APPLYING RHETORICAL STRUCTURE THEORY TO CLASSICAL CHINESE
POETRY: A CASE STUDY OF Mulan Ci
Yushan Lu*
MA Program in Linguistics, Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia, Mahidol
University, Thailand
*e-mail: pailinjob@hotmail.com
Abstract
This study attamps to examin the applicability of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST)
to classical Chinese poetry, illustrated with the case of Mulan Ci. RST, developed by Mann,
Thompson and their colleagues in 1980s-1990s as a descriptive theory of text organization,
has been applied to discribe discoruse structures of a wide range of text types and to study
cross-linguistic issuses (1-3). However, very limited studies have been found to analyze the
discourse strucures of poetry in terms of RST. Due to the various further developments, this
study tries to apply the original version of RST, i.e. Mann and Thompson (2), to describe the
discourse structure of classical Chinese poetry in terms of rhetorical relations. As one of the
famous classical Chinese poem, Mulan Ci is employed as the sample data for RST analysis in
this study. The result of analysis in this study reveals that RST is applicable to analyze the
discoruse strucutres of classical Chinese poetry. As a narrative classical Chinese poem,
Mulan Ci has sinificant rethorical strucrures both within stanzas and above stanzas levels. the
result of RST analysis in this study also reveals that line can be employed as the basis unit to
analyze the structure of poetry, which might provide another alternation to identify the units
in RST analysis of texts, especially those texts as language of art, such as poetry, songs, and
plays.
Keywords: Rhetorical Structure Theory(RST), Mulan Ci, classical Chinese poetry, stanza,
line
Introduction
The goal of this study is to examine the applicability of Rhetorical Structure Theory
(RST) to the specific text type as classical Chinese poetry, with the illastration of the
disocurse strucrtural analysis of a famous classical Chinese poem, Mulan Ci.
Rhtorcial Structure Theory (RST), developed by Mann, Tompson and their colleagues
in 1980s-1990s, is a descriptive theory of text organization, which provides a linguistically
useful method for describing natural texts, characterizing their structure primarily in terms of
relations that hold between parts of texts (cf.2, 4). The original goals of RST are to provide a
theoretical basis for discourse study and text generation. However, the original version of
RST, i.e Mann and Thompson (2), has been variously further developed and led to areas of
applications beyond its original limited goals, such as discourse analysis, theoretical
linguistics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, and cross-linguistic studies (3). For
discourse analysis, RST is constructed on the basis of the analysis of more than 400 texts in
various text types, such as memos, letters, advertisements, academic articles, news reports,
editorials, etc. (see also the former studies of Mann & Thompson (1, 2, 5, 6) ). As the further
development of it, RST has applied to a wider range of text types, such as news broadcasts
(7), expository texts (8), etc. And in the area of cross-linguistic studies, RST has been applied
to the study of different languages, often with the goal of making cross-linguistic
comparisons and generalizations, such as Chinese-English (e.g.9), Portuguese, French and
English (e.g.10), Spanish-English (e.g.11), etc. The results of the analysis of a large number
of texts in various languages show that RST is a language-independent theory, and vertically
every text has an RST analysis. However, Mann and Thompson (2) point out that there are
exceptions of RST analysis in some certain text types such as the language as art, including
some poetry. The present study tries to challenge the exception of applying RST to poetry,
illustrated analysis of the classical Chinese poetry.
Classical Chinese poetry is traditional Chinese poetry written in Classical Chinese,
typified by certain traditional forms and certain traditional genres, as well as the being
considered in terms associations with particular historical periods (12). The history of the
classical Chinese poetry can be traced to the work of the Classic of Poetry, or Shijing, dated
to 3000 years ago. And the use and development of classical Chinese poetry actively
continued up to until the early 20 century. Ci is a style of poetry also known as Music Bureau
Poems (Yuefu). Mulan Ci, or the Song of Mulan, is one of the famous classical Chinese
poetry which was originally a narrative folk song existed in Southern and Northern Dynasties
(386-589 AD) and later was rewritten in poetic form. The current version of Mulan Ci is
firstly recorded in Guo Maoqian’s work of ‘A Collection of Music Bureau Poems’ in Song
Dynasty (960-1279 AD). Mulan Ci narrates the story of a heroine named Mulan who
disguised as a man to join the army for her father’s service (13). As a classical Chinese poem,
Mulan Ci is created in a certain traditional poetic form known as Wuyan Yuefu (Music
Bureau Poems in 5 words) , in which most of lines consist of 5 words. And according to the
development of plots in the story, the text of Mulan Ci is divided into 8 stanzas, each stanza
contributes to the sequence of the development of the story (the whole counts of the text see
the following section, full text see p.8). In other words, The text of Mulan Ci is hierarchically
structured and functionally organized according to temporal and spatial setting in the story.
