Modern Chinese - Rhetoric

Author: Wu Liqian
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-11-01
Features: Once, some professors from Taiwan discussed together: "Is the Chinese nation the most outstanding nation in the world?" The discussion did not reach a conclusion. However, there was one point on which everyone agreed: "culinary art" and "beautiful language" are undoubtedly the two greatest strengths of the Chinese nation, unmatched in the world! It is universally acknowledged that the Chinese are fond of culinary art; it is well-known that the Chinese pay attention to beautiful language. As early as the pre-Qin era, Confucius famously said: "Speech without elegance cannot travel far"; the Book of Changes (Zhou Yi), Commentary on the Changes (Upper), states: "What moves the world lies in language"; Xunzi remarked: "The beauty of language is profound and majestic"; the Han Dynasty scholar Liu Xiang more explicitly declared: "One must not speak improperly, and language must not be unrefined"; the Southern Dynasties literary theorist Liu Xie said: "The eloquence of one person is more valuable than the nine-dragon cauldrons; the power of a three-inch tongue surpasses that of a million soldiers." The reason why the Chinese value rhetoric and excel at beautiful language can be traced back to historical roots. So, how can one create beautiful language? How can one make one's speech captivating and one's writing enchanting? Modern Chinese Rhetoric will provide you with valuable insights, as if drinking nectar and gaining sudden enlightenment. Modern Chinese Rhetoric is one of the modern Chinese series textbooks for universities in the 21st century, approved by the Ministry of Education. It is a new and powerful work by Wu Liqian, a young linguistics professor and doctoral supervisor at Fudan University, who has accumulated 20 years of academic research and has meticulously crafted it over five revisions and six years. The book contains 400,000 words, excluding the "Introduction," and is divided into nine chapters. It not only comprehensively reveals the various rhetorical rules from sentence structure to discourse organization but also summarizes specific and effective rhetorical text models. Additionally, it systematically integrates the latest rhetorical theories into the text in an accessible manner. The rhetorical rules it summarizes are scientific and comprehensive; the rhetorical principles it generalizes are profound and incisive; its explanation of the psychological mechanisms behind rhetorical text construction is pioneering; its analysis of the profound and subtle meanings of rhetorical texts is like a butcher dissecting an ox. Beyond its clear and logical theoretical explanations and solid academic discussions, the book is the first to apply modern quantitative statistical methods in rhetoric, conducting "quantitative" analyses of the relationships between various styles of modern Chinese, different speech styles, and rhetoric. It uses irrefutable data to validate the rhetorical principles it derives, giving the book a more scientific and modern touch of the times.