ABSTRACT
It may well be an understatement that stylistic variation in Chinese has been an under-researched area. Especially lacking in this area are empirical studies, and intuition is still very much relied on in matters of stylistics. With the use of many corpus and statistical tools, and ever ready to challenge unfounded assumptions, this volume is an attempt to ameliorate the situation. While much of what is presented here needs to be taken as exploratory in nature, the author believes that the empirical approach is the only way forward.
