Understanding and views of Xunzi's language view

Xunzi's understanding and views on language are as follows:

Compared with Confucius and Mencius, Xunzi made great achievements in literature and art. Xunzi is an excellent essayist at first. His articles are all literary, paying attention to the tempering of language, being "yellow" (Outline), paying equal attention to both literature and quality, and "both arts and sciences are emotional inside and outside" (Book of Rites).

Xunzi emphasized that "words must be reasonable" (influenced by Confucianism). His prose not only inherited the characteristics of strong logic and rigorous structure of Mozi's essays, but also made new explorations in the system and techniques, and developed Confucius and Mencius' documentary prose into an independent long-form monographic prose, which made important contributions to the development of pre-Qin philosophers' essays.

Xunzi's prose is clear in context, good at argumentation, rigorous in argumentation, magnificent in momentum, good in metaphor and beautiful in writing. Being good at comparison is one of the most striking features of his prose. For example, the article Encouraging Learning begins with five metaphors to demonstrate the importance of acquired learning, which is vivid and logical.

Then it discusses the importance of concentration and consistency in learning, and demonstrates the appeal from two sides with eight metaphors and comparison. Such analogies, metaphors and introductions can be found everywhere in Xun Wen.

In addition, Xunzi often uses rhetorical devices such as parallelism and antithesis to make his articles magnificent, full of rhythm and beauty.

Regarding the characteristics of Xunzi's articles, Guo Moruo made a high evaluation: "Xunzi's articles are quite rich ... He is a thinker who is good at literature and art. Among the pre-Qin philosophers, Monk and Zhuang Zhou can rank third, and Han Fei, who is said to be his disciple, can also be called four pillars. The sharpness of Mongolian, the arrogance of Wen Zhuang, the profundity of Xunwen and the rigor of Korean are really worlds apart. "