Contrastive Rhetoric: Evidence from the English Expository Writings of Chinese EFL Learners and Their Teachers’ Writing Instruction
Shih-Chieh Chien
University of Cambridge
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Warwick, 6-9 September 2006
Abstract
In this paper, I will explore the assumptions and controversies underlying contrastive rhetoric and attempt to forge a middle ground between those who have championed contrastive rhetoric and those who have opposed it. It has been argued that traditional Chinese text structures (indirect style) continue to influence the contemporary writing English of Chinese students in the expository writing text. The way of Chinese communication style and the origin of the traditional Chinese text structures, in particular the four-part qi-cheng-zhuan-he and the eight-legged essay structures are examined. In considering their influence upon the expository writing of Chinese students, it will be argued that, although these conventions do influence the Chinese students’ writing in Chinese to some extent, they are unlikely to exert a great influence upon their writing in English. English expository writings produced by 40 university students in Taiwan reflect that they were contemporary Anglo-American direct rhetorical style more than traditional Chinese indirect style. In addition, from the interviews with students, the findings show that the teachers’ writing instruction may play a crucial factor to influence students’ writing rhetorical strategy.
Keyword: Contrastive rhetoric; Expository writing; EFL; Qi-cheng-zhuan-he; Eight-legged essay; Rhetorical patterns/strategy
An EFL/ESL student’s first language and associated culture influence preferences for organization and structure of writing; these preferences may differ from native English language speakers’ preferences (e.g., Connor, 1996; Grabe, 2001). To date, contrastive rhetoric studies have produced equivocal evidence of variation in rhetorical styles across Chinese and English language discourses, as based on the prevailing “direct” versus “indirect” dichotomy. Resolving the issue of rhetorical difference is of particular importance to the teaching of writing, since awareness of any such variation is crucial to the development of communicative competence in language learners. For instance, placing L2 students in mainstream composition classes where their special needs go unmet by teachers in how to handle non-native writers is at best problematic. It has often been suggested in studies of EFL/ESL writing assessment that EFL/ESL writers have specific problems with acquiring the rhetorical patterns of English language academic discourse, and that the test scores of these writers may be affected adversely in high-stakes tests of English writing proficiency.Success in such tests is often a prerequisite for advanced academic study.
In 1966, Kaplan published a famous and controversial article on contrastive rhetoric that inspired a new approach to second language learning research, “Cultural Thought Patterns in Inter-cultural Education,” which served as a basis for the study of contrastive rhetoric. Contrastive rhetoric “is an area of research that has identified problems in composition encountered by second language writers, and by referring to the rhetorical strategies of the first language, attempts to explain them” (Connor, 1996, p. 5). The term “rhetoric” is used to denote elements of rhetorical organization in written discourse. Rhetoric is a mode of thinking and kind of strategy people employ and use. Each language offers speakers an interpretation of the world, which may be different from that of speakers of other languages. His 1966 article shed a new light into writing in different cultural settings. He argued that speakers of different languages have different cultural thought patterns that are reflected in how they organize writing; therefore, he proposed a diagram of cultural rhetorical patterns in which English rhetoric is depicted as a straight line and Oriental rhetoric as a spiral. Oriental speakers typically do not use the same type of rhetorical organization that native English speakers use. Native English writers prefer a direct and to-the-point organization, whereas oriental writers prefer an indirect, talk-around-the-point rhetorical organization. Contrastive rhetoric, partly based on Whorfian ideas of the relationship between language, culture and thought, it is a hypothesis claiming that the logic expressed through the organization of written text is culture-specific; that is, it posits that speakers of two different languages will organize the same reality in different ways (Kaplan, 1966, 1987, 1988). That they should do so seems self-evident, because different languages provide different resources for organizing text. However, this filtering of text logic through language is largely unconscious; that is, learners of an L2:
· are not aware of the way in which their L1 influences the way they organize text logic,
· are not aware of the way in which an L2 organizes text logic, and
· are not aware that there is a difference.
