A Study Of Hyperbole In Tang Xianzu’s And Shakespeare’s Plays From The Perspective Of Rhetorical Psychology

As the twin stars of Eastern and Western dramatic literature,Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare show spectacular art in using hyperbole.Since hyperbole is a rhetorical device rooted in psychological activity to express strong feelings,it is feasible and necessary to study the dramatic language,characters and themes through exploring the rhetorical expression and reception of hyperbole in Tang’s and Shakespeare’s plays from the perspective of rhetorical psychology.Therefore,this research will use Tang’s and Shakespeare’s plays The Peony Pavilion,The Purple Hairpins,Hamlet and King Lear as corpus to explore the following three questions.(1)What are the major types of hyperbole in Tang’s and Shakespeare’s plays,and what are their linguistic forms and features?(2)What are the psychological processes of rhetorical addressers and addressees in constructing and deconstructing hyperbole in Tang’s and Shakespeare’s plays?(3)What are the rhetorical effects of expressing and receiving hyperbole in Tang’s and Shakespeare’s plays?The findings are as follows:(1)Hyperbole in these four Tang’s and Shakespeare’s plays is widely used;direct hyperbole(enlarged hyperbole,narrowed hyperbole)and indirect hyperbole(metaphorical hyperbole,allusion hyperbole,parallel hyperbole,implicit hyperbole and advanced hyperbole)are all found in these four plays;and linguistic features have similarities and differences.As for lexical features,both Tang and Shakespeare use numerals such as thousand and million in hyperbolic texts,but Tang prefers “three” and “nine”,while Shakespeare uses multiples of “two”.Besides,Tang tends to use hyperbole with historical figures’ names.As for syntactic features,they use parallel,interrogative and exclamatory sentences to form hyperbole.(2)According to the psychological analysis on rhetorical expression and reception of these hyperbolic texts,the psychological process of rhetorical addressers can be divided into three stages:experiencing objective facts,creating hyperbolic images and achieving language representation.And rhetorical addressees’ psychological process can be divided into three stages: the reproduction of the ontological image and the hyperbolic image,the contrast between the two images and the fusion of the two images.(3)In the process of expressing these hyperbolic texts,expressive effects are produced as follows: expressing emotions of sadness,anger and love;portraying male and female characters;revealing dramatic themes of true feelings and ethics,and finally creating the beauties of image,imagery and artistic conception.And in the process of receiving these hyperbolic texts,receptive effects are mainly attributed to resonating emotions of sadness,anger and love;reproducing male and female characters;comprehending dramatic themes of true feelings and ethics,and attaining aesthetic experience including the beauties of image,imagery and artistic conception.This thesis studies hyperbole in these four Tang’s and Shakespeare’s plays from the perspective of rhetorical psychology to deeply understand the hyperbolic language,characters and themes of Tang’s and Shakespeare’s plays.