This study deals with the use of expository questions as discourse strategy inZhuangzi(4thc. B.C.), a foundational text of Daoism. We treat this particular type of non-information-seeking questions (e.g. “Why?Because…”) as a manifestation of conversational monologues, which are themselves fictive kinds of interactions between the original writer and subsequent reader(s) (Pascual 2002, 2014). We further analyze expository questions as constructions of intersubjectivity (cf. Verhagen 2005, 2008), involving a viewpoint blend (Dancygier and Sweetser 2012), integrating the perspectives of the writer, the assumed readers and the discourse characters. We hope to show that–counter to what is commonly assumed in discourse studies–conversationalization is not restricted to modern institutional discourse (Fairclough 1994) or spoken informal speech (Streeck 2002).

This chapter explores a critical yet still unanswered question in fictive interaction research, namely, the relationship between reality, fiction, and fictivity, through examining conversational imagery in a foundational Daoist text, Zhuangzi, and its comic book rendition. This text is the earliest surviving Chinese text to use abundant imagined dialogues between realistic and fantastic characters to present the philosopher’s views. The philosopher thereby fictively talks to himself through these characters in a kind of ventriloquism (Cooren 2010, 2012), the reader becoming a bystander of this fictive conversation. Hence, readers understand the moral of the narrative through reality, fiction, and fictivity. I argue that these ontological categories constitute a continuum and may appear embedded into one another in a conceptual blending net-work.

In the age of information and technology, idiom variation driven by linguistic creativity occurs more frequently than ever before. This poses a great challenge for L2 learners. The present study conducted a set of tests to investigate the effects of familiarity, L2 proficiency level, variation type, and L1 figurative competence on Chinese EFL learners’ comprehension of English idiom variants. The results revealed significant main effects of familiarity and L2 proficiency level on learners’ performance. Figurative-level variation was the most difficult to understand, followed by idioms with literal-scene modification and simple constructional adaptations. The influence of L1 figurative competence needs to be determined in combination with L2 skills. Pedagogically, the findings call attention to the factors that cause comprehension difficulty to deal with the flexible use of L2 figurative language.

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.

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