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J. TECHNICAL WRITING AND COMMUNICATION, Vol. 38(2) 133-148, 2008

TOWARD A CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE OF CULTURE:

CONTRAST OR COMPARE RHETORICS

JUNHUA WANG

University of Minnesota Duluth

ABSTRACT

Kaplan’s framework of contrastive rhetoric has been widely accepted in the

field of cross-cultural technical communication. However, in the last four

decades, contextual factors such as economic globalization trend and the

advances of communication technologies are changing our ways of inter-

acting with others. As a result our understanding of culture and cultural

differences need to be adjusted. In this research, I start by recommending

a workable definition of culture in the present context—culture as a process,

which establishes a foundation for cross-cultural rhetorical research in the

new era when communication across cultures transcends national boun-

daries. Based on the critical perspective of culture, I continue to point out

the limitations of contrastive rhetoric and argue that contrastive rhetoric’s

view of culture and its research purpose and methodology need to be modi-

fied to overcome its constraints and better meet the needs of the present

social context.

INTRODUCTION

Kaplan’s [1] seminal article, “Cultural thought patterns in intercultural education”

initiated the study of contrastive rhetoric. For about 40 years, contrastive rhetoric

has been widely used in ESL/EFL settings. As a scholarly discipline, contrastive

rhetoric undertakes to contrast rhetorics across linguistic and cultural boundaries

based on the notion that each language or culture has its own unique rhetorical

patterns. Since the 1960s, contrastive rhetoric has been continuously expanding to

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doi: 10.2190/TW.38.2.c

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include more genres to contrast besides the original ESL students’ academic

writing. It has been gaining the popularity of serving as a research framework

in fields other than ESL/EFL, such as cross-cultural technical communication.

Kaplan’s 1966 snail like “doodle” is still used today to explain some Asian

countries’ (e.g., China) indirect communication style. Some scholars claim that

contrastive rhetoric is “a must in cross-cultural inquiries” [2]. In the field of

technical communication, a lot of research based on contrastive rhetoric has been

done to emphasize the significance of cultural differences. The latest example is

Barnum and Li’s [3] article on cross-cultural comparison between Chinese and

American technical communication. The article was published in the May issue

of Technical Communication in 2006, which demonstrates the prevailing per-

spective embraced by scholars in the field.

However, in the last four decades, we have seen great changes happened to

various aspects of our life. Contextual factors such as the economic globalization

trend and convergent communication styles such as online communication and

homogeneous mass media are changing our ways of interacting with others [4].

As a result our understanding of culture and cultural differences need to be

adjusted. In this research, I start by recommending a workable definition of culture

in the present context culture as a process. Based on the critical perspective of

culture, I continue to point out the limitations of contrastive rhetoric and argue

that contrastive rhetoric’s view of culture and its research goals and methodology

need to be modified to overcome its constraints and better meet the needs of

social context. Context is a crucial concern for cross-cultural research. In this

research, I borrowed the concept of context from Barnett and Lee, who state that

context includes economic, political, and educational factors, as well as society’s

level of technology, and society’s infrastructure [5, p. 283].

TOWARD A WORKABLE DEFINITION

OF CULTURE

Atkinson posits that if we cannot understand the concept of culture, we

“could not very well compare or contrast rhetorics or genres across cultures and

languages” [6, p. 278]. William J. Starosta notes that cross-cultural communi-

cation is largely a study of rhetoric and culture [7, p. 150]. Thus it is essential to

clarify the term “culture” at the outset of this cross-cultural inquiry. Every social

group is thought to have a unique cultural pattern. The basic idea of culture can

be found in the Bible, Homer, and Chinese scholars’ works 2,000 years ago. Hall

concludes that “there is not one aspect of human life that is not touched and

altered by culture” [8, p. 16], which signifies that culture is everything and

everywhere. Because culture is so broad, there is not a single definition accepted

by all. In this research, I recommend a perspective of culture as a process for

cross-cultural technical communication studies, and the theoretical foundations

for this perspective are explained as following.

134 / WANG

Scientific Revolution Theory, Social Constructionism,

and Symbolic Interactionism

Culture as a research site and tool has been incorporated into different fields of

study and thus has assumed various definitions associated with each discipline.

