Open Journal of Modern Linguistics 2013. Vol.3, No.2, 149-156 Published Online June 2013 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojml) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojml.2013.32020 Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 149 Discourse and Intercultural Academic Rhetoric Fethi Helal University of Jendouba, Jendouba, Tunisia Email: fethi_helal@yaho o.fr Received January 31st, 2013; revised March 1st, 2013; a c c epted March 12th, 2013 Copyright © 2013 Fethi Helal. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribu- tion License, which permits unrestricted use, d i s tribution, and reproduction in any me di um, provide d the original work is properly cited. 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 non- Anglophone 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 re- searchers 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”. Keywords: Contrastive Rhetoric; Discourse Analysis; Academic Writing/Genres; Intercultural Communication; Situated Rhetorical Action Introduction This paper is critically concerned with the recent attempts in applied linguistic scholarship, particularly in the subfield known as Contrastive Rhetoric (hereafter CR), to interpret the linguistic and rhetorical differences found in the academic dis- courses produced by Anglophone and non-Anglophone aca- demics. The Anglophone grip on international communication and information access seems to be quite in place, as has been amply attested by many studies (Wood, 2001). As such, a large number of academics and researchers from non-Anglophone speaking backgrounds are urged to publish their best in English. For many academics, however, this is no easy enterprise. In- deed, ethnographic research has established that getting an entry into the global academic and research markets entails socialization and enculturation into another textual universe and another public face (Duszak, 1997; Connor, Halleck, & Mbaye, 2002). It is becoming increasingly clear that this textual uni- verse is heavily populated by an English, typically Anglo- merican, mode of rhetorical exposition. Non-Anglophones are expected to conform to this mode if they are to make it into the publication market. According to Swales (1996: p. 25), CR has emerged “out of those cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspectives, as one of the best ways we have of understanding why texts are as they are. In effect, we are once again trying to understand the distant other in order to better understand ourselves” (original empha- sis). Therefore, CR is relevant to the increasing interest that is being given to the themes of “communicative and intercultural competence” (Kramsch, 2005: p. 545) and cross-cultural dia- logues (Savignon & Sysoyev, 2002; Ware & Kramsch, 2005) as it attempts not only to describe the cultural meanings emanating from the texts produced by writers from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, but it also purports to explain the reasons which may inhibit the acquisition of such competence and the facilitation of those exchanges. The current focus on explaining differences in CR can be justified by a call initially pronounced by Scollon (1997; Mau- ranen, 2001) and later expressed by Swales (2004) that the next research agenda for CR research does not lie in proving that there are differences in research rhetorics, but in articulating a theoretical framework in order to explain the origins of such differences. This paper can be seen as a contribution to such enterprise. First, this paper reviews the theoretical assumptions on which the CR approach is based. Second, it addresses the theo- retical and methodological criticisms which have been leveled against this approach. The theoretical criticism comes from: a) the recent attempts to rethink the linguistic relativity hypothesis within more discourse perspectives (Gumperz & Levinson, 1996; Kramsch, 2004); b) current conceptualizations of culture (Sarangi, 1994: Holliday, 1999; Scollon & Scollon, 2001; At- kinson, 2004; Kramsch, 2004); c) the pluricentricity of English in lingua franca contexts (e.g., Swales, 1996; Kachru, 1997; Seidlhofer, 2001; Canagarajah, 2002), and d) the increasing recognition of the intertextual, interdisursive and dialogical nature of academic communication (Bakhtin, 1986; Bhatia, 1997; Scollon, 1997; Askehave & Swales, 2001). The meth- odological criticism concerns the need voiced by many CR researchers to establish appropriate tertia comparationis across genres and cultures (Moreno, 1998; Swales, 2004; Connor &