As stated in Mann and Thompson (2), texts which have hierarchical structures and functional
organizations are liable to be analyzed under RST, that is to say, the text of Mulan Ci has the
potential properties to undertake RST analysis.
To justify the examination of the applicability of RST to classical Chinese poetry, I
choose the original set of rhetorical relation definitions in Mann and Thompson (2) to
describe the discourse structure of the sample text of classical Chinese poetry as Mulan Ci.
This study presents a significant innovation in the application of rhetorical relations to text
analysis, that is to apply RST analysis to a new text type as classical Chinese poetry, which
might fulfill the exceptions of RST analysis according the Mann and Thompson’s (2)
statement.
Methodology
The framework used in this study is the original theory of RST, i.e. Mann and
Thompson (2). According to Mann and Thompson Mann and Thompson (2), in order to
provide a system that analyzes the organization of a text, RST should account for the kind of
parts in the text, the arrangement of the parts, and the way they are connected to form a
whole.
Under the assumptions that the text in question is functionally and hierarchically
organized, Mann and Thompson (2) states the principle mechanisms of RST as: defined
relations, schemas, and text structures, that is
i. There are two basic types of parts in a text: nuclei and satellites. A nucleus and a
satellite are two non-overlapping text spans, which hold a relationship between each
other, called a relation. Mann and Thompson (2) propose a set of relations (see Table
1 below ) and also point out that this set of relations is a open set, to which it is
possible to modify;
ii. schemas define the relation between a small number of text spans, specifying how
spans of text can co-occur with particular relations, and how certain spans(nuclei) are
related to the whole collection. RST recognizes five kinds of schemas represented by
the five examples diagrammed in figure 1 below, in which straight lines represent the
iii.
nuclear spans, and the curves denote the relations. A text span may link to one
another with a mononuclear schema, i.e. a nuclear text segment to a supporting
satellite, e.g. the relation of circumstance, or with a multinuclear schema , i.e. a
nuclear text span to one or more other nuclear spans, e.g. the relation of contrast.
With the schema application conditions, the schemas determine the possible RST text
structure;
structure in a text refers to the way schemas are applied. The first step in analyzing a
text is dividing it into units. According to Mann and Thompson (2), unit size is
arbitrary, but the division of the text should be based on some theory-neutral
classification. The second step is identify spans and relations. To determine what
relation should be said to hold between two given text spans, the analyst must make
particular judgments, based on context and the intentions of the writer/speaker. These
judgments are of plausibility more than certainty, that is, the analyst judges whether it
is plausible that the writer had such intention or desired that Effect when creating the
text (4). The relations do not hold only between minimal units, but also between spans
of texts, in a recursive manner. The recursive application of relations characterizes the
structure of a text. Thus, text structures are defined as the network of relations among
successively larger text spans, like a hierarchical tree-structural diagram.
Table 1. Organization of the relation definitions in RST
Circumstance
Solutionhood
Elaboration
Background
Enablement and Motivation
Enablement
Motivation
Evidence and Justify
Evidence
Justify
Relations of Cause
Volitional Cause
Non-Volitional Cause
Volitional Result
Non-Volitional Result
Purpose
Antithesis and Concession
Antithesis
Concession
Condition and Otherwise
Condition
Otherwise
Interpretation and Evaluation
Interpretation
Evaluation
Restatement and Summary
Restatement
Summary
Other Relations
Sequence
Contrast
Figure 1. Examples of the five main schema types
Briefly, the relation definitions identify particular relationships between two portions
of a text. Based on the relations, the schemas define patterns in which a particular span of
text can be analyzed in terms of other s spans. And the notion of the structure of an entire text
is defined in terms of composition of schema applications.
This study will apply the original theory of RST (i.e.2) to describe the discourse
structure of the sample of classical Chinese poetry, in the case of Mulan Ci, in terms of
Rhetorical Relations both within stanza and above stanza level.
The sample data used in this study is Mulan Ci, which is one of the famous classical
Chinese poetry. This poem consists of 8 stanzas, 62 lines, and 332 words in all. The whole
counts of the poem see the Table 2. In the present study, The whole text of Mulan Ci is
transcribed in International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) system firstly, and then word by word
translated in English, finally free translated in English for each stanza, see the full transcribed
and translated text of Mulan Ci on page 9.