The concept of culture was originally thought to be central to the field of

anthropology [9]. Currently, however, the concept of culture is not regarded one

exclusively belonging to the field of anthropology. More than 50 years ago,

Kroeber and Kluckhohn [10] presented 150 definitions of culture from a variety

of disciplines and attempted to forge a single, inclusive definition useful for the

field of anthropology. Fifty plus years later Baldwin et al. [9] include more than

300 definitions of culture since 1952 to provide the reader with a resource of

comprehensive definitions. Instead of attempting to achieve a full agreement on

the definition of culture, Baldwin et al. make efforts to show that “over time the

definition of such a central term would shift in meaning and be contested in

sharp debate” [9, p. x].

Thomas Kuhn [11] in The Structure of Scientific Revolution illustrates the

developmental process of scientific concepts, which supports the notion that the

concept of culture should be constantly adjusted to reflect the social context

of the society. According to Kuhn, every scientific concept experiences a war of

revolution. During the consensus period, a scientific concept and facts are in

agreement with each other. However, with the changing or developing of facts,

the scientific concept must be adjusted to be in closer agreement with the reality.

Kuhn calls the period of transformation a “paradigm shift.” While a scientific

concept alternates between periods of consensus and paradigm shifts, the whole

community of scientists needs not only to re-consider their paradigms and

tools, but also to give up the previous ones for the new emerging one. While

concepts of science always develop through time to address the changes, facts,

or realities, for the concept of culture, with its penetrating into various fields of

study in the globalization era, our way of understanding the concept needs to

be adjusted.

Kuhn’s idea of scientific revolution echoes the perspective of social construc-

tionism. Berger and Luckmann postulate that reality is socially constructed and

knowledge in human societies is constructed through the social context within

which it arises [12, p. 4]. While reality is seen as an ongoing, dynamic process,

it is derived from and continuously adjusted by social interactions. Based on the

theory of social constructionism, our knowledge about culture should reflect

the continuous changing of context in each society. Similarly, Anthony Giddens’

[13] structuration theory also proposes a view of human agents and social struc-

ture as a mutually interacting duality. As social structures enable or disable

human actions, human agents also produce, reproduce, or modify social structures

through their actions. Giddens thinks this structuration is an ongoing process

rather than a static property. The structuration theory supports the notion that

PERSPECTIVE OF CULTURE / 135

culture as a social structure is created by the social environment in a society; at

the same time the social context and practices turn back to restructure culture.

With the constraints of time, space, and physical environment removed in the

21st century, social interactions are much more increased. Thus a new sense of

meaning about culture may emerge, based on the symbolic interactionist’s notion

that social reality is constantly constructed through message exchange [14]. In

1934, George Herbert Mead formulated a theoretical framework called “symbolic

interactionism” [14, p. 22] to characterize human social interaction. According

to Mead, social interaction is not merely a forum in which people just interact

with each other while adhering to norms and values or conforming to cultural

definitions [14, p. 17]. For Mead, individuals interact with each other through

negotiating meanings of symbols such as languages or gestures. The essential

of social interaction on the symbolic level lies in the fact that “the participants

take each other’s roles” [14, p. 29] and take account of the actions of others. With

the increasing interactions among people from various cultures, the participants

are exposed to norms and values of other cultures, so that the meaning of culture

is constantly negotiated among participants. The above theories all work together

to show that our knowledge of culture should reflect and be strongly informed

by the social environment, which results in a view of culture as a constantly

changing concept.

Cultural Convergence Theory

In contrast with the fixed view of culture, theory of cultural convergence

focuses on the process in which culture is constantly reconstructed, which leads

to cultural convergence—cultures are becoming similar worldwide. Being critical

of the linear, one-way divergent models of communication which dominate the

past research, D. Lawrence Kincaid [15] introduces the cultural convergence

theory by developing a convergence model of communication.

According to Kincaid, “communication is a process (of convergence) in

which two or more individuals or groups share information in order to reach a

mutual understanding of each other and the world in which they live” [15, p. 31].

