Contrastive rhetoric

CHAPTER II. USING CONTRASTIVE RHETORIC IN DIFFERENT 
LANGUAGES 
II.1. Interpreting Approaches of contrastive rhetoric in cross-cultural studies 
 
The current role of English as the global lingua franca problematizes any 
correlation between the English language and a particular culture underscoring the 
inappropriateness of focusing solely on Anglo-American cultural norms, as has 
been the case in previous contrastive rhetoric studies. English as a lingua franca 
(ELF) research has highlighted the fluid nature of English and the cultures it is 
used to enact in intercultural communication. It will be argued that many of the 
same skills, attitudes and knowledge identified as relevant to successful 
communication in ELF studies of oral communication are also relevant to written 
intercultural communication. In particular this will include the ability to negotiate, 
adapt and mediate between different rhetorical norms and challenge the dominance 
of current Anglo-centric writing practices in English. 
As Matsuda and Atkinson comment
48
in a recent critique, contrastive 
rhetoric (CR)/intercultural rhetoric (IR) "...talks about culture without ever telling 
us what culture is. And without ever theorizing culture, and that's problematic." 
This lack of theorisation represents a major difficulty with IR as without a well-
conceived view of culture there is a danger of essentialising and stereotyping the 
communicative practices of different groups. This is not a new criticism of CR/IR, 
and attempts have been made to address some of these issues through more 
complex views of culture; indeed the move from CR to IR is clearly part of this 
process. Nevertheless, given the range of contextual factors that surrounds the 
construction and interpretation of a text, can such a large and contested concept as 
culture be of any value in textual analysis? This question is even more pertinent 
when we consider that for English the non-native users far outnumber native 
48
Matsuda, P., & Atkinson, D. (2008). A conversation on contrastive rhetoric. In U. Connor, Nagelhout, E., 
Rozycki, W. (Ed.), 
Contrastive Rhetoric. Reaching to intercultural rhetoric
(pp. 277-298). Amsterdam: John 
Benjamins. 

---

29 
speakers
49
, leading to difficulties in identifying which particular English speakers' 
cultures are being contrasted or even if there are any describable cultures to be 
contrasted. 
Despite these complexities, the concept of culture can yield valuable 
insights, but a more critical approach to culture is needed in which the native 
English speaker (NES) communities (in particular Anglo-American) should no 
longer be viewed as a baseline by which other English writing practices and forms 
are measured. The extensive use of English as a global lingua franca (ELF) means 
that a focus on the NES is not sustainable and runs the risk of imposing the 
communicative practises of one group over the many with the ethnocentrism, 
linguicism, othering, and inequality this entails. This paper will explore how the 
insights from critical approaches to culture and language taken in intercultural 
communication and ELF studies
50
can inform IR and make it relevant to the needs 
of English users in global settings. It will be suggested that many of the key areas 
of knowledge and skills identified as necessary to negotiate intercultural 
communication through ELF are equally relevant to truly intercultural writing 
practices. 
Interpreting culture
 
Given the crucial place of culture in CR/IR, clearly a well-developed 
understanding of both culture and the 'intercultural' is needed. However, as the title 
of this section highlights, rather than definitions, this paper will provide 
interpretations of these notions that are of relevance to the field of IR. Indeed, 
"there has been more or less a consensus that it is not possible to lay down an 
'authorised' definition of culture"
51
that would be applicable in all contexts. Thus, it 
is hardly surprising that IR has also struggled with this term. It might even be 
argued, as Scollon and Scollon have done
52
, that culture is simply too wide and 
general a term to be of use in analysing communication and texts. Perhaps other, 
49
Crystal, D. (2008). Two thousand million?