Contemporary Chinese Argumentation Studies From The Diachronic And Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Argumentation is omnipresent in our social life. Whether it concerns the propagation of political beliefs, the exchange of thoughts and ideas, the economic transactions, the lawsuits, the diplomatic negotiations between countries, or even the generation and evolution of academic discourse that seems detached in nature, there is simply no way we can do without explicit or implicit argumentation. As a non-violent means of verbal interaction, argumentation can be used to mediate the conflicting interests, clarify and resolve the controversial standpoints, coordinate each other's actions. Comparing with other means, such as administrative or economic means, argumentation is the optimal way to settle social conflicts and contradictions and is hence vital to China, a country devoted to the construction of a unique political civilization and a harmonious society. In addition, the generation and evolution of academic discourse also needs argumentation with which to stimulate and certify the production of new ideas and to forge new scholarly consensuses. Unfortunately, even though the study of argumentation ought to be one of the great theoretical projects for the Chinese academe, several serious problems exist and hamper current domestic researches in this field. These include the unnecessarily restrictive scope of investigation, woefully inadequate commitment of resources, and subscription to obsolete assumptions out of touch with today's reality.The contemporary argumentation studies in China tends to be hemmed in by a narrow framework of logic and linguistics, focusing on the techniques of logical inference, the art of language usage in the explicitly argumentative exposition, and the "debate competition" show that has become fashionable lately, virtually neglecting the distribution and presence of argumentation, in the form of everyday reasoning and of the primary mode of discursive interactions, throughout the discourse and its social traits and functions. The contemporary argumentation studies in China, on one hand, fails to recontextualize and draw from ancient Chinese argumentation conceptions. On the other hand, in the global academic context, it fails to introduce, draw on and assimilate what contemporary Western argumentation theories have to offer. Due to this historical and theoretical localism, the basis of argumentation conception in our country remains fragile and the assumptions formed in the study tend to be less than relevant.To help to overcome these handicapping problems, this dissertation makes a serious attempt at surveying and assessing the contemporary Chinese argumentation studies, by approaching it simultaneously from a diachronic and a cross-cultural perspective, with a view to putting forward a more constructive theoretical framework. Through a comparison that involves both a vertical and a horizontal, a diachronic and a synchronic, an inter-cultural and a cross-cultural dimension, we conclude that both the ancient Chinese argumentation conceptions, especially those of the Pre-Qin period, and the mainstream understanding of argumentation by contemporary Western argumentation theorists, point to the imperative that we approach the argumentation studies within a framework of rhetoric, seeing argumentation in terms of a special rhetorical pattern and reconstructing the basic argumentation categories in rhetorical terms as well. Only by adopting this approach can we promote a healthy development of the Chinese argumentation studies.