A Rhetorical Approach To Narrative Discourse

Discourse studies have become one of the focuses in language study after structuralism and generative grammar since the1960s, and with the further research, its scope has turned much wider, ranging from anthropology, philosophy, psychology to cognitive science and so on. As a result, a key characteristic of discourse studies is interdisciplinary. Now discourse studies include structure, function, genre, type, context, interactive communication, the construction of discourse and social order, and interdisciplinary studies. However, little research has been undertaken in language study as far as the analysis of text type is concerned, and less attention is paid to narrative discourse studies from interdisciplinary perspective.Rhetoric has been studied since ancient times in the West and in China. In China “Refining Language to Establish Truth” could be found in The Book of Changes. Rhetoric, evolving as an art of discourse or an art of persuasion from ancient Greece to modern times, has played a central role in the Western culture with its key characteristic and theory system. Moreover, in the20th century “rhetorical turn” in the field of language study has given more prominence to the importance of rhetoric in humanities for its annotation to other subjects. This is why this dissertation aims to provide a rhetorical perspective on narrative discourse studies with an interdisciplinary approach. More importantly, narrative discourse studies are, to a certain extent, ignored in linguistic field, while the research in literary criticism is comparatively one-sided and unsystematic. With the emergence and spread of interdisciplinary studies across the academy today, there is a growing trend towards this kind of research.This dissertation makes an attempt to explore the rhetorical motivation of narrative discourse studies, by means of which it is discovered that classical rhetoric constructed by Aristotle and other notable thinkers in ancient Greece constitutes the base for modern linguistics, and narrative discourse studies have the origins in classical rhetoric. As far as the relevance between rhetoric and narrative discourse studies is concerned, it can be found that there exist interfaces between these two subjects in purpose, structure, context, communication, author and audience, motives, interdisciplinary research and so on. The most integration is that both these two kinds of research, using language as a symbolic action, emphasize the purpose for communication with audience, and they are closely related to reality with an emphasis on social interaction, which contributes to the academic interpretation of narrative discourse from rhetorical aspect. This project selects some rhetorical theories, such as symbolism of rhetoric, rhetorical motives, rhetorical situation, rhetorical interaction, persuasion, identification and other classic rhetorical theories to interpret narrative discourse, and claims that the creation and comprehension of narratve discourse can be clarified from rhetorical perspective.This research, one study in social sciences, primarily employing qualitative method, also using quantitative analysis, has illustrated the rhetorical motivation of narrative discourse, has explicated the aspects, in which rhetoric and narrative discourse have something in common, and has determined that the creation and comprehension of narratve discourse can be clarified from rhetorical perspective. Theoretically, this study will provide a reference for narrative discourse and widen the scope of rhetoric. What has been done in this research will offer instructions for some spheres of applications.