| Starting from the premise that rhetoric is intimately related to interaction and cognition,this dissertation aims to shed light on the intersection of rhetoric,interaction and cognition by presenting a case study of the rhetorical use of conversational structures in the entireZhuangzi,the second foundational text of the Chinese Daoist philosophical and religious tradition(4th century B.C.).Written from an anti-rhetorical ideology,the Zhuangzi text contains abundant use of allegorical dialogues enacted by real or fantastic discourse characters(??? 2008;Xiang 2016)and hence is primarily conversational(Lu 1998:253).Critically,even when involving historical figures(e.g.actual philosophers,like Confucius or Zhuangzi himself),these dialogues never happened(?? 2005:375)and are not set up for entertainment or embellishment purposes.Rather,they serve as a rhetorical device to present the philosopher's actual thought.Thus,the philosopher's voice can be "heard" in the voice of all the characters(??? 1948/2007;??? 1979/2004;??? 2010;?? 2013).This suggests that there exist mixed viewpoints in the Zhuangzi text,as the perspectives of the writer and discourse characters are fused together.In terms of their inner structure,the allegorical dialogues in the Zhuangzi text feature prototypical conversational structures and sometimes comprise exclusively question-answer adjacency pairs.In addition,the occurrence of question(-answer sequence)s can also be found in short prose essays and those allegories that are essentially monologic.Among all the questions that occur in the Zhuangzi text,there are abundant instances of questions that do not call for an overt answer from the addressee,their corresponding answers being either directly provided or presupposed in the immediate discourse.These questions correspond to what have been referred to as 'expository questions'(e.g."Why?Because...")or 'rhetorical questions'(e.g."Why bother?")in rhetorical,pragmatic and discourse studies(e.g.Sperber&Wilson 1988;Ilie 1994,1999).Since they are not produced to make actual inquiries,these two types of questions can be described either as 'non-genuine' questions,following Clark and Gerrig's(1990)characterization of some kinds of demonstrations,or as 'virtual' or'fictive' questions in the sense of Talmy(1996/2000),Langacker(1999),and Pascual(2002,2006b,2014).Drawing on a combination of the theory of conceptual integration or 'blending'(Fauconnier&Turner 1994,1996,1998,2002)and Pascual's(2002,2006a,2014)idea of fictive interaction,I analyze fictive questions in the Zhuangzi text as pragmatic manifestations of conversational monologues,which are themselves fictive kinds of interactions between the original writer and subsequent reader(s)at the discourse level(Pascual 2002,2014;Xiang&Pascual 2016).This type of fictive interaction may occur in both the Here-and-Now Space and the embedded Current Discourse Space,which correspond to the monologic argumentative episodes and the allegorical dialogues in the Zhuangzi text respectively.In the Here-and-Now Space,we have the conventional writer-reader blend(e.g.Herman 1999;Fauconnier&Turner 2002;Pascual 2002,2009),in which the writer is conceptualized as directly interacting with the reader.In the Current Discourse Space,discursive fictive interaction becomes manifest in the form of dialogues between characters in the Allegory Space,who speak for the writer.This often involves the writer conceptually splitting himself into two or even multiple selves,each self blended with a discourse participant and taking turns in conversation;while the reader becomes the fictive bystander of this conversation.I further analyze fictive questions as intersubj ective mixed viewpoint constructions.Fictive questions in the Zhuangzi text are intersubjective,as they are used to express the narrator's position on a particular issue,which is to be jointly attended to and resolved in the reader's mind.The philosophical message that the writer wants to convey lies not in the interrogative form itself but in the silent answers in the subsequent readers' mind that are evoked by it.To understand the philosophical ideas presented in the Zhuangzi text,the readers will need to mentally simulate the questioning and thereby take the viewpoints of the writer and possibly also the discourse characters.In this sense,there is also a viewpoint blend(Dancygier&Sweetser 2012)of the perspectives of the writer and the assumed readers.There are also multiple viewpoint blending chains when a fictive question is produced by a discourse character,in which case we need to conceptually integrate the mixed viewpoints of the writer and potential future readers with that of the discourse characters,meant to represent the writer's voice(Xiang 2016).In terms of discursive function,expository questions in the Zhuangzi text can serve to:(?)introduce a new topic of discussion;(?)preface an argument;(?)seek clarification of an idea;(?)initiate a discussion and(?)problematize a controversial issue;while rhetorical questions can be used to:(?)convey criticism or irony;(?)emphasize a point that is obvious;(?)challenge an assertion assumed to be in the addressee's mind;(?)elicit agreement;(?)provoke thought and(?)make comment on a given issue.Hence,fictive.questions in the Zhuangzi text are important for structuring the text and/or presenting its argument and constitute a highly successful rhetorical strategy.Structured by the basic underlying pattern of face-to-face conversation(Pascual 2002,2006a,2014),fictive questions can evoke silent answers in the readers' mind,thereby setting up a fictive scenario in which the writer and reader are engaged in interaction(Hyland 2002;Halmari&Virtanen 2005:19;Farnsworth 2011),which contributes to the fulfillment of rhetorical purposes.This observation also applies to fictive questions that occur in the Bible(Labuschagne 1966:23;Adams 2006:137-139;Maxwell 2007:87-88),classical Hebrew poetry(Watson 1984:341),talk shows(Ilie 1994,1999)and courtroom interaction(Pascual 2002,2006b,2014).My analysis shows that mental simulation and perspective taking have a pivotal role to play in rhetoric.While reading fictive questions,readers will mentally simulate the act of questioning(Bergen 2005,2012),thereby taking the questioner's perspective and come up with possible silent answers in their mind,which generally contribute to getting themselves convinced through self-persuasion.Based on this,I propose a simulation-based model of persuasion.The basic premises underlying this model are that rhetoric is grounded in embodied experience and that all persuasion is self-persuasion.The persuasive process starts from communication by the rhetor in spoken or written form,which is processed in the cognitive system before eliciting attitude change in the recipient.I further develop Kenneth Burke's key concept"identification"(1969:55)and distinguish it into two subtypes,namely embodied identification and cognitive identification(cf.van Krieken et al.2017)in accordance with the cognitive operations involved.Through mental simulation,an identification relationship can be established between the sensorimotor representations activated in the recipient and his own embodied experience,which constitutes the basis for the establishment of cognitive identification,namely the alignment of the possibly different viewpoints of the rhetor and the recipient,which eventually will lead to self-persuasion in the recipient.This study,to a certain extent,deepens and extends our understanding of the relationship between rhetoric,interaction and cognition. |
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