F. HELAL Moreno, 2005). The last part of the paper introduces the theo- retical framework and a case study in order to help illustrate this framework. Contrastive Rhetoric: Origins and Theoretical Assumptions CR is a field of inquiry which investigates the way written discourse is structured and used across languages and cultures within such diverse settings as education, academia and the professions (Kaplan, 1966; Taylor & Chen, 1991; Connor, 1996a; Enkvist, 1997). Originally proposed by Kaplan (1966) as a pedagogical solution to the rhetorical and organizational problems faced by non-native speaking students writing in English, CR has become an established field of inquiry in ap- plied linguistics and written discourse analysis (Flowerdew, 2001; Kaplan, 2001; Kaplan & Grabe, 2002). Numerous arti- cles on the subject have appeared in such journals as Text, Written Communication, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Journal of English for Specific Purposes, a special issue in Multilingua (Connor, 1996b) and recently another special issue in Journal of English for Academic Purposes (Connor, 2004a). Book-length treatment of the subject includes Connor’s (1996a) Contrastive rhetoric: Cross-cultural aspects of second Lan- guage writing and the volume edited by Anna Duszak (1997) entitled Culture and styles of academic discourse. Partially derived from the weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity, CR “assumes that languages differ not only in phonological, morphological, and grammati- cal features, but in the kinds of genres available to their speak- ers for the organization of discourse and in the rhetorical (and syntactic) features that co-occur with those genres” (Kaplan, 2001: p. viii). Thus, CR views language and writing as cultural phenomena which are significantly shaped by the culture in which the writer first learns how to write. Moreover, to the extent that writing is cultural, different cultures have developed different “situationally, generically, or stylistically composi- tional forms” (Scollon, 1997: p. 353) to respond to different contexts of writing, and that these forms vary from one lan- guage to another and from one culture to another. Furthermore, the stylistic compositional forms acquired in the writer’s native language and culture often transfer to writing in the second or foreign language. In CR, it is important to note that interference is often manifested at the level of the writer’s choice of content as well as his/her arrangement of that content to form particular genres of text. In an influential essay entitled “Cultural thought patterns in intercultural education” published in the Language Learning Journal, Kaplan (1966) claimed that speakers of different lan- guages write according to different rhetorical logics, and that these logics often transfer to writing in a second or foreign language: It is apparent but not obvious that, at least to a very large extent, the organization of a paragraph, written in any language by any individual who is not a native speaker of that language, will carry the dominant imprint of that in- dividual’s culturally-coded orientation to the phenome- nological world in which he lives and which is bound to interpret largely through the avenues available to him in his native language (Kaplan, 1972: p. 1). Kaplan’s original study included a comparison of 600 para- graphs in English written by students from five major language families: English, Semitic, Oriental, Romance, and Russian. On the basis of an analysis of these paragraphs, Kaplan was able to identify five types of rhetorical tendencies within these groups. He claimed that the expository paragraphs written by Anglo- American students approached a topic in a “linear” and “direct” fashion, whereas paragraphs written by students belonging to the Semitic language group (e.g., Arabic and Hebrew) used a complex series of parallel coordinate constructions. Paragraphs by students with an Oriental language background (e.g., Japa- nese, Korean, and Chinese) approached a topic indirectly, and came to the main point at the end. Paragraphs written by the Romance language group (e.g., French, Spanish) included ma- terial which was only tangentially related to the main topic and allowed for more “freedom to digress or to introduce extrane- ous material” than in English (Kaplan, 1966: p. 12). Following Kaplan’s pioneering study, wide-scale investiga- tions comparing writing in several languages with English have been carried out. These studies have generally corroborated Ka- plan’s findings and presented the traditional CR assumptions as universally valid (see, for example, Clyne, 1987 with respect to German and English and Duszak, 1994 with reference to Polish and English). Although these findings have instilled a healthy doze of relativism into the field of foreign/second language teaching and writing, they have led to various stereotypes and prejudices. Kramsch (2004) elaborates on this idea in the fol- lowing terms: It is easy to see why so many ESL (English as a second language) teachers of writing extrapolated from the nature of the students’ native language to the logic of their para- graphs, and, from there to the innate logic of their minds and the intrinsic nature of their characters. Even though this was of course not what Kaplan had intended, many believed that Americans were direct and straightforward, Chinese devious and roundabout, and the French illogical and untrustworthy, and that those qualities were the direct result of the language they spoke (Kramsch, 2004: p. 254). Although Kaplan (1987) and his followers did later denounce these extrapolations, he continued to link cultural differences to the structure of language itself arguing that rhetorical and sty- listic differences are culturally conditioned and vary widely from one language to another, and that the stylistic and organ- izational forms which have been acquired in the writer’s native language and culture often transfer to the writing in a second or foreign language. Having introduced the assumptions on which the CR ap- proach is based, I shall now move to address the major critical stands which have been raised against this approach. Contrastive Rhetoric and the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis CR has been criticized for adopting a strong form of linguis- tic relativity which has been challenged by more recent studies of language, thought and culture (Gumperz & Levinson, 1996; Kramsch, 2004). According to Kramsch (2004: p. 254), many CR studies still maintain Kaplan’s (1966, 1972) original posi- tion that “the acquisition of a second language really requires the simultaneous acquisition of a whole new universe and whole new way of looking at it” (Kaplan, 1972: p. 100). For Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 150
