Exceptive construction

Abstract Exceptive construction (EC), an interesting pragma-rhetorical phenomenon, frequently occurs in Chinese interpersonal encounters. It refers to an utterance that achieves pragma-rhetorical effectiveness through superficial semantic incongruity. This is realized by a combination of affirmative and negative components and by the exclusion of one thing alongside the inclusion of another, establishing a meronymic or partitive relationship between the two parts. Few studies considered various contextual factors in actual use of EC or explained from a pragma-rhetorical perspective the reason why Chinese speakers often choose EC in interpersonal encounters, hence descriptive inadequacy and explanatory inadequacy. Drawing on the Pragma-rhetorical Principle and data from the classical Chinese novel A Dream of Red Mansions , this paper conducts a qualitative plus quantitative corpus-based analysis of EC’s syntactic, semantic properties and pragma-rhetorical function and effect in Chinese contexts. It is hoped that this study will offer insights for understanding traditional rhetorical devices from a pragma-rhetorical perspective, as well as contrastive studies of Chinese and English.