Harmony As The Essential Part Of Ritual Applications An Inquiry Into The Interpersonal Communication Thoughts Of Pre-Qin Confucianism In The Book Of Rites

"Harmony as the Essential Part of Ritual Applications." As one of the core concepts of Confucian communication thought,"harmony"(He)has become the ultimate goal of the Confucian interpersonal communication,which represents the inner spirit of Confucian ritual culture and characteristic.Ceremony is the most common form of social norms and contact,for its role is coordination of relationships.The Confucian hoped to restore social order of the ritual system under such a social background of destruction of Zhou's rite system at the end of the Spring and Autumn,which must can be named Confucian Ritualism.As far as the real condition is concerned,it has played certain active part in maintaining the stability and harmony of Chinese nation for thousands of years,as well as ensuring the development of the society and the cultural heritage historically.But absolute solidification of sequences of human relation gradually leaded to the rigidity of the society.Meanwhile,mandatory implementation of the relationship specifications became cruel without humanity.With 49 articles in it,the Book of Rites(Liji)focus on the corpus of ritual study of rites in the Confucian thirteen classics,also known as "the Rites by Daisheng".It mainly includes Confuician ritual study research articles from the warring states period to the Qin&Han dynasties,as well as some rites documents of pre-Qin period.The book accordingly can be-said to be the life history of the period which reflect the social reality with rich content and wide range.Confucian ideas of interpersonal communication are discussed from three aspects:ritual,etiquette,and ethics of "rites"in the pre-qin period in this paper.Interpersonal communication,including language communication and nonverbal communication,is about the interactive action such as dialogue,action and expression,as through the way people communicate their feelings and thoughts to coordinate relations.The Book of Rites(Liji)keeps a record of a large amount of human relations language specification in the specific scene of pre-Qin period,such as avoiding mentioning something,modest words and euphemism.Nonverbal communication specifications are mainly for "RongLi",which mean manners about the appearance look,pitch flexion,spinning and so on when networking.It is in the way conforming to the specification called "Li" in ordinary living that Confucian media power embedded society.In consequence,the Confucian value structure and power system have shaped the deep social psychological such as life attitude and emotion orientation unconsciously influenced,having played the role of social integration.Provided leaving these ritualized social life programs in reverse,people may lose the common situation and experience of life to share and stronger meaning.Consequently social cohesion would be weakened.The reconstruction of the core values must take concrete behavioral norms to become internal habits and life attitude via daily social practice,eventually in favors of constructing harmonious interpersonal communication and realizing the organic integration of society.In the perspective of communication studies,when people are in interpersonal communication,they all define the relationship between each other in the interactive way whatever the social activities.In the context of Chinese culture,this relationship is human relations according to feudal ethics,embodying orders and statuses between humans.According to this principle called "qin-qin,zun-zun,zhang-zhang",which means people mustn't only love his ancestors and family,but also respect superior and elder,Confucian divides interpersonal relationship into five basic categories:relation between monarch and subject,parent child relation,spousal relationship,Brothers&Sisters and friend relation.Confucian rules each order and the position in all kinds of relations with behavioral norms and communication specification in match according to the requirement of the rites "Li".This paper discusses the reasons of the classification and specification which makes interpersonal harmony and historical limitation.The Confucian value structure and power system have embedded media power in society to integrate social and to shape the deep social psychological such as life attitude,thoughts pattern and emotion orientation by the way of practice in daily life and important ceremonies unconsciously influenced.Confucian constructs the harmonious family relationship in the way of rites(Li),in which the main connotation is normative ethics order of rites(Li)on system level.According to the above,reasonable assumption in constructing modern harmonious family is put forward.Confucius said "Harmony is precious but not identity." So it is feasible to introduce dialogue mechanism to conjugal relations and parent-child relationship,with ensuring reasonable arithmetic by institutional means.Confucian doesn't only emphasis on statecraft,but also attaches great importance to the connotation of them,that is ritual meanings(Liyi)."The lofty status of rites(Li)comes from its noble connotation.It is diviner who only emphasize forms but not the connotation.Then this paper analyzes the connotation of etiquette in interpersonal communication,and summarizes the basic principles of the pre-qin Confucian harmonious interpersonal communication:honesty and attaching great importance to the promise,the doctrine of loyalty and consideration for others,doctrine of the mean and moderation,modest and respectful to others.Some problems of interpersonal communication are being highlighted in digital media era,such as disorder and lack of ethics.As reference to the Confucian harmonious interpersonal communication principles,interpersonal communication in digital media era should adhere to the following ethical principles:honesty and truth,moderation and mutual respect.