The Way, Multimodality of Ritual Symbols, and Social Change: Reading Confucius's Analects as a Rhetoric

Abstract

Most rhetorical readings of Confucius's Analects have focused on his views on eloquence, reflecting an insuppressible impulse among comparative rhetoricians to match Confucian rhetoric to Greco–Roman rhetorical framework. My reading of the text argues that Confucius was more concerned about the suasory power of the multimodality of ritual symbols than narrowly verbal persuasion. To achieve the Way for restoring social unity and peace, Confucius emphasizes the ritualization of both the self and the others through studying history and performing rituals reflectively. I suggest, as the first Chinese rhetoric par excellence, the Analects shares some similar features with epideictic rhetoric.

Acknowledgments

I thank Huiling Ding, Gregory Clark, and an anonymous reviewer for their insightful comments on early drafts of this article. I have also benefited from discussions with Richard Doyle and Jodie Nicotra, who encouraged me to reread Confucian rhetoric.

Notes

1. According to Mao, the etic/emic distinction derives from the distinction of two linguistic concepts, that is, phonetics and phonemics (“Reflective Encounters”). Phonetics represents sound categories by general acoustic concepts external to any particular language; phonemics represents sound categories according to their internal function in a particular language. To study less-known rhetorical traditions in their own terms, as Mao points out, one may not have any choice but to articulate these traditions first by seeking out frames and terms available in a better-known tradition. Next, he or she needs to move on from the etic approach to the emic approach—“so that attention can be directed toward materials and conditions that are native to these [less-known] traditions and so that appropriate frames and language can be developed to deal with differences as well as similarities between different traditions” (7). Therefore, an emic reading of the Analects means to delve into the materials and social conditions native to the text while keeping Greco–Roman rhetorical frames and concepts at bay.

2. My close reading of the Analects is primarily based on Xinbian Sishu Duben [Four Books: A New Reader] and Arthur Waley's English translation (Confucius). In some cases, when their interpretations of a verse diverge, I have followed that of Xinbian.

3. As a reviewer of this article rightly points out, in Rhetoric in Ancient China, Lu identifies six original Chinese terms from Chinese philosophical and literary texts and discusses the rhetorical meanings of each. Some terms share similar meanings with some Western terms on the conceptualization and practice of rhetoric. However, in both her book and a recent interview, she emphasizes the closeness or family resemblance between “Ming Bian,” a term with mixed meanings of discussion, argumentation, rationality, and epistemology, and the Western concept of rhetoric. She says, “I actually proposed ‘Ming Bian’ as the close appropriation to English ‘rhetoric’” (Wang 176). Despite the broad and ambiguous meanings that “Ming Bian” embraces, one would not fail to see verbal argumentation and persuasion constituting the primary modes of discourse in the rhetorical system that Lu has constructed for Confucian rhetoric in her book.

4. Granted that Lu tries to reconcile between the philosophical and rhetorical underpinnings of li in her book; therefore she describes li “as self-monitored and controlled verbal and nonverbal behavior proper and appropriate to norms of filial piety, ancestor worship, and official ceremonies, exhibited through listening, speaking, singing, dancing, and performing the rites and rituals” (159). However, by treating li briefly in the section of “philosophical views” and hardly bringing it up in the following discussions of Confucius' rhetorical perspectives, apparently she fails to conceive li, involving both rites and ritualization, as the overarching construct in Confucian rhetoric. Within the li-centered rhetorical system, verbal behaviors fall into one of the symbolic domains with which Confucian rhetoric deals.

5. The translation is mine.