Back To The Form Of Selected Rhetorical Constraints

Anaphora has been studied most frequently these years. A large number of linguistic experts studied and explained the principles of anaphoric selection from Syntactic and Semantic angles, which, however, sometimes proves to be unconvincing. This paper, applying the principles of Rhetoric, intends to discuss the restrictions of anaphora in Modern Chinese texts.This paper classifies the materials collected from nearly 60 Modern Chinese works under two types: lexical and grammatical anaphora. The part of lexical anaphora consists of the following five aspects: synonyms, super-ordinates & hyponyms (i.e., general words), demonstrative pronouns'Zhe(this)'and'Na(that)', the focal parts and the modifiers of the antecedents. While the part of grammatical anaphora contains three aspects: ellipsis (zero-anaphora), addition(repetition), and cohesion(chain-anaphora and connectives).The main restriction of anaphoric selection is to take the specific context into consideration, which is concluded from the analysis of the materials and some theories of Modern Rhetoric. To be specific, the following seven rhetoric restrictions should be considered: 1) time, place and its alternation; 2) the different angle of view; 3) the language sender's expressing intention and his role in the context; 4) the angle of the language receiver; 5) stress on information; 6) in harmony with the style of the texts; 7) the need for expression.It is obvious that the rhetoric principle plays an important role to restrict the anaphoric selection in texts. For example, the forms of demonstrative pronouns'Zhe(this)'and'Na(that)', repetition and the focal parts of the antecedents can be selected to emphasize an object. Zero-anaphora and pronouns are always used for concision. If the text writer wants to show his feelings towards an object, he is to choose a commendatory or derogatory term to fit his evaluation. In addition, the adoption of modifiers of the antecedents and the temporary context synonyms is a good way to show more emotions and add new information, for the modifiers and the temporary synonyms can reveal or emphasize some specific connotations of the object.The rhetoric restrictions of anaphoric selection put forward in this paper can also be applied to the practice of TCFL(Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language).