Table 2. Counts in the poem of Mulan Ci
Text (Poem)
Mulan Ci
(The song of Mulan)
Total
Stanza
1st stanza
2nd stanza
3rd stanza
4th stanza
5th stanza
6th stanza
7th stanza
8th stanza
8 stanzas
Line
1-16th line
17-20th line
21-28th line
29-34th line
35-42nd line
43-48th line
49-58th line
59-62nd line
62 lines
Words
90 words
20 words
52 words
30 words
44 words
32 words
52 words
22 words
332 words
When the data preparation works of transcription and translation are completed , the
data will be analyzed in terms of RST. Two steps of analysis are involved in this study, that is
step 1. To divide the text into units. To keep the nature structure of the poem, lines are
employed as the basis unit for RST analysis in this study. Line is a unit of language into
which the poem is divided. Line in classical Chinese poetry operates on principles which are
distinct from and not necessary to agree with grammatical structures, such as sentences or
clauses, however each lines has contribution to the discourse structure of the poetry.
step 2. To identify spans and relations on both within stanza and above stanza level. In
poetry, a stanza is a grouped set of lines within a poem. Relations within stanza level refer to
the internal relations held among lines inside a stanza, whereas relations above stanza level
refer to the external relations across stanzas.
Results
The RST analysis of the text of Mulan Ci, in terms of relations and their distributions,
is given in Figure 4 (p.9). The result of analysis shows the significant features of discourse
structure of classical Chinese poetry. The Table 3 displays a list of the relations found in the
text of Mulan Ci. The result indicates that 13 kinds of relations are found in the text of
Mulan Ci, among these relations, the relation of Sequence shows the highest frequency of
occurrence, followed by Circumstance and Joint, the relations of Condition, Justify, and
Restatement. The high frequency of the occurrence of the Sequence and Circumstance
relations indicates that the story of Mulan in the poem is developed by the temporal
sequences and spatial settings. We will discuss the result of RST analysis of the text of
Mulan Ci in two level, that is the RST structure within stanza level and the RST structure
above stanza level as follows.
RST structures within stanza level
RST structures within stanza level in this study refer to the internal structures of
stanzas in terms of Rhetorical Relations. As mentioned previously, the poem of Mulan Ci is
divided into 8 stanzas according to the development of story in the poem. The result of RST
analysis of the text shows that each stanza has different characteristics in structure (see the
details of structure of each stanza in Figure 4).
Table 3. Number and percentages of rhetorical relations in the text of Mulan Ci
Relation
Background
Circumstance
Concession
Condition
Elaboration
Joint
Justify
Number
4
9
4
1
5
7
1
Percentage
8.00%
18.00%
7.69%
1.92%
9.62%
13.46%
1.92%
Relation
Non-V-Cause
Purpose
Restatement
Sequence
Solution
Summary
Total
Number
2
2
1
10
2
2
52
percentage
3.85%
3.85%
1.92%
19.23%
3.85%
3.85%
100%
The first stanza, consisted of 1-16th lines, reveals the background of the story that
Mulan was weaving and though of the army notice, then she decided to join the army in her
father’s place. She disguised herself as a man, because at that time ,only men served in the
army. In this stanza, the nuclear part is line 13-16, that is Mulan decided to join the army for
her father’s service, and the line 1-12 plays the role of satellite supported to the nuclear
elements of line 13-16, the two span hold the relations of Nonvolitional-cause, i.e. because of
the big roll call from Kehan, Mulan’s father had to join the army (line 1-12). Within the
nuclear part of line 13-16, there is also a nonvotional-cause relation, i.e. because her father
had no older son (line 13-14), Mulan decided to serve the army for her father (line 15-16),
and the line 15-16 hold the relation of Purpose between them, i.e. Mulan was going to buy
the saddle and horse (line 15) in order to substitute her father’s military duty. Within the
satellite part, the 1-8th lines and 9-12th lines hold the relation of Concession, that is Mulan
was worried about other things (1-8th lines) but the her father’s military service (9-12th lines).
And the 1-4th lines provide the background information, that is Mulan sighed badly(line 3-4)
when she was weaving (line 1-2), for the 5-8 lines. And within the 5-8th lines, there is a
Solutionhood relation held between the 5-6th lines and the 7-8th lines, i.e. the line 7-8th lines
provide the answer to the questions arose in the 5-6th lines.