Kaplan’s general description of the direct English rhetorical pattern and the indirect oriental rhetorical pattern has triggered a lot of studies on contrastive rhetoric. A lot of subsequent studies have been conducted to test his hypothesis and qualify his brief generalization of culturally influenced rhetoric. The key question for contrastive rhetoric is whether there are differences between organizational patterns written by speakers of different languages and members of different cultures. The differences studied affected basically the organization and structure of texts. Those who support Kaplan maintain that contrastive rhetoric provides important insights as to how culture-bound thought patterns are reflected in ESL students’ writing and how those thought patterns limit their ability to communicate in written English. Kaplan’s detractors, on the other hand, criticize him for his somewhat simplistic generalizations of his conclusions about cultural differences in writing. As Connor (2002) herself acknowledges, contrastive rhetoric has been the target of recent criticisms for embracing an uncritical notion of culture as fixed and essential, existing independent of social and historical constructions of such differences. For example, Kubota and Lehner (2004) warns against the dangers of stereotyping and “othering” that result from cultural dichotomies between the West and the East, as seen in applied linguistics scholarship which often contrasts individualism with collectivism, directness with indirectness, logic with emotion, linearity with circularity, creativity versus memorization, and so on.
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
The Origins of Different Writing Discourses in English and Chinese
English Writing
The concept of literacy (and, by extension, rhetoric) is manifestly dependent upon its generating culture (Hinds, 1990). Therefore, it follows that we must consider literacy only within the parameters of a specific cultural value. It happens that Anglo literacy is broadly characterized by linearity. One of many examples of linearity of text is the structural demand for an outline of Anglo discourse structure can be divided into: clear Introduction (statement of thesis), Development (expansion of thesis, usually with supporting arguments), and Conclusion (summation or synthesis of thesis), logically progressing from the top to the bottom of a document in a vertical manner (Hinds, 1990). This passion for linearity may have its origins in the Anglo-Saxon lineage of English. Halasek (1999) categorizes most academic English writing as falling into one of the most common forms with the “prescriptive college essay” being the one she labels “form without function,” most often described as the five paragraph theme. Five-paragraph essay is most commonly designed to have students respond to a given prompt in a well-organized linear fashion of English writing (Halasek, 1999). These essays begin with an introduction that fulfills several functions. It must state the subject, set a context, give an explicit thesis statement, and it explicitly lists the supports that will be developed in the paper (usually 3) (Reid, 1994). The students are encouraged to think in threes. They write three paragraphs in the body of the essay; each paragraph should be supported by three details. Each contains a topic sentence, which is the support mentioned in the introductory paragraph. That support, in turn, is supported by details (usually defined as examples, relevant details and quotes, etc.). The final paragraph usually summarizes what has been presented and makes an attempt at concluding something, restating the consequence or significance of the thesis of the essay. As a result, in the length of "orientation statements" in writing, several studies have shown that English speakers typically produce much shorter orientation to the theme of a sentence or discussion than non-native English writers. This holistic scoring rubric, developed by teachers and widely available to students in English-speaking countries, describes qualities of effective writing such as, for organization, a clear and logical progression of ideas (Reid, 1994). Halasek (1999) notes that one of the goals for this kind of thinking is control: “No room for digression, circumlocution, or alternative forms of argumentation outside established and immediately recognizable patterns of development” (p. 151).
Chinese Writing
Kaplan (1966) asserted that there is a difference in directness between English and Chinese paragraphs. English readers expect a paragraph to be developed directly; however, the typical Chinese paragraph has an indirect pattern of development. “The circles or gyres turn around the subject and show it from a variety of tangential view, but the subject is never looked at directly” (p.10). Kaplan (1972) tried to explore the basic features of the classical Chinese worldview in order for Anglo-American readers to better understand the compositions written by Chinese. The traditional Chinese literary form could be one of the reasons. The literary form of the Chinese eight-legged essay (or ba-gu wen) loses its directness and coherence in an English reader’s eyes. Structurally the main body of this essay has eight parts--opening-up, amplification, preliminary exposition, initial argument, inceptive paragraphs, middle paragraphs, rear paragraphs and concluding paragraphs, and the fifth to eighth parts each had to have two "legs", i.e., two antithetical paragraphs, hence the name " eight-legged essay" (Cai, 1993). It has been used as the “prescribed essay form for the civil service examinations in China for five centuries” (Mohan & Lo, 1985, p. 518), and its influence continues to be strongly felt in the Chinese discourse. The eight-legged essay of Chinese cultural greatness became the major written genres of the time under China’s feudal dynasties from the 15th to the 19th centuries (Matalene, 1985). The opening lines of Chinese discourse, eight-legged essay, do not provide a thesis. The Chinese preferred to state a topic, and then to steadily unraveled it by building information before arriving at the important message. Thus the eight-legged essay and imitations of the classical literary language of the earlier eras of Chinese cultural greatness became the major written genres of the time. There were no further breakthroughs in literary writing, except for a style of artistically heightened descriptions of everyday life experiences, called hsiao-p'in ("little sketches"), which emerged in the 15th and 16th centuries. Kaplan (1972; 1983; 1987; 1988) suggested the supposedly circular nature of Chinese rhetoric on the influence of the eight-legged civil service exam essay, which he claimed demonstrated a discourse style of talking around the central subject rather than attacking it directly. Thus a Chinese mode of presenting ideas is through a variety of indirectly related views.
