修辞学与心理学结合的论文重点.docx

1、修辞学与心理学结合的论文重点本论文重点将华盛顿欧文和他的作品结合,论述修辞的特点和心理学的结合1.IntroductionVivid language can arouse the audiences interest, hold their attention and enhance their comprehension with imaginary and leave the audience with a fresh impression. To increase the impact of language, figures of speech are employed in bot

2、h literary and non-literary, both written and spoken forms. They are used to embellish, emphasize or clarify expressions, to make language more colorful, more forceful, or more explicit, and thus making communications more efficient and effective ( Zhang 88. There are various figures of speech in Wa

3、shington Irvings novel “the Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. It is of great help to understand Washington Irvings writing style and the theme of the novel by studying the figures of speech combined with psychological mechanism of rhetorical text structure.1.1Washington Irving and his work the legend of sle

4、epy hollow(1A Brief Introduction of Washington IrvingWashington Irving is one of the earliest romantic writers in America. Known for his sketches, short stories and biographies, Irving was the first American writer who has attained international reputation (Gao, 2006: 15. Absorbing the cream of Euro

5、pean culture and literature, Irving created his unique style that is fresh, natural, humorous and musical. With his short stories and success in many other fields, Irving has made great contributions to the development of independent American literature. According to Zhu Xiaoning, “I t is Irving who

6、 activated the potential of American literature and laid solid foundations for its future development.”(66-68. Irving helps to discover “real America” and he caricatures the ridiculous aspects of American life: materialism, complacency and smugness with his remarkable satirical essays.Rip Van Winkle

7、 and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow collected in The Sketch Book (1819-1820, the sustained and more mature satire, are undoubtedly the most striking ones. Besides, Irvings style can be described as beautiful. He was writing always for pleasure, and to produce pleasure (Wu, 1990: 60. It is imitative, it

8、 is true, he wrote to amuse and entertain, and he is good at enveloping his stories in an atmosphere, the richness of which is often more than compensation for the slimness of plot. His characters are vivid and true so that they tend to linger in the mind of the reader (Chang, 2003: 47.(2A Brief Int

9、roduction of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”The story is set in 1790 in the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town, in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow. It tells the story of Ichabod Crane, a sycophantic, lean, lanky, and extremely superstitious schoolmaster from Connecticut, who competes with Abraham Bro

10、m Bones Van Brunt, the town rowdy, for the hand of 18-year-old Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and sole child of a wealthy farmer, Baltus Van Tassel. As Crane leaves a party he attended at the Van Tassel home on an autumn night, he is pursued by Headless Horseman, who is supposedly the ghost of a H

11、essian trooper who had his head shot off by a stray cannonball during some nameless battle of the American Revolutionary War, and who rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head. Ichabod mysteriously disappears from town, leaving Katrina to marry Brom Bones, who was to look excee

12、dingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related. Although the nature of the Headless Horseman is left open to interpretation, the story implies that the Horseman was really Brom Bones in disguise.In this story, Irving describes ideal life in the countryside, and the villagers are considered

13、 honest, kind in extremely rich poetic languages. The story also made a veiled criticism of the social reality: quiet country is compared with the noisy cities; the simple -hearted early immigrants are compared with the humbled and dirty bourgeois. The employment of figures of speech contributes to

14、achieve rhetorical effects and helps readers understand the novels theme and Irvings writing style.1.2 Explanation about rhetoric(1The two basic principles of psychological mechanismThe construction of rhetoric is in order to reach a better result in language expression. There are two basic rhetoric

15、 text construction principles: the principle of availability and effectiveness. Availability refers that the rhetorical text should be accepted or understood easily by recipients, that is, the rhetoric should accord to recipients level of the knowledge base and mental state. Validity refers that tex

16、t should be able to understand and rhetoric receptors and be willing to accept. It cannot make recipients feel obscure. The two basic principles affect each other(吴礼权,2002: 42.(2 Rhetorical text structure and psychological mechanismThis paper demonstrates the effects of figures of speech from three

