The question at the end of the last post looks innocent enough: Are there human rights in China? Given everything we discussed about how language works, though, it seems we’re treading on very unsteady ground here: if we can’t even say that cup and bēizi mean “the same thing,” how can we begin to unravel the complexities of human rights and what a Chinese “equivalent” might be?

Just as with cup, with human rights we forget the separation between form and meaning. We forget thathuman rights is not some abstract, freely floating concept that applies identically the world over. Human rights, rather, is a pairing of form and meaning that is specific to the English language. The form is the sound string (represented in IPA as /hjuːmən ɹai̯ts/) and the meaning is the full set of concepts and images associated with the sound string.

The term human rights exists in the English language. And just as there is a rich set of meanings associated with the English sound string, there is also a rich set of meanings associated with its “nearest” Chinese “equivalent,” rénquán (人权). What we have to keep reminding ourselves of is that human rights and rénquánare not “the same thing.” English has human rights; Chinese has rénquán. The two sets of concepts are related, but not identical.

Some have asked me: Does that mean that the Chinese don’t have the concept of human rights? My answer is: Yes, only to the extent that Americans don’t have the concept of rénquán.

So: Language is not just form (sound), and not just meaning (concepts), but the pairing of form and meaning. Because our native language is so natural to us we forget that the concepts in our native language are not universal. So we naturally assume that other languages encode the same concepts as our native language. And since culture consists of shared concepts, it follows that by default we expect that other cultures will be the same as ours.

What does this mean for you, for us? It means that, as Westerners engaged with China, we need as thorough an understanding as we can get of key Chinese concepts in the Chinese language. In English we have the word contract; in Chinese we have hétong (合同). You can throw out a lot of what you understand a contract to be, because the Chinese don’t know from contracts; they know from hétong. If you want to succeed in China, you’d best know what the Chinese are thinking of when they use the word hétong, because that’s what they’re operating from in their negotiations with you.

It’s hard to talk about the importance of words without sounding trite — a testament to the privileged place of language in our human-ness. The problem is that we can get ourselves into trouble if we’re not clear about what we mean by “word.”

Language is about the relationship between form and meaning. By “form” I mean something perceptible, tangible. In the case of spoken language, “form” means a stream of sound, which the language-comprehending mind breaks up into smaller pieces called phonemes.

There is a way of representing the sounds of any spoken language, independent of the world’s writing systems. It’s called the International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA. The English word cup, for instance, is written /kʌp/, with the “wedge” symbol, /ʌ/, representing the short “u” sound. Each IPA symbol represents a phoneme.

As children grow into native English speakers, they learn to associate the form, or sound string, /kʌp/, with a set of meanings having to do with drinking beverages, and with other things. Consider:

• coffee cup
• cup your hands
• brassiere cup
• half a cup of sugar
• the putt missed the cup

This gets at just a small sampling of the rich set of meanings and images associated with the English sound string /kʌp/.

Now the trouble: When we use the word word, are we referring to the form or to the meaning? Depending on the context, it could be either or both. An example of word referring to just the form would be: “The English word cup consists of three phonemes.” Here there is no reference to meaning; just to sound.

Word can also refer to form-plus-meaning, as in: “No language has yet been found that doesn’t have a word for cup.” Here word refers to the combination of form and meaning.

The trouble starts when we treat words as if they were meanings and only meanings, with no form. Consider this sentence:

The Chinese word for cup is bēizi.

In this sentence “cup” could only refer to the meaning or meanings associated with the English-language form /kʌp/. Why? Because we all know, or can at least guess, that whatever the Chinese word is for “cup,” it isn’t pronounced /kʌp/. So “cup” must be referring to meaning alone, not form. We might paraphrase the sentence as, “The Chinese form that is paired with the same meaning as the English form ‘cup’ is bēizi.”

Now we’re in trouble, because bēizi and cup are in fact not paired with “the same meaning.” First, bēizicovers a broader range, including what English refers to using the word glass. Second, images of Chinesebēizi will differ from images of English cup: “teacups” look different, you might not see a “coffee cup” in some parts of China, and there are some types of bēizi you wouldn’t see in the U.S., like the special kind ofbēizi used for toasting with hard liquor.

At this point you might object that cup and bēizi are “close enough” that we shouldn’t be bothered by all this. Fair enough. If intercultural communication were limited to such simple categories, it might not be worth all the trouble.

But what do we do questions like this:

Are there human rights in China?

We’ll take that up next time.