Discourse Analysis Of The Literary Style Of Cao Yu's Drama

The charm of literature first comes from the successful discourse strategy, and the rich connotation must draw support from the appropriate literary style. Therefore, the literary style research is actually, by decoding and interpreting the language, an academic access to the connotation world of and the esthetic palace of the text. Here, it is precisely the original intention of this paper to make a research on the literary style of Cao Yu's drama. On the other hand, King Barher's discourse theory provides this paper with the broader research vision and the richer research methodology. In other words, it enables the paper to free from constraint of the traditional linguistic methodology and meanwhile to more freely and thoroughly unearth the essential characteristics and the artistic charm of the literary style of Cao's drama.According to this paper, the literary style originality of Cao's drama is fully manifested in the discourse mode, the language characteristics and the narrative structure.For the discourse mode of the drama literary style, there are mainly has two categories: reappearance discourse and narrative discourse. The former is represented by the dramatic drama which is stipulated by the dramatic theory of Aristotle, while the latter takes as representative the narrative drama of Brecht. However, the discourse mode of Cao's drama combines reappearance and narrative discourse together. Plenty of narrative discourse in Cao's drama helps Cao to show the individual discourse. It explains, supplements, and even subverts and promotes the first text connotation. Coexisting in the literary style of Cao's drama, the reappearance discourse and the narration discourse sustain each other in the way of outside versus inside as well as apparent versus latent. They construct the space of tension which is featured by the coexistence of reality and illusion and that of emotion and reason. Also, They set the specific discourse situation for other artistic elements so that language, role, narrative structure and the like are all placed on the intersection formed by realism and metaphor or by concreteness and abstract.Movement, lyricism and individualization are publicly recognized as the most prominent language characteristics of the literary style of Cao's drama, but they are only the external language characteristics when Cao's drama takes the form of the dramatic drama. They could neither include all the attributes of drama languages, nor undertake all the function of representation. The transmission of rich and profound connotation of Cao's drama is mainly dependent on other language strategies such as "topic symbolization", "diversification of inlay techniques", "complicated narration" and so on. "Topic symbolization" can be explained as follows. In Cao's drama, there are some dialogue paragraphs that take the meta-language as the leading function, and in which the author's emphasis of the topic connotation outweigh reference to motion and scenario. Consequently, once the topic is the object of interpretation, it will also become functional structure which inspires audience to move from attention of reality to enter into thought of existence. "Inlay technique" means to introduce social discourse which comes from outside drama scenario so that the dramatic work could obtain a broader background of space and time as well as richer methods of reference to thought. As for Cao's drama language, "inlay" is not only a specific language rhetoric strategy, but also is a kind of abstract discourse concept, reflecting the author's profound cognition and pursue of intertextality. Its final aim is through introduction of social mixed discourse to individual discourse of the role, audience will be able to hear not only sound of the role, but also that of the other, and to see the complex dialogue relations interacted and inter-shaped between the self of the role and the discourse of the other. Cao's drama includes plenty of narrative discourses, which either are beyond stage performance by taking the form of the second text, or mingle among the reappearance discourse by taking the form of the false dialogue. These narrative discourses, on the one hand, make necessary explanation of environment and roles for the theater performance. On the other hand, they establish semantic labyrinths by language strategies such as "unreliable narration", "subjective intention in objective description" and"incompleteness of role introduction", all of which make the narrations ambiguous. In order to pass through the semantic labyrinth, audience is expected not only to be careful and keen, but also to draw support from comparison between parts within the text and even that between texts.Narrative characteristics of the literary style of Cao's drama are mainly manifested as the space structure of reflection-type reference. Therefore, forming a complete impression of the text doesn't merely depend on linear reading. The audience, in the entire reading process, also needs to compare accidental events, details and symbols with each other to have correct interpretation of the text. Here, we can say it actually introduces the organized skill of poetry to the narrative structure of drama and even upgrade it to the leading structure, and thus the rich connotation of the dramatic work can be elaborately and fully revealed. The space structure in Cao's drama is accomplished by narrative strategies such as rhythm controls of tension and peace, dialectical unification of monologue discourse and dialogue relations as well as universal and diverse image juxtaposition.Cao Yu's four famous dramas, even including "Family", though totally different in the form style, maintain the intrinsic uniformity in the above literary style characteristics. "The form with meaning", constituted by the superficial divergence and the intrinsic unification in the literary style of Cao's drama, is worth our more thorough attention and interpretation. If the huge differences between these drama texts in the form style reflect the author's depression which is due to pressure of the public opinion, then the intrinsic unification in the literary style can prove the author's persistent pursue of his own artistic standpoint and drama creation concept. It is also the persistent pursue that enables him to constantly search for the expression way of the individual discourse among uproarious discourse of other people and thus accomplish the unique features of the literary style in his drama as well as the unique artistic charm of his drama. However, the artistic persistence and the literary style features can only survive in the multicultural language context during the period of cultural transformation. Once the phenomenon of varied language disappears and the new central discourse is established, the author's subject consciousness will then vanish. Cao's dramatic work during the period of Sino-Japanese War and after the founding of the People's Republic of China is precisely the product under the language context of unification, and thus the features of its literary style also have great change.