The rhetorical devices used in a language reflect both its linguistic characteristics and the cultural patterns of its users. Due to the extensive homophony in Chinese, punning is extensively exploited. The predilection for even numbers may account for the fondness for symmetry and parallelism. The special characteristics of Chinese characters naturally lend themselves to clever manipulation of graphic shape. As expected, rhetorical devices are seen more often in public writing such as advertisements and civic banners but less in strictly functional ones like road signs.

This introductory chapter provides the rationale for the book, as well as its organization. As part of the linguistic landscape, public signage provides glimpses of a culture and its changes. The ability to read signs is a practical skill essential for daily survival in the target language environment. But there seems to have been a general neglect of signs in the typical Chinese language curriculum, even at advanced levels of instruction. This book aims to rectify the situation.

The introduction summarizes the content of each section and distinguishes the selective focus on rhetorical texts, rhetorical reading practices and the communication between poets and rhetorical theorists employed in the book from previous studies typically geared towards enumerating technical elements of style and arrangement that any given poet is said to have “borrowed” from rhetorical critics.