A-brief-analysis-about-passive-rhetoric-in-cross.doc

Abstract As a branch of linguistics, rhetoric can be divided into two sides: active rhetoric and passive rhetoric. Both of them play a very significant role in writing and communication. However, in translation, an important form of cross-cultural communication, most of the English learners pay more attention to the active one, and the indispensable role of the passive rhetoric has been ignored. It influenced English learners awareness and competence of the cross-cultural communication. In this thesis, by using examples to illustrate and contrast to analyze, the culture background and expressing forms of passive rhetoric in English and Chinese have been demonstrated fully. It can not only provide the English learners with theory basis and culture backgrounds in translation, but also help them win a better performance on the stage of cross-cultural communication. Key words: passive rhetoric techniques, cross-cultural communication, translation, culture difference 摘 要修辞作为语言学中的一个分支，可分为积极修辞和消极修辞。两者在语言交流中都发挥着举足轻重的作用。然而，在翻译这一跨文化交流的具体形式中，英语学习者往往只重视积极修辞而忽略了消极修辞，从而影响了其跨文化交际意识的培养。本文通过举例和对比分析，揭示了消极修辞在英汉两种语言中的不同表现形式和文化内涵，从而为广大英语学习者能在翻译，写作等语言交流中充分利用消极修辞提供一定的文化背景，以使其提高跨文化交流的能力。关键字：消极修辞，跨文化交流，翻译，文化差异A brief analysis about passive rhetoric in cross-cultural communicationIntroductionNowadays with the development of globalization and internationalism, cross-cultural communication has become more and more evident and urgent. Then, what is cross-cultural communication? Communication can be defined as the process by which people exchange information or express their feelings and thoughts by speech, signals writing or behavior, and cross-cultural communication as that between people from different culture backgrounds (Summer 2003:307). Based on the facts that most of the choice of words, expressions, sentence structures and conventions of culture images are closely related with rhetoric, especially the passive rhetoric techniques in the process of translation, one important form of cross-cultural communication, we should make a contractive study of them and learn more about translation principles and methods of demonstration, thus making a successful communication.1. The definition and features of passive rhetoric techniques.According to Bizzell (1990), Passive rhetoric can be defined as the choice or creations, without fixed forms, of the best words, expressions and sentences. In detail, it means the appropriate use of words, expressions and sentence structures for a certain context to make a speech and writing vivid, perusable and idiomatic. In general, the choice should follow several rules-be fit for the certain situation, be appropriate stylistically, be idiomatic.1.1 fits for a certain situationFlaubert (1984)once pointed that whatever be the things one wishes to say, there is only one word to express it, only one verb to animate it, only one adjective to quality it. That is to say, the choice of words, expressions and sentence structures should be strong enough to fit for the situation. For example, in the sentence “when she woke up in this morning, she slowly remembered what had happened, then sprang out of bed and rushed into her clothes.” The author used the “sprang”, “rushed into”, in stead of using the common words “got up”, “put on” to create a state of emergency.Beside, the choice of words, expressions and sentence structures should be properly related with situations. Context includes big context and small one, here the small one refers to the specific situation, namely, say the right words at the right time and places, while the big context refer to culture background. As far as big context is concerned, we should take the different social customs and tradition into consideration. For example, English people like to say: “break your leg!” to their friends who are leaving for a trip, but Chinese people will not accept it, he may feel angry greatly, they may even break up with their friends. 1.2 An appropriate style We know different writer have different writing styles, and all these different writing styles come from their different writing habits and culture backgrounds. The style of something is the general way in which it is done or presented, which shows the attitude of people involved (Richards, 1967:152). For example, Charles Dickens style is simple and humor, He used simple sentences and few verbs to expose and criticize the bad things in reality. While Lu Xun words are ironical and serious, he is good at applying symbols to show his critical feelings. So when we make translation exercises, different writing styles should be taken into consideration.1.3 being idiomaticAlthough English and Chinese go through different histories and they carry different culture, both of them pay much attention to the idiomatic expression. All these idiomatic expressions are accumulated in their daily life, at the same time show their belief and living habits. For example, “A white lie” meaning “a lie that sb. tells with good intentions” is much brief than the explanatory expressions. While Chinese idioms are the enrichment of longer expressions and they are concise (Fen Cuihua, 2005:87). 