Abstract：As one of speaking ways for ancient Chinese culture and literature to express something that can't be expressed, "words exceeded" reflects a kind of strategy and wisdom that Chinese literature solve the contradiction between speaking and meaning. Modern Western literary theory, especially textual criticism, stresses the point that literature speaking has the characteristic of "signifier superiority" and gives prominence to form the features of literature language. This paper is trying to clarify the differences on language consciousness between Chinese and Western literary criticism as well as the underlying they result from through the contrast between "words exceeded" and "signifier superiority".