17、aspects:Rhetorical text structure and imagination: imagination is a common psychological phenomenon. When the text is structured by languages, it needs figures of speech, such as simile, metaphor, vision and parody, to express the text more clearly and vividly, andthese figures of speech are based o

18、n imagination.(吴礼权,2002: 55.Rhetorical text structure and the strengthened attention: attention is the action of applying ones mind to something. Hyperbole, repetition, parenthesis and irony are based on this kind of psychological mechanism.Rhetorical text structure and empathy: personification, tra

19、nsferred epithet are based on empathy. Empathy makes readers understand the plot or psychological characters by sharing the same emotion and experience from the novel.(3 Figures of speechThere are lots of figures of speech in this novel, such as simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, vision,

20、onomatopoeia and so on. Figures of speech are ways of making our language figurative. When we use words in other than their ordinary or literal sense to lend force to an idea, to heighten effect, or to create suggestive imaginary, we are said to be speaking or writing figuratively. When we use words

21、 in other than their ordinary or literal sense to lend force to an idea, to heighten effect, or to create suggestive imagery, we are said to be speaking or writing figuratively. (http:/en.wikipedia.org. Figures of speech aim at increasing vividness of language. Vivid language can arouse the audience

22、s interest, hold their attention and enhance their comprehension with imagery and leave the audience with a fresh impression. Literature is unequivocally a form of persuasive discourse governed by rhetoric.Through rhetoric, the text is equal to linguistic persuasion, and the author can express more

23、convincing. Irving was good at writing descriptive essays, especially using figures of speech. Washington Irvings style can be described as beautiful. It is imitative. It is true, but he was a highly skillful writer. Never shocking and a bit sentimental at times, his manner seems more important than

24、 his matter. As to the style of the piece, it represents Irving at his best.2.Literature reviewThere are large quantities of studies on “the Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. The following are the useful literatures for this paper.Cui Demin explained that Irving had described the protagonist with rich psych

25、ological changes in his paper Comments on Ichabod Crane in “the Legend of Sleepy Hollow”;Gao Qingxuan wrote the thesis Original Characters in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. He analyzed the writing skills and the main characters in the novel on the base of social background. He strengthened that Irving

26、 had found information from Europe for writing this novel; Tong Zhaosheng discussed the protagonists image through appearance, action and psychology. And from the analysis, he concluded that theprotagonist is greedy,timid and hypocritical. Another one is Zhang Nana analyzed the novel from the aspect

27、 of writing skills, and concluded that this novel took an important part in the literary history of America.From what has been mentioned above, most works focus on the protagonists characters. They studied the main characters and got information about the writing style and the theme of the novel. In

28、 my paper, there is something in common with theirs: we study the novel “the Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, the main character, the theme and the writing style. What is more, this paper will make a difference. It will discuss Irvings writing style and the theme of the novel by analyzing effects of figure

29、s of speech combined with the psychological mechanism of rhetoric.3.Rhetorical analysis of the legend of sleepy hollow from psychological mechanismThe following figures of speech play an important role in Washington Irvings novel.3.1 Simile and metaphorIn rhetoric, simile is a figure of speech by wh

30、ich two concepts or two dissimilar things are imaginatively and descriptively compared because they have at least one quality or characteristic in common or in resemblance (Zhang, 2005: 158.Metaphor uses words to indicate something different from their literal meaning-one thing is described in terms

31、 of another so as to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.(Zhang, 2005: 161 Both simile and metaphor share quite a few common qualities that belong to a kind of rhetorical text mode, which is the psychological mechanism based on associations. The construction of the rhetoric is referred that t

32、he producer associates things together to enrich the depicted contents vitality, vividness, novelty and extension ductility, which contributes to the deep understanding of connotation. Meanwhile, the receiver uses reengineering imagination to rediscover information that the author really wants to sh

33、ow, then to acquire a kind of interpretation of joy and aesthetic appeal (吴, 2001: 3.Metaphor and simile begin to run in this premise when ontology is acted as the objective existence, which stimulate the creators sense, with its bright vivid image into the brain, and with the original creator stored in the he