Discourse and Intercultural Academic Rhetoric
Fethi Helal
University of Jendouba, Jendouba, Tunisia.
 DOI: 10.4236/ojml.2013.32020   PDF    HTML     6,208 Downloads   10,950 Views   Citations

Abstract

This paper is critically concerned with the recent attempts in contrastive rhetoric (CR) to interpret the linguistic and rhetorical differences found in the academic discourses produced by Anglophone and nonAnglophone academic and research writers. Framing this critique within a discourse view of language, culture and communication, this paper points to the need to go beyond such a priori, static, and too often vague concepts as language and culture as explanatory variables in intercultural (academic) rhetoric. Moreover, using data that examined the use of English in lingua franca contexts, the paper urges researchers in CR to consider the differences and misunderstandings arising from a history of socialization of academics to different discourse communities, varying assumptions of what constitutes appropriate academic genres, as well as the identities and meanings that are co-constructed in concrete and situated rhetorical action. It is believed that such a perspective on intercultural academic communication will not only help move the CR agenda forward, but will also lead to a better understanding of communicative and intercultural competence, and dialogue with the cultural academic “other”.

Share and Cite:

Helal, F. (2013) Discourse and Intercultural Academic Rhetoric. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 3, 149-156. doi: 10.4236/ojml.2013.32020.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1] Askehave, I., & Swales, J. (2001). Genre identification and communicative purpose: A problem and a possible solution. Applied Linguistics, 22, 195-212. doi:10.1093/applin/22.2.195
[2] 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. doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2004.07.002
[3] Bhatia, V. (1997). Genre mixing in academic introductions. English for Specific Purposes, 16, 181-195. doi:10.1016/S0889-4906(96)00039-7
[4] Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Austin: University of Texas Press.
[5] Bakhtin, M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.
[6] Balter, M. (1998). Has French AIDS research stumbled? Science, 279, 312-314. doi:10.1126/science.279.5349.312
[7] Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[8] Canagarajah, A. (2002). Multilingual writers and the academic community: Towards a critical relationship. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 1, 29-44.
[9] Canagarajah, A. (2007). Lingua franca English, multilingual communities, and language acquisition. The Modern Language Journal, 91, 923-939. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.2007.00678.x
[10] Connor, U. (1996a). Contrastive rhetoric: Cross-cultural aspects of second language writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139524599
[11] Connor, U. (1996b). Contrastive rhetoric: Writing in professional settings. Multilingua, 15, 3.
[12] Connor, U. (2004a). Intercultural rhetoric research: Beyond texts. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 3, 291-304
[13] Connor, U. (2004b). Introduction. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 3, 271-276. doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2004.07.001
[14] Connor, U., Halleck, G., & Mbaye, A. (2002). Cross-cultural issues of academic literacy in US research labs: Fronting the Socialization dimension. Paper presented at the American Association of Applied linguistics Conference. March 2002, Salt Lake City, Utah.
[15] Clyne, M. (1987). Cultural differences in the organization of academic texts. Journal of Pragmatics, 11, 211-247. doi:10.1016/0378-2166(87)90196-2
[16] Connor, U., & Moreno, A. (2005). Tertia comparationis in contrastive discourse studies. Conference of Directions in Applied Linguistics, July 2005, Indianapolis: University of Indianapolis.
[17] Daoud, M. (1991). The processing of EST discourse: Arabic and French native speakers’ recognition of rhetorical relationships in engineering texts. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Los Angeles: University of California.
[18] Davies, A., & Elder, C. (2004). Applied linguistics: Subject to discipline. In A. Davies, & C. Elder (Eds.), The handbook of applied linguistics (pp. 1-9). Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers. doi:10.1002/9780470757000.ch