2. Comparison of passive rhetoric and its culture background between English and Chinese.Different culture results in different usage of words, expressions and sentence structures. English people have a logical thinking habit, they emphasis on individualism and seek for differences exist (Liu Benchen, 2005:23-25). So English is prone to achieve the elegant effect by using different words, expressions and sentence structures. While Chinese people lay stress on the ideal of “Golden Mean”, they prefer harmony without conformity, as a result, Chinese are prefer to use similar forms and to seek for similarity exists. They have their own prominent features in the forms of diction and sentence structure.2.1 The prominent features of English Elegant variations are the prominent features of English. Elegant variation that was first pointed out by Fowler means having various forms in diction and sentence structures. One meaning of the elegant was fussy or overdone, beside; variation should take place only when there is some awkwardness, such as ambiguity or noticeable monotony (Fowler, 2001:72). Throughout the English history, it is not hard to find out the reason why English is in various forms. First, English has a large vocabulary in the world, about 1.1 million words. Its a result of its historical development from Celtic and Anglo-Saxon origins. During the period of Roman and Norman Conquest, Latin and French had a great influence on the vocabulary. Besides, English is a scientific language with a large number of grammar suffixes, which help indicate the logic relationship in various ways. Generally, English express its variation by various forms in diction and sentences structures.2.1.1 Forms in dictionEnglish has a various option of synonyms, when English-speaking people speak or write, they tend to use words with similar meaning but different forms to avoid repetition. For example, the meaning of “uncertain” can be expressed by “doubt” ”wonder” “question”, while Chinese attaches great importance to intuition and the power of understanding(Liu Benchen,2005:67). In translation and writing, by repeating nouns and verbs, they make the meaning clear without being misunderstood.2.2.2 Forms in sentence structures In order to avoid repetition or to achieve variety, people often alternatively use long sentences and short sentences, which can help achieve some special rhetorical efforts. In modern English text, the average length of sentence is 15-25 words, so the long sentence and short sentence should be used alternated (Hu Shuzhong, 2004:79). By comparison, Chinese people are not used to choosing the long sentences and short sentences. Moreover, English is characterized by science and clearness, for it mainly belong to oceanic culture, in which a slight mistake in the longitude or latitude in the voyage may cause unbearable disasters, while Chinese often acquire the relation among things by means of “the power of understanding,” instead of the formal analysis. As a result, intuitive thinking leads to vagueness in language. In particular, English and Chinese differ in the use of subject and this difference dated back to the ancient philosophy of the west and east (Ding Wangdao, 1998:120). The people around the Mediterranean Sea lived a hard life because the natural conditions were not fit for agriculture. Having no choice, they just had to move around to look for pasture or dealing with commerce at sea. In peoples eyes, nature was the object of struggle and it was mighty. As a result, impersonal subjects are often applied to be the subject of the verbs which are often preceded by personal subject. In contract, Chinese writing does not appreciate the impersonal subject sentences, for Chinese people paid special attention to the hierarchy of society and personal and impersonal subject cannot be confused.2.2 The prominent features of ChineseThe prominent features of Chinese lie in the balanced structure and conception. Influenced by the philosophical idea of the Golden Mean, Chinese people developed their peculiar aesthetic values, one of which is unique emphasis on the beauty of balance (Chen Hongwei, 1998:28). Whats more, Chinese characters are square and take up the same space in printing; thus, it is very easy to form the balanced form (Wu Keyan, 2010:121). In Chinese, the poems, proverbs and four characters words are the good example to prove its beauty. They not only boast its beautiful rhythm but also the balanced form, which make the sentence more brief and effective. However, it should not be denied that English also pays attention to the beauty of balance such as using doubts, which is considered a form of parallelism. Beside the elegance of balance, Chinese also has its elegance of artistic conception. Chinese characters of pictographs enable the full use of the artistic conception (Wu Keyan, 2010:79). Poems in Tang and Song dynasty were