F. HELAL example, following Whorf (1956), Kaplan (1972) claims that cultural differences are inextricably linked to the structure of the language itself: “rhetorical and stylistic preferences are cul- turally conditioned and vary widely from language to language” (p. 103). But as Kramsch (2004: p. 254) maintains, the prefer- red styles and assumptions about genres of writing are trans- mitted through, and influenced by, schooling and the educa- tional systems of a particular culture. In turn, these styles and assumptions are not static, but they are themselves permeable and open to other cultural and subcultural influences (Daoud, 1991; Davis & Bistodeau, 1993; Moreno, 1998). Although the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been challenged especially in its strong form (i.e. language determines the mode of thinking), the weak version of the hypothesis (i.e. language influences thought) has been reexamined from a wider commu- nication and discourse perspectives. For example, Stubbs (1997) claimed that Whorf asked the right question, but he “ormulated it wrongly” (p. 365). He suggested that rather than talking about the influence of language on thought, it would be more reward- ing to talk about the influence of the use of certain language patterns on the receivers’ judgments. Following Halliday (1978), Stubbs argued that different communities have developed their own semiotic conventions in order to express their preferred ways of representing reality. For Stubbs, the focus of CR studies should be not on language structure per se, but on “language use in discourse; not on grammar, but on systematic selections from the grammar” (p. 365). He proposed that instead of focusing on the grammatical potential of a particular language, discourse analysts should investigate the “effects of systematic selections (by language users) from this potential in actual language use in important social contexts” (p. 364). Stubbs’s (1997) proposal is a useful corrective for CR studies to focus on the social action that par- ticular discourse forms serve in particular contexts and the ef- fect which such forms may have on their respective audiences. In their book Rethinking Linguistic Relativity, Gumperz and Levinson (1996) maintained that meaning went beyond lexical and grammatical patterning to comprise culture-specific activi- ties and interpretive practices, and “these are located in the social networks one is socialized in” (p. 11). For the issue of linguistic relativity, the recognition of the culturally diverse ways of assigning meaning to certain speech events in use has meant a shift: From an “inner circle” of links between grammar, catego- ries, and culture as internalized by the individual, [to] an “outer-circle” of communication and its relation, on the one hand, to interaction in social settings and on the other hand to individual patterns of cognition which are partly contextually attuned, and even perhaps acquired primarily through patterns of communication, in turn enabling it (Gumperz & Levinson, 1996: p. 10). For academic discourses, if the systematic selections of the grammar made by discourse communities determine meaning and interpretation made by disciplinary discourses, it follows that CR studies should focus on the characteristics of those communities, their preferred ways of writing and interpretation, and the functions that these cultural groups assign to systematic selections from the grammar. Culture in CR: Conceptual Problems It has become clear in recent years that CR seems to embrace a linguistic and cultural determinism that considers second/ foreign writers as prisoners/hostages of their own language and culture (Canagarajah, 2002). Many applied linguists have ques- tioned such a view for seeming to give little or no space to hu- man agency to transcend linguistic boundaries and cultural biases. According to Canagarajah (2002), “essentialist” defini- tions of culture—typical of CR studies—such as Connor’s (1996a: p. 101, but see Connor, 2004b) who defined culture as “a set of patterns and rules shared by a particular commu- nity”—tend to ignore the hybrid and heterogeneous nature of academic and educational cultures. For example, defining Ori- ental writing in terms of being reader-based and Anglo- American rhetoric as being writer-based (Hinds, 1987) ignores the diversity of styles within the two cultures and the changes undergone by them. In effect, it has been argued that “in this age of globalization, when (different scholars) shuttle