[英语学习]PartTwoDiction.doc

Unit Four Rhetoric Most students regard grammar, not rhetoric, as the ruling principle of good writing. Of curse, for beginners in a language good grammar is what attracts their teachers’ approval, but it only tells you such things as where words can go and where they cannot. Grammar will distinguish an acceptable sentence from an unacceptable one and deal with matters of right or wrong, whereas rhetoric speaks in terms of better or worse. In the vast majority of cases, it is easy to judge whether a sentence is grammatically correct or not. It is far harder to say whether one version of a text is rhetorically superior to another. Yet this is exactly what you must master if you wish to read and write well. Writing grammatically is of course a prerequisite, but it is only the first step. As an expert user you must progress from mere grammatical competence to rhetorical competence. What is rhetoric? Rhetoric is the art of expressing modes of thought through the employment of diction, sentence pattern, figures of speech, images, and other ornaments of style. Part I. Diction Rhetoric, actually, is a matter of choice. Jonathan Swift once described good style as “proper words in proper places”. In the proceeding chapters we have been chiefly concerned with “proper places”, but it is not sufficient for a writer merely to follow perfectly the principles of unity, coherence, and emphasis. A good style requires also a painstaking effort to select and use the best possible words. That part of rhetoric which treats of the selection and right use of words is called Diction. Diction is the most important part of rhetoric consists in the selection and right use of words, by which one’s ideas may be brought clearly and vividly to the hearer. A knowledge of words is the writer’s greatest need. Vocabulary and success go hand in hand. Through his knowledge of words, through his ability to make them express the exact shade of his meaning, he gives to his ideas r