Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

274 Part 4: Language and Literacy
Criticisms of and Evidence against the Assumptions
of Contrastive Rhetoric
As reviewed earlier, the dominant knowledge produced by contrastive
rhetoric research since the 1960s has underscored cultural difference in
rhetoric between English and other languages as well as L1–L2 negative
transfer of rhetoric in academic ESL writing. The pedagogical proposals
have been focused on explicit teaching of the prescriptive structure of
English essays as well as raising awareness about cultural difference.
However, such an approach has met many criticisms, especially with
regard to the fi xed and essentialist characterization of culture, language
and ESL writers as well as the assimilationist, prescriptive and transmission-oriented
pedagogy (see also Casanave, 2004 for a summary of
criticisms).
Diverse, complex and nonessentialist view of language
and culture
Scholars such as Matsuda (1997), Leki (1997), Spack (1997) and Zamel
(1997) have criticized the reductionist, deterministic and essentialist orientation
of contrastive rhetoric research, its prescriptive application to classroom
teaching, and the parallel discourse in some related publications
such as Fox (1994), Ramanathan and Kaplan (1996) and Carson (1992),
which draw a rigid boundary between English (and academic culture represented
by English) and ESL students’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
They critique the binary qualities created, such as linearity,
individualism, critical thinking, clarity, reason and audience awareness
for English writing versus opposing exotic and inferior qualities for writing
in other languages. The critics advocate instead more attention to plurality,
complexity, and hybridity of rhetorical patterns within one language
as well as similarities among languages or cultures. They also propose to
focus on the agency of students and view them as individuals with diverse
educational experiences, subjectivities, and competencies. Leki (1997), for
example argues that ignoring similarities leads to exoticizing the language
and culture that ESL writers bring to ESL classrooms and dismissing the
agency of writers as individuals.
Another critique has to do with diversity observed within a language.
Kachru (1995, 1997, 1999) critiques traditional contrastive rhetoric as
reducing English rhetoric to normative patterns and instructional models
of American and British English. From a perspective of world Englishes,
Kachru critiques contrastive rhetoric’s sole focus on the Inner Circle varieties
of English (i.e. English used in Anglophone countries) as a point of
reference and its failure to validate Outer Circle rhetorical varieties of
English (i.e. English used in former British and American colonies). Kachru
(1997) points out the indirect style of an English essay written by a student