Rhetorical Studies: Moving Beyond Technique

Author: Tan Xuechun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-12-01
Features: The main content of the book is divided into two parts: The first part is the rhetorical discourse and rhetorical theory research of the technique theory. "‘Man’s Talent and Woman’s Beauty’/‘Man’s Wealth and Woman’s Beauty’: An Analysis of Social Marriage and Love Mentality Discourse" takes the interpretive endpoint in the sense of rhetorical techniques as the starting point for a new round of interpretation. Taking "man’s talent and woman’s beauty" as the discourse prototype, the rhetoricalized "man’s wealth and woman’s beauty" is merely a superficial manifestation on the level of techniques, through which the changing trajectory of social marriage and love mentality can beed. The focus of this article is to explore how the reconstructed rhetorical discourse in this process of change influences people’s "way of living" with new "sayings." "The Definition of ‘Heredity’: Conceptual Cognition and Rhetorical Cognition" analyzes the definition of "heredity" and the answer strategies in the national college entrance examination Chinese test, thereby discussing the two paths of the subjective cognitive world: conceptual cognition and rhetorical cognition. The former locks objects in a conceptualized manner, while the latter unfolds objects in an aestheticized manner. The second part is a case study of textual rhetoric, which moves beyond rhetorical techniques and enters the rhetorical reading of pluralistic contexts. "Red Sorghum: An Alternative Writing of War Rhetorical Discourse" analyzes the "alternative" tendencies of the war rhetorical discourse in this novella from four perspectives: (1) The non-m, non-high-key narrative in the novel guides an alternative imagination of war; (2) the rhetorical portrayal of strong life calls upon the spirit of national resilience and continues the "power" tradition in the history of modern Chinese literature; (3) Mo Yan’s temporal rhetoric, which he is particularly skilled in, has also been emulated by other texts; (4) The author reconstructs an aesthetic scene of war beyond the reality of war, while also reconstructing the aesthetic value scale of war rhetorical discourse. The group of articles included in the appendix serves as a supplement to the main text and reflects, from different perspectives, the theoretical thinking and practical operations of rhetorical research moving beyond the technique theory.