between communities and enjoy multiple memberships, it is hard to pin down any person or community as characterized by an immuta- ble set of values” (Canagarajah, 2002: p. 35). In an attempt to overcome essentialist and reified definitions of culture, typical of CR studies, Atkinson (2004) argues that the concept of culture in current CR studies is ill-defined and confusing. Atkinson’s (2004) contribution to the field of CR is theoretical and conceptual. He maintains that so far CR has relied on an “underdeveloped,” “received,” “monolithic” and “deterministic” view of culture in order to explain differences in written texts. Building on mainstream thinking on cultural and postmodern studies, Atkinson proposes a view of culture as fluid, dynamic, and unpredictable. Following Adrian Holliday’s (1999) discussion of big vs. small cultures, Atkinson decon- structs the concept of culture into various subcultures to en- compass “small cultures” (e.g. professional-academic culture, classroom culture, student culture, etc.). These small cultures would interact in highly complex ways with national, ethnic and international cultures. The case remains to be made, how- ever, of how these small cultures may interact, intermingle and shape the finished written product in various genres. In other words, the conundrum of untangling the nature of this interac- tion in these written products remains to be solved. “Inner-Circle” Varieties of English as a Point of Departure It has been found that what is named as “inner-circle” varie- ties of English (British, American, Australian and Canadian varieties) do not constitute a single rhetorical tradition (Y. Kachru, 1995). Swales and Johns (reported in Swales, 1996) observe from their long-standing co-editing experience of the English for Specific Purposes Journal: An international journal that the existence of a single rhetorical tradition in what is called “the UK-US heartland” is highly questionable. Accord- ing to them: A British paper will begin with some interesting ideas, to be followed by some vague methodology and rather scrappy results. Its final section will just be a summary since the big ideas are all up-front anyway. On the other hand, a “typical American paper” will start off with an exhaustive review of the literature, followed by im- mensely painstaking methods and results sections. Only in the discussion, with the author’s credibility now estab- lished, will it come to full intellectual life. Textual dances of rather different kinds are being performed here. The Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 151
F. HELAL British dance steps are quick-quick-quick-repeat; the Ame- rican, slow-slow-slow-quick” (Swales, 1996: p. 26). As Swales was quick to point out, although these were sim- ply crude caricatures, the lesson to b e der ive d is tha t CR stu die s should avoid considering the Anglo-American rhetoric as “a point of departure” or constituting one single rhetorical tradi- tion (p. 27, original emphasis). Generic Intertextuality and Interdiscursivity Moreover, and drawing on the concept of “intertextuality,” particularly as conceptualized by Bakhtin (1981, 1986), Swales (2001) has argued that one genre does not constitute a culture, but rather a complex system of genre sets. He maintain that “the idea of independent genres, such as the free-standing research article (RA), is an over-simplification, perhaps a necessary one in the early stages of analysis, but difficult to sustain in the longer term” (Swales, 2001: p. 49). Although empirical at- tempts demonstrating the operation of other genre sets in indi- vidual genres are lagging far behind theoretical formulations, CR studies has yet to grapple with the problem of intertextual- ity and interdiscu rs ivity across genres. Drawing on a rhetorical and linguistic analysis of introduc- tions to academic books, Bhatia (1997) concluded that in the present-day competitive research environment, genres can no longer be seen to “maintain static values” (p. 181). Although the standard rhetorical moves in these introductions figured prominently (i.e. establishing the field and establishing a niche in that field), Bhatia found that the promotional input was far more pervasive and dominant than has hitherto been attested. This promotional intent has resulted in an extensive use of ad- jectives and adverbs. These strategies have brought these aca- demic introductions closer to the genre of advertising: As I see it, there is a clear indication of the fact that pub- lishers use a socially recognized communicative purpose (i.e. introducing the academic work) and genres which are considered appropriate for the fulfillment of this purpose, to communicate private intentions (i.e. to promote the book), which conventionally were not considered part of the book introduction. This phenomenon of mixing “pri- vate intentions” with “socially recognized communicative purposes” is not a characteristic of academic introductions alone; it is widely used in other professional genres too, resulting in a mixing of genres (Bhatia, 1997: p. 187). If this is the case; that is, if genre mixing has become the hallmark of contemporary academic research writing, then CR studies might find it useful, at least for analytical and peda- gogical purposes, to account for how different