Contrastive Rhetoric: Reaching to intercultural rhetoric (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Contrastive Rhetoric Pragmatics & Beyond New Series (P&BNS) Pragmatics & Beyond New Series is a continuation of Pragm...

Author: Ulla Connor | Ed Nagelhout | William V. Rozycki

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Contrastive Rhetoric

Pragmatics & Beyond New Series (P&BNS) Pragmatics & Beyond New Series is a continuation of Pragmatics & Beyond and its Companion Series. The New Series offers a selection of high quality work covering the full richness of Pragmatics as an interdisciplinary field, within language sciences.

Editor Andreas H. Jucker

University of Zurich, English Department Plattenstrasse 47, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected]

Associate Editors Jacob L. Mey

University of Southern Denmark

Herman Parret

Jef Verschueren

Susan C. Herring

Emanuel A. Schegloff

Belgian National Science Foundation, Universities of Louvain and Antwerp

Belgian National Science Foundation, University of Antwerp

Editorial Board Shoshana Blum-Kulka Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Jean Caron

Université de Poitiers

Indiana University

Masako K. Hiraga

St.Paul’s (Rikkyo) University

University of California at Los Angeles

Deborah Schiffrin

David Holdcroft

Georgetown University

Sachiko Ide

Kobe City University of Foreign Studies

Sandra A. Thompson

Thorstein Fretheim

Catherine KerbratOrecchioni

John C. Heritage

Claudia de Lemos

Teun A. van Dijk

Marina Sbisà

Richard J. Watts

Robyn Carston

University College London

Bruce Fraser

Boston University University of Trondheim University of California at Los Angeles

University of Leeds Japan Women’s University

University of Lyon 2 University of Campinas, Brazil University of Trieste

Paul Osamu Takahara

University of California at Santa Barbara Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona University of Berne

Volume 169 Contrastive Rhetoric. Reaching to intercultural rhetoric Edited by Ulla Connor, Ed Nagelhout and William V. Rozycki

Contrastive Rhetoric Reaching to intercultural rhetoric

Edited by

Ulla Connor Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

Ed Nagelhout University of Nevada, Las Vegas

William V. Rozycki Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Contrastive rhetoric : reaching to intercultural rhetoric / edited by Ulla Connor, Ed Nagelhout, William V. Rozycki. p. cm. (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, issn 0922-842X ; v. 169) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Rhetoric--Social aspects. 2. Intercultural communication. 3. English language--Study and teaching--Foreign speakers. I. Connor, Ulla, 1948- II. Nagelhout, Ed. III. Rozycki, William V. P301.5.S63C66 2008 808--dc22 isbn 978 90 272 5413 9 (Hb; alk. paper)

2007037061

© 2008 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa

Dedicated to Barbara E. and Karl R. Zimmer for their robust support of intercultural communication research

Table of contents

Introduction Ulla Connor, Ed Nagelhout, William Rozycki

1

Section I. Current state of contrastive rhetoric 1. From contrastive rhetoric to intercultural rhetoric: A search for collective identity Xiaoming Li 2. The importance of comparable corpora in cross-cultural studies Ana I. Moreno

11 25

Section II. Contrastive corpus studies in specific genres 3. Metadiscourse across three varieties of English: American, British, and advanced-learner English Annelie Ädel 4. A genre-based study of research grant proposals in China Haiying Feng 5. Different cultures – Different discourses? Rhetorical patterns of business letters by English and Russian speakers Maria Loukianenko Wolfe

45 63

87

6. Spanish-language newspaper editorials from Mexico, Spain, and the U.S. Chin-Sook Pak, Rebeca Acevedo

123

7. The rhetorical structure of academic book reviews of literature: An English-Spanish cross-linguistic approach Lorena Suárez, Ana I. Moreno

147

viii Table of contents

8. Newspaper commentaries on terrorism in China and Australia: A contrastive genre study Wei Wang

169

Section III. Contrastive rhetoric and the teaching of ESL/EFL writing 9. “Long sentences and floating commas”: Mexican students’ rhetorical practices and the sociocultural context Virginia LoCastro

195

10. English Web page use in an EFL setting: A contrastive rhetoric view of the development of information literacy Kara McBride

219

11. From Confucianism to Marxism: A century of theme treatment in Chinese writing instruction Xiaoye You

241

12. Plagiarism in an intercultural rhetoric context: What we can learn about one from the other Joel Bloch

257

Section IV. Future directions 13. A conversation on contrastive rhetoric: Dwight Atkinson and Paul Kei Matsuda talk about issues, conceptualizations, and the future of contrastive rhetoric Paul Kei Matsuda and Dwight Atkinson

277

14. Mapping multidimensional aspects of research: Reaching to intercultural rhetoric Ulla Connor

299

Notes on contributors Index

317 321

Introduction *Ulla

Connor, Ed Nagelhout, *William Rozycki

*Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis / University of Nevada,

Las Vegas

Contrastive rhetoric research began more than 40 years ago, started by the American applied linguist Robert Kaplan. Kaplan’s (1966) research pioneered the attention to cultural and linguistic differences in the writing of students of English as a Second Language (ESL). Kaplan assumed that rhetorical patterns of language are unique to each language and culture. These differences in rhetorical patterns, he maintained, may cause difficulties for second language writers. Kaplan offered convincing examples from the writing of his (nonnative-English-speaking) students to demonstrate these contrasting patterns. Since that time, the area of contrastive rhetoric studies has had a significant impact on the teaching of writing in both ESL and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes. This attention to writing was especially welcomed in the area of ESL instruction, as an emphasis on oral language skills had previously dominated ESL contexts in the United States. Looking at the impact of contrastive rhetoric in the area of EFL writing, Atkinson (2000) writes: The contrastive rhetoric hypothesis has held perhaps its greatest allure for those in nonnative-English-speaking contexts abroad, forced as they are to look EFL writing in the eye to try to understand why it at least sometimes looks “different” – often subtly out of sync with what one might expect from a “native” per(p. 319) spective.

Thus, contrastive rhetoric has both informed the teaching of writing in EFL contexts and impacted the teaching of writing in ESL contexts, in particular in the area of English for Academic Purposes in university settings. While it has had

Ulla Connor, Ed Nagelhout, William Rozycki

successful application for more than forty years, it has also, especially in recent years, been a contested area of study.

Critiques of contrastive rhetoric One of the first critics was the text linguist John Hinds (1983), who pointed out that instead of examining only second language writing of learners, we need to examine first language acquisition of these students. Hinds was critical of Kaplan’s ethnocentric view of representing English prose as a linear line. Additionally, Kaplan’s groupings of languages into “Oriental,” “Semitic,” and “Romance” drew criticism. More recently, several postmodern scholars have challenged contrastive rhetoric as essentializing writers and privileging English writing. In two 1997 issues of TESOL Quarterly, three articles (Scollon 1997; Spack 1997; Zamel 1997) criticized contrastive rhetoric for an alleged insensitivity to cultural differences. In other issues, Kubota (1999, 2001) has been critical of perceptions of a cultural dichotomy between East and West and the alleged resulting promotion of the superiority of Western writing. Canagarajah (2002) offered another critical perspective on contrastive rhetoric: Though CR is a rare research and pedagogical tradition indigenous to ESL with considerable value for teachers, it must develop more complex types of explanation for textual difference if the school is to enjoy continued usefulness. Though difference is always going to be there in writing, and though much of it may derive from culture, the ways in which this influence takes place can be positive or negative, enabling as well as limiting, and teachers have to be aware of all these possibilities when they teach student writing. More importantly, teachers must keep in mind that no one needs to be held hostage by language and culture; students can be taught to negotiate conflicting rhetorical structures to their advantage. (p. 68)

Most recently, Kubota and Lehner (2004) criticized contrastive rhetoric for discouraging active negotiation of multiple rhetorics in the writing classroom, and called for “critical contrastive rhetoric.”

