Contrastive rhetoric (CR) has come under sharp criticism in recent years. This chapter first traces CR’s emphasis on textual differences in students’ writing to its historical link to formal linguistics, delineating the reach and limitations of such an approach. Then, examining the major criticisms leveled against CR, it suggests that the criticism reflects the changing theoretical winds in Western academia. CR, with its continuing focus on the demonstrable linguistic traits of writing rather than their ideological implications, is vulnerable to charges of political neutrality, if not naiveté. Finally, it posits that intercultural rhetoric, by including qualitative research with expanded notions of culture, will offer both insights to teaching writing to non-native speakers of English and alternatives to the dominant discourse.
This chapter shows the importance of comparing corpora that are really comparable. The chapter conceives of texts as exemplars of situated genres and acknowledges that the rhetorical and discourse configuration of texts vary as a function of the contextual factors in which texts are situated. It argues that corpora may be considered equivalent (or similar to the maximum degree) across cultures to the extent that the text exemplars are similar in all of the relevant contextual factors. It concludes that cross-cultural corpora designs should attempt to control statistically as many of the relevant contextual factors as possible. If not, it may not be possible to say anything reliable about the possible effect of the language/culture factor on texts. Instead, possible differences found may be due to uncontrolled contextual variables.
This chapter focuses on the pervasive phenomenon of metadiscourse, or reflexivity in language, looking at argumentative essay writing by university students. It presents a study of three varieties of English, using two corpora of native-speaker writing (British and American) and one corpus of advanced learner writing (L1 Swedish). Considerable differences are shown to exist in the use of metadiscourse, not just between the learners and the native speakers, but also between the British and American writers. The differences are evident both in general frequencies across corpora and in the functions the metadiscourse serves. Four factors are identified as potentially accounting for the variation found: genre comparability, cultural conventions, register awareness and general learner strategies.
Despite an increasing interest in the study and analysis of research grant proposals (e.g., Connor 1998, 2000; Connor & Mauranen 1999; Connor & Wagner 1999; Feng & Shi 2004), this newly emerged genre has so far not been addressed in the Chinese context. This chapter presents results of a genre analysis of nine successfully funded Chinese research grant proposals written by nine Chinese scholars. Proposals were analyzed in terms of the rhetorical moves and strategies. Interviews with the grant writers were also conducted. The study revealed some distinctive features of Chinese grant proposal writing that are attributable to various local contextualities, such as “face” and “networking” concerns, research and literacy traditions, sociopolitical structure and economic conditions.
The chapter presents a cross-cultural analysis of rhetorical patterns in Russian and American business correspondence. The choice of linguistic features to be analyzed was guided by previous research in English as a Second Language, English for Specific Purposes, and Professional Communication studies. A few areas of Hofstede’s (1984) theory of cultural dimensions, such as power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and individualism/collectivism, were adapted for the linguistic and rhetorical analysis of the American and Russian business letters, and the data were tested in terms of these cultural dimensions. The results help illustrate the approach that could be taken while teaching intercultural rhetoric in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) business writing courses as well as Business Communication courses.
The study examines discourse patterns among various Spanish-speaking regions within one single genre of newspaper editorials, as compared to English language editorials. It focuses on the varieties of Spanish used by Latino communities in the United States as represented by El Diario (New York) and La Opinión(Los Angeles) and compares the findings with previous studies on the genre from newspapers such as The New York Times, El País (Madrid), and El Universal(Mexico). Rhetorical and stylistic features such as sentence and paragraph length and complexity, editorial titles, placement of the main topic and the use of attribution to sources as a device of argumentation were analyzed. The results demonstrate regional differences among various Spanish-speaking countries, and between the two Spanish-speaking areas in the U.S.
Since the 1990s, there has been an increasing interest in the study of genres (Swales 1990). Recent research on the academic journal book review (BR) has shown that the BR in English is shaped according to a rhetorical structure that gives it genre status (Motta-Roth 1998). However, it is not known whether this rhetorical structure is shared by comparable texts in other languages. This chapter carried out an English-Spanish cross-linguistic study of the rhetorical structure of BRs on the basis of two comparable corpora of 20 BRs of literature in each language. The main results show that, despite sharing similar overall patterns of organization, the Spanish BRs of literature develop more descriptive moves and are less likely to end with criticism-loaded strategies.
