Sociocultural Functions of Chinese Characters and Writing: Transnational Brushtalk Encounters in Mid-nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century East Asia

Written characters are not mere tools of communication and their value has been aesthetically appreciated in the art form of calligraphy in many locales throughout history. Depending on whether characters are phonographic or logographic, however, the sorts of values and functions attached to the characters’ written forms differ fundamentally. Focusing on cross-border interactions of historical figures from China, Vietnam and Japan in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century, this chapter explores the manners in which actors involved in these encounters assigned socio-cultural values to Chinese characters, or sinograms, that transcended their linguistic functions, and how they made the most of Sinitic writing as a resource for establishing rapport with foreigners in transcultural scenarios. Thanks to their rich potential to convey both linguistic and cultural meanings, sinograms and Sinitic writing in general allowed strangers who did not share a spoken language to forge meaningful relationships centered on interactive, face-to-face inscribing of Chinese characters, furthering their embeddedness in the literary and cultural tradition of Sinographic East Asia.