Interpretation and Analysis of Chinese Rhetoric "Divergence and Expansion"

Ambiguity solution

The theme of a club is "How to make a happy marriage?" At the seminar, there was a sentence in the poster: "What do you and your husband have in common?" Someone added a note under this sentence: "We got married on the same day."

"* * * Similarity" has many meanings in a specific context. Clowns deliberately tease by "getting married on the same day", which is a rhetorical method called ambiguity.

There is a figure of speech in traditional rhetoric, commonly known as "misinterpretation". Refers to deliberately distorting the meaning of certain words when writing or speaking. In fact, besides "misinterpretation", there is also "misunderstanding". Distortion is intentional, misunderstanding is unintentional. Traditional rhetoric cannot pick out "misunderstanding". We put forward the concept of "ambiguity resolution", which includes "misinterpretation" and "misunderstanding".

Distortion is intentional ambiguity about the meaning of some sentences.

For example, once Zhu went to see his old friend Sheng Wenru, who was carrying a basket to go shopping. After they greeted each other, Zhu asked, "Where are you going?" "Go shopping." Zhu asked again, "Do you want to buy North and South?" Sheng Wenru said: "The East belongs to wood and the West belongs to gold. If it belongs to wood and gold, the basket is full, the south belongs to fire, and the north belongs to water, fire, water and soil. This basket won't be full. So you can only buy things, not north and south. "

The word "thing" has two interpretations: one is orientation and the other is object. Zhu deliberately disambiguates "East" and "West" into directions here, which leads to "Can't you buy North and South?" Asking questions is like stealing, and explaining the meaning of "location" of "things" is self-evident and interesting.

Another example: when Lincoln was studying at school, there was an exam and the teacher asked him, "Lincoln, do you want to take a difficult question or two easy questions?" "Test a difficult problem." "Well, then you answer," the teacher asked. "How did the eggs come from?" "Chicken raw!" Lincoln replied. "Where did the chicken come from?" "Teacher, this is the second question." Lincoln said.

"Where do eggs come from" and "Where do chickens come from" are two related questions in the same topic. Lincoln deliberately misinterpreted them and deliberately avoided the question "Where did the chicken come from?"

Misunderstanding refers to unintentional ambiguity.

For example, a man ran to the police station to report that his home had been stolen. The police officer asked him, "Did you see the thief with your own eyes?" "Yes, I sleep in the house." "What are the characteristics of that person?" He thought for a moment and then replied, "That man has a terrible big green fly on his left ear."

The whistleblower didn't understand the meaning of "characteristics", misunderstood the word "characteristics" and described the non-essential things as essential things.

Another example: the inspector visited the school and casually asked when talking with the students, "Do you know who burned Epang Palace?" The student looked frightened and repeatedly said, "I didn't burn it." Although the headmaster didn't understand Epang Palace, he said calmly, "The students in our school have always been honest. Since he said it didn't burn, it certainly didn't burn. " In a rage, the inspector wrote a letter to the director of the Education Bureau, explaining the reasons. The secretary immediately replied: "Forget it, allocate funds to rebuild Epang Palace."

"Students", "principals" and "directors" all don't understand what "Epang Palace" is, and the sketch cleverly satirizes and attacks the decadent feudal education system with misunderstanding.

Both misinterpretation and misunderstanding can produce ambiguous expression effects, but both can be applied to specific speech activities.

For example, a sedan chair bearer can't make polite remarks. Once he and several other sedan chairs carried a scholar up the hill, and the sedan chair bearers asked, "Excuse me, Mr. Xiang, what does' your father' mean?" The scholar teased him and said, "Is the word your father used to address someone else's son?" Say that finish secretly cover your mouth and laugh. The sedan-chair bearer believed it, and exchanged pleasantries with the scholar: "How many dads are there in Xianggong's family?" The scholar turned pale with anger, but he couldn't get angry easily, so he had to say, "Your father is not at home." The sedan chair bearer thought that he really didn't have a son and felt sorry for him. He earnestly comforted him: "Xianggong has no' father'. Don't be sad. There are four sons in my family. Choose one to be your father. "

The scholar misinterpreted "your father" to amuse the bearers, but the bearers misunderstood "your father" and made a series of jokes.

