Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics

1. Definition and Early History An “ideograph” (alternatively “ideogram”) is, insofar as we can take the term itself at face value, nothing other than a written mark, i.e., a ‘graph’ (γράφος), that stands directly for an ‘idea’ (ἰδέα), however this may be understood, with no intervening linguistic mediation. The word has no classical existence; it was, together with its adjectival form ‘ideographic’, a learned neologism introduced into French and English in the early 19th century in connection with t…

The ideographic fallacy holds that Chinese characters are “ideographs” (also called ideograms) that express ideas independent of spoken language. The idea originated among early modern Europeans, spread to Japan, and then to China. Sustained by cultural politics east and west, it retains a powerful hold on the popular imagination and in some areas of academia. However, linguists, psychologists, and computer scientists consider the ideographic fallacy to be long disproved. Computer science breakt…