During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Liu Xie's Wen Xin Diao Long systematically discussed the rhetorical rules of poetry and prose. The rhetoric of history and poetry in Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties all developed.
In Chen Xun's Wen Ze in the Southern Song Dynasty, various figures of speech such as metaphor, quotation, parody, word analysis, overlapping, abridgement, ellipsis, layering, intricacy and inversion are analyzed respectively.
The Origin of Rhetoric in Yuan Dynasty is the first work named after rhetoric in China.
The Tang Yin Gui Qian written by Hu Zhenheng in Ming Dynasty is the first compilation of rhetorical data in ancient China.
Wang Guowei's poetry criticism in Qing Dynasty also made great contributions to rhetoric. In Europe, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle's rhetoric monograph "Rhetoric" pays attention to oral rhetoric.
Ancient rhetoric was rough and vague. Rhetoric really became an independent discipline in China after 1930s. After the May 4th Movement, rhetoric, as an independent discipline, has been comprehensively and systematically discussed and studied. The more important achievements mainly include:
The Origin of Rhetoric written by Hu Yu 1923 can be said to be the earliest modern rhetoric work in China.
Then there are Tang Yue's rhetoric, Zheng Dian's China rhetoric research method, Yang Shuda's China rhetoric and Wang Zhen's Putonghua rhetoric.
The Origin of Rhetoric by Chen Wangdao 1932 established the first scientific rhetoric system in China, opened up a new realm of rhetoric research and marked the establishment of modern rhetoric.
After liberation, Zhu's Grammar and Rhetoric, Zhang Gong's Modern Chinese Rhetoric, New Exploration of Chinese Grammar and Rhetoric, Ni Baoyuan's Rhetoric, Wang's General Theory of Chinese Rhetoric and 1980 Rhetoric Society, etc.
There are usually four kinds: rhetoric activities, rhetoric laws, rhetoric phenomena and rhetoric.
1, rhetorical activity
It is recorded in The Analects of Confucius Xianwen: "People are born with thinking at the beginning, teachers and uncles talk about it, pedestrians wear feathers, and Donglizi polishes." "Modification" and "retouching" are all rhetoric, and rhetoric is a kind of speech processing activity that people pursue the best expression effect in the process of using language to convey information and express feelings. The best expression effect is "accurate, vivid, vivid and vivid"
Rhetoric always discusses what kind of material to choose, what kind of rhetoric method to adopt and what kind of expression effect to pursue when the content and context are determined.
If a person is ugly, there are all kinds of statements. For example:
She is ugly. (So embarrassed/ugly/ugly/not handsome/)
She looks like an ugly person. (symbolically)
The whole pig eight quit his second aunt. /or everyone calls her "Aunt Zhu". (metonymy)
Different words show different styles and dialects.
None of her five senses are in the right position. (exaggerated)
See, she doesn't want to eat for three days. (exaggerated)
She is ugly enough to be a scarecrow. If she goes to be a scarecrow, she will scare away all crows. She can not only scare away crows who steal crops, but also scare away crows and send back stolen corn. (exaggerated)
But the degree of exaggeration is different.
This speech processing activity usually includes:
(1) Grassroots Combination (drafted by heart)
(2) Choose
Choose an appropriate speech form from various synonymous means.
(3) Innovation
Rhetoric lies in innovation. No matter how the words are tempered, how the sentence patterns are chosen and how the figures of speech are used, we should make innovations to prevent them from falling into stereotypes. There is a saying that the first person who says that a woman is a flower is a genius, and the second person who says that a woman is a flower is a fool. Therefore, innovation is the soul of rhetoric.
(4) amendment
Change wrong or not-so-good proverbs into correct and better ones.
(5) Add or delete
Add necessary components and delete redundant words. For example, in Xu Chi's Geological Light, "We now have our own best hospital", the sentence is concise and compact by deleting the last us. In Thunderstorm, it is more comprehensive and accurate to write Fan Yi as "she is an old-fashioned woman in China" rather than "she is an old-fashioned woman with a little new education".
2. Rhetoric
In this language processing activity, there are various laws that dominate and manipulate all rhetorical activities, so another meaning of rhetoric is rhetorical laws.
3. Rhetoric phenomenon
Rhetoric law and rhetoric activity are both social language phenomena that exist objectively, and some rhetoric are collectively called rhetoric phenomena. For example, the rhetoric of "an apricot is in the spring" is particularly novel. I have never seen this kind of rhetoric. Rhetoric refers to rhetorical phenomena.
4. Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the study of rhetorical phenomena.
As soon as human society came into being, it used language to express thoughts and exchanges, and there were rhetorical activities and rules. For example, there is a saying in Yi that "the difference between thoughts stinks like the sky", and there is a saying in The Book of Songs that "hands are as soft as a piano and skin is as thick as fat", but it was not until Liu Xie's Wen Xin Diao Long? This rhetorical phenomenon is expounded in Bi Xing.
