Japanese Speech Verbs as a Means of Forming the Rhetorical Structure of Polemical Texts — Based on the Material of the Journal "Meiroku Zasshi" (1874–75)

The proposed article is dedicated to studying the ways of forming a rhetorical apparatus through speech verbs in the Japanese language at the beginning of the Meiji era, based on the material of the socio-political magazine "Meiroku Zasshi" (1874–1875). The sources used were the original texts of the magazine taken from the Japanese corpus "Chunagon," a commented edition of the magazine's articles, and their English translations. The research object consisted of the articles from "Meiroku Zasshi." The subject of the study was the formation of a new rhetorical apparatus created through borrowings from the Chinese language and Western influences, as the authors were well-versed in Chinese classics and contemporary Western science. The work employs qualitative and quantitative analyses of vocabulary and grammatical features of usage. The author examines the frequency of the verb's usage and its graphic variants, as well as the context surrounding it. The author notes that the Japanese verb iu previously had much greater graphic variability than it does now, with each form carrying its own semantics, which did not overlap with its neighbors. These differences emerged during the process of translating Chinese classics into Japanese. All of this was used to indicate the source of citations. It is also noted that, in quotation constructions during that period, there was a strong influence from the Chinese language; this is particularly evident in the example of the verb iwaku. Its quotation model resembled that of the Chinese language, as it was placed before the quote rather than after it, as in Japanese. Additionally, a new application of this verb was discovered for emphatic emphasis on several words in lists. It was also used to denote the speech of interlocutors in texts with a presumed conversational partner.