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Abstract
This essay examines Kenneth Burke's puzzling work on pure persuasion to suggest that pure persuasion has four characteristics, that it is: (1) primarily consummatory in purpose or becomes instrumental or resistant indirectly or secondarily; (2) a near relation of dramatic performance, ritual, and prayer; (3) creates and maintains identity; and (4) relies on form—formal elements are essential to its enactment. This essay argues that an unusual body of discourse, Nüshu, an allegedly thousand‐year‐old phonetic transcription of Jiangyong dialect articulated in a variety of texts sung and chanted by rural women over their needlework on red cloth, handkerchiefs, and fans in a remote area of China, may be an exemplar of discourse with many characteristics of Burke's pure persuasion.
Notes
Lin‐Lee Lee is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at National Kaohsiung Normal University in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Correspondence to: Lin‐Lee Lee, Department of English, National Kaohsiung Normal University, 116 Heh Ping Road, Kaohsiung, Taiwan 802, R.O.C. Email: [email protected]. This paper originated in Karlyn Kohrs Campbell's seminar on writing women into the history of rhetoric. The author thanks Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, Angela G. Ray, and Joshua Gunn for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper, and the anonymous reviewers for insightful suggestions.
Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969), 274.
Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 269.
Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 267.
Nüshu scripts, which I examined, were produced by rural women in a small village, Shangjiangxu, Jiangyong, in the southern Hunan Province of China.
Peter L. Hagen, “‘Pure Persuasion’ and Verbal Irony,” Southern Communication Journal 61 (1995): 46–58.
Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 269.
Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969), 123.
Burke, A Grammar of Motives, 286.
Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 269–70.
Kenneth Burke, Language As Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1966), 29.
Burke, Language, 29.
Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 270.
Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 270.
Richard B. Gregg, “The Ego‐Function of the Rhetoric of Protest,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 4 (1971): 74.
Gregg, 74.
Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 273.
Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 274.
Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 274.
Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 275.
Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 276.
Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 284.
Kenneth Burke, The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1970), 34–5.
In 1958, a village woman from Jiangyong, Hunan Province of China, visited a relative in Beijing and spoke in a language unintelligible to others, which led to the discovery of Nüshu.
For sociological and anthropological perspectives, see Zhebing Gong, ed., Nüshu: Shijie Wei Yi de Nuxing Wenzi [The Only Women's Script in the World] (Taipei: Funu Xinzhi Jijinhui, 1991); Xuefei Huang, “Shangjiangxu Xiang Yaoli de Funu” [The Women of Yaoli Village in Shangjiangxu Township], in Funu Wenzi He Yaozu Qianjiadong [The Woman's Script and Qianjiadong of the Yao People], ed. Zhebing Gong (Beijing: Zhanwang, 1986), 124–8; Shihui Xiao, “Daoshien Tianguangdong de Nüshu” [Nüshu in Tianguangdong Village of Dao County], in Funu Wenzi He Yaozu Qianjiadong [The Woman's Script and Qianjiadong of the Yao People], ed. Zhebing Gong (Beijing: Zhanwang, 1986), 142–4; Zhiming Xie, Jiangyong “Nüshu” Zhi Mi [The Puzzle of Nüshu in Jiangyong] (Henan: Henan Renmin, 1991); Liming Zhao, ed., Zhongguo Nüshu Jicheng [Collections of Chinese Nüshu] (Beijing: Qignha Up, 1992); and Zhao Liming and Gong Zhebing, Nüshu: Yige Jingrende Faxian [Nüshu: A Surprising Discovery] (Wuchang: Huazhong Shifan Daxue, 1990). For linguistic characteristics, please see: Wei William Chiang, “We Two Know the Script: We Have Become Good Friends: Linguistic and Social Aspects of the Women's Script Literacy in Southern Hunan, China” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1991); and Liming Zhao, “Nüshu: Chinese Women's Character,” International Journal of Social Languages 129 (1998): 127–37. For literary qualities, please see: Qing Chen, “Shihhsi Nuzi Hsing Yin Yi De Tetien” [Tentative Analysis to the Characteristics of the Form, Sound, and Meaning of Nüshu], in Funu Wenzi He Yaozu Qianjiadong [The Woman's Script and Qianjiadong of the Yao People], ed. Zhebing Gong (Beijing: Zhanwang, 1986), 42–60; Shouhua Liu and Xiaoshen Hu, “Folk Narrative Literature in Chinese Nüshu: An Amazing New Discovery,” Asian Folklore Studies 53 (1994): 307–318; Cathy Silber, “From Daughter to Daughter‐in‐law in the Women's Script of Southern Hunan,” in Engendering China: Women, Culture, and the State, ed. Christina K. Gilmartin, Gail Hershatter, Lisa Rofel, and Tyrene White (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 47–68; Cathy Silber, “Nüshu (Chinese Women's Script) Literacy and Literature” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1995); Cathy Silber, “A 1,000‐year‐old Secret,” Ms, Sept–Oct 1992, 58–61; and Shu‐hui Tsai, “Women and Their Complaints in Women's Script” (M.A. thesis, University of Colorado, 1993). Gong Zhebing's two‐month field trip in 1985 was mainly focused on editing the women's scripts with three living Nüshu writers who were able to chant, recite, write, and read Nüshu. The scripts cited in the text are taken from Chiang's dissertation for the comparison of English and Chinese translation, pp. 82–3, 85, 87, and 345–431. Chiang translated from Nüshu to Hanzi and from Hanzi to English.