Introduction

New directions in contrastive rhetoric research As pointed out (Connor 2005), it is unfortunate that these critics have begun referring to contrastive rhetoric as if it had been frozen in space. Understood by many as Kaplan’s original work (1966), contrastive rhetoric is often characterized as static and linked to contrastive analysis, a movement associated with structural linguistics and behavioralism. However, since 1966, when Kaplan’s original work on contrastive rhetoric appeared, and 1996, when Connor’s book on contrastive rhetoric was published, many new trends have appeared in research and methods. Kaplan himself has continued as a theorist for contrastive rhetoric (2000, 2005). Changes have been affected by two major developments. First, there has been an increase in the types of written texts that are considered the purview of second language writing around the world. ESL and EFL classes teach other types of writing besides the student essay required in college classes. Other important genres are the academic research article, research report, and grant proposal. Writing for professional purposes, such as business, is now considered a legitimate type of second language writing and worthy of research and teaching. Second, in addition to the expansion of the genre, the field has moved to emphasize the social situation of writing. Today, writing is increasingly regarded as socially situated; each situation may entail special consideration to audience, to purposes, and to level of perfection, and correspondingly may require varying amounts of revision, collaboration, and attention to detail. The expectations and norms of discourse communities or communities of practice (cultural and disciplinary), of course, may shape these situational expectations and practices. Social construction of meaning as dynamic, sociocognitive activities best describes this approach to texts. Instead of analyzing what texts mean, we want to understand how they construct meaning. Bazerman and Prior (2004: 6) pose three questions to guide the analysis of writing: “What does the text talk about? How do texts influence audiences? And how do texts come into being?” Thus, two major reasons – the acknowledgment of more genres with specific textual requirements and the social contexts of writing – have motivated scholars of contrastive rhetoric to adjust and supplement research approaches in their work. In a special issue on contrastive rhetoric in Journal of English for Academic Purposes (2004), Connor reviewed research methodologies used in the expanded definition of contrastive rhetoric. Textual linguistic analyses have a sharpened focus in the specific genre characteristics of the many kinds of writing studied and taught in today’s writing contexts. On the one hand, corpus-based studies rely on new, sophisticated corpus linguistics quantitative analyses. The rigor introduced by corpus linguistics into design, data collection, and analysis is a welcomed stan-


dard. On the other hand, ethnographic approaches have gained importance because of the increasing awareness of the social nature of writing. Already in 2002, Connor addressed recent criticism and offered new directions for a viable contrastive rhetoric. In addressing the critiques, Connor aimed to draw attention to the broad scope of contrastive rhetoric and determined that a new term would better encompass the essence of contrastive rhetoric in its current state. To distinguish between the often-quoted “static” model and the new advances that have been made, it may be useful to begin using the term intercultural rhetoric to refer to the current dynamic models of cross-cultural research. The field is currently dynamic and exploratory, extending to new genres, widening contextual research through historical and ethnographic inquiry, refining methodology, utilizing electronic corpora of texts, going beyond linguistic patterns to the study of other distinctive differences in writing, and exploring contrasts even beyond writing, such as the differences in Web use between speakers of different languages.

Approaches highlighted in this volume All of these new approaches – genre analysis, corpus analysis, qualitative historical and ethnographic approaches, and extension to areas beyond writing – are presented in the chapters in this volume. This book showcases a great number of empirical studies of contrastive and intercultural rhetoric involving many first languages and writing genres. The two other major goals of the volume are (1) to further develop the theoretical base of contrastive rhetoric and (2) to evaluate its applications for the writing classroom. The overriding goal of this volume is to take contrastive rhetoric to the future, to reach to intercultural rhetoric. The collection is divided into four sections. Section I – Current State of Contrastive Rhetoric – sets the tone for the entire collection. Xiaoming Li offers an ideal beginning for the collection by tracing recent attacks on contrastive rhetoric with a critical eye. In arguing for practical and pedagogical aspects of contrastive rhetoric, especially those exemplified primarily by its demonstrable linguistic nature, she believes a turn to cultural/critical studies is neither a viable alternative nor the most appropriate direction for this type of work. Instead, to counter ideological attacks, she wants to expand the notion of contrastive rhetoric. “Intercultural” rhetoric should focus on/build on applied linguistic research and discourse analysis that promotes “procedural” rhetoric as counterpoint to notions of dominant discourses. And for this collection, the first key point is Li’s call for a move from contrastive rhetoric to intercultural rhetoric. Ana Moreno completes Section I by offering a second key point for this collection: the need

Introduction

for continued valid and rigorous research in cross-cultural studies. She argues for the continued use of corpora and makes the case for texts as exemplars of situated genres. An intercultural rhetoric approach highlights the very situatedness of a given genre, and only rigorous studies can determine if genres are truly comparable across cultures. Likewise, an intercultural rhetoric approach should also statistically control for relevant contextual features (especially for those that are similar across cultures) in order to make reliable claims about the effect of culture on textual constructions. By establishing the movement from contrastive rhetoric to intercultural rhetoric and calling for continued rigorous research in cross-cultural studies, Section I establishes a powerful framework for the rest of the collection. Section II – Contrastive Corpus Studies in Specific Genres – builds on Section I by offering a range of issues and a range of genres that legitimately fall under the purview of intercultural rhetorical studies. Annelie Ädel’s examination of metadiscourse in argumentative writing leads this section. Her study uses three different corpora to analyze both quantitative and qualitative differences between learners and native speakers and between British and American speakers. Ädel determined four factors – genre comparability, cultural conventions, register awareness, and general learner strategies – and calls for future studies to clarify these factors as legitimate and to evaluate their relative impact in other cross-cultural situations. More importantly, she poses important questions for L2 teaching that arose from her work: What are good models? How do conventions in the English-speaking world differ? What are cross-cultural differences in conventions for metadiscourse? Haiying Feng performs a genre analysis of rhetorical moves from nine successful Chinese research grant proposals. The contextual factors include “face,” networking, research traditions, sociopolitical structure, and economic conditions, but she makes a strong case that differences should not be seen as simply cultural; instead, Feng argues an extremely important point: that these factors may be attributable to a local context specific to a particular genre. Culture is both a wide-ranging – yet specific – consideration. Maria Loukianenko Wolfe examines Russian and English business correspondence using a methodological framework based on elements from Hofstede’s theory of cultural dimensions: power, distance, uncertainty avoidance, and individualism/collectivism. While she tested only limited data, she also makes a strong case for local considerations and argues that students who understand cultural mechanisms may be able to analyze rhetorical choices in particular intercultural writing situations more effectively. Chin-Sook Pak and Rebeca Acevedo use five corpora to examine varieties of Spanish in newspaper editorials. They looked at a range of stylistic and rhetorical


