main challenges for Chinese ethnosemioticians at the moment, the first challenge, I think, is expanding knowledge of semiotics and Chinese ethnology. At present, almost all Chinese ethnologists are ignorant of semiotics, especially semiotic methodology, so they feel it is difficult to conduct such interdisciplinary research as ethnosemiotics or semioethnology does, although they intend to. Most Chinese semioticians have almost no knowledge of Chinese ethnology, especially on ethnic languages and ethnic writing systems, which are the most important means of information input. For instance, if semioticians want to collect data related to Chinese ethnic oral literatures, if they do not know the ethnic languages in which the oral literatures are expressed, they cannot conduct such semiotic research. Compared with the semiotic research on ethnic verbal signs, those on non-verbal signs are possibly easier. If a semiotician knows enough about a given ethnic group, he or she could collect data on non-verbal signs and non-verbal sign activities.

The second challenge facing Chinese ethnosemiotics now is to distinguish semioethnology from ethnosemiotics in a clear way, determining its research object, scope, and task, making clear its disciplinarity, and delineating its boundaries. Ethnosemiotics is a scientific study of sign activities occurring in Chinese ethnic groups, while semioethnology is a semiotic approach to ethnology, namely ethnological research conducted using semiotic methodology. However, most scholars are confused between ethnosemiotics and semioethnology as the two interdisciplinary subjects.

The third challenge for semioticians is how to do field research on long-lost ethnic cultural features, such as witchcraft, religions, fork arts, cuisine, etc. Among Chinese semioticians, few have ever received any training in field research, but field research is a necessary skill in collecting data on long-lost ethnic cultures (usually in oral form).

As accounted above, to establish and build Chinese ethnosemiotics, we need to start with the field research skills to collect related data on Chinese ethnic sign activities on the basis of speaking a given ethnic language, as well as using its natural and artificial writing systems.

Xiulan Ge: The above questions are centered on the macro-level. The following question relates to the micro-level. In Morris’s “Foundations of the theory of signs ” (1938), he articulated three dimensions of semiosis as well as the three aspects of semiotics, namely syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics. “Syntactics, as the study of the syntactical relations of signs to one another, in abstraction from the relations of signs to objects or interpreters” (Morris 1938: 13). “Semantics deals with the relation of signs to their designata and so to the objects which they may or do denote” (Morris 1938: 21). “Pragmatics is designated the science of the relation of signs to their interpreters” (Morris 1938: 30). Do you think whether these dimensions are feasible for the analysis of ethnosemiotics?

Prof. Hongwei Jia: For this question, I think I need to answer in terms of verbal signs and non-verbal signs. In terms of ethnic verbal signs, there has been some ethnolinguistic research that has examined Chinese ethnic languages, such as Yuanxin Wang’s research on the Turkic language (2006: 7–11), Aitang Qu’s (瞿霭堂1934–) research on the Tibetan languages, research on the Mongolian language at University of Inner Mongolia, research on the Korean language at Yanbian (延边) University, among others. However, pragmatics is not as well studied as syntactics and semantics are, because most research on ethnic languages has been focused on culture-loaded vocabulary, semantics, and grammar.

In terms of ethnic non-verbal signs, almost no Chinese ethnosemioticians have ever examined syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics, because almost all people think syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics are not fit for non-verbal signs. Actually, as mentioned above, for non-verbal signs, a relation exists between the signs, a syntactical relation; a semiotic relation to the designata and to the objects; and a semiotic relation to their interpreters. Therefore, syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics also belong to the dimensions and aspects of non-verbal sign studies. In other words, they are the three dimensions of semiosis and the three aspects of semiotics, so they are also the dimensions of ethnosemiosis and the aspects of ethnosemiotics. In this sense, syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics are also necessary aspects of Chinese ethnosemiotics. For instance, besides ethnic languages, national patterns carried in ethnic clothes and ceramic wares, dwelling places, cooking utensils, working instruments, musical instruments, etc., there also exist syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic dimensions and aspects, but different from the semiosic dimensions and semiotic aspects of verbal sign studies. Metaphorically, the sign relations between the foregrounding and backgrounding in pattern configuration are in essence the syntactic relations, while the relations of signs in national patterns to objects are semantic, and the relations of signs in national patterns to their interpreters are pragmatic. However, in these dimensions and aspects, there have been very few research achievements so far, as far as I have learned.

Xiulan Ge: Professor Jia, in your “Signs, language, and listening: a review” (2019b: 469), you mentioned that “reference to the multi-millenary Chinese tradition of knowledge, wisdom and awareness of life forms or sign activities would be fitting; but such reference is missing.” You have sketched a framework to Chinese researchers, which is also consistent with the belief that China has continued moving up the quality chain in terms of sharing her story globally. Chinese culture is so extensive and profound that researchers are sometimes at a loss to know how to conduct such research. Could you please give the researchers some suggestions on how to make full use of the ancient Chinese tradition of knowledge to do research on ethnosemiotics?