Newspaper articles are a common genre that has been examined in contrastive rhetoric research to explore its rhetorical and linguistic patterns. However, this chapter aims to go beyond this and to explore how the writers position themselves, manipulate the topic and address their readers by the use of various linguistic strategies and devices. This chapter illustrates the key findings by examining two newspaper commentaries, one Chinese and one Australian. The analysis indicates that the Chinese writer tends to avoid personal voice by the use of more facts and evidence to establish arguments, while the Australian writer shows personal identity clearly by presenting his viewpoint. These findings are discussed in relation to the respective sociocultural contexts in which the texts were written.
This chapter reports on a study that takes a problem-drive approach to answer the question “What do Mexican Spanish university writers ‘do’ when they write in Spanish, their L1, and in English, their L2?” This ethnographic study examines learners’ writing practices in their educational environment. Data collection includes learner and participant observation accounts, classroom observations, and textbook analyses. In Part I, the sociocultural context of the Mexican university is described, followed by a functional discourse analysis of one representative example from a multilingual student’s essay. Part II discusses the educational setting, literacy training, and writing instruction from both teachers’ and learners’ perspectives. This chapter informs teachers and other language education professionals about multilingual writers in EFL contexts.
The nonlinear and interactive nature of Internet searches makes them quite different from other types of reading acts. This chapter describes a study that investigated how English as a foreign language (EFL) Internet users in a Chilean university community approached English language websites and databases. Participants were observed in computer workshops, surveyed, interviewed, and asked to use a think-aloud protocol while navigating unfamiliar websites in English. Contrastive rhetoric and schema theory were used to interpret the findings. English-specific problems included word order confusions and incorrect interpretations of synonyms. Among the younger participants, level of English proficiency did not correlate highly with skill in finding information over the Internet. Differences between user schemata and Web page layouts were found to negatively affect some information search attempts. Pedagogical implications are discussed.
Theme treatment is a long neglected issue in intercultural studies of school writing. Taking a historical approach, this chapter traces theme treatment in Chinese school essay writing during the 20th century. The study shows that Chinese school writing moved from neo-Confucian topics to Socialist issues for the most part of the century and that the themes always needed to be “correct,” or in alignment with the dominant Chinese ideology. Currently, Chinese students write on diversified themes reflecting a hybrid value system emerging in Chinese society. The study further reveals that theme treatment carried equal, if not more, weight to textual organization in that it often decided the selection of types of writing and dictated the layout of text structure.
This chapter discusses how an examination of plagiarism in a cross-cultural context can reflect on some of the controversial issues in intercultural communication. It examines how rethinking our attitudes towards traditional views of how plagiarism should be viewed and how these views compare to attitudes held in other parts of the world can exemplify an alternative perspective on research in intercultural rhetoric. This alternative perspective responds to many, though not all, of the criticisms leveled against contrastive rhetoric. Pedagogical approaches based on this alternative perspective are suggested.
This conversation took place on the evening of September 25, 2004, in an old house on an island in Maine. Because contrastive rhetoric (CR) may be at a crucial point in its history – and one which invites fundamental rethinking – we decided to match this exploratory moment with an equally exploratory genre: the academic conversation. Our intent was not to come to univocal agreement or to state a general theory; instead, we sought to develop our thoughts and feelings about CR through friendly but serious dialogue. It should be clear that both of us have complex feelings about CR. We thought that this was an opportune place from which to begin to examine its future possibilities and implications.
This chapter traces the history of contrastive rhetoric and offers an agenda for expansion. Postmodern mapping methods are introduced to examine the effects of three major developments in discourse on the theory and methods of contrastive rhetoric research. The first map considers writing as a socially constructed activity and suggests that the study of writing should not be limited to texts but should consider the social practices surrounding it. The second map considers “small” cultures and draws attention to the important roles of disciplinary and other such small cultures. The third map introduces the study of writing as an intercultural encounter where writers are interacting in the production and comprehension of texts. Contrastive rhetoric needs to study writing as it is taking place in today’s instant and global message making environment, in addition to studying written products cross-culturally. The chapter argues for the expansion of the contrastive rhetoric research agenda and ends by proposing a name change to “intercultural rhetoric.”