features in comparing local newspapers like El Diario (in New York City) and La Opinión (in Los Angeles) with major newspapers such as the New York Times, El País (Madrid), and El Universal (Mexico City). They demonstrate regional differences in all five papers and call for future research to describe pluricentrality of cultures and how persuasion is constructed in specific contexts. Intercultural rhetoric is certainly more than contrasting dominant discourses. Lorena Suárez and Ana Moreno focus on the academic journal book review as written in Spanish and in English. While they only have a small sample (20 each), they offer a better definition, as well as a refinement, of the genre of the academic book review, especially in terms of rhetorical structure. They argue, in particular, for the influence of specific cultural preferences, such as evidence that Spanish authors use descriptive moves and more sympathetic evaluations. Suárez and Moreno call for a greater examination of writing cultures in order to explain possible sources for these types of differences. Wei Wang examines newspaper commentaries on terrorism in both China and Australia. His findings show clear differences in use of fact (Chinese) and opinion (Australian); generic participants (Chinese) and specific participants (Australian); and the use of “I” (Australian) and no authorial presence (Chinese). While he makes some broad cultural claims, the real strength of this work is his call for the use of a variety of analytical frameworks to offer different perspectives and produce a more thorough picture of particular rhetorical situations. Section III – Contrastive Rhetoric and the Teaching of ESL/EFL Writing – focuses on the pedagogical concerns traditionally associated with contrastive rhetoric. This section, however, expands the discussion in interesting ways by using a variety of methods. Virginia LoCastro begins the section with an ethnographic study of a Mexican student’s university writing in both L1 (Spanish) and L2 (English). While she does some traditional analysis of punctuation markers, the beauty of this study is the way LoCastro places the writing in the larger educational environment: classroom, textbook, teacher, university culture, etc. Her point is that education is not an acontextual activity, and so our research needs to account for the larger EFL context, especially when we study student writing. In a similar vein, Kara McBride examines EFL internet users in Chile. She also creates an understanding of the larger contextual nature of Internet research by students. Her use of both contrastive rhetoric and schema theory helps McBride argue effectively for teachers to describe the visual design of Web sites more completely and to develop more effective strategies for students to develop successful keyword searches. She concludes with a call for researchers to expand traditional notions of schemata building for reading and writing in order to apply it to the ways that experienced Internet users build schemata for conducting research online.

Introduction

Xiaoye You offers a historical examination of theme writing in Chinese education. The importance of themes is evident in the movement of topics over time from neo-Confucian to socialist issues. You found that theme carries weight in scoring that is equivalent to textual organization; more importantly, he found that successful academic writing meant that theme is necessarily aligned with the dominant ideology and, in fact, dictates the layout of the textual structure. His research shows the trajectory of theme over time and reveals a complexity and fluidity of rhetorical practices in China. He concludes with a call for more historical studies in order to contribute new knowledge in this area. Joel Bloch examines plagiarism from both cross-cultural and historical perspectives. He begins with the notion that instances of plagiarism, especially among Asian students, are the result of cultural differences engrained in rhetorical traditions deemed “other.” He shows this as an example of essentialistic thinking, then offers a more thorough examination of the issue in a historical context. In doing so, Bloch provides a model for rethinking the dichotomies prevalent in criticisms leveled at contrastive rhetoric. More specifically, he addresses pedagogical concerns of teachers of composition by offering “investigative” strategies that help students understand plagiarism more effectively. Finally, Section IV – Future Directions – describes both the limits and potential for intercultural rhetoric in the future. Dwight Atkinson and Paul Matsuda begin the final section of the collection with a self-edited “conversation” about possible futures for contrastive rhetoric. They call for open-ended conversations that will take contrastive rhetoric in positive directions in the future. They initiate their discussion by tracing the history of contrastive rhetoric through their own experiences, addressing both their intellectual and emotional responses to the controversies surrounding contrastive rhetoric over the years. They analyze Kaplan’s 1966 article from multiple angles: pedagogy, research, reception. They label many recent critiques as a “straw man.” While they do not believe that contrastive rhetoric is a “field” (nor are they content with a name change to “intercultural rhetoric”), they offer two primary directions for contrastive rhetoric in the future: all-inclusive or reintegration. In either case, Atkinson and Matsuda believe that contrastive rhetoric is stuck in a cycle of undermining and attack. They conclude with a toolkit of ideas for constructive critique, something needed if people are going to take contrastive rhetoric seriously and move forward. Ulla Connor concludes the collection with a history of contrastive rhetoric using postmodern mapping techniques. In it, she traces three strands of thinking about contrastive rhetoric: writing (texts and social practices surrounding it), small cultures (especially disciplinary thinking), and writing as intercultural encounter. Connor takes the all-inclusive route described by Atkinson and Matsuda and expands the contrastive rhetoric research agenda, beginning with a rethink-


ing of the term itself. She presents a critique of the term, contrastive rhetoric, and its current viability. She then offers “intercultural rhetoric” as an alternative and argues that this new term is more sensitive to context and considers influences of both the interpersonal and the intercultural.

References Atkinson, D. (2000). On Robert B. Kaplan’s response to Terry Santos et al.’s “On the future of second language writing.” Journal of Second Language Writing, 9(3), 317–320. Bazerman, C., & Prior, P. (Eds.). (2004). What writing does and how it does it: An introduction to analyzing texts and textual practices. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Canagarajah, A. S. (2002). Critical academic writing and multilingual students. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Connor, U. (2002). New directions in contrastive rhetoric. TESOL Quarterly, 36(4), 493–510. Connor, U. (2004). Intercultural rhetoric research: Beyond texts. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, (3)4, 291–304. Connor, U. (2005). Comment on “Toward critical contrastive rhetoric” by Ryuko Kubota and Al Lehner. Journal of Second Language Writing, 14(2), 132–136. Hinds, J. (1983). Contrastive rhetoric: Japanese and English. Text, 3, 183–195. Kaplan, R. B. (1966). Cultural thought patterns in intercultural education. Language Learning, 16(1), 1–20. Kaplan, R. B. (2000). Contrastive rhetoric and discourse analysis: Who writes what to whom? When? In what circumstances? In S. Sarangi & M. Coulthard (Eds.), Discourse and social life (pp. 82–101). Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Limited. Kaplan, R. B. (2005). Contrastive rhetoric. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning (pp. 375–392). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Kubota, R. (1999). Japanese culture constructed by discourses: Implications for applied linguistics research and English language teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 33, 9–35. Kubota, R. (2001). Discursive construction of the images of U.S. classrooms. TESOL Quarterly, 35, 9–38. Kubota, R., & Lehner, A. (2004). Toward critical contrastive rhetoric. Journal of Second Language Writing, 13, 7–27. Scollon, R. (1997). Contrastive rhetoric, contrastive poetics, or perhaps something else? TESOL Quarterly, 31, 352–363. Spack, R. (1997). The rhetorical construction of multilingual students. TESOL Quarterly, 31, 765–774. Zamel, V. (1997). Toward a model of transculturation. TESOL Quarterly, 31, 341–343.

section i

Current state of contrastive rhetoric

From contrastive rhetoric to intercultural rhetoric A search for collective identity Xiaoming Li Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus

Contrastive rhetoric (CR) has come under sharp criticism in recent years. This chapter first traces CR’s emphasis on textual differences in students’ writing to its historical link to formal linguistics, delineating the reach and limitations of such an approach. Then, examining the major criticisms leveled against CR, it suggests that the criticism reflects the changing theoretical winds in Western academia. CR, with its continuing focus on the demonstrable linguistic traits of writing rather than their ideological implications, is vulnerable to charges of political neutrality, if not naiveté. Finally, it posits that intercultural rhetoric, by including qualitative research with expanded notions of culture, will offer both insights to teaching writing to non-native speakers of English and alternatives to the dominant discourse.

