Broad Rhetoric Sense Of Words

"Among all the figures in English, those being performed by words are in a very salient and unique position, not only because rhetoric in itself has extensive knowledge and profound scholarship, but vocabulary is a much too astronomic and integral system for languages."(Wang Rongpei 2002:249) Word, being the overflowing cornucopia for expressive rhetoric, has deserved the most thoroughgoing concern. Numerous works and articles on lexical rhetoric, indeed, care no more than "dozens of figures of speech in a numeration" or "an exhibition of polishing good words with a list of examples", i.e. many books or articles have done a duplicated job.Rhetoric is an arcane and multi-disciplined subject with 2500-year-old tradition, which can be traced to the ancient Greco-Roman when Socrates equated rhetoric with nothing more than some kind of "forensic sophistry"; the progenitor of modern rhetoric Aristotle advocated rhetoric to be the art of oratory purposing persuading audience to follow an orator's will; New rhetoricians employed "persuasion in consciousness" and "identification in both consciousness and unconsciousness" as the key terms to distinguish traditional rhetoric and new rhetoric.A cluster of rhetoric-books like "An Advanced Course of English Lexicology "(Wang Rongpei 2002), "Figures and Vocabulary "(Li Guonan 2002), "English Rhetoric, An Introduction "(Huang Ren 1999), "English Rhetoric "(Hu Shuzhong 2004), "Broad Sense Rhetoric "(Tan Xuechun, Zhu Ling 2001), "Modern Rhetoric "(Wang Dechun 2002), etc. have denounced a breakthrough in the traditional rhetoric, expanding the spectrum of lexical rhetoric. This thesis is arranged in six chapters, viewing in broadness on a general survey on conception of word, rhetorical word-formation, contextual words, rhetorical archetypes and illusions, rhetorical words being expressed and accepted, function of rhetorical words, rather than a mere enumeration on a kaleidoscope of rhetorical devices installed upon words.Chapter one "multi-dimensional interpretations on 'word'": So-called 'word' is defined from different angles and facets. Firstly, comprehensive English dictionaries usually define words as syntactic units in a sentence as well as provide a string of English idioms involving word to equal 'word' with 'language', referring what is said in contrast to what is done; In linguistics, especially in lexicology, 'lexeme' rather than 'word' is inlayed with some certain academically terminological sense, embracing adissection on the outer-structure and inner-structure of lexicons in phonetics, morphology and semantics; Semantic aesthetics believes artistic thought composes of words and the emergence of words envelopes human being's subjective eternity upon the properties of objects. Individuals in different subsistence relationship will present and lighten a referent from individualized standpoints and it is this difference that builds a cornucopia of word meaning which is open to bottomless implications of signs; In the platform of philosophy of language, Heidegger said "Language is the realm of being" and "Human being is in rusty language"; Wittgenstein expounded word meaning and how to use words were presupposed by situation; I.A.Richards' philosophy of rhetoric defined rhetoric as "words removing barriers in communicative discourses make value".Chapter two "rhetorical word-formation": Word-formation, being an important sub-branch of lexicology is always treated as merely outer-structural manners to form new words, rhetorical function being neglected. The author selects six methods for word-formation (affixation, composition, conversion, backformation, blending, shortening and simulacrum) to illustrate that word-formation rhetorically works.Chapter three "contextual words": Contextualism is the corner-stone for modern rhetoric and to tackle vocabulary contextually is the latest tendency of English lexicology. This chapter is a profiled account on the stylistic words (formal words and informal words, slang, archaism and neologism, jargon and argot) and several functional s...