From winning a Taiwan national singing competition at age 81 to becoming the Golden Melody Best Female Singer at age 382, Sarah Chen had an outstanding and sustained career. But you would not know that by reading her biography online3,4. Instead, she is described as the singer successfully transformed by Jonathan Lee, who shaped her into the “voice of urban women” through songs such as “Dream to Awakening5.” Chen collaborated with Lee on three of her 30+ albums and originated the concept behind their work6–8, but the erasure of her artistic agency was nearly total.

What could have contributed to the stunning degree of narrative capture? In two articles, we explore a linguistic device, dating back to Confucius’s writing of “Spring and Autumn9,10,” deployed to promote Chen’s work with Lee. The 9/1/2026 issue examines the grammar of that promotion, which positions Lee as the agent acting on Chen as the causee (the “causative” construction). The 9/15/2026 issue focuses on the use of words that criminalize and pathologize Chen’s past work (the “transformation” framework). By employing a centuries-old practice of embedding hidden meaning in words, the album promotion wrote Chen out of her own work.

从八岁赢得台湾歌唱比赛1, 至38岁再度获得金曲奖最佳女歌手奖2, 陈淑桦是华语乐坛活跃了二三十年的常青树。但如今你去读她的在线生平介绍，她仿佛只是梦醒时分的昙花一现3,4：几乎所有中文网站都说李宗盛捧红了她，成功地对她进行转型，把她塑造成“都市女子代言人”5。陈淑桦录制过三十几张个人专辑，她和李宗盛的合作仅限于两张原创和一张台语经典6–8, 但她独立的艺术身份却所剩无几。

是什么造成了陈淑桦职业生涯如此彻底的叙述劫持？在九月的两篇期刊里，我们分析当年唱片公司对陈淑桦的宣传文案，其中使用了暗含意义的语言机制，可以追溯到孔子写《春秋》的笔法9,10 。九月一日是“春秋笔法”上集，探讨《女人心》专辑宣传文案使用的语法——「使役结构」将李宗盛置于陈淑桦之上（“使役结构”，the “causative” construction). 九月十五日是“春秋笔法”下集，分析宣传陈淑桦时使用的负面比喻，比如“转型”、“洗底”和“下猛药”。这些词将陈淑桦滚石之前的作品与失败、罪行和疾病相连（“转型论”，the “transformation” framework)。这种春秋笔法不仅淹没了陈淑桦在滚石时期的主导贡献，也抹去了她之前在海山和百代打下的江山。