A Comparative Study Of Chinese And English Vague Rhetorics On Teaching Chinese As The Second Language

Vagueness is the objective property of language. Vague rhetoric, because of its pragmatic functions, has been paid more attentions from all study fields. The achievements are not limited on theories but also applied in many practical areas, including translation, education, communication and culture research. To improve the Chinese teaching for foreigners demands more attentions on latest study theories at home and abroad and research creation. No doubt the vague rhetoric provides Chinese teachers with new inspirations on how to improve teaching.This thesis, based on the examples from Chinese and English literary works, Center for Chinese Linguistics Corpus (Peking University) and Concordance English Corpus, mainly studies the comparisons of Chinese and English vague rhetoric. The similarities are as followed. Firstly, Chinese and English vague rhetoric share similarities on terms. For the reason that there are typical features of vague rhetoric in time and hedge terms, they are two good examples to research on the similarities of vague term in two languages. Secondly, the traditional figures of vague speech in two languages have much in common. Then, the application of punctuation marks and pronunciation reflects some similarities of Chinese and English vague rhetoric too. On the other hand, the differences are studied from the aspects of language form, culture background and psychological factors. Influenced by the cultural differences, diverse things are related with in the process of using metaphor, which reflects the different views towards the world and thinking tendency between Chinese and westerners. Except the cultural background, the vague language are highly affected by the psychological factors, which contains different thinking way and opinions on beauty. Thus the thesis comes to the conclusion that not only are students’ abilities to apply the vague rhetoric in Chinese speaking and writing supposed to be enhanced, but also the teachers need to promote their communicating skills in class, of which using vague rhetoric is one important capability.Many time terms and color terms own typical features of vague rhetoric. Therefore, the thesis, based on the conclusions of the comparison research and teaching experience of the author of this thesis, makes a teaching design for vague time terms and vague color terms. Furthermore, some teaching suggestions can be pointed out. On the first place, suitable situation should be created in class, which also emphasizes students’center position in the class. On the second place, the cutural differences are supposed to be paid more attentions to, so teachers can help students to get a deeper understanding of Chinese language. Finally, teachers can try to apply communication skills in the whole process of class, which gives students more chances to practice Chinese.