Research On Mencius's "Persuasion" Speech Act

Mencius is the representative of Confucianism during the Warring States Period.Co-editted by Mencius and his disciples(Wan Zhang,etc.),the book Mencius records the controversy between Mencius and other families,the teaching of personal example as well as verbal instruction towards his students,and the words and deeds of lobbying princes.In this this thesis,we explored the pragmatic features,pragmatic strategies and pragmatic principles of Mencius' verbal behavior of “persuasion” from the perspective of pragmatics,all of which were based on the book Mencius.In the first section,we defined and classified the verbal “persuasion” behavior of Mencius.We didn't distinguish the difference between “persuasion”,“suggestions” and “criticism” due to the particularity of the “Mengzi” corpus,thus all the words of Mencius' persuasion,suggestion,and criticism to the communicative objects would be regarded as Mencius' “persuasive speech acts”.Here we classified the Mencius' s verbal behavior of “persuasion” under two criteria: “persuasion of students”,“persuasion of power”,“persuasion of others” according to the power position of the persuasion object;“persuasion at presence” and “persuasion at no presence” according to the presence of persuader.In the second part we observed the linguistic form of Mencius' verbal “persuasion” behavior in a static condition and summarized the language characteristics of Mencius' verbal “persuasion” behavior.We found that the use of Mencius' s language had several characteristics: using the appellation language to spread the atmosphere and draw the psychological relationship between the two sides;using the interrogative sentence to inspire other party and achieve the communicative purpose of persuasion;using metaphors and citations to improve the image and justification of the language,thus enhancing persuasiveness.Those pragmatic features made it easy for Mencius to adjust the conversation atmosphere and rhythm of both parties to control the direction of communication and achieve communicative purposes.The third part summarized the pragmatic strategy of Mencius' “persuasion” action according to the specific corpus of Mencius' “persuasion” speeches.In this part,Mencius' s pragmatic strategies of “persuasion” were divided into “enlightening and guiding strategies”,“both soft and hard strategies” and “interpretation strategies”,the three of which could be further subdivided into nine subcategories.Here we also illustrated the specific using strategies of Mencius' “persuasion” with the concrete language examples.Finally,in combination with the classification of Mencius' verbal behavior of “persuasion” in the first part,we analyzed the specific usage of Mencius' verbal behavior of “persuasion” pragmatic strategy.The last part combined the pragmatic features and pragmatic strategies of Mencius' verbal behavior of “persuasion”,summarized the pragmatic principle of Mencius' verbal behavior of “persuasion”.After summarizing the second part and the third part,this part analyzed the principle of “knowing ourselves and knowing the enemy” followed by the principle of “being good at giving systematic guidance” and “shoot the arrow at the target” according to the specific corpus.Mencius' persuasive pragmatic principle of verbal behavior is the embodiment of Mencius' superb language application skills,and is also the externalization of its profound ideological cultivation.It is an important embodiment of Confucian verbal communication principles.