Ambiguity is the use of verbal ambiguity, which is the basis of ambiguity. There are five main ways to form ambiguity.

1. Use homophones to form ambiguity resolution

Once upon a time, a gentleman wanted to test his students. He asked the students, "Is Zheng Chenggong familiar?" Many students can't answer at the moment. Only one student said, "Sir, I am not familiar with Zheng Chenggong, but I am familiar with Zheng Chenggong's mother. She is a loser, and failure is the mother of success. " The students all grinned.

These two "successes" are homophones. The author took advantage of this feature and deliberately misinterpreted the word "success" to achieve humorous effect.

2. Use polysemous words to form ambiguity

For example, the mother sent her son to the grocery store to buy two Jin of eggs, and repeatedly told him, "Choose carefully, don't spoil." In a short time, my son bought the eggs back. My mother saw it and was surprised. She asked, "Why is it all broken?" The son said, "I'm afraid it's not good either." I have opened them one by one, and there is nothing wrong with them. "

There are two understandings of "not bad" here: mother's understanding of "not bad" means "not bad" and "not bad"; My son's understanding of "not bad" is only "not bad", but he ignores "not bad". As a result, all the eggs are broken.

3. Use the uncertainty of syntactic relationship to form ambiguity.

(1) Modify the relationship. For example, "several battalions of cadres are here." There are two understandings in semantic expression: one is that "several" modifies "battalion", which can be understood as "cadres of several battalions (not necessarily battalion level) come forward". Second, "several" modifies "battalion cadres", which can be understood as "several battalion cadres come up".

(2) Verb-object relationship. For example, "punish your monitor". If "punishment" and "you" constitute a verb-object relationship, it can be understood as "punishing your monitor"; If "punishment" and "your monitor" constitute a verb-object relationship, it can be understood as "it is your monitor who is punished"

(3) Coordination. Such as "friends of Xiao Li and Xiao Zhang". There are two understandings of this sentence: a. Xiao Li and a friend, and a friend is a friend of Xiao Zhang. This friend is a friend of Xiao Li and Xiao Zhang.

(4) the relationship between subject and object. Such as About Lu Xun's Works. If the scope of "about" is "Lu Xun", it can be understood as "a book about Lu Xun's life story and thoughts"; If "about" refers to Lu Xun's works, it can be understood as "about Lu Xun's own works" or "about Lu Xun's own works".

(5) The relationship between giving and receiving. For example, "It is he who opposes it." "He" acts as an agent, indicating that "he opposes"; "He" is a patient, which means "He objects."

4. Form ambiguity by reading sentences.

For example, a scholar applied to be a private school teacher in a rich family. Knowing the miserliness of the rich man, the scholar wrote when signing the contract: "A plate of vegetarian dishes without chicken, duck and fish is enough." The owner was very happy after hearing this and signed the contract immediately. The scholar arrived a few days later, and when he saw the poor reception, he took the contract to the rich man's theory: "The contract clearly says' no chicken, no duck'; No fish, no meat, and a plate of vegetarian dishes is enough. " Why don't you abide by the contract? "

When the scholar made the contract, he deliberately made a verb sentence break in vernacular, that is, without punctuation marks, so that the rich man could make another sentence break after signing the contract to amuse the rich man.

5. Use specific context to form ambiguity.

For example, my brother-in-law is wooden and taciturn, which happens to be a natural couple with my introverted sister. I worked together for three years before marriage, although I was interested in each other, but I didn't have the courage to express myself. Later, under the arrangement of colleagues, they started dating. My sister asked shyly, "Why do I always feel that there is something special in your eyes every time we meet?" Brother-in-law blushed and replied, "Oh dear! How did you know I had trachoma? But please rest assured that the doctor said that it has almost recovered. "

In a specific context, my brother-in-law heard the question "There is something very special in your eyes" and said that he had trachoma.

