Chinese Language Teaching And The Art Of Irony

This article aims to discuss Chinese language teaching and the art of irony.As an artistic approach that has been long employed in western literature, irony plays a key role in all kinds of literary texts selected to act as the material in Chinese language teaching.Irony not only provides a unique text style with two or more deviating and conflicting factors in language and structure, but also enables the text to have two or more converse meanings, endows it with remarkable depth, and presents an unparalleled artistic charm.Chinese teaching material is an organic vehicle for students to learn, appreciate and employ Chinese language. Based on in-depth mastering of irony's specific forms and roles in literary texts as selected in Chinese teaching material, methods on how to master and employ the art of irony will be taught to students in writing.In this article, firstly the concept of irony is defined, to include its origin, development and meanings at different levels, and its significance in Chinese language teaching is discussed. Then, mastering and employment of irony is emphasized from the perspectives of teaching of reading and writing. In "Teaching of Reading and the Art of Irony", linguistics and poetics are employed to give an in-depth exploration of irony in Chinese teaching material, and its types, modes as well as its roles and significance in texts are analyzed. In "Teaching of Writing and the Art of Irony", writing theories are employed to explore how to accumulate, conceive and write by use of irony.To sum up, this article aims to reveal Chinese text writers' unique, profound feeling and understanding of history, reality, tradition and modern times under their unique ways of art aesthetics, and tries to apply these ways in our writings.