关键词: 西方修辞批评; 西方修辞学; 修辞理论; 理论综述; 修辞批评模式

Abstract: Rhetorical criticism enjoys a long history of studies, and the research in this field upsurged at the end of 20th century and the beginning of 21st century. In the article, the author aims to investigate the developmental trends in this filed at home and abroad by a literature review of the studies in the past two decades. It has been proved in the research that domestic studies can be classified into four types—introducing theories of western rhetorical criticism in the U.S., building new models of western rhetorical criticism, comparing theories of Chinese and Western rhetorical criticism, and applying western rhetorical criticism into domestic use; while studies abroad in this field, especially in the U. S., keep deepening and upgrading its theories on the basis of its profundity, and enlarging its research scope. A literature review of western rhetorical criticism in the past two decades can provide some academic nutrition to domestic research and deliver certain implicational meaning to it. In the future, more studies should be carried out to systematize the theory of western rhetorical criticism and to incorporate the updated theory into the analysis of rhetorical practice in our country, thus expressing the strong interpretative power of western rhetorical criticism.

Keywords: western rhetorical criticism; western rhetoric; rhetorical theory; theoretical review; models of western rhetorical criticism