A Study On Rhetorical Questions Of Modern Chinese

The thesis is divided into two parts, the general studies part and the respective one, which attempt to combine the wholeness of the description with the profundity of the explanation to make a research on the modern Chinese Rhetorical Questions from the multi-respects of syntax, semantics and pragmatics so that people can attain a general and profound understanding about the modern Chinese Rhetorical Questions.The general studies part discusses about five issues including the features of Rhetorical Questions, the definition and scope of Rhetorical Questions, the syntactic structure of Genuine Questions and Rhetorical Questions, the response system of rhetorical questions, the pragmatic values of rhetoric questions and the understanding of rhetorical questions. Besides, three basic characters of rhetoric questions are put forth in the thesis—asking without doubts, answering without need, negatives. Based upon these foundations, rhetorical questions are defined as the asking-without-doubts questions which negate their forms. The thesis makes conclusions about the distinction of syntactic structures between genuine questions and rhetorical questions. Generally speaking, there are two categories of syntactic structures for the genuine questions and seventeen for the rhetorical ones. The thesis aims to distinct covert responses and overt responses. Covert responses are mental responses of addessees induced from the rhetorical questions, extending from the identification of the addressees till the induction of meanings from the various contextual information. So covert responses is a inherited feature of the rhetorical questions. On the other, overt responses are the ones made by the addressees and addressers actually. The rhetorical force can be simply considered as the restrictive force from which the speaker requires the audience to combine the context to induce his original meanings by means of asking. Upon the foundation of such a concept, the thesis defines two different overt responses—answers and replies. Answers are overt and verbalized responses in which reacters are unable to identify the rhetorical force or cancel it on purpose, while replies is the overt and verbalized responses reacters produce in terms of the rhetorical force. In addition to overt and verbalized responses, there exist overt and non-verbalized responses. As for the assertive rhetorical questions, non-verbalized...