后现代哲学大力倡导多元论,我们据此在体认语言学中提出了“象豹观”,拟为汉语中两个成语“盲人摸象”和“窥斑见豹”平反。它们原来多用作贬义,却道出了认识论的基本原理,我们常常是通过局部观察来识得整体的,人类永远走在以“转喻性方式(部代整)”认识世界的旅途之上。语言研究也是如此,学者们常基于某一立场,从某一视角来论述语言的某一性质,才有了如此多的语言理论和学派。这说明学人总是依据“多元论”和“象豹观”来认识和研究语言。

We, on the basis of pluralism proposed by post modernist philosophy, put forward “the View of Elephant & Leopard” in Embodied Cognitive Linguistics, with the intention of redressing two idioms in Chinese “blind men and elephant (draw conclusions from incomplete data) ” and “seeing a leopard only by a glimpse of few dots”, for they are usually meant for derogatory usage. But we think it is a basic principle for epistemology, because we often recognize the whole by partial observation, and the human beings are forever on the way to metonymically (part for whole) know the world. So does the linguistic research, for linguists have often explained the nature of language from one standpoint or one perspective, thus resulting so many linguistic theories and schools, which have proven that the scholars always depend on pluralism and “the View of Elephant and Leopard” for the recognition and research of language.