In addition, it is said that the Chinese style of writing is "qi3 cheng2 zhuan3 he2," in other words, "opening, development, deviation, conclusion" (Connor, 1996). It is suggested that Chinese writers introduce their main idea at the end of their essays "conclusion" (Connor, 1996). Additional evidence of what represents "good writing" in the Chinese sense comes from a book published by Li (1996), "Good Writing in Cross-cultural Context." Li wants to use this method to investigate what writing teachers in the United States and China consider being good student writing. She wants to find out how the characteristics of “good writing” might differ as a result of different cultural values. She quotes a Chinese teacher of writing:
Basically we think a piece of writing should have four components: introduction, development, transition, and closure [qi3 cheng2 zhuan3 he2]. I think this basic format is still valid because they are in accord with the way we think.... We have three thousand years of writing history... Teachers have the responsibility to teach a student the successful writing experiences of our forefathers. (p. 73-74)
Another Chinese teacher adds:
It is very unlikely that one would start a piece from a form; we all start from ideas or from experience in life.... Especially in a country like China that has a literary history of thousands of years, is arrogant to think that one can surpass his predecessors without first learning from them. (p.74)
Challenges to the Kaplan’s Study and Traditional Chinese Culture in Writing: The Possible Coexistence of Direct and Indirect Discourses in Contemporary Chinese Writing
Wu’s (1988) study of Modern Chinese writing challenges Kaplan’s theory (1966), showing that, within a single Chinese culture, there is diversity in performance. Her study demonstrates that Chinese writers do not always write in the circular way that Kaplan describes; a linear order is also employed. This way of writing is presented in the work of Wang Chong. To illustrate her point, Wu conducted an analysis of Wang Chong’s essay Ding Gui which is typical of his way of writing. The following is the skeleton structure of Wu’s analysis (Wu, 1988).
Sick people are terrified to death and so they see ghosts.
Sick people seeing ghosts are just like Bo Le looking over a horse or Pao
Ding looking over a cow.
When a sick person is in pain, he sees or thinks ghosts are hitting him.
Sick people seeing a ghost are but dreaming. (p.165)
The topic sentence in this extract is placed right the beginning, followed by the examples of sick people seeing ghosts, such as Bo Le and Pao Ding. Then the conclusion reinforces the topic idea: that sick people seeing ghosts are only dreaming. Wu’s analysis shows that the deductive way of reasoning exists in the Chinese culture and it is, therefore, not unique to Western cultures.
In addition, Mohan and Lo (1985) argue that there is no support for the claim that the organizational pattern of Chinese writing differs markedly from that of English. They dispute the assertion by Kaplan (1966), among others, that Chinese essays are structurally quite different from Western ones.They claim that there is evidence from both classical and modern Chinese prose that questions the view that there are significant differences between the organization of Chinese and English writing. Apart from that, Mohan and Lo (1985) take their criticism of Kaplan’s version of contrastive rhetoric beyond the issue of pedagogical orientations. They question Kaplan’s insistence that negative transfer is the only way to account for the characteristics of non-native student writing. They focus their study on Chinese students, but their conclusions apply to non-native students of any background: the difficulties of Chinese students writing in English may be better understood in terms of developmental factors: “Ability in rhetorical organization develops late, even among writers who are native speakers, and because this ability is derived especially from formal education, previous educational experience may facilitate or retard the development of academic writing ability” (p. 528). In the conclusion of their article, they compared composition in two groups between Hong Kong and British Columbia where teachers and students focus on different areas while one (Hong Kong) is on sentence-level accuracy, another (British Columbia) is on discourse-level organization. The initial finding suggested that the respective two-group students attended on different areas, which corresponded to their respective teachers’ teaching practices. Mohan and Lo (1985) point out areas that might be considered in future research. They suggest that students be brought into the research process to offer information about their experiences in writing classes in their home countries. The study addresses several of the issues raised by Mohan and Lo (1985): In collaboration with their writing center teachers, students articulate their native cultures’ rhetoric, probe their previous writing experiences, and compare and contrast both with their experiences writing in English.