Interpreting the value dimension of Chinese moral language

Every ethnic group has a moral language, but the moral language of different peoples is quite different in form and content. Chinese moral language is mainly the moral language commonly used by the Chinese nation, which is a tool used by the whole people to record moral life experience, exchange moral thoughts, express moral feelings, narrate moral will, and describe moral behavior, but at present, China's ethics community has rarely carried out in-depth and systematic research in this field, which is an important topic that needs to be made up urgently in China's ethical research. Chinese moral language is self-contained and has national characteristics, and plays a strong constructive role in the long-standing Chinese moral culture, which is mainly reflected in the following three aspects:

01

The chinese moral language is the Chinese national ethics

Chinese expression system of value appeal

In the system of meaning expressed in Chinese, ethical meaning occupies an important position that cannot be ignored. The main function of Chinese moral language is to express ethical meaning. As a subsystem of the Chinese language, it is composed of elements such as words, words, grammar, and rhetoric, and expresses rich and colorful ethical meanings with the help of these elements. The so-called "ethical meaning" is a semantic system that embodies the understanding of human ethical values, ethical value judgments and ethical value choices, and its core meaning is the regularity or regularity of human moral life. The Chinese nation uses moral language to express its ethical value demands, which is essentially to express the ethical significance we pursue.

Many Chinese characters have ethical implications. The Book of Rites says, "He who is virtuous, he who has gained." This means not only the homophony of the words "de" and "gain", but also the synonym of the two. In ancient times, the Chinese referred to as "virtue" in the natural sense, specifically the fact that people acquired virtues such as benevolence, righteousness, wisdom, and faith. It can be seen that the word "virtue" contains the ethical meaning of requiring people to seek virtue or to support virtue. Some Chinese characters can directly express ethical meanings. For example, the glyph of the word "loyalty" intuitively shows two aspects of ethical meaning: one refers to "righteousness of mind" without crooked thoughts; the other refers to "concentration" without three hearts and two intentions. Therefore, the ethical meaning of "loyalty" is "faithfulness" or "faithfulness." In Chinese, "loyalty" or "loyalty" is an ethical requirement implicit in the word "loyalty".

The Chinese nation is also very fond of using rhetorical techniques to express ethical meaning. There is a classic metaphor in the Book of Rites: "The virtuous, the sexual end; the musician, the dezhihua." It means that morality is the root of human nature, and music is the flower of morality. The metaphor of "morality" as the "end of sex" and the metaphor of "music" as "virtue" not only vividly shows the relationship between "morality" and "music", but also vividly describes their ethical implications. In ancient China, the words written by people, the music they composed, the dances they performed, the buildings they built, etc. all had the function of ethical bearing, and they were all regarded as the products of the "heart", while the "heart" of the cultivation of foreign objects was called "moral heart", "wen heart", "carved dragon heart" or "heart of heaven and earth".

02

The Chinese moral language reflects traditional Chinese society

The reality of being an ethical society

The Chinese nation is a nation that particularly respects philosophy. Mr. Feng Youlan once pointed out: "The position of philosophy in Chinese culture has always been comparable to the position of religion in other cultures. "The Chinese nation's admiration for philosophy is universal, and it is centered on ethics. China's "philosophical enlightenment" is essentially an education in ethical thought or moral values.

Chinese has a long tradition of advocating ethics, has always advocated ethics to guide human existence, transform ethics into morality, and regulate social life with moral norms, emphasizing the important position of rule by virtue in national governance.

The reality of traditional Chinese society as an ethical society is most directly reflected through the status of moral language. Chinese attaches the greatest importance to moral education, adheres to the educational concept of "moral education should start from the doll", and puts it into practice, so that almost everyone will receive a more systematic moral education from an early age, and will master a more systematic ethical discourse system. In China, many people know classic moral stories such as "mother-in-law's thorn characters" and can skillfully quote ethical terms such as self-improvement, virtue, benevolence, love for others, world unity, shangshan ruoshui, and compassion in classics such as Zhou Yi, Analects, Lao Tzu, and Mencius.

Chinese generally like to observe and talk about life from an "ethical" point of view. In traditional societies, a moral life is an ethical life. People can adopt a detached attitude towards political, religious, literary and artistic life, but they have always attached great importance to ethics and morality. Following the normative requirements of ethics and living a morally cultivated life, people generally believe in such a moral belief: people cannot stand without morality, and the country is not prosperous without morality.

03

The role of Chinese moral language in the construction of Chinese moral culture

The Chinese moral language is not only an important part of China's moral culture, but also an important constructor of Chinese moral culture. Chinese moral culture is a huge system composed of many elements such as moral thinking, moral cognition, moral emotion, moral belief, moral behavior, moral memory, and moral language formed by the Chinese nation in a long-term common life. Chinese moral language uses words, words, grammar, rhetoric and other forms to express moral culture, so that the ethical meaning it contains becomes something that can be spoken, communicated, communicated, explained, and understood. Without the constructive role of moral language, moral culture can only be in a state of obscuration. In fact, moral culture is historical, realistic, and has room for future development, and its historical reality, actual reality, and future reality all need to be constructed with the help of moral language.

Of course, Chinese moral culture also plays an equally important role in the construction of Chinese moral language. It is what moral language is designed to express. Without the specific content provided by moral culture, there is no necessity or possibility for Chinese moral language to emerge. The relationship between moral language and moral culture is essentially a relationship between form and content, and they are interdependent, interrelated, mutually influencing, interacting, and complementing each other.

On the question of how to understand the relationship between Chinese moral language and Chinese moral culture, we can learn from Confucius's views. Confucius put forward the theory of "wenbinbin" as early as 2,000 years ago. He said: "Quality is better than literature is wild, and literature is better than quality." Polite and then gentlemanly. Confucius used the concept of "gentleman" to discuss the relationship between "literature" and "quality". The so-called "text" refers to the literary style of a person's speech and writing; the so-called "quality" refers to the content of a person's speech and writing. Confucius believed that if a person speaks and writes more than the literary style in which he expresses them, it will appear insufficient, and if a person speaks and writes with more literary style than he wants to express, it will appear exaggerated. He obviously wanted to emphasize that the best match between "text" and "quality" was the best. The relationship between moral language and moral culture should be "polite and polite".

Chinese moral language is a form of moral language with great charm, because it expresses a long-standing, profound moral culture. Chinese moral culture is a conceptual form with great charm, because its expression form is a moral language with special explanatory power, persuasiveness, and appeal. The organic combination of moral language and moral culture plays a duet that has both the meaning of beauty and the meaning of goodness. The Chinese nation has always pursued a way of living in which beauty and goodness are integrated. We have created a beautiful moral language and used it to express our moral life of seeking goodness, seeking goodness, and doing good deeds, thus composing a unique and national history of the moral life of the Chinese nation. A history of the moral life of the Chinese nation is a history in which moral language and moral culture complement each other, reflect each other, and complement each other.

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