Contrastive rhetoric (CR) has come under sharp criticism in recent years. This chapter first traces CR’s emphasis on textual differences in students’ writing to its historical link to formal linguistics, delineating the reach and limitations of such an approach. Then, examining the major criticisms leveled against CR, it suggests that the criticism reflects the changing theoretical winds in Western academia. CR, with its continuing focus on the demonstrable linguistic traits of writing rather than their ideological implications, is vulnerable to charges of political neutrality, if not naiveté. Finally, it posits that intercultural rhetoric, by including qualitative research with expanded notions of culture, will offer both insights to teaching writing to non-native speakers of English and alternatives to the dominant discourse.
This chapter shows the importance of comparing corpora that are really comparable. The chapter conceives of texts as exemplars of situated genres and acknowledges that the rhetorical and discourse configuration of texts vary as a function of the contextual factors in which texts are situated. It argues that corpora may be considered equivalent (or similar to the maximum degree) across cultures to the extent that the text exemplars are similar in all of the relevant contextual factors. It concludes that cross-cultural corpora designs should attempt to control statistically as many of the relevant contextual factors as possible. If not, it may not be possible to say anything reliable about the possible effect of the language/culture factor on texts. Instead, possible differences found may be due to uncontrolled contextual variables.
This chapter focuses on the pervasive phenomenon of metadiscourse, or reflexivity in language, looking at argumentative essay writing by university students. It presents a study of three varieties of English, using two corpora of native-speaker writing (British and American) and one corpus of advanced learner writing (L1 Swedish). Considerable differences are shown to exist in the use of metadiscourse, not just between the learners and the native speakers, but also between the British and American writers. The differences are evident both in general frequencies across corpora and in the functions the metadiscourse serves. Four factors are identified as potentially accounting for the variation found: genre comparability, cultural conventions, register awareness and general learner strategies.
Despite an increasing interest in the study and analysis of research grant proposals (e.g., Connor 1998, 2000; Connor & Mauranen 1999; Connor & Wagner 1999; Feng & Shi 2004), this newly emerged genre has so far not been addressed in the Chinese context. This chapter presents results of a genre analysis of nine successfully funded Chinese research grant proposals written by nine Chinese scholars. Proposals were analyzed in terms of the rhetorical moves and strategies. Interviews with the grant writers were also conducted. The study revealed some distinctive features of Chinese grant proposal writing that are attributable to various local contextualities, such as “face” and “networking” concerns, research and literacy traditions, sociopolitical structure and economic conditions.
The chapter presents a cross-cultural analysis of rhetorical patterns in Russian and American business correspondence. The choice of linguistic features to be analyzed was guided by previous research in English as a Second Language, English for Specific Purposes, and Professional Communication studies. A few areas of Hofstede’s (1984) theory of cultural dimensions, such as power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and individualism/collectivism, were adapted for the linguistic and rhetorical analysis of the American and Russian business letters, and the data were tested in terms of these cultural dimensions. The results help illustrate the approach that could be taken while teaching intercultural rhetoric in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) business writing courses as well as Business Communication courses.
The study examines discourse patterns among various Spanish-speaking regions within one single genre of newspaper editorials, as compared to English language editorials. It focuses on the varieties of Spanish used by Latino communities in the United States as represented by El Diario (New York) and La Opinión(Los Angeles) and compares the findings with previous studies on the genre from newspapers such as The New York Times, El País (Madrid), and El Universal(Mexico). Rhetorical and stylistic features such as sentence and paragraph length and complexity, editorial titles, placement of the main topic and the use of attribution to sources as a device of argumentation were analyzed. The results demonstrate regional differences among various Spanish-speaking countries, and between the two Spanish-speaking areas in the U.S.
Since the 1990s, there has been an increasing interest in the study of genres (Swales 1990). Recent research on the academic journal book review (BR) has shown that the BR in English is shaped according to a rhetorical structure that gives it genre status (Motta-Roth 1998). However, it is not known whether this rhetorical structure is shared by comparable texts in other languages. This chapter carried out an English-Spanish cross-linguistic study of the rhetorical structure of BRs on the basis of two comparable corpora of 20 BRs of literature in each language. The main results show that, despite sharing similar overall patterns of organization, the Spanish BRs of literature develop more descriptive moves and are less likely to end with criticism-loaded strategies.
