Chinese Zodiac Culture and the Rhetorical Construction of A Shu B, C

Abstract

This study, based on the CCL (Center for Chinese Linguistics) corpus, the BCC (Beijing Language and Culture University Corpus Center) corpus, and the dictionaries of Xiehouyu ( 歇后 语 ) (two-part allegorical sayings), finds that the rhetorical senses of the construction A Shu B , C depends on the categories of A , B , and C . When A is non-human, the statement is rhetorical; when A is human, the categories of B and C will decide its nature. When B is a non-traditional Zodiac sign, the statement is rhetorical, and when B is a traditional Zodiac sign, the categories of A and C will decide its nature. When C is age-related, the statement is traditional, and when C is attribute-related, it is rhetorical. The rhetorical construction carries evaluative connotations in the following distribution: negative: 80.8%; positive: 13.5%; and neutral: 5.7%. The possible motivations for the rhetorical senses are culturally contextualized interactions of metaphor and metonymy as well as homophonic and conceptual associations.