“说”祭与“说”体

“说”祭是一种以论说的方式说服神灵满足祭祷者诉求的言语行为，“说”祭祝辞因其特定的情境、内涵与形态而固定为格套，具有鲜明的文体属性，经过祝史的书面化处理与篇章化撰作，便生成祭祷性说体。诸子论说本质上跟祝史“说”祭一样，都是“陈论其事”的言语行为，以犀利的言辞陈述并说服对方接受自己的观点。诸子论说在方法与策略、思维与逻辑等方面受祭祷性说体的影响，于是形成议论性说体。诸子论辩时先简要表明观点，再详细加以阐述，于是形成经说体。晚周时期，诸子称自家学说为“经说”而贬斥他家学说为“小说”。两汉后，目录学家借用“小说”一词，泛指所有不本于经典的论著，于是又形成了传统的小说体。

The Interpretation of Sacrifice and the Stylistic of Shuo

The interpretation of sacrifice is a speech act which persuades the gods to satisfy the prayers’ demands in the way of argumentation, contributing to the fixed pattern and distinct stylistic attributes of its prayers with the specific situation, connotation and form. After the prayers wrote them down with articles, there generates the prayer stylistic of shuo (" 说”). Actually, the pre-Qin scholars and the prayers shared the same essence of argument with their speech acts of presenting affairs and the purposes of persuading others with incisive discourses. Therefore, the pre-Qin scholars gained their inspirations of methods and strategies, the ways of thinking and logic from the prayer stylistic of shuo, thus shaping the argumentative stylistic of shuo. In their debates, the pre-Qin scholars started with brief interpretation of their views, and then elaborated them in detail, thus forming the stylistic of jingshuo (" 经说”). In the late Zhou Dynasty, the scholars named their own doctrine with jingshuo and denounced others as xiaoshuo (" 小说”). After the Han Dynasty, bibliographers borrowed the term xiaoshuo to refer to all works that were not based on classics, hence, the traditional stylistic of xiaoshuo came into being.