Newspaper articles are a common genre that has been examined in contrastive rhetoric research to explore its rhetorical and linguistic patterns. However, this chapter aims to go beyond this and to explore how the writers position themselves, manipulate the topic and address their readers by the use of various linguistic strategies and devices. This chapter illustrates the key findings by examining two newspaper commentaries, one Chinese and one Australian. The analysis indicates that the Chinese writer tends to avoid personal voice by the use of more facts and evidence to establish arguments, while the Australian writer shows personal identity clearly by presenting his viewpoint. These findings are discussed in relation to the respective sociocultural contexts in which the texts were written.
This chapter reports on a study that takes a problem-drive approach to answer the question “What do Mexican Spanish university writers ‘do’ when they write in Spanish, their L1, and in English, their L2?” This ethnographic study examines learners’ writing practices in their educational environment. Data collection includes learner and participant observation accounts, classroom observations, and textbook analyses. In Part I, the sociocultural context of the Mexican university is described, followed by a functional discourse analysis of one representative example from a multilingual student’s essay. Part II discusses the educational setting, literacy training, and writing instruction from both teachers’ and learners’ perspectives. This chapter informs teachers and other language education professionals about multilingual writers in EFL contexts.
The nonlinear and interactive nature of Internet searches makes them quite different from other types of reading acts. This chapter describes a study that investigated how English as a foreign language (EFL) Internet users in a Chilean university community approached English language websites and databases. Participants were observed in computer workshops, surveyed, interviewed, and asked to use a think-aloud protocol while navigating unfamiliar websites in English. Contrastive rhetoric and schema theory were used to interpret the findings. English-specific problems included word order confusions and incorrect interpretations of synonyms. Among the younger participants, level of English proficiency did not correlate highly with skill in finding information over the Internet. Differences between user schemata and Web page layouts were found to negatively affect some information search attempts. Pedagogical implications are discussed.
Theme treatment is a long neglected issue in intercultural studies of school writing. Taking a historical approach, this chapter traces theme treatment in Chinese school essay writing during the 20th century. The study shows that Chinese school writing moved from neo-Confucian topics to Socialist issues for the most part of the century and that the themes always needed to be “correct,” or in alignment with the dominant Chinese ideology. Currently, Chinese students write on diversified themes reflecting a hybrid value system emerging in Chinese society. The study further reveals that theme treatment carried equal, if not more, weight to textual organization in that it often decided the selection of types of writing and dictated the layout of text structure.
This chapter discusses how an examination of plagiarism in a cross-cultural context can reflect on some of the controversial issues in intercultural communication. It examines how rethinking our attitudes towards traditional views of how plagiarism should be viewed and how these views compare to attitudes held in other parts of the world can exemplify an alternative perspective on research in intercultural rhetoric. This alternative perspective responds to many, though not all, of the criticisms leveled against contrastive rhetoric. Pedagogical approaches based on this alternative perspective are suggested.
This conversation took place on the evening of September 25, 2004, in an old house on an island in Maine. Because contrastive rhetoric (CR) may be at a crucial point in its history – and one which invites fundamental rethinking – we decided to match this exploratory moment with an equally exploratory genre: the academic conversation. Our intent was not to come to univocal agreement or to state a general theory; instead, we sought to develop our thoughts and feelings about CR through friendly but serious dialogue. It should be clear that both of us have complex feelings about CR. We thought that this was an opportune place from which to begin to examine its future possibilities and implications.
This chapter traces the history of contrastive rhetoric and offers an agenda for expansion. Postmodern mapping methods are introduced to examine the effects of three major developments in discourse on the theory and methods of contrastive rhetoric research. The first map considers writing as a socially constructed activity and suggests that the study of writing should not be limited to texts but should consider the social practices surrounding it. The second map considers “small” cultures and draws attention to the important roles of disciplinary and other such small cultures. The third map introduces the study of writing as an intercultural encounter where writers are interacting in the production and comprehension of texts. Contrastive rhetoric needs to study writing as it is taking place in today’s instant and global message making environment, in addition to studying written products cross-culturally. The chapter argues for the expansion of the contrastive rhetoric research agenda and ends by proposing a name change to “intercultural rhetoric.”