Many of us share Suresh Canagarajah’s view of contrastive rhetoric as “a rare research and pedagogical tradition indigenous to ESL” (2002: 271) and cherish it as such. ESL writing instructors have benefited much from studies of contrastive rhetoric, which have enhanced their cultural sensitivity and offered them useful roadmaps to navigate ESL writing classes and ESL student papers, as many of them are bewildered and frustrated by inexplicable “jolts” in their students’ writing. The cultural focus of contrastive rhetoric also accounts for its popularity as a research approach among nonnative educators of English: although I doubt that this was its original intention, contrastive rhetoric has created an institutional space for us, nonnative educators of English, where our experience in the home culture is made relevant to the English-speaking audience here. Thus, our presumed liability becomes an asset. This is one place we can have as much and

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sometimes more authority than native speakers of English. It is a rare, comfortable place to hang out our shingles. Ulla Connor, the major banner bearer of contrastive rhetoric after Robert Kaplan, recently suggested changing the name of contrastive rhetoric to intercultural rhetoric. In the Introduction to the special issue of Journal of English for Academic Purposes on Contrastive Rhetoric in EAP, she writes: I propose the term intercultural rhetoric to refer to what might previously have been called contrastive rhetoric or cross-cultural studies of writing. The term, in my definition, encompasses cross-cultural studies (comparison of concept A in culture one and two) and... The term intercultural rhetoric better describes the broadening trends of writing across languages and cultures. It preserves the traditional approaches that use text analysis, genre analysis, and corpus analysis as well as introduces the ethnographic approaches that examine language in interactions. Furthermore, it connotes the analysis of texts that allows for dynamic definitions of culture and the inclusion of smaller cultures (e.g., disciplinary, classroom) in the analysis. (2004: 273)

A label or a name denotes and connotes, describes and prescribes, connects and delimits. It not only tells our colleagues who we are and what we do, but, more importantly, disposes what we tell ourselves we should do and will do. As an active practitioner of cross-cultural studies for the last ten years or so, I have been closely watching the debate and discussion that led to the name change and would like to offer my thoughts on the name that identifies us collectively as scholars and language educators. Before that, however, I want to make clear the particular position from which I come to this discussion. Ethnically, I am a Chinese American, yet even today, I still feel more Chinese than American, one reason being that while I speak and write in Chinese as effortlessly as I breathe, I still struggle with English articles and prepositions and still need a native speaker to proofread an article like this. In terms of disciplinary affiliation, I have two master’s degrees in Applied Linguistics, one from the East China Teachers’ University in Shanghai, the other from the University of New Hampshire. However, after I studied for four years under some of the best scholars in Composition and Rhetoric at the University of New Hampshire and received a Ph.D. in Composition Studies and Literature, I had converted to a compositionist with only a glancing interest in linguistics. That means I read every issue of College Composition and Communication, but TESOL Quarterly only selectively; I attend the annual Conference on College Composition and Communication regularly, but until recently rarely went to the TESOL Conference. Ironically, despite my self-identification with composition studies, contrastive rhetoric has pulled on me like a call from home. Ulla Connor was the

From contrastive rhetoric to intercultural rhetoric

first reader who enthusiastically recommended my book manuscript of “Good Writing” in Cross-Cultural Context (1996) before it was published and then received positive reviews from compositionists, and much of my research proceeds from the premise that culture is a powerful explanatory factor in ESL writing. Despite the kindred spirit I always felt towards contrastive rhetoric, linguistics represents my past rather than my present and my research method is basically qualitative and interpretative, so I had steered away from identifying my work as contrastive rhetoric and chosen instead to call it cross-cultural studies, terms Connor often uses interchangeably. To understand the significance and implications of the new label and its expanded reach, I will reflect on three terms that are often used to describe the field: culture, linguistics, and difference. I take these terms from the same article I mentioned at the beginning. In this article, Connor describes contrastive rhetoric as pioneered by Kaplan as a line of inquiry that attends to “cultural and linguistic differences [italics mine] in the writing of students of ESL” (2004: 271). The description, an apt one in my judgment, highlights the essential features that together draw up the objectives and methodology of contrastive rhetoric as we know it, that distinguish it from various other approaches aimed at ESL writing. I will first examine “culture” and “difference,” and then the epithet “linguistic” as used in contrastive rhetoric, and lastly, offer my take on how contrastive rhetoric, under the new name of “intercultural rhetoric,” can best position itself in relation to composition studies, a closely related field of study. The purpose is not to offer an alternative name – there are already quite a few out there – but to understand this unique and indigenous tradition in order to preserve it as it adapts to the changing reality. Much criticism of contrastive rhetoric over the past ten years has concentrated on the implied meaning of culture in research that has been conducted under the rubric of contrastive rhetoric. The accentuation of culture as a cognitive category to explain ESL writing is a defining characteristic of contrastive rhetoric. Although cultural anthropologists had taken culture as the object of study long before there was contrastive rhetoric, Kaplan was a trailblazer as an applied linguist in the United States who saw that “cultural differences in the nature of rhetoric supply the key to understanding the difference in international students’ writing” (Connor 1996: 11). The cultural focus makes eminent sense, considering that ESL classrooms are populated by students from non-English speaking backgrounds, whose literacy practices, writing patterns, and expectations of the instructors, as well as their world views, have all been informed and shaped by cultures that are often different from writers born and raised in America. However, despite its wide acceptance, as Dwight Atkinson (1999: 629) notes, culture as a concept received little scrutiny until a tidal wave of new theories that

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had been mainstreamed in other areas of humanities began to lap at our shore. These new theories – among them, social constructionism, culture studies, postcolonial studies, postmodernism, and feminism – characteristically foreground the nexus between text and context, language and power, take issue with the representation of the “other,” and interrogate such established categories as race, gender, and class. They view the postmodern world, in Lester Faigley’s words, as one of fragmentation, multiplicity, fluidity, plurality, and intensity (1992: 15). As early as 1986, leading cultural anthropologists James Clifford and George Marcus posited that culture, under the spotlight of new theories, became a “newly problematic object of description and critiques” (p. 3). In the late 1990s, some concerned ESL educators, such as Ruth Spack (1997), Vivian Zamel (1997), and Ryuko Kubota (1999), started to challenge the received notion of culture as denoting homogenous and static conceptual and geographical entities. They accused studies of contrastive rhetoric of essentializing and stereotyping ESL students. It should be noted, however, that although Spack, Zamel, and Kubota are often cited together as major critics of contrastive rhetoric, they have very different theoretical orientations. Spack and Zamel, despite their heavy use of postmodern languages, in their argument often fall back on the romantic notion of the individual as, in Geertz’ words, “a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational cognitive universe” (1983: 59). Kubota, on the other hand, premises her argument on post-colonial theories and cultural critic Michel Foucault’s discursive theory, both of which see reality as inscribed by power relationship. Regardless of the particular perspective each critic brings to the debate and the validity of their argument, the scrutiny of the notion of culture as used in contrastive rhetoric provoked much needed reflection on and examination of one of its cornerstones (Atkinson 1999; Connor 2002). A concomitant of their critique of culture is what the critics see as the “cultural dichotomy” (Kubota 1999: 11) promoted by contrastive rhetoric because of its traditional emphasis on cultural difference. In her recent article, co-authored with Ling Shi in the Journal of Asian-Pacific Communication, Kubota characterizes much past research as “perpetuat[ing] the assumption that rhetorical conventions in East Asian languages are entirely different from those in standard written English” (2005: 98). Although Kubota and Shi had difficulty deciding whether opinion writing in Chinese and Japanese textbooks could be categorized as argument as the term is used in classic western rhetoric, they concluded that writing instruction in English and in Chinese or Japanese is more similar than different (p. 123). To shift the traditional focus of contrastive rhetoric from differences, Zamel proposes to replace contrastive rhetoric with transculturation to celebrate “the selective, generative, and inventive nature of linguistic and cultural adaptation” of


individual ESL writers (1997: 350), whereas Kubota suggests critical multiculturalism to foreground the “power struggle within the culture and between cultures” (1999: 11). Both aim to de-emphasize cultural difference to accommodate what they perceive as an increasingly homogenized world as a result of globalization. Are cultural differences, as one critic claims, mere “fictions people entertain about themselves and about other people” (Zamel, p. 350)? Are national and ethnic differences still real and important enough to warrant the continued use of culture as a cognitive and analytical lens? I can only answer that question from my personal and scholarly experience. As a frequent visitor to China, it is hard for me not to notice the changes. In the few decades since the death of the “great helmsman,” China has leaped through greater changes than it had for centuries before. Shanghai was hardly recognizable each time I returned to visit, but in my study (2002), “Chinese High School and University Writing in a Time of Change,” I found that Chinese writing classes remain distinctly different from those in America. Based on that study I offered the following response to the claim that given the fluidity of the postmodern world, culture as indicating a bounded notion is no longer a useful category (2005: 128): [E]ven a culture as receptive to changes as China’s has not lost its distinctive cultural identity, not at this point in history. Writing a morality thesis is still the order of the day, and to be able to write arguments without an argumentative edge is still what gets a high school student into the door of a Chinese university. Yes, China is changing and changing rapidly, but fluidity is a valid concept only in relation to stability, just as permeability is a phenomenon that exists only when there are still borders. To elevate one dimension of reality to erase another is “neither necessary nor accurate” (Hatlen, p. 73).

