Former Soviet Cultural Semiotics in China
AbstractSince China adopted the reform and open-up policy in the late 1970s, cultural semiotics from the former Soviet Union has been introduced into China, and has exerted substantial influence on Chinese academia. This essay starts from the perspective of research discourse to review the influence of Soviet literary theories among Chinese scholars over the past half century, and to demonstrate the positive role played by Soviet cultural semiotics in the evolution process of the Chinese literary community from revolution through aesthetic discourse to dialogue and polyphony. The essay then proceeds to the discussion of the revolutionary shift in the critical mindset caused by the changes in research discourses, namely the shift from the scientific way of thinking, featuring scientific induction, to the artistic way of thinking, featuring pluralism and the co-existence of various elements. The last part of the essay provides an in-depth discussion of the Chinese adaptation of Soviet cultural semiotics, i.e. the rediscovery of the nature of cultural semiotics by Chinese semioticians.