跨國筆桿面談: ── 從漢文筆談講到筆佐交流

漢字大都會泛指今日中國、韓國、日本、越南四地。明清時期，此四地流行一種以書寫漢字為主體之交談方式，史稱「漢文筆談」，身處異國的東亞士人，言語不通，卻可以漢文筆談克服溝通障礙。文藝復興時期(14-17世纪)，耶穌會會士來華傳教，觀察到這現象，就把這想法帶回歐洲──東亞諸國雖言語不通，但文人儒生皆可以手書漢字交談，透過視覺模式來傳播思想、互動交流，造就出一個「無須翻譯的東亞世界」。這便是「文言傳意神話」的由來。 這觀念儘管毫無科學依據，卻流傳不絕。是次報告先以中﹑朝﹑日﹑越﹑琉文人筆談唱和之歷史文獻爲例，然後（一）概述這文言傳意神話之歷史淵源及造就漢文筆談之物質條件；（二）闡明漢文構詞孤立簡單、漢字表意為主表音為輔、放諸四海字義一致性高之特性，如何讓東亞儒生習得漢文；（三）說明「緘默交談」可通過語音相互主體性來解釋（phonetic inter-subjectivity, 即必須以聽覺模式運作靜默讀寫之協作動力）。漢字這種「交際文字」的功能，令東亞漢字文化圈中各地熟讀儒家典籍以及其他經史子集的文人得以透過筆談互動交流。古往今來，漢文筆談這現象似自成一格，未見於其他採用拼音文字的文明社會。於演化語言學而言，筆談是繼言語、（觸感）手語後的第三或第四種人類溝通模態。我們亦將簡單論述漢文筆談在科學層面上之意義。

[ For centuries until the 1900s, educated East Asians within the Sinographic cosmopolis corresponding with today’s Japan, Korea, Vietnam and China were able to conduct writing-mediated brush conversation using sinograms (漢字 Mand: hànzì, Jap: kanji, Kor: hanja, Viet: Hán tự or Hán văn) and, in this way, overcome their communication barrier when engaged in cross-border encounters. In Renaissance Europe, such an observation, which was made popular by Jesuits during their mission in China, gave rise to a persistent – albeit mistaken – belief that literati of Sinitic from different East Asian polities with no shared spoken language could transmit ideas and exchange meanings via the visual mode, thus fueling an ‘Ideographic Myth’ whereby the improvisation of sinograms in writing allowed for “an East Asian world without translation”. In this presentation, after exemplifying brushed interactions including poetic exchange involving speakers of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Ryukyuan vernaculars, we will (i) outline the historical origin of the Ideographic Myth and how it proved to be fallacious in the face of massive scientific evidence; (ii) elucidate how the relative simplicity of an isolating morphology type and the use of a morphographic, non-phonographic but cross-linguistically semantically stable writing system allowed East Asian students of Sinitic to learn Classical Chinese or Literary Sinitic; and (iii) explain how that pragma-linguistic affordance of the Sinitic script for facilitating ‘silent conversation’ may be accounted for by phonetic inter-subjectivity, an interactional dynamic that operates necessarily in the audio mode, albeit lingua-cognitively by heart rather than through utterance in speech. Such a ‘scripta franca’ function of Sinitic, which enabled brush-talkers with shared knowledge of Confucian classics and other Chinese literary canons from different parts of Sinographic East Asia to conduct brush conversation interactively face-to-face, appeared to be sui generis, unparalleled in other societies dominated by languages written with a phonographic script, ancient or modern. The scientific significance of this third or fourth modality of communication between humans – after speech and (tactile) sign language – in evolutionary linguistics will be briefly discussed. ]