Ambiguity elimination makes use of the fuzziness of language, which can be manifested in words, phrases, sentences and contexts. Clever use of ambiguity can produce an ideal communicative effect, or humorous speech characteristics, or a relaxed and pleasant conversation atmosphere, or achieve a spicy and ironic artistic effect.

Be flexible

Four candidates want to know how the exam results are, so they go to fortune telling. The fortune teller only said one word "one". After the examination results were announced, one candidate failed. Someone asked the fortune teller why he was so accurate. "It's very simple." The fortune teller said: "If a person passes, it is passed;" If two people pass, half of them pass; If three pass, one fails; If they all pass, none will fail. "

The fortune teller summed up four possible situations with the word "one". In terms of verbal expression, deliberately not saying absolute, understanding can be up and down, wide and narrow, which can be different and leave room. This rhetorical method is called stretching. There are two situations: expansion and contraction.

1. Formal extension of semantically uncertain statements.

For example, plums don't necessarily fall around plum trees, and apples don't necessarily fall near apple trees.

Saying a few words is not necessarily stupid, and talking and laughing is not necessarily not serious.

A beautiful woman is not necessarily empty-hearted, and a silly elder sister is not necessarily lucky.

Lovers are not always smooth sailing, and bachelors are not always unlucky.

True love is not necessarily only once, but also two or three times.

The truth is not always in the hands of the elderly, and sometimes young people might as well listen.

Being rich doesn't necessarily bring misfortune, but being empty-handed deserves happiness?

This short poem "Not necessarily" uses uncertain words such as "not necessarily", "not necessarily", "maybe" and "sometimes might as well" to explain the possible situations layer by layer. This poem expands and contracts with words with uncertain meaning, and the whole poem contains rich philosophy of life.

2. Avoid talking about the people you want to talk about.

What are you doing? Write a letter?

B: Yes, this letter is really difficult to write! A few days ago, I sent a gift of menstruation to celebrate my birthday. Now I want to write a letter to thank her, but I can't remember what gift she sent.

A: Why is it so difficult? You wrote, "Dear Menstruation, thank you for your wonderful gift. The gift you gave me was just what I dreamed of. I wonder, how do you know my mind? I wish you health! "

The writer wants to write back to Menstruation and thank her for her gift, but he can't remember what it is, so he has to avoid talking about it in the letter and use "excellent gift" to prevaricate and form an expansion.

The basis of stretching method is to use the fuzziness of speech. The size, quantity, height, length, speed, thickness, depth, width, thickness, shade, distance and so on of things are relative, and there are no strict boundaries for words expressing the concept of time, such as "morning, noon and evening". The relativity of objective things brings the fuzziness of people's subjective understanding. For example, the word "dusk" has different interpretations in Modern Chinese Dictionary and Four Corner Number Dictionary.

Modern Chinese dictionary: after sunset, before the stars rise.

Four-corner digital dictionary: I will be late when the sun sets.

The relativity of objective things and the resulting ambiguity in understanding provide a basis for the application of expansion method. Verbal communication needs both accurate expression and vague expression, and vague expression plays an important role in verbal communication. We can use the stretching method artistically to leave room for the words, or deliberately leave the words dead to achieve a specific expression effect.

remove doubts and misgivings

Ambiguity elimination and expansion

Ambiguity is the intentional or unintentional disambiguation of the meaning of some sentences. Intentional ambiguity is called misinterpretation, and unintentional ambiguity is called misunderstanding. The difference between them is based on the subjective and objective intention of the expresser. Flexibility is deliberately not absolute, which can be understood as up and down, width, this and that. It's an expression that leaves room. The basis of disambiguation is to use the fuzziness of speech, and the basis of expansion is to use the fuzziness of speech.