Toward a Semiotics of Chinese Cinema: a Critical Study of Cinematic Signs

This work is to initiate a semiotic re-examination of Chinese cinema. Such re-examination was built upon the concepts of Semiotics as conceived of by Charles Sanders Peirce. In addition, in constructing a semiotic approach to aesthetic issues in general and to cinema in particular, the author incorporated aesthetic theories from American Pragmatism and Kenneth Burke¿s concepts of poetic process. In forming a semiotic approach specific to cinema, the author relied primarily on Gilles Deleuze¿s cinematic theories. This book brings a Chinese perspective into dialectic contact with Western thought, hoping at once to enrich the scope of a general Semiotics of Cinema and to initiate a semiotic analysis of Chinese Cinema. This theorizing is to converse with scholars who are interested in Semiotics in general and film Semiotics in particular; furthermore, it should be especially informative and useful to researchers of Chinese Cinema.