According to the Reader: A Semiotic Approach to the Study of Shaoshu Minzu Wenxue

Abstract

The notion of “ethnic minority literature” is well established in Chinese literary studies. According to the standard definition, ethnic minority literature must be authored by a member of an ethnic minority and must reflect that specific minority’s modes of life. This definition hinges on the analysis of the author’s ethnicity and on the themes of his/her writing, thus ignoring the role of the reader in the process of literary interpretation. To fill this gap, this study asks what makes a text “ethnic” from the perspective of the model reader, the hypothetical person who is the target audience of a literary text. Taking five texts by contemporary Chinese authors as case studies, this article suggests that the content of a literary text— not the author’s ethnicity—determines whether a text is perceived as “ethnic”. For this reason, the article introduces the notion of “literature about ethnic minorities” as a tool of literary analysis that allows foregrounding modes of literary expression such as language use and literary themes rather than ethnic administrative categories.