本文旨在探討表達方式與情意音聲兩者之間的交織與互動。以流傳於湖南省 江永縣農村婦女之間的女書、女歌爲例，本文分析書寫與歌詠兩者各自的表意利 基（niches)或表意空間，以及兩種不同的表意空間如何反映當事人不同層面的生 命脈動。本文之論證理路主要係就當前學界於文字與口語議題上，兩個常見的現 象而發抒：一是漢學界重文字而輕口語或歌謠的治學傳統；二是人類學界對文字 與口語二元對立的關懷。爲了化解文字與口語兩者之間的「主從問題」與「二元 對立」，本文提出一個新的思考方向，亦即：文字與口語的關係，除了本質上的異 同之外，還涉及社會文化所賦予其中的表意利基，以及使用者如何善用該利基，以 建構論述、申述自我和體現人情。在此一認識論下，硏究主體不是個別的表意工 具(或文字、或口語)，而是使用社群。更具體的說，即是使用社群如何透過口語 與文字各自不同的表意空間，投射她們看世界的不同視維（vision)，這兩個不同 的視維或有重疊，但也有其獨特利基，無法相互取代。誠如文中所述，文字書寫 在時、空之間穿梭；口語歌詠則在禮法、權力結構的內外游移。在書寫與歌詠的 交織下，呈現的不僅是自我在時間與空間中的轉圜、置換，更是一己與社會相互 主體性的建構，以及情思與禮法之間的糾葛、妥協。由是之故，若欲瞭解江永婦 女幽微深蘊的情意音聲，則關鍵不在個別的口語女歌或文字女書，而是兼容並蓄， 亦即把這兩種不同的表意工具視爲一個整體或當成一個表意連環結，而非各自獨 立的象限，如此才能呈現被硏究社群的多重視維。

In this article, I explore the interactions between singing and writing among women in Jiangyong County in southern Hunan, China. I argue that writing and singing have unique expressive niches and that women take advantage of these different expressive mediums to articulate different voices. To capture the multi-faceted social reality of the concerned community, I suggest that instead of focusing on what a single expressive medium can deliver, various expressive mediums (writing, singing, etc.) utilized within a community should be taken as a whole or as “an interactional chain of expression” rather than separate entities. Such a theoretical orientation not only lends insights into the dialectical relations between literacy and orality, it also calls attention to the significance of oral performances and singing cultures, which have been marginalized in sinology due to Its heavy emphasis on historiography.
This paper is based upon research I have been conducting in southern China for a decade. My topic, niishu 女書 or “female writing,” was found in one Confucian androcentric village-based agrarian community. Referring to a writing system as well as the literature written in it, niishu was used not only exclusively among women in rural Jiangyong, but moreover, it was male-illegible—it is semiphonetic compared to the ideographs of Chinese official hanzi. This male-illegible system, though used for centuries, was largely undocumented and unknown to the outside world until the 1980s，just as it was becoming extinct. Prior to the Liberation in 1949，Jiangyong women had used this script to compose sisterhood letters, biographical laments, wedding texts, prayers, folk stories, and other narratives in verse form. More importantly, such literature, though written, required performance in the form of singing or chanting, making it almost completely interchangeable with the local women’s singing tradition, referred to as niigetc歌 or “female song.” As a combination of writing and singing, nushu!niige illuminate the dynamic ways voices are articulated depending on the form of expression.
In this paper, I focus on two types of nUshu/niige literature: biographical
nUge and the correspondence between ritually “sworn sisters” (becoming ritually sworn sisters is a distinctive local custom in Jiangyong). I discuss how the culturally defined overtones of singing performance in traditional China—sentimentality rather than morality, inner-orientation rather than sociality, unofficiality rather than formality—led to the elite assumption that the mind of the singer is shallow or unsophisticated. Ironically, it is this expectation, that gives the act of singing its influence and power. This lapse in vigilance over oral expression allows nUge women to “sing” what they are not supposed to “write，” thus helping them to evade the authority of dominant discourse, challenge hierarchical relations, and give meaning to their existence.
In contrast, niishu literacy allows voices to travel across time and space. By writing niishu letters, women were able to make cross-village, in conjunction with intra-village, sisterhood pacts before marriage, thus helping them expand their female social connections beyond the confines of male-centric family relation. But sisterhood ties were often disrupted rather than perpetuated after marriage due to the practice of patrilocal village exogamy. For niishu letters to be delivered between villages, women had to hook into male-controlled social, economic, and kinship networks. Thus, no matter how powerful or touching the writing might be, the women’s literacy in nUshu could never completely overcome the androcentric structural confinements imposed on them. To offset this frustration, the role of literacy in prompting spatial and social expansion was converted to that of a time shuttle or time capsule—to memorialize and eternalize the sentiments of the unsustainable sisterhood. Through nUshu writing, memory achieves eternal reality, and time became a space in which to wander and rest.
The interweave of oral nilge and literate nUshu creates a practice through which women in rural Jiangyong can mitigate their difficulties in relation to hierarchy, social relations, space, and time. By examining the intersection of niishu and nUge, we thus learn how women negotiate social protocols, how they simultaneously identify with and challenge the local power structure, how they grapple with geographical relocations, and how they give meaning to their existence through memory. It is in this sense that singing and writing should be treated as a whole or as an interactional chain of expression, rather than two separate domains, so that the subjects’ multi-dimensional visions of the world can be captured and revealed.