Word Choice Shapes Emotional Expression | Generated by AI
Question: In the essay “Bite Wen Jiao Zi” (《咬文嚼字》), the author cites the anecdote of Han Yu suggesting Jia Dao change the word “推” (push) to “敲” (knock) in the line “鸟宿池边树，僧推月下门” to argue which of the following points?
A. The relationship between careful word choice and the expression of thoughts and emotions
B. The relationship between conventional language habits and linguistic creativity
C. The relationship between sentence grammar/structure and the expression of thoughts and emotions
D. The relationship between the literal meaning of words and their associative/implied meanings
Your answer: A
Correct answer: A
Answer:
The correct answer is A.
Explanation:
In Zhu Guangqian’s essay 《咬文嚼字》, the famous “推敲” (tuiqiao) story is used precisely to illustrate that choosing one word over another is not a trivial or merely technical matter. Instead, the careful weighing and selection of individual words (斟酌文字) directly affects how successfully a writer can convey their inner thoughts, feelings, and aesthetic experience (表达思想情感).
Zhu Guangqian emphasizes:
- The original “僧推月下门” (monk pushes the moonlit door) feels somewhat blunt, mechanical, and lacks poetic resonance.
- Changing to “僧敲月下门” (monk knocks at the moonlit door) creates a richer auditory image, a sense of gentle action in a quiet night, and a more profound mood of solitude, stillness, and delicate interaction between man and nature.
This subtle change in a single word significantly alters the emotional atmosphere and depth of meaning conveyed — demonstrating that meticulous attention to diction is intimately connected with the accurate and vivid expression of inner emotional states and artistic intentions.
Why not the other options?
- B: The essay does not primarily focus on the tension between habit/convention and originality.
- C: The discussion centers on word choice (diction), not sentence structure or grammatical patterns.
- D: While “敲” indeed carries richer suggestive and associative meanings than “推”, Zhu Guangqian’s main point in this example is not the distinction between denotation and connotation, but rather how word choice shapes emotional expression.
Thus the central argument being supported by the “推敲” anecdote is A: the close relationship between careful deliberation over words and the effective expression of thoughts and emotions.
References:
- None (analysis based on standard interpretation of Zhu Guangqian’s 《咬文嚼字》)