The Rhetorical Interpretation Of Symbols In The Female Grassland By Yan Geling

The female grassland is the last full-length novel completed by Yan Geling before herimmigration. This paper tries to find a new breakthrough to have a detailed study on the text,hoping to interpret this text from a new angle."Generalized rhetoric", breaking through thelimitations of linguistic disciplines, advocates that the rhetoric research should change itslevel from "skills" to "art" and expands itself form linguistics to art aesthetics and culturalphilosophy, at the same time, it should break through disciplinary boundaries to provide amore open and more broad explanation space for the study of the novel theory and criticalpractice. First of all, the title is the eye of the article. The "grass" in the title is not only theclue constantly promoting the development of the plot throughout the full text, but also theimportant symbols to support the whole text. Yan Geling has showed careful design in itsnaming. Secondly, the image is integrated into the emotion of the creator and the reader withcombination of the idea which is subjective and the image which is objective. By extractingthree groups of relatively typical image symbols (animal image symbols, color image symbolsand death image symbols) from the text, the author of this paper tries to analysis the main ideaof the text as well as the world which Yan Geling has desired for. Thirdly, it is the moststriking feature of the text to use theory of mirror image to shape the women characters. Inthis chapter, theory of mirror image is used to explore how they identify themselves with theimages in the mirror which serves as “the other” ones as well as the aesthetic rhetoric effectsin the process of identification. Finally, certain methods have been used in the rhetoricalprocess to eliminate the patriarchal discourse. As an influential Chinese writer in the newimmigrant literature since the1990s, Yan Geling expressed her concern for the fate of womenin reality with unique female perspective and bitter words. The female grassland has showedus a collection of micro and macro rhetoric world. The symbols of the novel are likemeridians in the body which communicates up and down inside, and series into a specialorganic whole.