Chiang, 35–7; Silber, “Nüshu,” 42.
Zhao, “Nüshu,” 128. According to Zhao, “Chu, Yue, and the Central Plains are traditional names. Chu includes Hunan and Hubei; Yue includes Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Shandong; and the Central Plains refers to the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, which includes Henan, Shandong, Hebei, and Shanxi.” See Zhao, “Nüshu,” 137.
Zhao, “Nüshu,” 128.
See Chiang, 50–2, 208. The Yao Goddesses include Panhu, Gupo, Flower Old Woman, Guanyin, Mazu, Qixinggu, and Furenma. A Panhu temple exists in most villages. The festivals of goddess Gupo take place annually on May 10. Goddess Flower Old Woman originates from the Zhuang and Miao ethnic groups who pray for children to the goddess who is believed to have control over the souls of children.
Huang, 126; Zhao, “Collections,” 81. Nüer Jie or “women's day,” Douniu Jie or “woman's bullfighting day,” Chuiliang Jie or “cooling day,” and “the ghost holiday” are all female festivals.
Chiang, 51–2.
Shinobu Suzuki, “Hiratsuka's ‘Editor’s Introduction to the First Issue of Seito': Where ‘Feminine Style’ Intersects High‐Context Communication,” Women's Studies in Communication 23 (2000): 185.
Mary Garrett, “Women and the Rhetorical Tradition in Premodern China: A Preliminary Sketch,” in Chinese Communication Studies, ed. Xing Lu, Wenshan Jia, and D. Ray Heisey (Westport, CT: Ablex, 2002), 91.
Hu and Liu, 316–7. Foot‐binding started in the Song Dynasty (960–1278 B.C.E.) and was widely practiced among women of the gentry as one criterion for marriageability in the Qing Dynasty. Traditionally, the smaller a girl's feet, the greater her marriageability. Women of the lower classes escaped this torture to meet the demands of helping with farming.
Mary Garrett, “Some Elementary Methodological Reflections on the Study of the Chinese Rhetorical Tradition,” in Rhetoric in Intercultural Context, ed. Alberto Gonzalez and Dolores V. Tanno (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999), 60.
The Chinese saying is literally translated into “A woman without talents is virtuous,” suggesting that women without knowledge should be praised as virtuous.
Mary Garrett, “Women and the Rhetorical Tradition,” 91.
Wen Shu Lee, “In the Names of Chinese Women,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 84 (1998): 283.
Chiang, 113–4; Zhao, “Nüshu,” 129. Chiang comes up with 719 graphs after his close analysis of 24 Nüshu texts. Zhao sorts out about 1200 single characters; he concludes that more than 80 percent of the Nüshu characters derive from square Chinese characters, and less than 20 percent are of unknown origin.
Zhao, “Nüshu,” 134–5. Nüshu graphs are so different from Hanzi and from any local dialect spoken in Jiangyong County that they would not be easily recognizable or readable to anyone schooled in the Hanzi system without special training.
Chiang, 180.
