Revisiting Senses of Li in Writing Instruction on Chinese Argumentation: An Interpretive Context

This paper focuses on writing instruction in Chinese language arts textbooks, examining how senses of “coherence ( li )” in “speaking coherently and thus persuasively ( shuo li )” are construed in Chinese argumentation with the method of cultural hermeneutics. It is found that li in Chinese argumentation mainly includes four cluster terms: coherence within events ( shili ), cultural coherence ( daoli ), feeling ( qing ) and the disposition to act ( xing ). This expansive li suggests how the writer thinks and feels about lived experience with a focus on human becomings, showing great differences from reasoning in instructional materials on English argumentation in Writer’s choice by Glencoe (2009). Such differences are embodied in three aspects. First, shili / daoli and events( shi ) are the two aspects of the same human narrative. Yet reasoning tends to rely on facts and opinions to develop the argument with a focus on truth, indicating logical order. Second, qing is different from appeal to emotion. Qing is processual and discursive and it is coherent with shili / daoli while appeal to emotion operates as a linguistic strategy to serve reasoning. Third, xing collaborates with shili / daoli and qing to contribute to the totality of seeking dao , which reflects aesthetic order. This sense of li is not covered in reasoning in English argumentation.