Paper short abstract:

There are three different types of anthropology that exist in China due to three different kinds of languages used by anthropologists. An overlapping consuses can be reached through semiotic negotiation.

Paper long abstract:

There are three different types of anthropology that exist in China, resulted from the three different kinds of languages employed in anthropological research and publication. The first type is the anthropology in English, the second in Chinese, the third in minority languages. The cultural assimilationist discourse in the circle of nationalistic intellectuals fuels such incongruity. I'll argue that despite particularities between the kinds of anthropologies due to confrontational linguistic ideologies and ethnic-national discourse, they can be semiotically negotiated and reconciled in a Peircean spirit. Anthropologists in Chna can reach an overlapping consensus, at least academically, beyond the dualism of particularities and universalities. I call it an opening process of negotiating consensus.