The communication model always begins with “and then . . .” to suggest that

something has occurred before we begin to observe the process. When participant

A shares information I1 with participant B, B interprets the information as

information I2 to share with A. A understands the new information as information

I3 and then shares it with B, who creates information I4 to share with A. The

cyclical process continues until A and B become satisfied and have come to

a mutual understanding of the information [15, p. 33]. Kincaid defines the

mutual understanding as the primary purpose of human communication. For

Kincaid, the communication is a dynamic process, and he uses the term “con-

vergence” to depict the movement in which communication participants move

toward one another.

136 / WANG

George Barnett and D. Lawrence Kincaid [16] use the convergence model to

address the effects of communication among different cultures on culture itself

and develop a mathematical model that predicts the cultural convergence when

members from different cultures are interacting. For Kincaid and Barnett, the

main purpose of cross-cultural communication is to identify changes in cultural

differences—“the degree and direction of cultural convergence and divergence—

that occur over time as a result of communication among different cultural

groups” [16, p. 173]. Based on the laws of thermodynamics they predict that

“all participants in a closed system will converge over time on the mean collec-

tive pattern of thought if communication is allowed to continue indefinitely”

[16, p. 175].

Cultural convergence theory indicates the ongoing nature of culture and sig-

nifies that it is inappropriate to give each culture a label. As Woolever states,

“although we are used to the traditional stereotypes (such as the Asian indirectness

and Western directness), these standardization characteristics apply to a lesser

and lesser degree as disparate communities become more and more connected

via technology” [17, p. 50]. In recent years, there are escalations in economical,

political, cultural, and global interconnections, which enable people across the

world to simultaneously interact with each other. When there are no constraints of

time and space, people around the world get to know, learn, and develop norms,

values, and ideologies consistent or tend to be consistent with other cultures.

Culture as a Process

Considering the debate on the various definitions of culture in different disci-

plines, Baldwin et al. suggest that the term “culture” is an empty vessel waiting

for people to fill it in with meaning [9, p. 4]. The vessel metaphor of culture

encourages us to engage the current trends of the present social reality and develop

a new critical perspective of culture. As Baldwin et al. maintain, the term culture

is not a useless vessel; on the contrary, the definition of culture is “a moving

target,” and those who choose to define it should ground their definitions in their

own academic background [9, p. 24]. For the field of cross-cultural technical

communication, we can base our understanding of culture on Gerry Philipsen’s

[18] social constructive perspective of culture. Philipsen defines culture as “a

socially constructed and historically transmitted pattern of symbols, meanings,

premises, and rules” [18, p. 7]. Starting from Philipsen’s definition of culture, a

critical perspective of culture—culture as a process, should be appropriate for

cross-cultural technical communication research against the background of the

present age when technology and globalization bring about new possibilities

and changes.

The roots of the word “culture” originated from Latin meaning “cultivation,”

which emphasized the process of developing or cultivating. Since culture is culti-

vated, it legitimates the position that culture is a learning process for a given

PERSPECTIVE OF CULTURE / 137

society and it always derives from one’s social environment. The process

definition of culture reflects the aforementioned view of social constructionism

or symbolic interactionism. In the field of cross-cultural technical communication,

the common accepted cultural approaches are Hofstede’s dimensions of culture

and Edward Hall’s high and low context communication models, which allow

little flexibility and dynamism [19]. Hofstede and Hall’s views of culture tend

to view culture as a product that can be labeled to show how one culture

differentiates from another, and can be passed from one generation to another

independent of the influences of the ongoing social changes [20-24]. While

Hofstede and Hall’s cultural models have successfully brought people’s attention

to cultural differences in the past decades, the divergent perspective creates

differences by emphasizing alienation without considering the social processes

which construct cultural differences.

On the contrary, the process perspective views culture not simply as a received

pattern of thoughts, actions, values, beliefs, or artifacts, but rather an ongoing

active process to create and reshape. As an open and dynamic system, culture

always takes on new meanings through a group’s constant constructing of social

reality in social interactions. This is especially true during the globalization

process—the stretching process in which “the intensification of worldwide social

relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are

shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa” [25, p. 64]. The

increase of cross-cultural communication has opened cultural boundaries, which

leads to the rapid diffusion of values, thoughts, technologies, and other kinds of

components of culture. In other words, globalization stretches the boundaries

of social interaction so that a webbed connection of social contexts of various

cultures is formed across the globe. The increased social interaction in the global-

ization process exposes culture to the influence of economic and political forces,

the importation of ideas, and the advances of communication technologies.

