The Static Definition of Culture

In his seminal study in contrastive rhetoric, Kaplan (1966) analyzed the rhetorical organization of expository essays written by L2 writers and classified five patterns of development: the linear development of the English language; the parallel development of the Semitic languages; the indirect development of the “Oriental” languages; and the distinctive patterns of digressive development of both the Romance languages and Russian.  These five divergent patterns – later disparagingly referred to by Kaplan as “doodles” – were attributed to the native cultures of the writers.  Kaplan’s conception of culture, however, consisted of a closed system that viewed “culture as based largely on distinct geographical and national entities, which are presented as relatively unchanging and homogeneous” (Connor, 2002, p. 503).

Much of the current research in contrastive rhetoric continues to utilize a comparable static definition of culture.  For instance, Fox (1994) categorizes rhetorical conventions into cultural groups similar to those established by Kaplan.  She describes the written discourse of academic English as a direct rhetorical structure, where the audience expects to find a clear thesis statement accompanied by relevant supporting details.  Fox defines this structure as “direct, to the point, explicitly connected, [and] meticulously supported with evidence” (p. 48).  In contrast, she describes the written discourse of Asian cultures as exemplifying an indirect rhetorical structure, “show[ing] respect for audience by leaving out information that intelligent listeners could infer from context” (p. x).  Further, Fox claims that Hispanic cultures are characterized as having a digressive rhetorical style, where writers provide their audience with extensive background information relating to the topic.  As a result, their writing often contains information that is considered unnecessary or irrelevant to an academic English audience.

Fox also divides culture into two other broad categories: collectivist cultures and individualist cultures.  According to Fox, collectivist and individualist cultures have differing notions of what constitutes originality in writing.  She states that collectivist cultures:

value the wisdom and authority of the past [and] tend to be structured in hierarchies in which the social roles that people play are more important than individual personalities, and where respectful silence, rather than discussion and challenge, is characteristic of learning (p. 49).

She contrasts this ideological system with that of an individualist culture, in which “knowledge can be created and challenged” (p. 48).  Although this model remains a valuable tool for compiling and analyzing the rhetorical structures produced by L2 writers, the concept of culture has been recognized as problematic, particularly by postmodern theorists.

The Dynamic Definition of Culture

One of the ways early contrastive rhetoric simplified the notion of culture is described by Connor (1996), who states it was criticized for disregarding “linguistic and cultural differences in writing among related languages, that is, for including Chinese, Thai, and Korean speakers in one ‘Oriental’ group” (p. 16).  Further, in response to postmodern and poststructuralist theories, many researchers in contrastive rhetoric have called for a new definition of culture, one that abandons the previous static model.  Atkinson (2002) argues for “making the culture concept substantially more flexible and reflexive” (p. 51).  He claims that “to relate all differences unproblematically to single putative national styles … flies in the face both of commonly available evidence and hundreds of years of cross-cultural exchange, hybridity, borrowing, and indigenization” (p. 58).  Connor (2002) relates a similar notion suggested by Sarangi, where the term “intercultural” is used “to refer to migrant’s fluid identities” (p. 504).  In postmodern theory, the fluid nature of identities is considered a universal human condition, not just the immigrant condition.

While attempting to construct a “dynamic model” of contrastive rhetoric, Matsuda (1997) describes the complexity of culture using the hypothetical case of a Japanese student composing a letter to the editor:

Her decisions as a writer may perhaps be influenced by, for example, her experience as an editor of a high-school newspaper in Japan.  Her religious view may also affect how she reacts to the particular issue.  She may try to present herself more indirectly if the editor she is criticizing lives in the same residence hall as she.  Furthermore, she may approach the task of writing with more confidence if she has some prior experience in writing argumentative letters for the same newspaper. (p. 53)

As this example illustrates, there are many factors influencing rhetorical structure besides the writer’s native culture.  In fact, the writer occupies multiple cultures simultaneously.  This concept of culture echoes the definition of discourse communities, which are “sociorhetorical networks that form in order to work towards sets of common goals” (Swales, 1990, p. 9).  Swales states, “One of the characteristics that established members of these discourse communities possess is familiarity with the particular genres that are used in communicative furtherance of those set goals” (p. 9).  In the next section, I explore the notion of genre, which has also been made more complex under the lens of post-structuralist theory.