The description above shows the method of RST analysis within stanza level
employed in this study, that is analyzing each stanza from spans in a higher level to those in a
lower level. This method is employed to analyze each stanza. At last, each stanza shows its
clear RST structure related to the contents in terms of schemas. For instance, the multinuclear
schemas are mainly used in the 2-4th and 6-7th stanzas. Specifically, the schema of Sequence
relations in stanza 2 (line 17-20) indicates the plot that Mulan was preparing the equipments
in the markets, and the similar schema of Sequence relations is also used to describe Mulan’s
lonely journey to the battlefield in stanza 3 (line 21-28 ); while stanza 4 (line 29-34) draws
the Joint schema to describe the violent battles, and the stanza 6 (line 43-48) also employ the
Joint schema to describe the reactions of Mulan’s family when they heard Mulan was coming
back home; the stanza 7, again used the schema of Sequence relations to describe Mulan’s
actions after her back home. The mono-nuclear schemas are mainly used in the 1st, 5th, and 8th
stanzas, that is used to associated with the plot of before Mulan jointing the army (the 1st
stanza, see the discussion of the analysis above), when Mulan went to meet the emperor (the
5th stanza, line 25-42), and metaphoric description in the last stanza (the 8th stanza, line 5962).
RST structure above stanza level
RST structures above stanza level in this study refer to the external structures cross
stanzas in terms of Rhetorical Relations, the structure in this level is higher than the former
one, i.e. the RST structure within stanza level, to cover the holistic structure of the whole
text. To capture the sense of whole structure of the text, The RST structure diagram in Figure
4 simplified, by collapsing the schemas in the lower level, the simplified diagram is
represented in Figure 3 below.
Figure 3. The RST structure above stanza level
From the Figure 3, we can see that the Sequence relation plays an dominant role in
the RST structure of the text of Mulan Ci above stanza level, which covers the relations held
between the nuclear spans in the text that is the 2-7th stanzas (line 12-58), the 1st stanza (line
1-16) and the last stanza (line 59-62) play the satellite s, specifically the 1st stanza provide the
background information for the story, i.e. why Mulan decided to join the army, and the last
stanza gives a summary to the story, i.e. the female can serve the country well as the male do.
The high frequency of occurrence of the Sequence relations cross stanzas indicates that the
story in the poem is developed according to the temporal and spatial sequence in the story. In
other words, the text of Mulan Ci is organized as the structure of Background  Sequences
of plots Summary. The Table 4 is another way of representation of the holistic structure of
the text of Mulan Ci.
Table 4. The holistic structure of the text of Mulan Ci
Structure
Background
Sequences
( of the plots
in the story)
Summary
Content
Why Mulan decided to join the army.
Preparing the equipments to join the army;

On the way to join the army;

Joining the battles;

Back from the battles to meet the emperor ;

Back to hometown.
The female can serve the country well as the male do.
Stanza
the 1st stanza
the 2nd stanza
the 3rd stanza
the 4th stanza
the 5th stanza
the 6-7th stanzas
the 8th stanza
Discussion and Conclusion
This study tries to describe the discourse structure of classical Chinese poetry in terms
of RST, with illustration of the RST analysis of Mulan Ci, which is one of famous narrative
classical Chinese poem.
As a narrative classical Chinese poem, Mulan Ci has some significant patterns in its
RST structure, both within stanza level and above stanza level. Within stanza level, both the
multinuclear relations, such as the relations of Sequence and Contrast, and the nuclearsatellite relations, such as the relations of background, circumstance, concession, etc., play
the important roles in internal organization of stanzas. However, due to the different
functions of the stanzas, different stanzas show different internal structures. Above stanza
level, the multinuclear relations, particularly the relation of Sequence, play dominant role in
the holistic structure of the text. The high frequency of the occurrence of Sequence relations,
both within and above stanza levels, indicates that the text of Mulan Ci is organized and
developed according to the temporal and spatial sequences in the story.
The RST analysis of the text of Mulan Ci indicates that RST is applicable to analyze
the discourse structures of classical Chinese poetry. In addition, the result of RST analysis in
this study also reveals that line can be employed as the basis unit to analyze the structure of
poetry, which might provide another alternation to identify the units in RST analysis of texts,
especially those texts as language of art, such as poetry, songs, and plays.
There are also some limitations of the present study, that is the examination of the
applicability of RST is only undertaken to the a limited subtype of poetry as narrative
classical Chinese poetry, and with only one case study. A larger corpus of Chinese poetry
texts should be built for the further study, and such the examination of the applicability of
RST is also worthy to undertake to poetry in other languages.
Figure 2. Full text of the poem of Mulan Ci
Figure 3. RST diagram for the poem of Mulan Ci
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