With the outside contextual influences, culture is always in the making and

subjects to change and development. As Baldwin et al. argues, “It [culture]

embodies the processes by which a group constructs and passes on its reality,

rather than the reality itself handed down to others” [25, p. 40].

The process perspective of culture captures the dynamic nature of culture, and

avoids a static, monolithic view of culture that tends to treat culture as a snapshot.

In other words, the static view of culture focuses on the differences of end

products, whereas the process view concerns with how culture gets there and

thus pays attention to the trends of cultural convergence as a result of social inter-

action. While the notion of culture as a process is useful in theory, it is difficult

to conceptualize or describe. However, the process definition of culture takes

researchers to new directions, guides the cross-cultural inquires to examine social

realties, and take considerations of contextual factors and their influences on

138 / WANG

culture. This critical perspective of culture as a process is especially useful for

cross-cultural communication. It provides a tool for cross-cultural communicators

to avoid the common stereotypes and simplified ways of labeling cultures and

thus better address the complex situations confronting them in the new era. If we

recognize that culture is a constant process of defining and redefining through

communication, we have a better chance to understand how contextual factors

construct, shape, and reshape cultural and communication practices in the present

era, and it also provides a theoretical base for us to reexamine the framework

of contrastive rhetoric.

ISSUES AROUND CONTRASTIVE RHETORIC

Contrastive rhetoric advocates have noticed contrastive rhetoric has been

receiving criticisms in recent years. Connor [26] attributes the criticism to “a

lack of understanding about the changes that have taken place in contrastive

rhetoric in the last decade.” So before we justify a critical perspective on con-

trastive rhetoric, it is necessary for us to review the development of contrastive

rhetoric in the last four decades.

Contrastive Rhetoric in the Last Four Decades

Kaplan’s 1966 framework of contrastive rhetoric prescribes a research disci-

pline originally only for identifying problems in ESL/EFL students’ academic

writing, based on the understanding that writers from various cultures bring

different rhetorical and linguistic patterns into their writings. Kaplan’s 1966

article supports that linguistic analysis is the main method for contrastive rhetoric

studies. In the following decades, contrastive rhetoric has been embraced by

scholars around the world. Following the framework of contrastive rhetoric, a

number of contrastive analyses have been conducted, including languages such

as Arabic, Chinese, Finnish, Polish, Korean, Japanese, Spanish, and Czech [27].

At the same time, contrastive rhetoric has been well accepted in many countries

around the world, for example, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

Since the 1960s, contrastive rhetoric has been used in many settings other than

the classroom. More and more genres have been analyzed in the business arena,

such as business reports, job application letters, and grant proposals [28]. Connor

[27] states that contrastive rhetoric researchers have also practiced new research

methods rather than focusing on Kaplan’s 1966 model of textual analysis. The new

methods include textual analysis of cohesion and coherence patterns, analysis of

the distribution of responsibility between reader and writer, and a more compre-

hensive model of text analysis integrating rhetorical analysis with linguistically-

oriented analysis.

PERSPECTIVE OF CULTURE / 139

Criticism of Contrastive Rhetoric

In recent years scholars have developed various arguments against the tradi-

tional approach of contrastive rhetoric. For instance, Hinds [29] and Kachru [30]

found that in Japanese and Hindi, respectively, both writings exemplify the

Western straightforward rhetorical structure and the indirect circular style

described by Kaplan. Atkinson [31] criticizes contrastive rhetoric’s “received

view” of culture, which holds that culture is based on national boundaries

and is unchanging and homogenous. James W. Chesebro holds that cultures

change, and factors such as “the behaviors of adjacent societies, access to

technological developments, and types of governing bureaucracies and decision-

making systems” may motivate cultural changes [32, p. 187]. Chesebro cate-

gorizes cultural changes with different stages, ranging from revolutionary

change (radical, abrupt) to relatively stable period [32]. Dodd further explains

Chesebro’s view and states that “each stage [of cultural changes] is marked

by forms of discourse or rhetoric, which are designed to fit the outcomes asso-

ciated with each stage” [33, p. 210]. In contrast with the understanding of

social factors’ impact on culture and discourse, contrastive rhetoric analyzes

specific discourse at a specific time and fails to understand the ever-changing

nature of culture and rhetoric.

