Tentative Discussions of the Impact of Rhetorical Strategies on Dissemination of Mencius’ Philosophy

Zhuxiang Qin

Tentative Discussions of the Impact of Rhetorical Strategies on Dissemination of Mencius’ Philosophy

During the early centuries of Ancient China while the definition and scope of literature were still vague and ambiguous, written language was simply used as the medium to carry certain types of information. The information, mostly regarding to divination, agriculture, or imperial affairs, served no particular function but for recordkeeping and hence was often narrative and descriptive. After a long time period during which along with the evolution of Ancient Chinese civilization the Classics of Poetry (Shi-jing) was first identified as literature and followed by some other collections of compositions including the Chu-ci, written language started to bear more significance as a transition was observed – different from early compositions whose themes were either objective or commonly accepted, some later compositions carried the authors’ individual ideas. Especially in the Springs and Autumns and the Warring States when the proliferation of philosophical schools arose, written words in literature at that time were further required to have enough explanatory power so that the thinkers’ ideologies could be understood and disseminated. How did this happen? How, if any, did written language change in order to carry more complicated information? How, in general, did those early thinkers propose, develop, and present their ideas, in terms of both oral languages and written languages? This paper will narrow down these questions and examine the impact of rhetorical strategies, specifically the rhetorical device that Mencius was applying when suggesting to the Kings, on the dissemination of one’s ideology by closely analyzing the texts from the Mencius.

How to propose? In the age when vocabularies were insufficient and therefore ideas with complexities could not be easily outlined, this came as the first challenge. For Mencius whose ideology was often...