Fictive questions in the Zhuangzi: A cognitive rhetorical study
Mingjian Xiang
[Figurative Thought and Language, 18] 2023. xiii, 206 pp.
Mingjian Xiang
List of John Benjamins publications for which Mingjian Xiang plays a role.
Title
Subjects Cognition and language | Discourse studies | Pragmatics | Sino-Tibetan languages
2022 Who’s speaking for whom? Rhetorical questions as intersubjective mixed viewpoint constructions in an early Daoist text Journal of Historical Pragmatics 23:1, pp. 29–53 | Article
This paper deals with rhetorically intended questions in the Zhuangzi, a foundational text of Daoism (fourth century bc). Such questions are generally meant to evoke silent answers in the addressee’s mind, thereby involving a fictive type of interaction (Pascual 2006, 2014). We analyse… read more
2020 Chapter 12. How can I persuade you without making self-assertions? A cognitive rhetorical analysis of the use of fictive questions in an early Daoist text Language, Culture and Identity – Signs of Life, Silva Sinha, Vera da, Ana Moreno-Núñez and Zhen Tian (eds.), pp. 249–274 | Chapter
This chapter explores the cognitive underpinnings of rhetoric by presenting a case study of the rhetorical use of non-information-seeking questions in the Zhuangzi (4th c. B.C.), a foundational Daoist text. These questions are: expository questions (“Why do I say this? Because…”) and rhetorical… read more
2016 Real, imaginary, or fictive? Philosophical dialogues in an early Daoist text and its pictorial version The Conversation Frame: Forms and functions of fictive interaction, Pascual, Esther and Sergeiy Sandler (eds.), pp. 63–86 | Article
This chapter explores a critical yet still unanswered question in fictive interaction research, namely, the relationship between reality, fiction, and fictivity, through examining conversational imagery in a foundational Daoist text, Zhuangzi, and its comic book rendition. This text is the earliest… read more
2016 Debate with zhuangzi: Expository questions as fictive interaction blends in an old Chinese text Pragmatics 26:1, pp. 137–162 | Article
This study deals with the use of expository questions as discourse strategy in Zhuangzi (4th c. B.C.), a foundational text of Daoism. We treat this particular type of non-information-seeking questions (e.g. “Why? Because…”) as a manifestation of conversational monologues, which are themselves… read more