[19] Duszak, A. (1994). Academic discourse and intellectual styles. Journal of Pragmatics, 21, 291-313. doi:10.1016/0378-2166(94)90003-5
[20] Duszak, A. (1997). Intellectual styles and cross-cultural communication. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
[21] Enkvist, N. (1997). Why we need contrastive rhetoric? Alternations, 4, 188-206.
[22] Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge and the discourse on language. New York: Pantheon Press.
[23] Flowerdew, J. (2001). Attitudes of journal editors to nonnative speaker contribution. TESOL Quarterly, 35, 121-150. doi:10.2307/3587862
[24] Fredrickson, M., & Swales, J. (1994). Competition and discourse community: Introductions from Nysvenska studier. In B. Gunnarson, P. Linell, & B. Nordberg (Eds.), Text and talk in professional contexts (pp. 9-22). Uppsala: University of Uppsala Press.
[25] Galtung, J. (1988). Methodology and development: Essay in methodology. Copenhagen: Christain Ejless Press.
[26] Gee, J. (1999). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. London and New York: Routledge.
[27] Giles, H., & Powesland, P. (1997). Accommodation theory. In N. Coupland, & A. Jawarski (Eds.), Sociolinguistics: A reader and coursebook (pp. 232-239). New York: Macmillan Press.
[28] Gross, A., & William, M. K. (1997). Rhetorical hermeneutics: Invention and interpretation in the age of science. Albany: State University of New York Press.
[29] Gumperz, J. (2001). Interactional sociolinguistics: A personal perspective. In A. Davies, & C. Elder (Eds.), The handbook of applied linguistics (pp. 215-228). London and New York: Blackwell Publishers.
[30] Gumperz, J., & Levinson, S. (1996). Rethinking linguistic relativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[31] Halliday, M. (1978). Language as social semiotic. London: Edward Arnold.
[32] Helal, F. (2009). Genres, styles and discourse communities in global communicative competition. Plenary Paper Presented at the Fifth Conference on Intercultural Rhetoric and Discourse. The University of Michigan, 11-13 June 2009.
[33] Helal, F. (in press). The Franco-American AIDS war: A discourse analysis. Discourse Studies, 16, 2.
[34] Hinds, J. (1987). Reader versus writer responsibility: A new typology. In U. Connor, & R. Kaplan (Eds.), Writing across languages: Analysis of L2 texts (pp. 141-152). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
[35] Holliday, A. (1996). Developing a sociological imagination: Expanding ethnography in international English language education. Applied Linguistics, 17, 234-254. doi:10.1093/applin/17.2.234
[36] Holliday, A. (1999). Small cultures. Applied Linguistics, 20, 237-264. doi:10.1093/applin/20.2.237
[37] Kachru, B. (1994). Englishization and contact linguistics. World Englishes, 13, 135-154. doi:10.1111/j.1467-971X.1994.tb00303.x
[38] Kachru, Y. (1995). Cultural meaning and rhetorical styles: Toward a framework for contrastive rhetoric. In G. Cook, & B. Seidlhofer (Eds.), Principles and practice in applied linguistics: Studies in honor of H. G. Widdowson (pp. 171-184). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[39] Kaplan, R. (1987). Cultural thought patterns revisited. In U. Connor, & R. Kaplan (Eds.), Writing across languages: Analysis of L2 text (pp. 9-21). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
[40] Kaplan, R. (1966). Cultural thought patterns in intercultural education. Language Learning, 16, 1-20. doi:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1966.tb00804.x
[41] Kaplan, R. (1972). The anatomy of rhetoric: Prolegomena to a functional theory of rhetoric. Philadelphia, PA: Center for Curriculum Development.
[42] Kaplan, R. (2001). Forward: What in the world is contrastive rhetoric? In P. Panetta (Ed.), Contrastive rhetoric revisited and redefined (pp. i-xx). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
[43] Kaplan, R., & Grabe, W. (2002). A modern history of written discourse analysis. Journal of Second Language Writing, 11, 191-223.
[44] doi:10.1016/S1060-3743(02)00085-1
[45] Kramsch, C. (2002). In search of the intercultural. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 6, 275-285. doi:10.1111/1467-9481.00188
[46] Kramsch, C. (2004). Language, thought, and culture. In A. Davies, & C. Elder (Eds.), The handbook of applied linguistics (pp. 235-265). London and New York: Blackwell Publishers. doi:10.1002/9780470757000.ch9