In response to the criticisms, contrastive rhetoric advocates in recent years

have made great efforts to depict the significant changes which have happened

to contrastive rhetoric in the past decades. A typical example is Connor’s article

“New directions in contrastive rhetoric” [26]. But Connor’s comprehensive

review does not provide a detailed account on the various arguments against the

traditional approach to contrastive rhetoric. In the article, Connor writes:

Researchers in contrastive rhetoric have certainly not interpreted all

difference in L2 writing as stemming from first language or interference

from the national culture. Instead, they have explained such differences

in written communication as often stemming from multiple sources includ-

ing Ll, national culture, Ll educational background, disciplinary culture,

genre characteristics, and mismatched expectations between readers and

writers [26].

Since the distinctive characteristic of contrastive rhetoric is to use the notion

of culture to explain differences in writing practices, in the above quotation,

Connor is giving contrastive rhetoric a weak definition contrary to Kaplan’s by

saying that cultural differences in writing are no longer believed to be absolute.

Despite the controversy, we are pleased to find contrastive rhetoric scholars are

beginning to realize contrastive rhetoric’s drawbacks.

By reviewing contrastive rhetoric’s contrastive analysis between different

cultures and languages, what readers find most are acontextual cultural

140 / WANG

dichotomies, “as if only the differences explained human communication” [32,

p. 183]. For example, Kaplan depicts Asian communication style as a snail-like

“doodle” “turning and turning in a widening gyre,” contrary to English’s

straightforward arrow-like direct rhetorical pattern [1, p. 10]. Other polarized

cultural generalizations include: Finnish writers use connectors less frequently

than native English speakers [34]; Arabic argumentation is heavy on

“through-argumentation” (thesis presentation, substantiation, and conclusion) in

contrast with the Western argumentation characterized with identified

counterarguments and refutation [35]; and so on. With a cultural divergent

perspective, contrastive rhetoric researchers do not consider the dynamic nature of

culture and understand culture as a product rather than an evolutionary process.

Contrastive rhetoric’s static view of culture encourages contrastive rhetoric

researchers to conduct text-based discourse analysis rather than context-sensitive

analysis, which leads to contrastive rhetoric’s de-contextualized research method.

Based on his analysis of Asian students’ academic writings, Kaplan [1] claims

that Eastern cultures (e.g., Chinese culture) prefer indirect communication style

without studying the contextual factors which contribute to the direct or indirect

rhetorical mechanism. Contrary to this view, after analyzing 115 Chinese authored

business letters to recipients in a foreign-owned company in the 19th century, Linda

Beamer [22] demonstrates that the Chinese businesspersons in her study prefer a

direct rhetorical style. According to Beamer, contextual factors, such as power

differentials and the proximity of relationships between the correspondents, illustrate

the Chinese authors’ preference for directness/indirectness. Beamer may not realize

that a more significant contextual factor—the business persons’ frequent exposing to

the foreign culture, has changed the group of Chinese authors’ rhetorical styles,

considering the fact that Beamer has collected the letters written in a span of 60 years,

including the period when the Chinese Qing government (1644-1911 A.D.) was

carrying out the yangwu (Foreign Affairs) reforms (1860s to 1890s) after losing the

two Opium Wars. But of course, we cannot conclude that Chinese authors in the 19th

century prefer direct business writing style, for this small group of business persons

does not represent all the business persons at that time. If we generalize Chinese

writing’s preference for directness/indirectness based on Beamer’s study, we are

making the mistake by adopting contrastive rhetoric’s de-contextual research method

to understand culture as a product rather than a process.

A recent study based on the framework of contrastive rhetoric is Barnum

and Li’s article [3]. In the article, the authors discuss a Chinese writing example—

the introduction of a feasibility study, which represents what they call “typical

Chinese report.” Barnum and Li notice that document is presented indirectly

which is contrary to the Western direct organizational pattern. But they fail to

analyze the rhetorical situation in which the text is produced. In the article,

Barnum and Li do not specify the writer of the text, but they do mention that the

PERSPECTIVE OF CULTURE / 141

original text was addressed to the Yunnan Provincial government. So the report

must be used by the local Kuming municipal government to seek approval or

funding from the provincial government. In that case, a Western reader can

understand that it is quite reasonable and persuasive for the writer to emphasize

Chinese government’s policy on West China development (the 1st paragraph

of the text; Yunnan province located in southwest of China), and the Kuming

city’s strategic development plan in compliance with the government’s policy

(2nd paragraph) before stating the main idea at the end. Starting from the per-

spective of contrastive rhetoric, Barnum and Li minimize contextual factors

economic and political situations in which the text is produced, when examining

the text’s rhetorical patterns.

