A Study of the Rhetorical Devices Used in Japanese Children's Literature: Using 'Friends of the Grassland' as an Example

A Study of the Rhetorical Devices Used in Japanese Children's Literature: Using 'Friends of the Grassland' as an Example

The book 'ともだちは緑のにおい' by Naoko Kudo, a famous Japanese fairy tale writer, was published in 1988 and won the 'arts recommendation newcomer award' in Japan in 1990. In 1999, the Chinese version titled 'Friends of the Grassland' was published by Taiwan Interminds Publishing Inc. There are 47 stories in the book. The book has been highly praised by readers for the vividness, fun, and rich rhetoric devices. Thus, this study aimed to explore the applications of rhetoric devices in the Chinese version of 'Friends of the Grassland', using the concept analysis method, a qualitative research method, to identify the rhetoric devices used by the author when writing this book. According to the findings of the analysis, the author had used 25 rhetoric devices, with the conversion method used to form the main structure, along with another 24 rhetoric devices, including metaphor, prepetition, gradation, parallelism, inlay, antithesis, rhetorical question, imitation, hyperbole, exclamation, etc. The rhetorical analysis results are helpful in understanding the creative ideas of applications of rhetorical devices in Japanese children's literature.

The book ともだちは緑のにおい by Naoko Kudo, a famous Japanese fairy tale writer, was published in 1988 and won the arts recommendation newcomer award in Japan in 1990. In 1999, the Chinese version titled Friends of the Grassland was published by Taiwan Interminds Publishing Inc. There are 47 stories in the book. The book has been highly praised by readers for the vividness, fun, and rich rhetoric devices. Thus, this study aimed to explore the applications of rhetoric devices in the Chinese version of Friends of the Grassland, using the concept analysis method, a qualitative research method, to identify the rhetoric devices used by the author when writing this book. According to the findings of the analysis, the author had used 25 rhetoric devices, with the conversion method used to form the main structure, along with another 24 rhetoric devices, including metaphor, prepetition, gradation, parallelism, inlay, antithesis, rhetorical question, imitation, hyperbole, exclamation, etc. The rhetorical analysis results are helpful in understanding the creative ideas of applications of rhetorical devices in Japanese childrens literature.