disciplinary and national cultures use certain linguistic and rhetorical features associated with prior generic forms to modify or enhance the genre under construction. There also remains the problem of oral influences on literate traditions in some cultures. Scollon (1997) addressed this prob- lem when he criticized CR for its unjustified focus on literate written genres and its neglect of “oral-to-literate influences:” Within the traditional contrastive rhetorical paradigm, as evidenced by many papers […] there seems to me to re- main an excess of focus on textual comparisons on the one hand, and on world literature cultures, on the other. In this highly intertextualized, interdiscursive world in which most of us work, I would argue that oral-to-literate influ- ences are as likely to be the major lines of influence as are cross-linguistic but same genre-influences (Scollon, 1997: p. 356). Scollon gave as an example his own study of Hong Kong Chinese students’ English writing where he found that the ma- jor sources influencing this writing were the popular culture media of music, videos, film and fashion. Although Scollon’s study was concerned with the writing of students, rather than expert writers, it is highly recommended that CR analysts should move beyond what Adrian Holliday (1996: p. 234) called “the narrow emicism of verbatim data” if they were to explain variations in written texts. Establishing Ap propria te Tertia Comparationis Comparing texts across languages and cultures is no easy matter. Methodological problems abound. As Claire Krmasch (2004: pp. 254-255) observes “an essay is not an essay is not an essay when written in different languages for different audi- ences with different purposes in mind.” Moreover, it has been found that the same names given to genres across national edu- cational systems are not methodologically reliable. For example, Mauranen (1994) has shown that same labels given to genres such as the Seminar and the Essay have distinctive functions and values in the Finnish and British educational systems: In the English (Kent) system, each unit known as a “course” is a cluster of very closely interlinked genres. A certain number of these make up a year, and three com- pleted years constitute a degree. The Finnish (Jyvaskela) system consists of smaller course units, each covering one or two discourse types only, but the units combine into larger wholes which constitute stages in the study system, and completing all the stage earns a degree (Mauranen, 1994: p. 6). In an attempt to address the problem of establishing a com- mon platform for CR studies, Connor and Moreno (2005) pro- posed a methodology based on the construct of “tertium com- parationis or common platform of comparison” (p. 154). This construct requires that CR studies should, first, compare texts or textual elements which can be compared. It consists of a three-level procedure: a) identifying texts for corpora; b) se- lecting textual concepts to be studied in the corpora; and c) identifying linguistic features that are to be used to realize these concepts (p. 154). Connor’s and Moreno’s (2005) article builds on an earlier study by Moreno (1998) of the expression of premise-conclu- sion signaling devices in a corpus of RAs written by Spanish and English academic writers. Examples of these devices com- prise such signals as connectives (e.g. therefore, as a conse- quence), and expressions such as the results indicate that (for a full taxonomy, see Moreno, 1998: pp. 561-562). In order to maximize the similarity constraints in her corpus, Moreno (1998) identified five tertia comparationis. These are: text form = expository writing; genre = RA; subject-matter/topic = busi- ness and economics; level of expertise = expert writers, and global superstructure: introductions-methods-discussion sec- tions of RAs, and other rhetorical patterns as Problem-Solution- Evaluation. Using qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis, Mo- Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 152
F. HELAL reno (1998) found striking similarities in the use and distribu- tion of the expression of premise-conclusion in the two writing corpora. These similarities were explained by the influence of English-speaking academia on Spanish business education, such as the frequent use of English language business materials in Spanish schools and universities. The only difference, how- ever, emerged at the interpersonal/interactional level of text (Halliday, 1978), especially in the expression of claims and counterclaims. Unlike their American peers, Spanish academics tend to express claims with conviction and confidence. This was shown by the frequent use of hedges in the American texts and the paucity of such devices in the Spanish texts. Although Moreno’s contribution (1998) is essentially methodological, her results suggest a great level of increasing homogenization across academic cultures as a result of the growing global in- fluence of the American academic culture. This influence re- mains to be shown, however, for the case of other distant lan- guages and cultures. Of particular interest here are questions of difference and accommodation in textual form and organization in lingua franca contexts as academic writers should learn how to address larger and highly competitive