A semantic study of the relationship between morphemic symbols and designed artifacts in China

Abstract

Modern times of China see serious impact on the cultural inheritance due to tremendous transformations and movements. Artifact design, deemed as one of the major carriers of the cultural values, has become more critical because of the complex situations facing every designer. This research focuses on how to interpret designed artifacts in an innovative way, and how to embody the essence of native culture in man-made forms, proposing an approach to fit the acculturation. Toward this end, a series of studies is conducted from the perspective of semantic representation. It starts with the linguistic investigation, suggesting a new way to analyze Chinese ideographs morphemically. The connection between Chinese ideographs and designed artifacts is then set up, and the cognitive semantics-based interpretive framework of designed artifacts is proposed. On the basis of the theoretical statements, the author is establishing the "Ideograph-Artifact Library" that contains the information of both artifact samples and corresponding Chinese ideographs with different groups and units. After that, several case studies are given, including the "food-container" group, the "meat utensil" unit, and the "wine vessel" group. By examining semantics of designed artifacts from a cognitive approach, two kinds of relationships between Chinese ideographs and designed artifacts are uncovered, namely, the denotative and the connotative relationship. Furthermore, the author raises two implications of design: the evaluation model and the "Ideographic Design" approach. To prove the statements, examples are also given, attesting the practical value of the research.