Rhetorical Studies (Beyond the Theory of Techniques)

Author: Tan Xuechun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-12-01
Features: The main content of the book is divided into two parts: Part 1 focuses on the rhetoric discourse and theoretical research of rhetoric techniques. In the article "The 'Manly Talent and Feminine Beauty'/'Manly Wealth and Feminine Beauty': An Analysis of Social Marriage and Love Discourse," the interpretive endpoint in the sense of rhetorical techniques is taken as the starting point for a new round of interpretation. Taking "Manly Talent and Feminine Beauty" as the discourse prototype, the rhetoric-generated "Manly Wealth and Feminine Beauty" is merely a superficial manifestation on the level of techniques, through which the changing trajectory of social marriage and love attitudes can beed. The focus of this paper is to explore how the reconstructed rhetorical discourse in this process, through new "sayings," influences people's "way of living." The article "The Definition of 'Heredity': Conceptual Cognition and Rhetorical Cognition" analyzes the definition of "heredity" and the reasoning approach in the national college entrance examination Chinese test paper, thereby discussing the two paths of the subjective cognitive world: conceptual cognition and rhetorical cognition. The former locks onto objects in a conceptualized manner, while the latter unfolds objects in an aestheticized manner. Part 2 conducts case studies on the rhetoric of texts, moving beyond rhetoric techniques to enter the pluralistic context of rhetoric reading. In the article "Red Sorghum: An Alternative Writing of War Rhetoric Discourse," the "alternative" tendency of the war rhetoric discourse in this novella is analyzed from four perspectives: (1) The non-macroeconomic, non-high-profile narration in the novel guides an alternative imagination of war; (2) The rhetorical portrayal of strong life in the novel invokes the spirit of national resilience and continues the tradition of "power" in the history of modern Chinese literature; (3) Mo Yan's time rhetoric, which he is particularly skilled in, has also been emulated by other texts; (4) The author, beyond the reality of war, reconstructs an aesthetic scene of war and simultaneously reconstructs the aesthetic value scale of war rhetoric discourse. The group of articles included in the appendix, as a supplement to the main text, also reflects theoretical thinking and practical operations of rhetoric research moving beyond the technique theory from different perspectives.