3.3 Critical Contrastive Rhetoric
Around the same time as Connor put forward the notion of Intercultural Rhetoric,Kubota and Lehner(2004)developed a critical approach to examine Contrastive Rhetoric,which is built on the theoretical foundation of poststructuralist multiplicity,postcolonial critique and postmodernism.They use poststructuralist multiplicity to argue against assimilationist ideology.According to them,the traditional contrastive rhetoric“keeps standard English in its place of authority and positions second language student writers as needing correction”(p.17),that is,non-native English speakers should adopt English norms in their English writing.Kubota and Lehner took the poststructuralist view and advocated linguistic and cultural pluralism.
Postcolonial critique is used to reveal the underlying idea of“racial categorization”and“hierarchies of power”in Contrastive Rhetoric(p.18).According to Kubota and Lehner,the emphasis on cultural differences and the superiority of English conventions“assumes a hierarchy in cognitive abilities according to racial difference”(p.18).In this sense,cultural differences equal to racial differences and teaching of English rhetorical conventions can be seen as“discourses of colonialism”(p.19).
Postmodernism is used to counter the ideas of modernist relativity,which assumes that cultures are fixed and exist in binaries,and that people in the same ethnic or national group adopt the same rhetorical conventions.Kubota and Lehner,using the postmodernist relativity,argue that the rhetoric of a culture has an ever-shifting and multiplicity nature.Rhetorical norms may change under the influence of cross-cultural communication.
Kubota and Lehner’s Critical Contrastive Rhetoric,compared with Connor’s new development of the field,takes Contrastive Rhetoric in an opposite direction.Connor(2008)redefined two essential concepts in the field,namely discourse and culture,emphasizing the importance of context when studying texts,and distinguishing intercultural and cross-cultural writing as writing in two different situations.Intercultural Rhetoric conceptualizes the field,but brings no changes to its pedagogical rationale.Critical Contrastive Rhetoric,on the other hand,challenges the pedagogical rationale of the field,criticizing the assimilationist approach of converting non-native English speakers to compose according to the English rhetorical conventions.Kubota and Lehner promoted a counter-hegemonic pedagogy,in which the“taken-for-granted cultural differences and instructional practices that legitimate these differences”should be reevaluated(p.20).Instead of converting all people to learn a set of conventions,Critical Contrastive Rhetoric encourages“pluralization of rhetorical norms”(p.20).The rhetorical differences identified are used to help students reflect on how to add English norms to their existing literacy and negotiate their position in English writing.
As reviewed above,there are two main focuses of genre analysis research,namely investigating the schematic structure of a particular genre or part-genre,and examining the genre variation in different contexts.Previous studies have identified some factors in context that may contribute to genre variation,including discipline,writers’first language,evolutionary changes over time,and research approach.
The present study first investigated the schematic structure of the Introduction and Literature Review chapters of Master’s Theses from an emic perspective,and then examines genre differences between local communities.To control possible variation caused by other factors,the researcher uses discipline,year of submission and research approach as the confounding variables by taking samples from a single discipline(i.e.Applied Linguistics)and calculating the variation associated with year of submission and research approach.
Connor(2004b)contends that contrastive genre analysis is an important method of contrasting rhetoric.Unlike traditional rhetoric studies,contrastive genre analysts examine the rhetorical organization of scripts,collecting writings of the same genre produced by writers of different cultural background,in order to make the writings comparable.Drawn on the new development in Contrastive/Intercultural Rhetoric,the present study follows the small culture paradigm,establishing contrast groups based on social communities(i.e.local disciplinary communities)rather than writers’essential features such as first language.In addition,special attention is paid to the context in which the texts were produced to interpret the differences.The position of Critical Contrastive Rhetoric(Kubota &Lehner,2004)is taken when explaining genre differences and discussing pedagogical implications.The next three chapters report the identification of moves in the opening section of Master’s Theses and the investigation into the community and individual differences in the use of the moves.Relevant constructs and empirical research are reviewed in each of the studies.