In short, rhetoric is
1. Rhetoric is a social speech phenomenon, a modification and adjustment of language, and a comprehensive artistic processing of language. -Rhetoric
2. It includes the law of this activity and the description, refinement, analysis and regression of rhetorical phenomena, activities and laws. -Rhetoric
If the meanings of the two aspects are opposite, the former part can be called rhetoric, which is an objective language phenomenon; The latter part is called rhetoric, which is a subjective reflection of the objective rhetoric phenomenon.
Second, the object of rhetoric
There were two great discussions about the scope of rhetoric in 1960s or 1980s, with different opinions.
Chen Wangdao's "The Origin of Rhetoric" holds that "rhetoric takes rhetorical phenomena as the research object." He divided rhetorical phenomena into two categories: positive rhetoric and negative rhetoric. The adjustment method adopted to make the language accurate, fluent, clear and stable is called positive rhetoric; The technique of making language vivid is called negative rhetoric.
Some only speak positive words. (too narrow)
Some define the rhetorical object as "parallel synonymous structure and non-parallel synonymous structure" from the perspective of structure (too narrow to include all the principles, methods, forms and laws of rhetoric)
We believe that the object of rhetoric research should be rhetoric phenomenon and rhetoric theory. Rhetoric phenomenon is an active process of integrating the rules of rhetorical devices into language adjustment and modification; Rhetoric theory refers to the study of the nature, task, object, scope, principle, function, method and attitude of rhetoric and the relationship between language rhetoric and ideological content.
Rhetoric unit is the smallest element to express rhetorical semantic information, a language structure based on semantics, and a combination of phonetic semantics. It has two aspects: semantic content and phonetic form.
Rhetorical meaning is the object of semantic research. Phonetic form and grammatical structure are interrelated and often included in phonetics, lexicology and grammar.
From the perspective of language structure, rhetorical units are long or short language structures that constitute rhetorical devices. Can be divided into four categories.
1, syllable rhetoric
Rhetoric is expressed in only one syllable.
2. Rhetoric of words
Coherence is only reflected in words, that is, words as rhetorical units. 3. Sentence rhetoric
Rhetoric is expressed as sentence patterns and sentences, that is, certain sentences and sentence groups are used as rhetorical units. For example, "learning a word is like moving a mountain."
4 text rhetoric
People often say that "rhetoric is the use of three elements of language." For rhetoric, the three elements of language are the means and foundation of rhetoric, and they are also the language materials that rhetoric should mobilize and process; As far as language is concerned, rhetoric is a comprehensive artistic processing of language and an advanced embodiment of language.
If in a language system, the combination of semantics and phonetics is the first basic plane and lexical grammar is the second plane, then rhetoric is the third plane.
1, rhetoric and phonetics
If the language is to be sonorous and pleasing to the ear, it is necessary to arrange the sound order well.
Phonetic rhetoric's main means:
Disyllabic, reduplicative, rhyming, flat tone, homophonic, reduplicative, onomatopoeic words, Hua Er, stress, light tone, intonation, pause, syllable and rhythm are the main means of phonetic rhetoric.
The relationship between phonetics and rhetoric;
Phonetics provides conditions for rhetoric in enhancing the beauty of melody and highlighting semantics, and enriches the content of rhetoric methods; Rhetoric expands the function of pronunciation by actively mobilizing phonetic factors.
2. Rhetoric and vocabulary
Rhetoric is closely related to vocabulary.
Common rhetorical methods:
The choice of synonyms, the antithesis of antonyms, the association of polysemous words, the color and collocation of words, the imitation and innovation of words, the change of order, the flexible use, and the clever use of idioms.
The relationship between words and rhetoric;
Vocabulary provides the necessary conditions for the choice of words and the formation of specific rhetorical methods. Almost all rhetorical methods are related to vocabulary, such as pun, irony, parody, beautiful melody, antithesis, contrast, metonymy, synaesthesia, exaggeration, truth, circulation, conjunction, repetition, metaphor, transferred epithet and two-part allegorical sayings. Rhetoric makes vocabulary play an important and extensive role in language use.
3. Rhetoric and grammar
Rhetoric and grammar are more closely related.
Sentence patterns of rhetorical choice:
Long and short sentences, whole and scattered sentences, active and passive sentences, affirmative and negative sentences, inverted and collocated sentences, complete and elliptical sentences, divided and combined sentences, oral and written sentences, compound sentence and meaning combined sentences, simple and complex sentences, complex sentences and sentence groups are all rhetorical choice materials.
The relationship between grammar and rhetoric;
Generally speaking, rhetoric should be based on grammar. Sometimes, seemingly ungrammatical sentences are the result of the extraordinary features used in rhetoric.
Grammar provides expressions for rhetorical phenomena and rules. Without sentences and sentence groups, there is no language model that embodies the external form of rhetoric. Without complex sentences in grammar, there would be no rhetorical devices such as duality, contrast, parallelism, truth and circulation. Rhetoric expands the role of grammar in language use.