Contrastive rhetoric

Language Teaching,
1-14. 
59
Holliday, A. (2011). Intercultural Communication and Ideology. London: Sage. P-89

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34 
and cultural resources but also the universality of cultural processes and small 
cultures. He is critical of what he sees as the othering of much intercultural 
communication research in which differences between 'our culture' and 'their 
culture' are highlighted, even if all cultures are viewed as equally valid. This, 
Holliday believes, results in a centre-periphery distinction which marginalises 
others' knowledge and communicative practices. Instead, he argues, we need to 
make explicit the ideological dimensions that lead us to characterise cultures and 
people in certain ways and the consequences of such characterisations. Holliday 
advocates viewing cultures as an interaction among a complexity of 'small 
cultures', of which national culture is just one aspect, and through which 
individuals engage in culturally universal processes but in particular ways by 
utilising the specific cultural resources that are available to them. How individuals 
choose these cultural resources, or have them imposed upon them, and the 
subsequent construction of cultures is an ideological process; although no less real 
or important because of this. Crucially, according to Holliday, this understanding 
of culture should result in the removal of the 'intercultural line' which treats 
cultural entities as separate and distinct. 
These more critical, post-modernist understandings of culture and 
intercultural communication are commensurable with recent IR conceptualisations 
of culture. Indeed the notion of small cultures has been drawn on by both Atkinson 
and Connor in attempts to understand the complexity of interacting cultures that 
may result in the production of a text. Examples such as national culture, 
professional academic culture, classroom culture, student culture and youth culture 
are given in relation to understanding the interface of small cultures present in an 
education context. Connor also makes use of the cross-cultural/intercultural 
communication distinction, suggesting that both may have a role in IR, with cross-
cultural research uncovering possible 'language universals' and shared features of 
writing and intercultural research highlighting the way writers adapt and 

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35 
accommodate to their 'interactants'. Additionally, Atkinson explicitly states
60
the 
need for CR/IR to adopt a more postmodernist critical understanding of culture, 
but also questions the extent to which this has been taken up in CR/IR studies. 
Putting aside these concerns with how much IR has moved beyond a 
received culture perspective in practice, there is also the question of whether the 
theorising of culture in IR has fully incorporated a critical understanding of the 
relationship between cultures and languages in multilingual and multicultural 
settings. This is especially relevant to a language such as English, which on a 
global scale predominantly functions as a lingua franca where there are no native 
speakers /writers or fixed target cultures which can be compared (as will be 
explained in the next section). Statements from IR researchers such as, "the 'inter' 
of intercultural stresses the 
connections
rather than the cultural and rhetorical 
differences" 
indicate a move towards more critical comparisons between cultures. 
Nevertheless, Connor's analysis is still embedded in a framework that views 
cultures as entities which can be identified and compared as separate, "Western 
languages and rhetorics and Japanese have had a 150-year history or interaction". 
Although this quotation acknowledges cultures as complex and linked, they are 
nonetheless still equated with the national, 'Japanese' and the even larger concept 
of 'Western'. 
The idea of Western culture is notoriously problematic and its othering and 
essentializing influencing has been well documented, perhaps most famously 
through Said's discussion
61
of 'orientalism' and more recently through Holliday's 
critique of 'centre - periphery' distinctions in intercultural communication studies. 
This is not to claim that such discourses do not exist; ideas of nationality may well 
be pervasive in the construction of some texts; however, they need to be 
approached in a critical manner that recognises them for the ideological 
constructions that they are. Positioning nationality-culture correlations as 
ideological constructs does not deny the power of such ideas, yet, it underlines the 
60
Atkinson, D. (2004). Contrasting rhetorics/contrasting cultures: why contrastive rhetoric needs a better 
conceptualization of culture. 
Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 3,
277-289. 
61
Said, E. (1985). 
Orientalism.
Middlesex: Peregrine. 

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36 
need to problematize them and go beyond surface interpretations. It may be 
relevant to discuss a text in reference to Japanese culture, but we should not 
assume 
a priori
that such a category is relevant. Even if culture is considered 
salient, a critical approach is needed where we ask "[w]ho has introduced culture 
as a relevant category, for what purposes, and with what consequences?". 
English as a lingua franca. Many of the studies within the field of CR/IR 
have been concerned with texts produced in English by writers for whom English 
is not their L1. Such writing, as the title intercultural rhetoric suggests, can be 
viewed as a form of intercultural communication, thus necessitating a good 
understanding of how English functions as a language of intercultural 
communication. It is now a well-known, and often quoted, fact that non-native 
users of English considerably outnumber native users; perhaps by as much as 4:1. 
It therefore follows that the owners and arbiters of English in intercultural 
communication should no longer be the minority NES communities and that we 
might expect most changes and innovations to come from its majority of non-
native users. ELF (English as a lingua franca) studies focus on this central role of 
'nonnative' users in the development of English, while also offering an approach to 
language, culture and communication that is commensurable with critical, post-
modern perspectives on these fields. 
ELF is frequently defined as a contact language between interlocutors from 
different lingua-cultures (linguistic and cultural backgrounds) and serves as an 
additionally acquired contact language for all. In keeping with the majority of 
definitions of ELF, this does not exclude NES from ELF communication, but it 
does emphasize that they do not drive the norms of such communication. ELF is