The Interpretation of Sacrifice and the Stylistic of Shuo

Abstract: The interpretation of sacrifice is a speech act which persuades the gods to satisfy the prayers’ demands in the way of argumentation, contributing to the fixed pattern and distinct stylistic attributes of its prayers with the specific situation, connotation and form. After the prayers wrote them down with articles, there generates the prayer stylistic of shuo (" 说”). Actually, the pre-Qin scholars and the prayers shared the same essence of argument with their speech acts of presenting affairs and the purposes of persuading others with incisive discourses. Therefore, the pre-Qin scholars gained their inspirations of methods and strategies, the ways of thinking and logic from the prayer stylistic of shuo, thus shaping the argumentative stylistic of shuo. In their debates, the pre-Qin scholars started with brief interpretation of their views, and then elaborated them in detail, thus forming the stylistic of jingshuo (" 经说”). In the late Zhou Dynasty, the scholars named their own doctrine with jingshuo and denounced others as xiaoshuo (" 小说”). After the Han Dynasty, bibliographers borrowed the term xiaoshuo to refer to all works that were not based on classics, hence, the traditional stylistic of xiaoshuo came into being.