research communities. There also remains the question of resistance to the dominant culture and the rhetorical strategies that may be employed in order to negotiate and/or oppose the hegemony of such culture (Canagarajah, 2002, 2007). Intercultural Rhetoric: A Discourse Approach Building on Srikant Sarangi’s (1995) discussion of the con- cepts of culture and language in intercultural pragmatic re- search, Connor (2004b) suggests using the term intercultural rhetoric, instead of CR, in order to designate the “analysis of an actual encounter between two participants who represent dif- ferent linguistic and cultural backgrounds” (Sarangi 1995: p. 22). She suggests that this term help both avoid the “static” model associated with traditional CR studies and subsume “the current dynamic models of cross-cultural research” (Connor, 2004b: p. 272). Aware of the methodological problems inherent in current cultural comparisons of academic practice, Mauranen (2001) introduces the term “glocalization” (Robertson, 1995) in order to counteract such essentialist, simplified and stereotypical con- structions of writing traditions and cultures. She argues that “the universal, or the general, and the local are mutually defin- ing, and they receive their meanings and identities from each other. Local identities arise from intercultural encounters, brought about or accelerated by globalization” (Mauranen, 2001: p. 51). Mauranen’s (2001) idea, though so often assumed than actually realized, points to the need to depart from abstract comparisons of cultures and individuals and to focus, instead, on the co-constructive and dynamic aspects of communication and discourse in situated action and language use. A discourse approach to intercultural communication is ex- actly the one expounded by Scollon and Scollon (2001) in an article entitled “Discourse and intercultural communication.” In this article, Scollon and Scollon (2001) introduced the concept of interdiscourse communication in order to avoid the meth- odological demurrals associated with traditional intercultural communication cultural studies. Building on Gee’s (1999) Foucault’s-inspired (19 72) notion of Discourse (with a capital d) as constituting “ways of being in the world, or forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities” (p. 17), Scollon and Scollon (2001: p. 543) propose treating culture as “a minor discursive formation at best.” That is, culture as constituting “one of a very wide range of dis- courses at play in any particular instance of discourse” (p. 543). Scollon and Scollon (2001) take Gee’s (1999) concept of Discourses or discourse systems as providing a “conceptual framework” (p. 542) which helps to deconstruct “reified cul- tural or social identities on the one hand and of apriorist views of the person on the other” (p. 542). This perspective is outlined in the following terms: We take the position that in any instance of actual com- munication we are mutually positioned within an indefi- nite number of Discourses (in the Gee sense) or within what we have called discourse systems. These discourse systems would include those of gender, generation, pro- fession, corporate or institutional placement, regional, ethnic, and other possible identities. As each of these dis- course systems is manifested in a complex network of forms of discourse, face relationships, socialization pat- terns and ideologies, this multiple membership and iden- tity produces simultaneous internal (to the person) and external contradictions (Scollon & Scollon, 2001: p. 544). Thus, in this perspective, the discourse system of a certain professional culture would comprise such elements as forms and functions of discourse, socialization, enculturation and ac- culturation patterns, ideologies (beliefs, values and power rela- tions), and face systems (projection of self and ingroup and outgroup membership). In this sense, culture is seen as an emergent and “ongoing process of construction and negotia- tion” (Kramsch, 2002: p. 281) interacting with, and impinging on, these elements of discourse. Kramsch (2002: p. 281) singles out three principles on which this perspective on intercultural communicati o n i s base d : 1) “Intercultural communication is social action.” It is not a “representation of thought or values”. It is “an ecologi- cal phenomenon, based on a tacit habitus (Bourdieu, 1977), that positions the participants and socializes them into members of communities of practice while differenti- ating them from other non-members;” 2) Social action takes shape through communication; 3) Communicative practice is “embedded in history i.e. in contradictions and complications. It is characterized by interdiscursivity, intertextuality, and dialogicality” (p. 281). In a second step, Scollon and Scollon (2001: pp. 544-545) outlined the methodology which can be followed in the analysis of a typical intercultural communicative exchange. First, a dis- course approach would begin by assuming that individuals in communication in professional or institutional settings belong to different cultural groups and that their communication can be treated as a problem in communication. Second, quantitative or qualitative discourse studies can be established to analyze the typical linguistic and rhetorical patterns followed by these groups and the perceptions and values that these groups would assign to these patterns. Third, through a close analysis of this discourse patterns actually produced, the discourse analyst would identify the problems which may have led to a commu- nication breakdown. This breakdowns is to be found not in the assumed entities of linguistic and cultural membership, but in Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 153