My study was conducted in 2000, and things have continued to change miraculously in all aspects of Chinese life since then. However, some aspects of Chinese life seem to change at a glacier pace. Most of the essay topics for the university entrance exam held in June, 2005 are still moral propositions. In Shanghai, one of my research sites in 2000, the essay topic is “On Setbacks and Pain” and in Zhejiang province, “Moral Cultivation Amidst Economic Development.” In Nanjing, however, the other of my research sites in 2000, the essay topic is “The Phoenix’s Head, Pig’s Stomach, and Leopard’s Tail” (metaphors for the structure of a successful essay, which should have a luring introduction, full body, and a powerful conclusion). Although the topic is uniquely non-moral, the metaphors have long . The essay topics, publicized in local and national newspapers immediately after the exam, were obtained through personal communications with acquaintances in those areas.

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been established and taught in schools, and the writers were obviously invited to understand and carry on that literary tradition, not to challenge or question it. If we apply Chaim Perelman’s definition of argument that “All arguments aim somehow at modifying an existing state of affairs” (1994: 154) and, therefore, that they should not be adapted to use to communicate established judgments or revolutionary dogmas (McKeon 1994: 144), argument is not likely to be taught in Chinese writing classes as long as diverse views are viewed in China as a threat to social and political stability. According to one report, the Chinese government has stationed more than 50,000 Internet “cops” to enforce censorship on the information highway. It was no accident that classical rhetoric, the study of effective argument, was born in an ancient democracy, not in a dynasty. The world is not as free-flowing as postmodernists would like us to believe. Some old barriers may have been removed, but many remain in place, and new ones are being erected to stop the flow. It is true that the received notion of culture is too simplistic and static to reflect the emerging reality of an interconnected, globalizing, postmodern world. However, the interconnected world does not necessarily create a homogeneous world culture. The same adaptation process (described by Zamel) that individual ESL students experience in the writing class, is applicable to nations and ethnic groups as they come into contact with each other. Each culture will select, invent, revise, and create its identity in response to a new reality by incorporating its unique tradition instead of erasing it. Although it is not certain when and whether the grand vision of democracy is to be realized in the Middle East, it is certain that when it does – and I, for one, certainly hope it does – it will demonstrate the distinct Islamic tradition of that area and will not be a copy of democracy as conceived and practiced in the West. A globalized world, if we ever come to it, is not going to be a piece of flattened cardboard. I agree with the criticism (and suspect many in the field do, too) that some past studies in contrastive rhetoric, because of the stress on differences as implied by the label, tended to apply polarized characterizations to cultural difference. In all fairness, Connor has repeatedly made clear that contrastive rhetoric examines both the similarities and differences between the target culture and the students’ home culture, but most of the actual research by Connor and others concentrates on the differences. I assume this is more for pedagogical reasons than for any philosophical reasons, and I think the rhetorical tradition of academic discourse that is based on a dualistic model is also partly responsible. However, it is equally dichotomous to correct that bias by shifting to similarity. At the risk of sounding hopelessly ancient, I suggest the yin/yang scheme as a better model for cultural comparison. In that scheme, although yin and yang are distinctly different and oppositional to each other, they are not separated by


a razor sharp line; they are intertwined, curving into each other’s sphere. Yin is found deep in the greatest citadel of yang, and yang in yin’s. When tipped, yin can be transmuted into yang, and yang into yin. It is a model of fluidity based on the acknowledgement of difference. David Hall and Roger Ames, two comparative philosophers who have engaged in scholarship on Confucianism, describe the differences between Chinese and Western not as mutually exclusive, but as “differences in emphasis that exist between the rich and diverse fabric of Confucian and Anglo-European cultures.” They believe that “it is precisely this recognition of significant differences that provides an opportunity for mutual enrichment by suggesting alternative responses to problems that resist satisfactory resolution within a single culture” (1987: 5). Lao Tzu would certainly agree with them: cultures do not stay in separated domains, and they change, although in the account of two American philosophers, the change happens from our active understanding and thoughtful adoption of the alternative, rather than an inevitable tipping to the opposite that results from excesses, regardless of human intention. More importantly, if we accept culture as a relevant and useful concept in understanding ESL writing, we need to consider two issues. First, how do we determine when culture comes into play in a student’s writing process or product? Second, what particular cultural-specific template is the student writer consciously or unconsciously proceeding from? There is nothing wrong in adopting one particular approach, as some in cultural studies consistently adopt a feminist, Marxist, or postcolonial perspective and some in literary studies are known as experts in formalism, structuralism, or semiotics. But it is important to keep in mind the limitations of one particular approach and understand that though reading student papers through a single lens affords us certain insights, it also renders others invisible. The partiality does not invalidate any one approach, for all perspectives are partial, but the pretense that one approach explains all, be it cultural or political, is both false and harmful. In my view, many of the flaws in our research stem less from the misconceived notion of culture, a notion that is both pervasive and elusive and probably all too broad as an analytical category, than from the misguided view of culture as an omniscient explanation and the assumption that there is one cultural proto-

. Hall and Ames (1987) claim that their comparative method shares commonalities with both the intercultural and transcultural perspectives. “With the intercultural method we remain sensitive to those contrasting cultural emphases that establish real alternative approaches to significant theoretical and practical concerns. With the transcultural approach we share the search for a single hermeneutical community serving as the context of viable philosophic dialogue” (p. 5).

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type that students from the same cultural background would all pay homage to. Probably just as important, the traditional method of textual analysis employed by most studies in contrastive rhetoric does not yield reliable understanding of the context, which, in this case, is the culture. In contrastive rhetoric the culture that presumably influences students’ writing is often inferred backwards from the text – as Kaplan did in his early work. Such a backward inference can yield useful insight, yet because of the lack of reliable method, the link between the text and the context is often determined arbitrarily, no better than guesswork. Studies of Chinese students’ writing, for example, often attribute the peculiarities in their writing to the influence of the eight-legged essay, not knowing (or in some cases despite knowing) that the eight-legged essay, the standard template for essays in the Imperial Civil Service Examination for centuries, was officially abolished at the turn of the last century and was an object of ridicule in Mao’s polemic, “Against Eight-Legged Partisan Essays.” How much the eight-legged essay still influences Chinese students’ writing is an open question to be determined by methods conducive to the study of context, but more often than not, it is taken for granted as the writing template that all Chinese writers, as well as Japanese and Korean writers, would follow. Recent studies such as David Cahill’s (2003) “The Myth of the ‘Turn’ in Contrastive Rhetoric” debunk such myth (see also Xiaoye You’s chapter in this volume). Kaplan later recognized and acknowledged the difficulty in locating the cultural factor in writing because “no paradigm yet exists that could incorporate such information,” and suggested “subdivid[ing] the cultural factors into two interlocking systems – one deriving from the total ambient environment, from the community of speakers of which the writer is a member, and the other deriving from the cultural conventions that surround the act of writing” (1988: 285). Connor suggests that we expand the traditional methods of linguistics to include ethnography, the traditional tool of research anthropologists use to study culture as it is lived. What still needs to be supplied is the methodological link between text and context in intercultural rhetoric when the focus of our study is the native habitat from which the texts have already been removed. Now to the term “linguistic” in Connor’s description. I am probably taking this epithet more literally than Connor meant it. Connor, I assume, uses the word “linguistic” as the adjective form for the word “language,” while I see it as a stand-in for linguistics as a discipline with all its related disciplinary traditions and practices. It seems to me that unlike the cultural and contrastive perspectives, . Probably for that reason, Atkinson (2004) suggests the study of “small cultures” (e.g., classroom culture, youth culture, company culture, and disciplinary culture), while Sarangi, taking an entirely different tack, suggests that culture is not a viable cognitive category.


