Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

Cross-cultural Perspectives on Writing 275
writer of English in India and proposes to broaden the conceptualization
of English rhetoric. Although the type of cultural difference that Kachru
points out is consistent with the common assumption of contrastive rhetoric,
which would be critiqued as essentialist based on a binary logic (see
more discussion later), attention to the diversity of English problematizes
the static and homogeneous view of English. An element of postcolonial
critique is also evident in Kachru’s proposal that Inner Circle readers (editors,
professors, etc.) should raise awareness about different conventions
of diverse varieties of English.
Focus on historical shifts
Kachru’s perspective of the diversity within a language also raises a
question of what ought to be compared or contrasted. As reviewed earlier,
contrastive rhetoric research often compares an idealized contemporary
English structure with essentialized classical styles of Arabic, Chinese,
Korean, Japanese, and so on. This process exoticizes the images of these
languages as the Other, while ignoring the shifting nature of language.
Language indeed changes over time due to political and inter-linguistic/
cultural infl uence. In Chinese, critics argue that the ba gu wen (eight-legged
essay), which has been claimed to affect Chinese students’ writing in
English (Kaplan, 1972), exerts little infl uence on contemporary writing in
Chinese, particularly after the May 4th Movement of the Chinese Literary
Revolution in 1919 (Kirkpatrick, 1997; Mohan & Lo, 1985). You (2008) provides
a historical examination of Confucian infl uence on writing in China
and demonstrates a historical shift from the use of the prescriptive eightlegged
essay to its denunciation by emphasizing a clear theme and audience
awareness during the Cultural Revolution, and to the subsequent
depoliticization of themes, albeit some alignment with the dominant
political ideology remains. Furthermore, Bloch and Chi (1995) argue that
even classical Chinese rhetoric was never monolithic but invited varied
views, some of which promoted logical argumentation and critical examination
of the canon. Li (2002) argues that in high school writing in China,
the eight-legged essay still exerts its infl uence, whereas university-level
writing emphasizes logic, clarity, analysis, interpretation, and development
of one’s own ideas. Yet an analysis of junior high school language
arts (L1 Chinese) textbooks in Mainland China identifi ed some instructional
emphases that are shared with English writing, including awareness
of audience and purpose, clarity, good organization, effective
supporting details and so on (Kubota & Shi, 2005).
Another classical style for East Asian languages is a four-unit pattern,
qi-cheng-zhuan-he or ki-shô-ten-ketsu, which Hinds (1990) identifi es as culturally
specifi c. However, there is little evidence that this style infl uences
contemporary expository writing in Chinese (Kirkpatrick, 1997) or