A Study of Lu Xun's "Blessing" Appellatives and the Implications for Chinese Language Teaching

Abstract

Lu Xun, as the founder of modern Chinese literature, is known for his profound and sharp language style. Although there are different views on whether and how to teach Lu Xun's works in Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) teaching circles, the fact that Lu Xun's works are most frequently included in Chinese language textbooks is enough to emphasize his central position. From the perspective of sociolinguistics, this paper takes the epithets in Lu Xun's Blessing as the object of study, and employs exhaustive statistics and other research methods to systematically analyze the epithets in Blessing. It is found that Blessing contains 54 predicates, which are categorized into two major categories of locution and expressive function and seven subcategories of occupational title and honorific title on the basis of Li Mingjie's classification of predicates. From the study of the predicates in Blessing, we can see that they are characterized by the wide distribution and different colors of predicative elements, and the phenomenon of heteronymity and homonymity, and so on. Finally, from the perspective of the "Three Teachings" (teachers, teaching materials, and teaching methods), the study provides insights for Chinese language teaching and promotes Chinese language learners to better understand the development of Chinese society through the study of Lu Xun's epithets.