Silber argues that men could understand Nüshu because its phonetic aspect allowed them to understand while hearing it; Chiang discovered that a local male teacher was said to have been able to write it (Silber, Engendering China, 45; Chiang, 108–9). Zhao and Gong, during their field trips, learned of an elderly man who could read Nüshu with his spouse's help (Zhao and Gong, 9). Scholars assert that like men with high literacy skills in the Hanzi society, women with literacy in Nüshu in the Shangjiangxu area won the admiration and respect of both women and men. For more information, see: Qing Zan, “Nüshu: Chinese Women's Characters” (M.A. thesis, University of Florida, 1994), 35; Ann McLaren, “Women's Voices and Textuality: Chastity and Abduction in Chinese/Nüshu Writing,” Modern China 22 (1996): 394.
McLaren, 394; Xie, 1859; Chiang, 1–2.
Silber, “Secret,” 58.
Nüshu resembles the emergence of the Korean language. Although the phonetic Korean language was first introduced to Koreans in 1392, it was regarded as a female language suitable only for noble ladies by those learned in ideographic Chinese.
Chiang, 351.
Chiang, 348.
Chiang, 82–3.
Chiang, 83.
Chiang, 414–5.
This piece was written by Yi between 1988 and 1989.
Chiang, 422.
Chiang, 362. Emperor Dezong of the Qing Dynasty (1875–1908 A.D.) used the name Guangxü for the period title.
Chiang, 347, 352.
Chiang, 393.
Chiang, 357, 359.
Chiang, 347.
Chiang, 352.
Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 284.
Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 270.
Liu and Hu, 312.
Silber, “Nüshu,” 192.
Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 276.
It is the only surviving text of this kind memorized by Hu.
Chiang, 89–91.
Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 293–4.
Silber, “Nüshu,” 88.
Chiang, 383, 392.
Chiang, 395, 396–7.
Chiang, 403, 406–7, 408–9.
Chiang, 382.
Chiang, 430–1.
Silber, “Nüshu,” 163–75.
Chiang, 367–8.
Chiang, 371–2.
Chiang, 374.
Chiang, 402.
Burke, Religion, 34–5.
For more information, see Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for Her (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1989), 13; Campbell, “The Rhetoric of Radical Black Nationalism: A Case Study in Self‐Conscious Criticism,” Central States Speech Journal (1971): 155.
Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 270.
Zhao also investigated another female writing script called Ban Niang Wu, or “inviting people from the parental family.” He suggested that Ban Niang Wu had been used by married Yao women to elicit help from their parental family at times when they could not tolerate the misery of their marriages. Unfortunately, this script became extinct owing to the constraints of time, money, and the natural deaths of its users.
Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 294.
Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 285.
For more information, see Carol C. Fan, “Language, Gender, and Chinese Culture,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 10 (1996): 109; Gong, 33; McLaren, 396; Silber, “Secret,” 58; Tsai, 18; and Zan, 35–6. Just who the creators of Nüshu were remains unknown. Six possible legends have been discussed by scholars. (1) Some women invented Nüshu in the form of embroidery patterns on cloth and used it to write to their friends. (2) A woman named Hu Yuxiu from Jingtian village in Shangjiangxu was a royal concubine of the emperor of the Song Dynasty. After she experienced the oppressive and lonely court life, her brother, a learned court official, created and taught her the women's script to express her complaints to her family. Yuxiu later returned home and taught all her female relatives how to use this language. (3) This one resembles number 2. Before being a Song concubine, a beauty and her sworn sisters learned the women's script. After losing favor with the emperor, she used this secretive language to share her misery with female relatives and sworn sisters. She told her relatives that the characters were italicized and should be read with the local pronunciation, from left to right. (4) A local woman was born with a birth weight of approximately 5.4 kg or 11.9 pounds. Intelligent and talented, she created Nüshu to communicate with her sworn sisters. Chiang argues that this legend derives from “Nine‐catty Woman,” a Yew vernacular drama. (5) It is linked to Yao embroidery. In the past, women gathered for needlework and embroidery. With limited access to education, most women were illiterate. Accordingly, they created Nüshu over the needlework on cloth, fans, and handkerchiefs to record their memorable hardships. (6) It derives from prayers. While taking prayers from the shrine and singing them, some women wrote down their wishes and dedicated them to the goddesses. For more information, see Chiang, 109–11; Gong, 21–2; Tsai, 20–1; Xie, 5; Zhao, “Nüshu,” 135.