F. HELAL patterns of language use, in the history of socialization of groups into different discourse communities, and a “misunder- standing of contextualization cues (Gumperz, 2001) in the ac- tual situation of communicating with each other” (p. 545). Overall, the analysis would impose the concept of cultural membership only when this variable is emergent and invoked by the participants themselves. Having summarized the principles on which this discourse approach to intercultural communication is based and outlined the methodology which it attempts to employ, I shall now move to provide some examples in order to illustrate this framework. The Case Study The first example comes from my own doctoral study of a major twentieth century scientific controversy in the early 1980s over AIDS research (Helal, 2009, Helal, forthcoming). The controversy was about claiming priority rights for the dis- covery of the AIDS virus between French scientists at the In- stitut Pasteur in Paris and American scientists at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland. The controversy was played out predominantly in leading Anglophone journals based in the UK and USA. In particular, I set out to investigate some of the features of the style used by both research teams and to tenta- tively suggest some of the reasons for the French research au- thors’ performance in the debate, which was considered poor from both the American and international perspectives. On the methodological level, the RAs published by the American and French scientists during one of the major 20th- century scientific disputes provided ideal equivalent contrasting parameters which have been deemed as one, but so far unat- tained, design features in contrastive discourse analysis studies. Besides their belonging to the same field, the RAs published by the French and American research teams during the so-called “AIDS virus hunt” seemed to satisfy Swales’s (2004 tertia comparationis of “status, likely audience reached, and level of rewriting and editorial gatekeeping” (p. 244). Using a combination of a rhetorical model adopted from Swales (1990) and a concordance software to analyze the RA introductions written by both research team, I found interesting similarities and differences, but since the differences were so striking, let me provide a quick synopsis. It was found that both research teams based their presentation on the introductory schema described in the CARS model. This was shown by the emergence of the three moves in both paper sets. Substantial differences emerged, however, at the level of the development and elaboration of the schema. While the French research au- thors followed a simple, relaxed and unelaborated pattern, their American counterparts opted for a recycled and elaborated pattern of presentation by consistently reviewing previous lit- erature and deducing research conclusions from it. These re- sults in the American papers being longer than the French ones. The qualitative analysis of the argumentation patterns fol- lowed by each research team indicated that while the French proceeded with an inductive pattern of presentation character- ized by the reticence and the reluctance of the French scientists to distinguish their virus from the American one and to impli- cate it as the causative agent of the disease, the American pro- ceeded with a deductive and bold style. This was shown by the use of such statements as “We are testing the possibility that ….” “That our virus is the cause of AIDS can be suggested by….” In short, if the American rhetoric was geared to justify- ing “why we are considering this possibility,” the French rheto- ric was directed to “here is what we found and here we attempt to describe how we had found it.” The rhetorical and argumen- tation patterns followed by each research team were further confirmed by analyzing the use of sentence connectors, per- sonal pronouns, hedges and boosters which emphasized the fact-based orientation of the French prose vs. the argument- based orientation of the American one during the AIDS con- troversy. However, by the end of the controversy, certain ac- commodating rhetorical acts on the French part were observed. This made the French papers look much more like the Ameri- can ones and much more engaged with scientific argumentation than in the onset of the controversy. Rather than attributing these differences, noted especially in French texts to the quintessentially Gallic character of the French intellectual style, or to linguistic interference of some kind as many contrastive rhetoricians would have believed (e.g. Galtung, 1988), I attempted to account for their characteristics in terms of the American and French scientists’ perception as to what constitutes appropriate academic conduct during the de- bate, the way they constructed their readership, and the socio- politics of knowledge