Given the impact of the World Wide Web, globalization, and economic

progression, traditional contrastive rhetoric’s assumptions based on the static

views of culture and its research focus on written text might be proved to be

more inappropriate, especially for the field of cross-cultural technical

communication. Contrastive rhetoric’s traditional textual analysis cannot

address the problems arising from the new communication practices such as

cross-cultural project teams and visual design including Website graphic

designing [17]. Today, we are connected through answering machines, fax,

the Internet, and Webcam, to people we have never met face-to-face.

Technology enables online businesses to have customers around the world.

Virtual workplaces make it possible for team members from several countries

to cooperate without communication barriers. Under the new situation, as

Woolever argues, traditional ways of generalizing cultural differences as

contrastive rhetoric does prior to the Internet, are not able to deal with the

present situation when “most locales have electronic access to cultural ‘levelers’

that have created in the younger generation around the world a similar set of

expectations and behaviors” [17, p. 50]. A critical contrastive rhetoric calls for

more attention to “variability, complexity, unpredictability, and hybridity of

rhetorical patterns within one language as well as similarities among languages or

cultures” [36-38].

Contrasting or Comparing Rhetorics?

Viewing culture as a process helps us understand that culture changes, tech-

nology and economy develop. As our view of culture transcends national boun-

daries, traditional limited contrastive rhetorical concept should adopt a new

critical approach. The research purpose for cross-cultural studies should be

adjusted to reflect culture’s dynamic and flexible nature. Traditional contrastive

rhetoric’s purpose is to investigate the rhetorical differences between languages

and cultures without considering culture’s ongoing nature. Instead of merely

142 / WANG

contrasting rhetoric, a cross-cultural rhetorical approach should also compare

rhetoric, which means that researchers should examine both similarities and

differences [e.g., 39-41]. George Kennedy [42] in his book Comparative Rhetoric:

A Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction, promotes a comparative study of

cross-cultural rhetorical traditions. He outlines that the comparative rhetorical

study should have at least four objectives:

• Use comparative methods to identify what is universal and what is distinctive

about any rhetoric in comparison to others.

• Formulate a general rhetorical theory which is applicable to all societies.

• Develop and test structures and terminology that can be used to describe

rhetorical practices cross-culturally.

• To apply what has been learned from the contemporary study to contemporary

cross-cultural communication [42].

Some of the purposes are quite ambitious, for example, the 2nd objective. But

we find the ultimate purpose of comparative rhetoric, according to Kennedy,

is to facilitate the contemporary cross-cultural communication by identifying

both similarities and differences of rhetorical practices around the world. The

objectives Kennedy defines for comparative rhetoric illuminate a bright future

for cross-cultural rhetorical research. The comparative studies of rhetoric in other

cultures [42-43] show that rhetoric is not limited in the Western hemisphere,

although the rhetorical systems in some cultures may not be developed into

the same discipline as that in the West. Cross-cultural rhetoric erodes diversity

[7, p. 235]. With the increasing interaction between cultures, there are more

reasons to examine Western rhetoric’s influence on the rhetorical systems in

other cultures, and compare rather than contrast rhetorics to facilitate com-

munication in the present age.

Genre-Based Contextual Analysis

To promote a critical contrastive rhetoric, traditional contrastive research

method should also be adjusted. From Connor’s review of contrastive rhetoric

[26], we find contrastive rhetoric’s method does develop in the past decades.

However, most of the analysis methods cannot fulfill the task of dealing

with culture and rhetoric. As aforementioned, traditional contrastive rhetoric’s

weakest theoretical foundation is its fixed view of culture. To understand

culture’s dynamic nature, the critical contrastive rhetoric demands a

research method which can efficiently address culture’s ever-changing nature.