[47] Kramsch, C. (2005). Post 9/11: Foreign languages between knowledge and power. Applied Linguistics, 26, 545-567. doi:10.1093/applin/ami026
[48] Kramsch, C., & Thorne, S. (2004). Foreign langue learning in global communicative practice. In B. David, & D. Cameron (Eds.), Globalization and language teaching (pp. 83-100). London and New York: Routledge.
[49] Mauranen, A. (1994). Two discourse worlds: Study genres in Britain and Finland. Finlance: A Finnish Journal of Applied Linguistics, XIII, 1-40.
[50] Mauranen, A. (2001). Descriptions or explanations? Some methodological issues in contrastive rhetoric. In M. Hewings (Ed.), Academic writing in context (pp. 43-54). Birmingham: University of Birmingham Press.
[51] Moreno, A. (1998). The explicit signaling of premise-conclusion sequences in research articles: A contrastive framework. Text, 18, 545585. doi:10.1515/text.1.1998.18.4.545
[52] Sarnagi, S. (1995). Culture. In J. Verschueren, J. Ostman, & J. Blommaert (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics (pp. 1-30). Philadelphia, PA: John Bemjamins.
[53] Savignon, S., & Sysoyev, P. (2002). Sociocultural strategies for a dialogue of cultures. The Modern Language Journal, 86, 508-524. doi:10.1111/1540-4781.00158
[54] Scollon, R. (1997). Contrastive rhetoric, contrastive poetics, or perhaps something else. TESOL Quarterly, 31, 353-358.
[55] Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. (2001). Discourse and intercultural communication. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, & H. E. Hamilton (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 538-547). Oxford, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
[56] Seidlhofer, B. (2001). Closing a conceptual gap: The case for a description of English as a lingua franca. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 11, 134-158. doi:10.1111/1473-4192.00011
[57] Shilts, R. (1987). And the band played on. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
[58] Stubbs, M. (1997). Language and the mediation of experience: Linguistic representation and cognitive orientation. In E. Coulmas (Ed.), The handbook of sociolinguistics (pp. 358-373). Oxford, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
[59] Swales, J. (1996). The enduring Kaplan legacy. Paper presented at the 1996 TESOL Convention, March 1996, Chicago.
[60] Swales, J. (2001). EAP-related linguistic research: An intellectual history. In J. Flowerdew, & M. Peacock (Eds.), Research perspectives on English for academic purposes (pp. 42-54). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[61] Swales, J. (2004). Research genres: Exploration and applications, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139524827
[62] Reeves, C. (1998). Rhetoric and the AIDS virus hunt. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 84, 1-22. doi:10.1080/00335639809384201
[63] Robertson, R. (1995). Globalization: Time-space and homogeneityheterogeneity. In M. Featherstone, S. Lash, & R. Roberstson (Eds.), Global modernities (pp. 25-44). London: Sage Publications
[64] Taylor, G., & Chen, T. (1991). Linguistic, cultural and subcultural issues in contrastive discourse analysis: Anglo-American and Chinese scientific texts. Applied Linguistics, 12, 319-336.
[65] Ware, P., & Kramsch, C. (2005). Toward an intercultural stance: Teaching German and English through telecolloboration. The Modern Language Journal, 89, 190-205. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.2005.00274.x
[66] Whorf, B. (1956). The relation of habitual thought and behavior to language. In J. B. Carroll (Ed.), Language, thought and reality: Selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf (pp. 134-59). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[67] Wood, A. (2001). International scientific English: The language of research scientists around the world. In J. Flowerdew, & M. Peacock (Eds.), Research perspectives on English for academic purposes (pp.71-83). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Journals Menu
Follow SCIRP
Contact us
+1 323-425-8868
customer@scirp.org
WhatsApp +86 18163351462(WhatsApp)
Click here to send a message to me 1655362766
Paper Publishing WeChat

Copyright © 2024 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.

Creative Commons License

This work and the related PDF file are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

  翻译：