which are adopted traits of contrastive rhetoric, applied linguistics is biological. It is true, as Connor claims, contrastive rhetoric is multidisciplinary as it draws on a variety of theories and research methods. But that does not alter its linguistic lineage. Kaplan was quite explicit about that, describing his brainchild as “a kind of text analysis that has floated on the periphery of more formal linguistic studies” (1988: 275). In my view, contrastive rhetoric is linguistic in at least three ways. First, it was founded by an applied linguist and subsequently practiced mostly by applied linguists. Second, its methodology and object are typically formal textual linguistics. It analyzes the identifiable linguistic structures of texts, concentrating on those above the sentence level, and, derivative of a discipline that allies itself with the social sciences rather than the humanities, its method is typically quantitative. Third, true to the disciplinary tradition of applied linguistics, the goal of contrastive rhetoric is practical rather than theoretical. It attempts to address the immediate concerns in the ESL writing class; thus the texts for study are those written by ESL students, and only recently those by native speakers of English learning other languages. These features become prominent if we compare them to another line of inquiry, comparative rhetoric, as represented by George Kennedy (1998). Comparative rhetoric, associated with humanities, is practiced by rhetoricians or linguists who are steeped in classical rhetoric. Although it also uses the textual approach of contrastive rhetoric, it is historical, interpretive, and not directly pedagogical. The texts chosen for study are literary or philosophical classics rather than student papers. Their different disciplinary lineages probably explain why the two neighbors remain strangers to each other and have rarely referred to one another’s work. The linguistic lineage probably accounts for the “uneasy” relationship between contrastive rhetoric and composition studies. In her article, “Resources for Discourse Analysis in Composition Studies,” Ellen Barton reviews the downward trajectory that characterizes the relationship between linguistics and composition studies, which started on a promising note in the 1950s and 1960s, when linguistics appeared to have much to offer to composition studies both theoretically and methodologically. Barton explains, Theoretically, the focus in the linguistics of the 1950s on descriptive rather than prescriptive grammar and the focus in the linguistics of the 1960s on competence rather than performance held out the possibility of a richer conceptualization of language that was not narrowly focused on school grammar and writing er-

. Luming Mao’s essay “Reflective Encounters: Illustrating Comparative Rhetoric” (2003) offers a brief history of comparative rhetoric.

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rors. Methodologically, the scientific nature of the field of linguistics beckoned towards rigorous empirical research and the promise of generalizable knowledge in composition. (2002: 579)

It was more than a coincidence that Kaplan published his seminal article, “Cultural Thought Patterns in Intercultural Education,” in 1966. He must have been acute enough to sense the exciting prospect promised by the alliance between the two disciplines, both interested in student texts. The Writing Teacher’s Sourcebook (3rd. ed.), edited by Gary Tate and Edward Corbett (1994), two leading compositionists, was a standard textbook for most composition programs in the 1980s. It has a substantial selection of linguistic works, featuring Ross Winterowd’s “The Grammar of Coherence,” Frances Christensen’s “A Generative Rhetoric of the Sentence,” and Charles Cooper’s “An Outline for Writing Sentence-Combining Problems.” Unfortunately, composition studies has since moved in a different direction. When The Writing Teacher’s Sourcebook was revised and reprinted in 1994, all those articles were nowhere to be seen. Barton describes further how the two disciplines gradually drifted apart: To the field of composition studies in the later 1970s and 80s, however, neither linguistic theory nor its methodological approach seemed relevant any longer: a view of language that foregrounded structure (whether descriptive or cognitive) seemed inadequate for a growing conceptualization of language as the material of identity and social practice, and a view of research that promoted empirical investigation seemed problematic to a field that had enthusiastically taken a theoretical turn. By the 1990s, notes Lester Faigley in Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity and the Subject of Composition, “linguistics is no longer a major contributor of ideas”. (1992: 80)

Barton’s account leaves out sociolinguistics, which has been more responsive to the new theories. That divergence between composition studies and linguistics only widened in the 1990s as composition studies took its cues from culture studies. In his article in College Composition and Communication, Richard Fulkerson observes, “Judging from the published scholarship of the last thirteen years, cultural studies has been the major movement in composition studies” (2005: 659). Fulkerson uses critical/cultural studies as an umbrella term for approaches that bear such names as critical pedagogy, feminist composition, and postcolonialism, whose common goal is “not improved writing, but liberation from dominant discourse” (pp. 660–661). For those who read College Composition and Communication and attend the Conference on College Composition and Communication, as I do, the dramatic “social turn” John Trimbur first described for composition studies in 1994 was most striking. Viewed against this backdrop, critics of contrastive rhetoric, who are closely affiliated with composition studies, appear sus-


piciously derivative, their arguments echoing much of the discussion that took place in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s in composition studies. However, the participial qualifier in Fulkerson’s claim is important, “judging from the published scholarship of the last thirteen years.” There is ample evidence that composition studies is much more diverse from a worm’s eye view, which the published scholarship failed to represent. Surveying the terrain of composition around the turn of the twenty-first century, Fulkerson identifies three major approaches: critical/cultural studies, expressivism, and procedural rhetoric. He further identifies three different emphases under the rubric of procedural rhetoric: argumentation, genre-based composition, and composition as introduction to an academic discourse (p. 671). Fulkerson argues that while critical/cultural studies have dominated publications, “expressivism . . . is, in fact, quietly expanding its regions of command” (p. 655), and judging from the consensus among writing program directors, “perhaps procedural rhetoric is dominant in reality though not in publications” (p. 681). At the end of his article, citing Jim Porter, Fulkerson points to a major divide within the field of composition studies: that “between a postmodern, cultural studies, reading-based program, and a broadly conceived rhetoric of genres and discourse forums” (p. 679). There is little question as to which side of the divide contrastive rhetoric is on. I would argue, however, that what divides critical/cultural studies from other approaches in writing, including contrastive rhetoric, is not its social turn but its political turn. Contrastive rhetoric has been socially oriented from the start, concentrating on culture as the explanation for students’ writing. Neither was the social turn a stranger to mainstream compositionists before cultural studies emerged. Shirley Brice Heath’s Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms (1983), a ten-year ethnographic study of literacy in three communities, had been a classic for composition programs before the dominance of critical/cultural studies. Contrastive rhetoric, however, has not made the “political turn” collectively, not even in the published scholarship. Like its parent discipline of applied linguistics, it has been unabashedly pedagogical rather than political. But, if Fulkerson is right, those in expressivism and procedural rhetoric have never taken their eyes off the ball of students’ texts either. As composition studies reclaims its pedagogical roots both in reality and publication, linguistics will become relevant again as it has always been to procedural rhetoric, and there are already signs of that happening. It may sound opportunistic, but I believe that, without adopting the overt political orientation of critical/cultural studies, intercultural rhetoric can still make important contributions to both sides of the divide, if there is one. The persistent and continuous effort of applied linguists in ESL writing over the past two decades has created a richer cache of knowledge about genre and academic discourse than

