Ideographic Myth: Advocacy of the Critique

Keywords: Ideographic Myth, John DeFrancis,

Victor Mair, J. Marshall Unger, Lawrence J. Howell

The first paragraph of Victor Mair's Foreword to J. Marshall Unger's “Ideogram:

Chinese Characters and the Myth of Disembodied Meaning” is characterized by

truculent, even bellicose terminology: “pernicious lies and naïve myths that swirl

around the sinograms”; “ubiquitous and outrageous tall tales concerning the

sinograms”; “... embattled warriors do their best to combat them.” We can find

DeFrancis using similarly contentious language (or plain speaking, if one prefers).

For his part, Unger (in his 1993 reply to Hansen) takes things to an extreme with the

discreditable use of argumentum ad hominem. The degree of stridency with which the

critique has been advanced strikes me as disproportionate for a theory about language

and writing; this style of disputation is more often seen in cases where something

much greater is at stake.

For those interested in knowing exactly what Unger wrote, here is the relevant

passage from a Communication to the Editor printed in the Journal of Asian Studies

(Vol. 52, No. 4; Nov., 1993):

“... the quality of Hansen's scholarship is so poor that I feel someone must apprise

readers who are not specialists in linguistics of facts and sources Hansen fails to cite.

There are equally wrongheaded writers, such as Donald (1991), who deal with the

relevant literature (even if they sometimes misinterpret it), get most of the basic facts

straight, write clearly, have something original to say, and may be excused for their

missteps because they don't know an East Asian language. None of these

qualifications applies to Hansen ...”

Mair is above the use of personal attacks. However, we find him misrepresenting the

positions of other scholars who address ideography or the Critique of the Ideographic

Myth. For example, in a Language Log post of 7 January 2009, Mair avers:

“The current trend in studies of the construction of Chinese characters is that there

are essentially no pure ideograms, or — if there are any ideograms — they are

exceedingly rare. Scholars who subscribe to this point of view include Peter Alexis

Boodberg, the late and much lamented John DeFrancis, William Boltz, J. Marshall

Unger, and David Prager Branner. On the other side of the fence are those, including

Herrlee Glessner Creel, Chad Hansen, Françoise Bottéro, and David Lurie, who are

quite comfortable with the idea that the Chinese script is replete with ideograms.”

Is it actually true that Françoise Bottéro and David Lurie are “... quite comfortable

with the idea that the Chinese script is replete with ideograms”? It is not. My reading

of Bottéro's and Lurie's writings concerning the Chinese script indicates no tendency

toward the position Mair claims they hold. Lurie's “crime” seems to be that in his

2006 essay “Language, Writing, and Disciplinarity in the Critique of the 'Ideographic

Myth': Some Proleptical Remarks” he examines the Critique evenhandedly, without

taking care to kneel and kiss the “myth-as-debunked-by-DeFrancis” ring. Meanwhile,

what it is that might constitute Bottéro's “infraction” is even more of a mystery. I urge

Mair to quote for our benefit the relevant passages he believes supports his

designation of the two. Whether he does so or not, I submit that in fact neither

Bottéro nor Lurie is “... quite comfortable with the idea that the Chinese script is

replete with ideograms,” and that this erroneous ascription is nothing other than an

example of partisanship beclouding objectivity.

From the above, we find the Critique being advanced by means of personal attacks,

misrepresentation and accusations of “pernicious lies,” with its chief proponent

likening himself and his allies to “embattled warriors.”

Invective, distortion, allegations of mendacity, a bunker mentality: It's all more

reminiscent of a defense of the true faith (or its secular cousin, a political campaign)

than a sober defense of a scholarly position. The wonder is that the Critique of the

Ideographic Myth has managed to go nearly three decades without attracting the

critical attention it deserves.

Lawrence J. Howell

7 April 2012

Adapted from a post originally uploaded to the Kanji Networks Blog