Confucian Perspective On And Strategies Of Rhetoric: With The Analects As An Exemplar

As a world-famous cultural and intellectual figure at home and abroad, Confucius remains one of the most inspiring, most read, and most discussed ancient masters in our time. And The Analects has been translated into many languages and read in almost all corners of the world. To probe into the reason why Confucius and The Analects have such a powerful influence, we cannot adhere to the old philosophical, cultural or anthropological perspectives. In a chaotic society with no normative standards to follow, such as the one Confucius lived in, discursive interactions always play a key role to spread one's opinions, and any one wanting to influence the society at such a time has to convince people of his opinions in order to obtain the discursive authority. Confucius, therefore, could never escape functioning in the first place as a rhetorician who spoke his way into being accepted by people in his times. And yet the current studies on Confucius, rich as they are, fail to take into serious consideration the rhetorical dimension of his discourse. This thesis is an attempt to analyze Confucius's modes of argumentation and discursive strategies, and to establish him as an excellent rhetorician in his own right, by taking The Analects as an exemplar and subjecting it to a reexamination within a new and unconventional framework. In so doing, we hope also to shed some new light on the current studies on ancient Chinese discourse, especially on the pre-imperial texts.Towards these ends, we first lay down a general understanding of rhetoric and then conduct an analysis of the current rhetorical study on the ancient Chinese discourse, especially the pre-imperial texts. This is followed by a review of the current studies on Confucius's rhetoric. Through a close look into the approaches to Confucius's studies currently adopted, we expose and identify defects and misconceptions in this area of inquiry. We then propose adopting a different perspective to analyze Confucian conception of, or attitude towards, language and discourse, or in his term "yan." Following this, we offer an analysis of Confucius's modes of argumentation and discursive strategies, in an attempt to establish his identity as a rhetorician. To achieve this end, we quote from both the Chinese and the English version of The Analects, so as to give full expression to the nuances and the subtleties with which Confucius conveys his thinking on rhetoric in this immortal work.We conclude that being an excellent rhetor, Confucius has very sophisticated and mature ideas on rhetoric ("yan"); and he projects a designed ethos within his status as a teacher and within the discourse itself, and employs techniques of persuasion, thus making good use of logos. As an extension on these conclusions, we also point out that ancient Chinese discourse and discursive practices were more rhetorical than philosophical in nature, and that as far as rhetoric is understood in terms of "effective use of symbolic resources in discursive practices," we have to acknowledge the rhetorical nature of human discourses in general and to assume that a rhetorical perspective is applicable cross-culturally, even to the study of ancient Chinese discourse.