Fictive questions in the Zhuangzi

Rhetoric is intimately related to interaction and cognition. This book explores the cognitive underpinnings of rhetoric by presenting a case study of the rhetorical use of interactional structures, namely expository questions and rhetorical questions, in the classical Chinese tradition. Such questions are generally meant to evoke silent answers in the addressee’s mind, thereby involving a fictive type of interaction. The book analyzes fictive questions as intersubjective mixed viewpoint constructions, involving a viewpoint blend of the perspectives of the writer, the assumed prospective readers, and possibly also that of the discourse characters. The analysis further shows that in addition to attention, other late developing human capacities such as mental simulation and perspective taking also have a pivotal role to play in rhetoric, on the basis of which a simulation-based rhetorical model of persuasion is proposed to account for meaning construction in rhetorical practices. The book will influence our understanding of rhetorical practices outside the Western tradition but within the framework of cognitive semantics.

Haun Saussy, University of Chicago:
The Zhuangzi raises more questions than it answers — and that’s no failing. Mingjian Xiang investigates the process of questioning both syntactically and thematically, showing how expository and rhetorical questions participate in the creation of a shared space of interaction where characters, narrator, and reader meet and determine the laws of sometimes quite bizarre worlds. The subtlety of his analyses of such “blending” is laudable and brings clarity to what earlier readers often deemed mere verbal excess.