very popular, when reading the poems of China, you will find that most of them are very simple stories but carry a magnificent value between the lines. By contrast, English version is only a narrative style without artistic value. Maybe that is the reason why many Chinese famous works will lose its original meaning once they are translated into English. Chinese poems can even be integrated with pictures to show an obvious picturesque effect. For example, if the poem describes something that is closely related with bamboo, a picture of bamboo will be applied, and then the theme of the poem and the symbolization of bamboo are united perfectly. There is no wonder that it is easy to put poem into English literary but difficult to retain the artistic effect in English.3. Application of passive rhetoric techniques in cross-cultural communication.From above analyses, we know that English and Chinese have their own features of passive rhetoric techniques, and they also share plenty of similarities between each other, therefore, the rhetorical effects from many figures of speech, which are mainly related with the syntactic structure in English and Chinese, can generally be transferred between the two languages, as a result of inter textual coherence (Gu Zhengkong, 2007:56). Further more, we can get a better understanding about translation and writing skills as well as enhance our communicative competence in cross-cultural communication.3.1 Applications of English prominent features Although its hard to apply some English prominent features in Chinese, great attention should be given to English features in the process of reading, writing and translation. For one thing, the elegant variation requires English writing to avoid unintentional repetition both in diction and sentence structures, because the meaning of one word can be showed by different expressions, among which some important clues will be implied by some seemingly new words. With this in mind, we will find that the new words can become familiar and the readers can have a better understanding of the new information. It goes same to the exercises of translation. “Owing to a lack of synonymous words and a particular love of repetition, Chinese people do not painstakingly try to achieve elegant variation” (Wu Keyan, 2009:116-119).Thus, a sense of changing many repetitious words into different forms is absolutely important. Its unbearable that if a same English phrase appear five times in the English passage. For another, since the impersonal subject sentences are frequently appeared in English, Chinese personal subject sentences be rendered into English impersonal subject sentences. Actually, it shows a psychological fact: English-speaking people are often not willing to let know their disadvantages, they try to shift the shortcomings to nature (Gu Zhengkong, 2007:89). In contrast, Chinese people do not hide the disadvantages, by which shows their honest. Beside, the loose sentence is an ordinary state in English but the periodic sentences in Chinese. 3.2 Application of the Chinese prominent features As mentioned above, balanced structures, periodic sentences and Chinese words with vaguer reference are three prominent features in Chinese, and then some skills of choosing the best or strongest words and sentences are badly needed in translation, one important form of cross-cultural communication. That is to say, on one hand, various convert need to be applied in the translation. Here loose sentences are good example, “She was unhappy recently because of a quarrel with her boyfriend.” It needs to be converted into periodic sentence “because she has quarreled with her boyfriend, so she was unhappy recently.” In English, a serious of nouns is powerful enough to indicate the virtues, yet, in china, four-characterized phrases form a balanced structure and have the Chinese traits, so we also need to change its form without losing original meaning. On the other hand, the Chinese words with vague reference may brighten the translation. It requires us to accumulate more such words as to get a smooth communication.3.3 Culture difference of the application about passive rhetoric between English and Chinese The reasons for these differences of the application about passive rhetoric are closely related with their culture. English culture derived from ancient Greek, ancient Rome and the Great Britain, where people mainly lived on commerce. Many people worked at sea, and the concept of space is vitally important. As a result, they tend to care about the special destination instead of how they got there. They attach great importance to the action and result rather than the purpose, reason and condition. Reflected in language, the main idea is likely to be mentioned first. In contrast, Chinese culture is rooted in the Yellow River, along which the ancient Chinese lived on agriculture. It means that people were not conscious of the concept of space because they seldom moved about but conscious about time, then the culture of time was characterized by the