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any other line of inquiry. However, despite the critique of the pervasive and pernicious influence of dominant discourse, cultural critics in composition have yet to offer viable alternatives to counter its dominance. Contrastive rhetoric, with its wide cultural spectrum and scholarly interest in discourse, represents the best hope for cultural critics. That is, in my view, where intercultural rhetoric can best position itself. Incidentally, Barton recommends exactly that. She proposes discourse analysis as “a methodological bridge” between composition studies and linguistics (2002: 575). She defines the goal of discourse analysis in linguistics as “the understanding of conventions of language use,” conventions, that she explains, “describe a relationship between the repeated or typical use of a [textual] feature and its function in context” (p. 576). It is this attention to both text and context, and their relationship with each other, that puts discourse analysis in the tradition of rhetoric (Fulkerson 2005). Rhetoric, both classic and new, differentiates itself from other studies of oral and written language use through its concern with the dynamic relationships between pathos, ethos, and logos. And for that Fulkerson sees the studies of genre and academic discourse as carried out in the second language by linguists as part of the procedural rhetoric in composition studies. In his article, he points to Ken Hyland’s “Genre-Based Pedagogies: A Social Response to Progress” (2003) as “an excellent overview of the current situation” in procedural rhetoric, with the qualification, “although his study focuses on English as a Second language” (p. 675). Another indication of the convergence is the book, ALT DIS: Alternative Discourses and the Academy (2002), edited by Patricia Bizzell, a major force of cultural/critical studies, with contributions by Christopher Schroeder and Helen Fox (whose book Listening to the World [1994] has been charged as promoting determinism by some critics). It should be pointed out, however, that only a small fraction of works in discourse analysis or genre studies takes a cross-cultural perspective by following “the basic premise of contrastive rhetoric,” which, as Alan Purves explains, “is that one must deal with at least two groups of writers” (1988: 15). For that matter, I tend to think contrastive rhetoric or intercultural rhetoric is a particular perspective that the researcher brings to the examination of ESL writing. It is going to remain a small niche in ESL writing occupied mostly by polyglot researchers, and

. Determinism, the critic claims, is “a stance that assumes that we can attribute a student’s attempts in another language to that student’s L1 background and that anticipates that a student’s cultural and linguistic background will be problematic and limiting” (Zamel 1997: 343). I find the first assumption a fair characterization of the premise of Fox’s (1994) study, yet the second expresses an interpretive stance the writer chooses to take. Where she reads “problematic and limiting” (not Fox’s words), I find different and illuminating.


an even smaller one in composition studies, but it will continue to be a relevant and productive perspective. No one needs to apologize for that.

References Atkinson, D. (1999). TESOL and culture. TESOL Quarterly, 33, 625–654. Atkinson, D. (2004). Contrasting rhetorics/contrasting cultures: Why contrastive rhetoric needs a better conceptualization of culture. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 3(4), 277–290. Barton, E. (2002). Resources for discourse analysis in composition studies. Style, 36, 575–598. Bizzell, P., Schroeder, C., & Fox, H. (2002). ALT DIS: Alternative discourses and the academy. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook. Cahill, D. (2003). The myth of the “turn” in contrastive rhetoric. Written Communication, 20(2), 170–194. Canagarajah, A. S. (2002). Critical academic writing and multilingual students. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Christensen, F. (1981). A generative rhetoric of the sentence. In G. Tate & E. Corbett (Eds.), The writing teacher’s sourcebook (pp. 353–367). New York: Oxford University Press. Clifford, J., & Marcus, G. E. (1986). Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Connor, U. (1996). Contrastive rhetoric: Cross-cultural aspects of second language writing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Connor, U. (2004). New directions in contrastive rhetoric. TESOL Quarterly, 36, 493–510. Connor, U. (2004). Introduction. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 3(4), 271–276. Cooper, R. C. (1981). An outline for writing sentence-combining problems. In G. Tate & E. Corbett (Eds.), The writing teacher’s sourcebook (pp. 368–378). New York: Oxford University Press. Faigley, L. (1992). Fragments of rationality: Postmodernity and the subject of composition. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Fox, H. (1994). Listening to the world: Cultural issues in academic writing. Urbana, IL: NCTE. Fulkerson, R. (2005). Composition at the turn of the twenty-first century. College Composition and Communication, 56, 654–687. Geertz, C. (1983). Local knowledge: Further essays in interpretive anthropology. New York: Basic Books. Hall, D. L., & Ames, R. T. (1987). Thinking through Confucius. Albany: State University of New York Press. Hatlen, B. (1986). Old wine and new bottles: A dialectical encounter between the old rhetoric and the new. In T. Newkirk (Ed.), Only connect: Uniting reading and writing (pp. 59–86). Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook. Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life, and works in communities and classrooms. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hyland, K. (2003). Genre-based pedagogies: A social response to process. Journal of Second Language Writing, 12(1), 17–29. Kaplan, R. B. (1966). Cultural thought patterns in inter-cultural education. Language Learning: A Journal of Applied Linguistics, 16, 1–20.

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Kaplan, R. B. (1988). Contrastive rhetoric and second language learning: Notes towards a theory of contrastive rhetoric. In A. C. Purves (Ed.), Writing across languages and cultures: Issues in contrastive rhetoric (pp. 275–303). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Kennedy, G. A. (1998). Comparative rhetoric: A historical and cross-cultural introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Kubota, R. (1999). Japanese culture constructed by discourses: Implications for applied linguistics research and English language teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 33, 9–35. Kubota, R., & Shi, L. (2005). Instruction and reading samples for opinion writing in L1 junior high school textbooks in China and Japan. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 15, 97–128. Li, X. M. (1996). “Good writing” in cross-cultural context. Albany: State University of New York Press. Li, X. M. (2002). “Track (dis)connecting”: Chinese high school and university writing in a time of change. In D. Foster & D. Russell (Eds.), Writing and learning in cross-national perspective: Transitions from secondary to higher education (pp. 49–87). Urbana, IL: NCTE. Li, X. M. (2005). Composing culture in a fragmented world: The issue of representation in cross-cultural research. In P. K. Matsuda & T. J. Silva (Eds.), Second language writing research: Perspectives on the process of knowledge construction (pp. 121–134). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Mao, L. (2003). Reflective encounters: Illustrating comparative rhetoric. Style, 37, 401–425. McKeon, R. (1994). The use of rhetoric in a technological age: Architectonic productive arts. In T. Enos & S. C. Brown (Eds.), Professing the new rhetorics: A sourcebook (pp. 126–144). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Perelman, C. (1994). The new rhetoric: A theory of practical reasoning. In T. Enos & S. C. Brown (Eds.), Professing the new rhetorics: A sourcebook (pp. 145–177). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Purves, A. C. (1988). Introduction. In A. C. Purves (Ed.), Writing across languages and cultures: Issues in contrastive rhetoric (pp. 9–24). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Sarangi, S. (2005, July 22–23). Intercultural research paradigms: A reassessment of their applicability of professional discourse studies. Plenary speech at the Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication’s Second Annual Conference on Intercultural Rhetoric and Written Discourse Analysis, Indianapolis, IN. Spack, R. (1997). The rhetorical construction of multilingual students. TESOL Quarterly, 31, 765–774. Tate, G., Corbett, E., & Myers, N. (1994). The writing teacher’s sourcebook (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Trimbur, J. (1994). Taking the social turn: Teaching writing post-process. College Composition and Communication, 45(1), 108–118. Winterowd, W. R. (1981). The grammar of coherence. In G. Tate & E. Corbett (Eds.), The writing teacher’s sourcebook (pp. 301–309). New York: Oxford University Press. Zamel, V. (1997). Toward a model of transculturation. TESOL Quarterly, 31, 341–352.

