Nüshu in the Sense of Pragmatics

10.2478/bjlp-2022-001079

Abstract

Nüshu is the only living female script in the world. It is a complete set of
writing signs created and used by women in Jiangyong county and Daoxian County
of Hunan Province. Since it was discovered by Chinese scholars in the 1980s,
scholars in China and the worldwide have studied Nüshu in succession. However,
there are few studies on Nüshu from the perspective of semiotics. Based on Peirce’s
theories of semiotics and pragmaticism, this paper makes an exploratory analysis
on the locutionary meaning, illocutionary meaning and perlocutionary meaning of
Nüshu from the perspective of Morris’ pragmatics, expecting to play a role in the
multi-path study of Nüshu signs.