New Directions in Contrastive Rhetoric

Abstract

Contrastive rhetoric examines differences and similarities in writing across cultures. Although mainly concerned with student essay writing in its first 30 years, the area of study today contributes to knowledge about preferred patterns of writing in many English for specific purposes situations. This article discusses some of the new directions contrastive rhetoric has taken. Following a brief review of the goals, methods, and accomplishments of research in contrastive rhetoric during the past 30 years, the article examines how contrastive rhetoric has been pursued with varying aims and methods in a variety of EFL situations involving academic and professional writing. Recent criticisms of contrastive rhetoric and their effects on changing directions are then surveyed.

On Rhetorical Patterns in ESL Writing and Teachers’ Expectation for the Patterns

“…Second, some essays which have indirect paragraph development have also received good grades from the teachers. Third, the rhetorical patterns demonstrated in the 1 According to Wikipedia, "The Boy Who Cried Wolf", also known as "The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf", is a fable attributed to Aesop ("The Boy Who Cried Wolf"). 2 It is told in Wikipedia that Lei Feng (1940 -1962) was a soldier of the People's Liberation Army in the People's Republic of China.…”

Evolución y desarrollo del texto de especialidad

“…De igual modo, dentro de este panorama en continua expansión y cambio, debido a la globalización social e idiomática, ya tampoco son tan evidentes los contrastes en Retórica Contrastiva como lo eran tan solo hace unas décadas (Connor, 2001(Connor, , 2002. Es un hecho probado que los textos están influidos por los de otras comunidades lingüísticas (Véase Graddol, 1997Graddol, , 2006, y algunos estilos de escritura en español se aproximan a los patrones discursivos ingleses (Moreno, 1997;Albeola, 2002;Trujillo, 2002).…”

Reflections on the Development of Contrastive Domain of Second Language Education: An Overview

“…In fact, the initial wave of innovative research in developing a functional CA based on conceptual analysis was launched in the 1960s, predating the birth of Contrastive Rhetoric Movement (Kaplan, 1966). A quick glimpse at the claim of this movement indicates that the occurrence of negative transfer is largely due to rhetorical conceptual elements rather than to purely lexical or syntactic elements (Chesterman, 1998;Connor, 1996Connor, , 2002Danesi, 2003;Kaplan, 1978;Kroll, 1990;Leki, 1991).…”