Prof. Hongwei Jia: Regarding this question, I think I need to answer from two totally different perspectives. First of all, to examine the semiotic traditions of Chinese ethnic groups or the traditional semiotics of Chinese ethnic groups, one needs to exhaustively collect the pertinent literatures related to the traditions of Chinese ethnic groups or to the traditional cultures of these ethnic groups. For instance, Gulu Wang translated into Chinese A history of modern Chinese opera (中国近世戏曲史) in 1930, which was written by the Japanese scholar Aoki Shoji (青木正儿, 1887–1964). The translation of this book is conducive to semiotic research on Chinese ethnic opera in modern times. In fact, pertinent literatures of this sort are numerous and scattered in the libraries worldwide, so research on the tradition of Chinese ethnosemiotics or semioethnology is preconditioned by the collection of these pertinent literatures.

Another case shall also be mentioned here. To examine the traditional dress of Chinese ethnic groups in terms of semiotics, a collection of such dresses published by previous scholars is also a must, not only because ethnic groups in modern times do not dress in the traditional way, making it difficult to collect all the types of traditional dress of different classes of ethnic people, but also so this semiotician can make a contrast between traditional dress and modernized ethnic dress kept only for ceremonies and various performances by referring to these collections, thus presenting the evolution of ethnic dress from semiotic perspectives.

Secondly, from the current sign activities prevailing in Chinese ethnic groups, some peculiar semiotic features or principles can be abstracted, thus enriching the content of general semiotics. From traditional sign activities kept in historical records of various sorts, some knowledge related to the traditions of Chinese ethnosemiotics may be learned, thus inspiring further theoretical explorations. Putting together the achievement from these two perspectives, Chinese ethnosemiotics based on a given ethnic group as a whole may be constructed and reconstructed. Literature recording the multi-millenary Chinese tradition of knowledge, wisdom, and awareness of life forms or sign activities may inform what types of sign activities were conducted, how sign activities were conducted among ethnic people, what these sign activities result in, what peculiarities these sign activities have, what contributes to the changes and evolutions of sign activities in a given ethnic group, and how the sign activities change and evolve through history due to the evolution and changes of social production tools, means of social production, and living standards. Meanwhile, semiotic thought recorded in ancient literatures may verify more or less what modern semioticians have found in current sign activities among ethnic peoples.

Thirdly, some sign activities only existed in the time and space of the archival facts recorded in ancient literature, such as horse training for various purposes, eagle training, shaman ceremonies, necromancy, séance, and divination, among others. In addition, how ethnic people face the Other and the Otherness from both Self and the Others, what kinds of values, ideology, ethics, etc. were held, how ethnic people in ancient time communicated with people from their own groups with different social status, with people from the outside with different social status, with the royal commissioners sent by the rulers, whether the communications between male and female, senior citizens and junior citizens, the rich and the poor, the healthy and the disabled, all these questions can only resort to the historical records kept in ancient literatures of various kinds.

Finally, through time-long history, almost all Chinese ethnic groups have formed their own tradition of clinical practice or treating diseases in general. Whether these ethnic groups used witchcraft to treat diseases or came to see the physicians with more advanced traditions of clinical practice, such as acupuncture, stone-needling, moxibustion, decoction, and massaging; whether or not ethnic groups kept the same medicoethics, values, and ideologies as Han people did; whether or not Chinese ethnic groups followed the general principle of the natural law of the unity between the Heaven in the upper, the Earth in the below, and Man in the middle – how have ethnic groups been interacting with their outside environments, namely ethnosemiosis, in terms of environmental humanities? What differences lie in the Miao people treating diseases, the Tibetans treating diseases, and the Han people treating diseases, among others? How did ethnic groups in history know about herbal medicine? What did they think about diseases, including the epidemics occurring to them? What kinds of categories, universal and particular, did they hold? How did they count and calculate time? What about their knowledge of colors, animals, and their customs? What were the relations kept between totems and their knowledge of nature?

To conclude, as China is a unified country where 56 nationalities live together, and different traditions of life, different ways of thinking, and different ways of thinking about life in general have formed, thus developing different worldviews. Therefore, there are so many topics still to be engaged with from the perspectives of semiotics in general.

Xiulan Ge: You have talked about the traditions and trends of ethnosemiotics in China on the macro- and micro-levels. Meanwhile, your profound knowledge reminds us that a host of topics are worth examining in the multi-millenary Chinese tradition of knowledge. I do believe these illuminating ideas on ethnosemiotics will inspire professional researchers and enthusiasts in the fields of ethnosemiotics, semiotics, and ethnology. Thank you once again for your contributions!