The History of Chinese Rhetoric

This book challenges the notion that rhetoric did not exist in ancient China and provides evidence from public speeches, oracle bone inscriptions, and debates about government policies to demonstrate the presence of persuasive discourse and rudimentary rhetorical techniques. It explains how the Mandate of Heaven was inscribed at the core of Chinese rhetoric and explores Chinese rhetorical wisdom by extracting concepts and terms from literary works. The book is aimed at postgraduate students, teachers, researchers, and scholars interested in advanced Chinese language, literature, history, and culture.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 148 pages
Publication date: 29 January 2024
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This book presents a compelling argument that challenges the prevailing notion that ancient China lacked rhetoric. Instead, it offers abundant evidence from public speeches during the Xia dynasty and oracle bone inscriptions from the Shang dynasty, as well as public debates about government policies during the Han dynasty. Through the application of literary analysis and discourse analysis methods, the book elucidates how the concept of the Mandate of Heaven, which has been integral to Chinese rhetoric for centuries, shaped Chinese thoughts and expressions. Furthermore, it showcases Chinese rhetorical wisdom by extracting numerous concepts and terms related to language expression, persuasive speech, morality and virtue, life and philosophy, from renowned Chinese literary works. Prominent figures such as Confucius, Laozi, Sima Qian, Liu Xie, Mozi, Hanfeizi, and Guibuzi are explored, with their famous theories and sayings related to rhetoric being analyzed and interpreted from a rhetorical perspective. The author uncovers numerous surprising facts throughout the book, such as the discovery by Liu Xie, a thousand years ago, that all words possess preferred lexical neighbors and structural environments. This insight was later corroborated by corpus linguistics and exemplified through concepts such as collocation and pattern grammar. This book is specifically designed for postgraduate students, teachers, researchers, and scholars with an interest in advanced Chinese language, Chinese literature, history, and culture.

Weight: 453g
Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032072753