Lecture 5 the Chinese Cultural Spirit in Chinese language, Literature and Art 中国文学精神.docVIP

Lecture 5 the Chinese Cultural Spirit in Chinese language, Literature and Art 本专题旨在使学生对中国文化精神生产中中国人文精神与语言、文学和艺术的关系有一个较全面的认识。通过中西文化比较把握中国传统文化的独特性。学生要通过对比对中国精神文化宏观特征有较详解得了解：人文传统与科学精神、群体认同与个人本位、天人合一与物我二分、关注此岸与关注彼岸等等。本专题包括中西语言、思维比较，如意合语言与形合语言、场依附性语言与场独立性语言、悟性思维与理性思维、模糊思维与明细思维、直觉思维与逻辑思维、实践理性与思辨理性等等。本专题通过中西文学艺术宏观比较，引导学生发现中国美学观念在艺术表现倾向的不同及文化意蕴上的差异，如中国神化与希腊神话、写意与写实、心物感应与模仿现实、重意境的抒情传统与重叙事的史诗传统、重视团圆和谐的审美与张扬奔放冲突的审美等等。 I. Language Every very language has its special way to perceive the objective world and dissect the world differently. Therefore, a language can be taken as a mirror of the culture that demonstrates the character of the people who use the language. In many ways, Chinese are quite different from other languages in the way of combining form and meaning. But most of the Chinese people do not really see themselves clearly in the mirror as they do not consciously compare their language with others. Lets take Western languages as a comparative reference. We will focus on English as an epitome [ipit?mi; e-] of the Western language as it is the most popularly spoken Western tongue in the world at present time and embodies most the necessary elements for discussion. Chinese Language There are at least two perspectives to look at languages, linguistic perspective and cultural perspective. From the surface, we find that Western languages have a shared feature, that is, a great number of inflectional variations to indicate time, aspect, gender, number and case of words, as well as structural relationships in word combination. Therefore, Western linguists take form as their central concern. In contrast, Chinese lacks inflectional variations which show clear grammatical categories and relations. A Chinese linguist and translator Lü Shuxiang(1988) once humorously remarked, We Chinese people have no admiration for the intertwined grammar. We find it extremely in- convenient to have these pigtails on our head; A bald head is much better. A bald head is much better means that the