On Rhetorical Narrative In English Public Speech

Rhetorical narrative in public speech is manipulated by speakers to persuade and prove through telling past events in brief. Narratology as a particular area of studies stems from such linguists as Vladimir Propp, Algirdas Julien Greimas, Ronald Barthes, Tzvetan Todorov, and William Labov, who attempted to apply structural linguistic methodologies and theories to the interpretation and construction of literary narrative modes. Those linguists aimed to set up a universal scientific mode to analyze literary narrative. The theoretical exploration from the structural linguistic perspective has stimulated a great interest in the narrative field. Different scholars adopt quite distinct stands in their studies, resulting in the emergence of a variety of inter-subject narratologies. In the literary world, Wayne Booth, James Phalen and some others have focused on literary narrative techniques and moral rhetroical effects. Gerald Genette, Seymour Chatman and Michael Kearns have attempted to combine both literary and linguistic methods in their study of narrative techniques and moral effects on social teaching. Hence the start of narrative rhetorical theories. The previous theoretical explorations in narratology rhetoric all laid emphasis on literary narrative while overlooking rhetorical narratives existing in speech and some other texttypes which are of great significance in our practical life.Our study grows out of an awarenenss of a discrepancy between the significant role narratives play in public speech and a lack of theories there is to explicate it. This dissertation is intended for two purposes:(1) to establish a theoretical framework for the concept of rhetorical narrative from the perspectives of rhetorical function and mechanism as well as philosophical and linguistic underpinnings;and (2) to probe into the unique characteristics of speech narrative in function, structuring mode and material- selecting tendencies.The study of rhetorical narratives in speech concerns basically the three disciplines of narratology, rhetoric and public speech. Following the transdisciplinary practice adopted by the above related subjects, this dissertation resorts comprehensively to all the relevant theories of textlinguistics, speech act theory, rhetorical situation, practical and constructive philosophies and so on. In addition, multimodal methods such as history-probing, induction-deduction, contrastive analysis, description, intrepertation and exposition are also integrated in the systematic study of rhetorical narratives existing in such practical texts as public speech.The study endeavors to make contributions in the following three aspects:1. Putting forth a new narrative rhetoric system Chinese scholars in their study of rhetorical phenomena in narrative habitually apply the term"rheotrical narrative"to all the theories concerning narrative rhetoric. Abroad, serious problems also exist: hithereto there lacks a unanimous name for the rhetorical phenomena existng in narratives, nor is there a fixed definition. Wayne Booth names his theory as"The Rhetoric of Fiction", James Phalen as"Narrative as Rhetoric"and Michael Kearns as"Rhetorical Narratology". All have been interpreted as"rhetorical narrative"in China despite the obvious differences ammong them. Another weakness common to most existant theories is that they all take a part for the whole in their replacing narrative with literary narratives, neglecting the existence of rhetorical narrative in the non-narrative texttypes like persuasive speech.Based on the above observation, this dissertation attempts to reorganize the existant theories by putting forward a new system of narrative rhetoric, taking in all the theories concerning rhetoric in narrative texttype and rhetorical narrative subordianted in nonnarrative texttypes. The former includes both aesthetic rhetoric (concerning the textual organization and diction) and moral rhetoric.2. Constructing a theoretic framework of rhetorical narrativeRhetorical narrative is basically a rhetorical device,which reveals great differences in function, forming mechanism and structuring modes from the narrative texttype. Besides conveying information of the event itself, the narrator puts greater stress on helping realize the aim of another text that subordinates it. Different from the social moral teaching sought by the common narrative texttype, the dominant function of rhehorical narrative is to be in service of a supertext with the perloctutionary effect of narrating. To optimize the persuading effect, rhetorical narrator first resorts to the guidence of practical principles in their selecting real events agreeing with the persuasion purpose, and then restructures the events under the guiding principles of world subjective changeability and of the interaction between subject and object in cognition process. Finally, conditioned by the forming mechanism of the supertext types, rhetorical narrative may be comparatively incomplete in terms of structure.3. Exploring the narrating mode in public speechRestricted by a particular superodinate persuasive genre and a particular rhetorical situation, speech narrative is obviously different from the general rhetorical narative in function and structure. Functionally speaking, speech narrative can serve as text organizer and emotional appeal as well as evidence-provider. In construction, speech narrative tries best to simplify the event plot while giving prominence to the feeling and attitude of the speaker in order to manipulate the audience's emotion and influence their selection.In order to study the rhetorical narratives in nonnarrative argument, exposition and persuasion, this dissertation makes a thorough study of"rhetorical narrative"aiming at relevant theory-construction, which will in turn help develop and widen the research domain held by traditional narratology, providing valuable reference and guidance for narrative interpretation and construction in speech and other practical texttypes.