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”
This article compares the rhetorical strategies employed by American and French scientists in the research article introductions published by both research teams during the so-called ‘AIDS War’ (1983–1987). The controversy concerned priority rights for the discovery of the AIDS virus. Using Swales’s (1990) CARS model as a comparative template, the results indicated that while the Americans proceeded with a deductive, bold and highly elaborated pattern of rhetorical presentation, the French opted for an inductive, more nuanced and unelaborated rhetoric which prioritized the communication of scientific content at the expense of the writers’ attitude and personal perspective. The observed variations can be accounted for on the basis of perceptions of what constitutes appropriate academic style during the debate, audience design, power relationships and the sociopolitics of knowledge production in American and French scientific cultures. The article concludes by exploring the implications of these results for the use of English in the resolution of global research problems across the intercultural continuum.
This study investigates the discursive construction of the idea of tunisianité in a sample of 41 articles published in the national press in the wake of the Arab Spring. Using analytical categories developed within the discourse-historical approach, the analysis indicates three general, strongly secularist, representations of tunisianité. One of these, which can be called essentialist, claims an unmistakable ethnolinguistic connection to a glorified pre-Arabo-Islamic classicism which goes back to the foundation of Carthage (814-146 BC). A second and a more dominant (avowedly consensual) one construes tunisianité in assimilationist terms, that is, Tunisia as a 'melting pot' lumping different Eastern and Western ethnolinguistic and cultural traditions. A third emerging, but a marginalized trend in the data, grounds tunisianité within the Enlightenment/Revolutionary ideals of Democracy, Dignity and Freedom and warns against its possible disintegration because of its vulnerability to the upheavals of terrorism, corporatism, populism and socioeconomic insecurity. While the third representation is laudable from the perspective of the Revolutionary demands, the dominant nationalist identity discourse remains backward-looking, reactionary and strongly preoccupied with a perceived political invasion by the Islamist-Arabist Other. It is argued that the dominant model of identity politics and the political economy associated with it are incompatible with Tunisians' aspirations for socioeconomic development and social justice.
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