Everyone who has studied the upheavals of modern China knows that one of them has taken place in Chinese writing. Anyone who has read Chinese texts has also eventually pondered the possible significance of this upheaval for understanding the text, and vice versa. By analyzing formal features and speculating about their relevance to the construction of a modern Chinese culture, this book intends to show why the Chinese have come to write the way they do in this century. Drawing on linguistic and rhetorical descriptions of language in writing as features of style, the author reviews the...