Reflections on Sept. 16 Readings

The readings for this week have to do with Contrastive Rhetoric, its history, its problems, its alternative terms, the way it is viewed and so many related concerns. Kaplan’s article is seminal and so innovative though it has been critiqued a lot. For him, every language determines how its speakers interpret the way they look at the world. Unlike in English, in Arabic we read and write right to left, but this does not mean native Arabic speakers view and interpret the world the other way round. I have sensed a powerful power-related issue in Kaplan’s article, especially in relation to placing and having English and other languages on two different extremes on the foreign-native divide, so to speak (p. 45). In addition, the way the sample paragraph on page 46 is graded could be debated.

A few questions pertaining to this may include: What is “normal paragraph development”? How reliable a grader is Kaplan? What about inter-reliability of grading? What about the idiosyncratic and individualistic traits of graders? I have also sensed a great deal of generalization throughout this article, especially when talking about Semitic languages. I like the examples about Arabic writing style; however, I believe a distinction should be more clearly made between writing and translation (in regard to King James’s version of the Old Testament. Moreover, the term “culture” is very loosely used; Kaplan would say the Arabic culture and the Korean culture without giving any attention to the complexity and problematicity of such a term. Of course, I am here measuring his article against modern and post-modern standards, and this is in no way an underestimation of the greatness and innovativeness of such an article.

Atkinson and Matsuda have a very enlightening and enriching academic conversation about CR. They raise readers’ awareness to the complexities and problems pertaining to CR, and its “new” replacement term “Intercultural Rhetoric”. “Contrastive” refers to differences existing between two things, and “comparative” denotes the similarities, which necessitates the existence and presence of differences. An important point that Matsuda makes has to do with contextualization. Being a highly problematic concept, CR needs to be contextualized in terms of the HOW and the WHY it came to light.

Matsuda problematizes “Contrastive”, “Comparative”, “Inter”, “Cultural”, and even rhetoric as well. For him, CR cannot be seen as a field like applied linguistics or L2 writing, because it is not formed in a “sustained” and “intellectual” manner. A piece of advice given to Matsuda and Atkinson to readers is that we always need to re-conceptualize and redefine such terminologies used in CR and IR. In CR, we are not looking at binaries (the presence or the absence) of a certain writing trait. I would love also to introduce “intra-cultural” as a concept vis-à-vis “intercultural”, where the former refers to sub-cultures or culture with a small big “C” and the latter to “national Culture” with a big “C”. The fact that rhetoric and language might be based on biological and genetic criteria defeats the entire purpose of the “intercultural” part of CR. I am wondering if we can look at small “c” cultures as microcosms of the big “C” Culture. Another issue in regard to CR has to do with the fact that seeing differences and similarities is idiosyncratic and individualistic.

An introduction I may make is why not term CR as RR “Rhetorical Relativism,” as Sapir and Whorf did with their Cultural Relativism. I believe “relative” is a term more neutral than “contrastive”,” comparative” and ever “intercultural”. Ulla Connor provides readers with an extensive overview in relation to how CR came to light, and what was going on during and before Kaplan had written his seminal article. She introduces Intercultural Rhetoric that Matsuda critiques though Connor makes it clear that what she means by the “inter” part of “intercultural” is not differences but rather connections