That being said, the most qualified research method is genre based con-

textual analysis.

PERSPECTIVE OF CULTURE / 143

In recent years, people’s understanding of genre tends to be unified, which

shifts attention from formalistic study to a more contextual approach. By referring

to Bitzer’s definition of rhetorical situation, Miller defines genre “as typified

rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations” [44, p. 159]. Miller’s new defini-

tion of genre places texts into context and encourages researchers to investigate

the effects of social factors on texts. The social constructionist view of genre

eliminates the previous notion of genre as a classification system, and emphasizes

that knowledge of social contexts is essential for helping writers select rhetoric

that is most appropriate for a particular situation. Since genre is situated in social

context, social context changes may lead to changes and development of genre.

As societies and institutions develop, old genres will be pressed to change or

new genres will be created. As Miller indicates, genre is an open system; genres

change and evolve, with new members evolving, old ones decaying [44, p. 163].

While genres are produced, reproduced, and changed over time, social contextual

changes are reflected in the substance and form of genre. In other words, through

the changing of substance and form, genre is enacted and evolved continuously

to respond to the needs of the social context.

Since the recent genre re-conceptualization emphasizes context of situation and

context of genres, genre-based approach is appropriate for a critical contrastive

rhetoric to deal with the contextual and dynamic nature of culture. It helps to avoid

the cultural generalization commonly found in traditional contrastive rhetoric. As

Miller [45] maintains, genre and culture should be understood together. Bazerman

[46] uses the genre approach to show how the experimental research articles

have changed over 30 years. His research is a good example to illustrate how

“genre and the scientific form of life have evolved together within the changes

in Western culture at large” [45]. The context-sensitive genre approach better

reflects the contextual factors’ impact on culture and discourse when a com-

parative rhetorical study is conducted.

CONCLUSION

My purpose in this article is to call for scholars’ attention to the notion of culture

in the study of contrastive rhetoric, and attempt to suggest a re-examination of

contrastive rhetoric’s research purpose and methodology. The perspective of

culture as a process establishes a foundation for cross-cultural rhetorical research

in the new era when communication across cultures transcends national boun-

daries. On the other hand, rhetoric itself is a dynamic, developing process, which

is constantly adjusted to reflect the needs and changes of each society. While

the two elements of contrastive rhetoric—culture and rhetoric, are both subject

to the influence of social context and move along evolutionary paths, both

contrastive rhetoric’s notion of culture and its focus on finding cross-cultural

144 / WANG

rhetorical differences are not able to deal with the present social context in the

globalization age.

Economic globalization and the advances of communication technologies in

the new era have brought about increasing interactions across cultures. Under

the new situation, possible cultural convergence is leading to similar rhetorical

systems around the world which come into existence as a response to the new

situation. In other words, the present global context has greatly expanded the

scope of what we call the rhetoric of Western thought, and as Golden et al.

note, “the rhetorical systems developed in Graeco-Roman, European, and U.S.

contexts now are more widely available around the globe” [47, p. 30]. Thus

it may be time for cross-cultural communication researchers to relinquish the

usual way of finding cross-cultural differences by contrasting rhetorics, and

embrace the idea of facilitating the cross-cultural technical communication by

comparing—finding both similarities and differences.

REFERENCES

1. R. Kaplan, Cultural Thought Patterns in Intercultural Education, Language Learning,

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2. H. Lan, Contrastive Rhetoric: A Must in Cross-Cultural Inquiries, in ALT DIS:

Alternative Discourses and the Academy, C. Schroeder, H. Fox, and P. Bizell (eds.),

Heinemann, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, pp. 68-79, 2002.

3. C. M. Barnum and H. Li, Chinese and American Technical Communication:

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Differences, Technical Communication, 53:2,

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PERSPECTIVE OF CULTURE / 147

Another Article On Communication By This Author

Wang, Junhua, Offshoring and Serving the Needs of Indian Technical Communicators

with Online Technical Communication, Technical Communications, 53, pp. 427-438,

2006.

Direct reprint requests to:

Junhua Wang, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Business Communication

FMIS Department, Labovitz School of Business & Economics

University of Minnesota Duluth

412 Library Drive, SBE 151

Duluth, MN 55812

e-mail: [email protected]

148 / WANG