Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

Cross-cultural Perspectives on Writing 267
that is often used to describe an inductive organization is delayed introduction
of purpose, which was proposed by Hinds (1990) in describing Chinese,
Korean, Japanese and Thai as opposed to a deductive structure with a
thesis statement placed at the outset as in English. Another category is a
distinction between reader responsibilities and writer responsibility
(Hinds, 1987). According to Hinds, texts written in a reader-responsible
language (e.g. Japanese) require readers to fi nd a logical link between sentences
or paragraphs due to a lack of explicit rhetorical devices, whereas
texts written in a writer-responsible language (e.g. English) display a logical
connection between arguments because the writer is responsible for
making the connection explicit. Connor (2002) provides more updated
summaries of previous studies on rhetoric in some languages in Europe
(e.g. Finnish and Spanish), the Middle East (Arabic) and Asia (Chinese).
While her review identifi es some fi ndings that are inconsistent with previous
research (e.g. the study by Scollon and Scollon (1997), which found no
evidence of the predominance of qi-cheng-zhuan-he or inductive pattern in
Chinese; see also critiques below), her summary underscores L1–L2 transfer
and cultural differences between English (which is seen as linear, direct
and assertive) and various languages (which are not like English).
In terms of the second assumption of contrastive rhetoric – namely
L1–L2 negative transfer of rhetoric – the identifi cation of culturally specifi c
rhetorical features in L2 texts led researchers to presume L1–L2 transfer
(Kaplan, 1966, 1967, 1972; Ostler, 1987, 1990; Söter, 1988). Other studies
that include actual analysis of students’ L1 and L2 essays generally support
L1–L2 transfer. Whereas earlier studies tend to confi rm L1–L2 transfer of an
inductive style as culturally specifi c and different from English (Indrasuta,
1988; Kobayashi, 1984; Oi, 1984), more recent studies found L1–L2 transfer
of a deductive organization (Hirose, 2003; Kubota, 1998a; Wu & Rubin,
2000 – see more discussion later).
Overall, the mainstream contrastive rhetoric studies have depicted the
characteristics of written discourse of English, especially standard American
written English, as linear, deductive, logical and writer-responsible.
These features of written English are manifested in the fi ve-paragraph
theme in school writing, which consists of ‘one paragraph of introduction
(“tell what you are going to say”), three of expansion and example (“say
it”), and one of conclusion (“tell what you have said”)’ (Emig, 1971: 97). In
contrast, languages other than English are usually depicted as what
English is not. Contrastive rhetoric has actually constructed a peculiar
kind of knowledge – a binary between English and non-English languages.
Furthermore, this binary is not neutral; it implies superiority of English
and inferiority of other languages. These issues, among others, make this
fi eld of study highly controversial (see criticisms below). In response to
criticisms, Connor has proposed a new direction of contrastive rhetoric,
which she calls intercultural rhetoric (Connor, 2004, 2008). As discussed in a