Homophony in traditional Chinese folk paper-cutting
The traditional Chinese folk paper-cut works that have been accumulated in the process of civilization are the artistic expression of the creators' understanding and perception of life and nature, and are the implicit cultural symbols when they express their inner emotions. code. This form itself still carries the meaningful content of the original natural genes. This "natural genetic content" is the most symbolic content of the folk paper-cut pattern images. Many shapes contain relatively profound symbols and hints, etc. Features. These "imagery" characteristics are often expressed through the three most basic language forms in paper-cut art, namely homophony, metaphor and symbol. The combination of these expression techniques makes the folk paper-cut shapes imbue the creators subjective imagination and romance.
The number of Chinese characters is huge. The "Kangxi Dictionary" contains more than 47,000 characters, and the "Chinese Dictionary" contains more than 48,000 characters. In addition to the above two large dictionaries, even the "Xinhua Dictionary" used in daily life , also contains more than 8,000 words. According to the frequency of use of Chinese characters, there are generally about 6,000 commonly used Chinese characters. Most of the pronunciations of these Chinese characters are one word and one sound. However, when the sounds of these characters are combined, there are only more than 1,200. More than 1,200 sounds are used to read tens of thousands of Chinese characters, so "homophones" and "homophones" appeared. Homophony is a phonetic rhetorical technique that uses homophone words. In folk paper-cutting, we often see some "irrelevant" picture combinations, which are actually the application of homophony in folk art. The common people use the same or similar pronunciation as the picture to express auspicious meanings, such as: cutting lotus flowers, cinnamon branches and dolls together, which means that the lotus will give birth to precious (cinnamon) seeds; using cracked pomegranates and dolls to combine them, It means that the durian will bear hundreds of seeds; cutting the plum tree or plum blossoms together with the magpies means that the eyebrows (plum trees) will be happy... (For more information, please refer to: The homophonic meaning of Shaanxi folk paper-cutting) This kind of tangible picture The combination with invisible auspicious words is the embodiment of the imagery expression of folk art. The homophonic and colorful auspicious words are also called “Talk for Color" is the embodiment of the unique way of thinking of the people, an integral part of the traditional culture, and the yearning for a better life that the people place in folk paper-cutting.
Homophony is an implicit semantic system. The so-called implicit semantics refers to the meaning that is attached to the explicit semantics and is restricted by a certain speech communication context. In "The Phenomenon of Homophony in Southern Han Folk Customs", Mr. Zhou Xing has an incisive discussion of the diversity of homophonic folk customs. When he analyzed the homophony method from the perspective of language rhetoric, he said: "There are situations where we only start from the principle of homophony to form a transition between different things, and there are also situations where we start from a certain attribute of one thing and involve another thing through homophony. There are also cases where the meaning is understood by analogy through naming first and then through homophony (recommended reading: The meaning of homophony in the symbolic expression of Chinese folk paper-cut art).