production in French and American cul- tures. The explanation in terms of the construction of readership was supported by interview data with one of the leaders of the French scientists who indicates “it is not a question of lack of confidence or competence or ‘humility’ in making a case (as many had thought), we expected them (the readers) to put two and two together” (Francoise-Barre Sinoussi, interview data, cited in Reeves, 1998: p. 9-10). Differences in the sociopolitics of knowledge production were supported by the idea that that during the 1980s the para- digm of the “hard-sell competitive approach” characteristic of the American science seemed not to find its way to French science and so the French scientists were still subscribing to “an enlightenment ethic.” This is, as humble servants in the disci- pline working in the name of Science, it appeared that the French scientists saw no need to provide an elaborated and lengthy rhetorical defense of the topic. What was important was to get the facts right. This reading was further supported by the French research authors’ association of American rhetoric with politics and salesmanship: “We have learned more of politics than of science during all this. We never thought we would have to be good salesmen in order to be heard” (Montagnier, head of the French research team cited in Shilts, 1987: p. 496). Similar accounts in the scientific literature also attest to the conservative and rigid nature of French scientific institutions (Balter, 1998: pp. 312-314). Although the accommodations in French rhetorical style noted in the later papers posed something of a puzzle which could not immediately be solved, two explanatory factors were suggested. The first was attributed to developmental factors, and the second to the sociolinguistic factor. The first factor was that the French scientists who participated in the controversy were learning the style associated with the global scientific culture. The second factor was that sociolinguistic research suggested that the process of speech accommodation operates on the principle that individuals adjust their speech so as to induce others to “evaluate them more favorably by reducing dissimilarities between them” (Giles & Powesland, 1997: p. 233) regardless of all the risks they may undergo. Building on the Bakhtinian (1986) view of genre as being the property of discourse communities and their accumulated ex- Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 154
F. HELAL perience (Bakhtin, 1986), I suggested that the “AIDS War” could be interpreted as a “genre war,” that is, a clash between two generic conventions and ways of constructing and re- sponding to particular events. Moreover, since rhetoric is both a mode of conflict and a means of managing and building com- munities (Gross & Keith, 1997), it seemed to me that the con- troversy analyzed in the study was not between an appropriate, inappropriate or a reserved style or an audacious and powerful one, but between two genres and two discourse communities involved in what Kramsch and Throne (2002: p. 99) called “global communicative practice.” As this study and other similar ones have indicated (Freder- ickson & Swales, 1994) meaning and interpretation are essen- tially determined by discourse community characteristics and the writer’s orientation to, and construction of, that community rather than by such static concepts as language and culture. Clearly, if texts have different organizations, it is because they have different communicative purposes, and their readerships have different orientations and expectations. Such explanation is far from the traditional assumptions of CR. I believe that if the CR agenda is to move forward, it should attempt to set aside such a priori notions as the writer’s language and culture if it were to adequately continue “trying to understand the distant other in order to better understand ourselves” (Swales, 1996: p. 25) and to promote a fair, healthy and non-deficit model of intercultural communication. Conclusion The main argument of this paper has been that in a world where the notion of national cultures is being eroded by inter- national academic (and otherwise) transactions and alliances, the time seems apt to depart from such a priori, often static concepts as language, thought and culture. It proposes to focus, instead, on the co-constructive aspects of communications, and the meanings and identities arising in concrete and situated rhetorical action. Clearly, it has become increasingly estab- lished that the analysis of decontextualized and synchronic texts from abstract entities across-cultural and linguistic boundaries will lead to certain stereotypes and prejudices which are un- wanted both for research and pedagogical practice. The study has advanced a number of examples which could lend further proof to this growing trend in intercultural academic rhetoric. I believe that a discourse approach, in the sense advanced by Scollon and Scollon (2001), and exemplified in this paper can serve as a useful theoretical framework not only for appreciat- ing the differences found in intercultural academic rhetoric, but also for the teaching of academic writing whether in Anglo- phone or non-Anglophone writing contexts. 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