The importance of comparable corpora in cross-cultural studies Ana I. Moreno University of León

This chapter shows the importance of comparing corpora that are really comparable. The chapter conceives of texts as exemplars of situated genres and acknowledges that the rhetorical and discourse configuration of texts vary as a function of the contextual factors in which texts are situated. It argues that corpora may be considered equivalent (or similar to the maximum degree) across cultures to the extent that the text exemplars are similar in all of the relevant contextual factors. It concludes that cross-cultural corpora designs should attempt to control statistically as many of the relevant contextual factors as possible. If not, it may not be possible to say anything reliable about the possible effect of the language/culture factor on texts. Instead, possible differences found may be due to uncontrolled contextual variables.

Introduction It has been four decades since Kaplan (1966) proposed the idea that the rhetorical structures of texts in different languages might vary greatly, and that such variation should be taken into account in language teaching programs. He also suggested that these differences in writing across cultures may reflect different writing conventions and, in an attempt to revise his initial notion – which was severely criticized – Kaplan (1987) later on suggested that these differences in writing do not necessarily reflect different patterns of thinking that are acquired, but are more likely to reflect cultural and educational training factors which help to shape the writing conventions that are learned in a culture. Given the tremendous research activity driven by his basic insight that “writing is culturally influenced in interesting, and complex, ways” (Connor 2002: 495), contrastive rhetoric (CR) scholars should be convinced that this field of enquiry does not need further justification. What they need to do now is whatever is necessary to make their research more and more rigorous, reliable, and explanatory.

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One thing that can be done in this direction is to make sure they are comparing what is comparable across cultures. The purpose of this chapter is to reflect on how important this methodological requirement is. It is first convenient to distinguish between different types of questions that have been considered by CR researchers. A clear distinction is considered crucial because the type of question will ultimately dictate the sources and type of data that should be compared, and which therefore need to be comparable.

Contrastive rhetoric questions 1. Whether the imputed cross-cultural differences in the rhetorical configuration of texts actually exist, 2. If they exist, which cultural or educational factors may help to account for such differences (e.g., values, norms, learning processes and educational trends), 3. Which precise difficulties with discourse structure and other rhetorical features do second language learners from a given non-English writing culture experience when writing in English as an L2, 4. Whether difficulties experienced with discourse structure and other rhetorical features by L2 learners of English are attributable to interference (or negative transfer) from the first language. Table 1 sketches the types of data that should be used to answer each of these questions: Table 1. Types of comparable data used to answer CR questions Question type Types of comparable data Question 1 Question 2

Question 3

Question 4

Original texts written in English as L1 and equivalent original texts written independently in the other language as L1 Documentation/Information provided by writers/readers/other participants involved in the process of writing, interpreting and learning to write and interpret original texts written in English as L1 and similar information provided by similar participants in similar processes in relation to equivalent original texts written independently in the other language as L1 Original texts written in English as L2 and equivalent original texts written independently in English as L1. Information about the process of writing and learning to write these texts both as L1 and as L2 The results obtained in answer to question 3 (the difficulties experienced) and relevant results obtained in answer to questions 1 (the differences observed) and 2 (the reasons for these differences).

The importance of comparable corpora in cross-cultural studies

To answer question 1, CR studies will need to identify areas of difference (and similarity) in equivalent rhetorical/discourse features between original texts written in English as L1 and equivalent original texts written independently in the other language as L1. Accordingly, translations or English as L2 texts would not be valid to answer this question. As Reid (1988) argues, texts written by nonnative speakers – whether L2 texts or translations – do not constitute “a sufficient data sample for valid analysis because they use second language texts to investigate first language rhetorical patterns” (Reid 1988: 19). To answer question 2, CR studies need to go beyond texts and look contrastively at the two writing cultures, big and small, that have contributed to the L1 texts. This would involve obtaining information from documents and from the writers, readers, and other participants involved in the process of writing, interpreting, and learning to write and interpret the type of texts under research, by means of questionnaires, interviews, and so on. To answer question 3, CR studies need to identify non-English rhetorical features in original texts written in English as L2 by referring to equivalent discourse and rhetorical features used in equivalent original texts written independently in English as L1 (not only with reference to judgments by native speakers’ of English such as those by teachers of English as L2, but with reference to what actually happens in equivalent non-expert texts written in English as L1). They also need information about the process of writing and learning to write these texts in each writing culture independently. To answer the final question (question 4), CR studies need to compare the results obtained in answer to questions 1 and 2 to the relevant results obtained in answer to question 3. This will allow us to check whether, for instance, the differences identified in answer to question 1 could explain the non-English discourse and rhetorical features identified in answer to question 3. The main distinguishing feature of CR is that it has broadened the scope of its analyses to incorporate text-linguistic phenomena that go beyond the sentence level. Rather than focus on the lexico-grammatical resources employed by different languages to create meaning, it has concentrated on the text features that help writers of different cultures to negotiate meaning, both on the textual and the interpersonal plane. To this aim, CR has been more interested in finding out how writers of different writing cultures organize their texts into coherent meaningful units to accomplish their communicative purposes. So, for instance, studies have looked at paragraph organization and macro-structures of different kinds. They have also looked at how information flows effectively across sentences. CR has also been concerned with how writers show their attitudes towards their own ideas and their readers, how much conviction and commitment to their ideas

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writers feel it is appropriate to display depending on the communicative situation, and so on. In Table 1, the texts used as sources of data for the comparison should be equivalent, or comparable. Although it sounds rather obvious, meeting this methodological requirement is crucial for any study that aims to contribute valid knowledge to this discipline. As Connor and Moreno (2005) have recently argued, this requirement to use comparable data should be met, to start with, at two basic stages of the research: one, in selecting texts to build parallel corpora; and two, in identifying equivalent textual concepts to be examined in the corpora. Due to limitations of space, I will focus on the first of these two stages: the selection of parallel corpora.

Definition of parallel corpora A corpus is defined as a sample of texts which may be considered representative of the population of texts which it intends to represent. For example, Moreno’s (1996, 1997, 1998) corpus comprised two sets of 36 research articles from Business and Economics, one in English, the other in Spanish. Each of these samples was meant to represent the population of research articles on Business and Economics in each language. Parallel corpora are defined as sets of comparable original texts written independently in two or more languages (Connor & Moreno 2005: 155). The notion of comparability is equated to the concept of equivalence and is crucial for designing corpora for CR studies.

The concept of equivalence in parallel corpus designs The concept of equivalence has been widely used in Contrastive Analysis and Translation Theory. It helps contrastive researchers to establish a valid criterion of comparison between corpora. One important development in this respect has been that the original conception of equivalence as identity is giving way to the conception of equivalence as maximum similarity (Chesterman 1998). That is, for two corpora to be considered as equivalent they do not need to be exactly the same but similar to the maximum degree. But we still face the problem that judgments about what constitutes maximum similarity and how it is to be measured are relative, i.e. they depend on the assessors. So definitions of equivalence (or maximum similarity) will be relative to the theoretical framework in which they are made.


This chapter addresses how this requirement of maximum similarity could be met in cross-cultural studies that draw on one particular theoretical framework, genre theory (Swales 1990). According to this framework, it is theoretically plausible to conceive of texts as exemplars of situated genres. This means acknowledging that the rhetorical and semantico-linguistic configuration of texts – what is known as text form and content – vary as a function of the context in which discourse is situated. If we make our concept of maximum similarity relative to this theoretical conception of texts, we could then say that two corpora are equivalent (or similar to the maximum degree) to the extent that the text exemplars contained in them may be considered similar in all relevant contextual factors. It is therefore necessary to clarify what is meant by contextual factors in a general model of communication, applicable to contrastive studies.

A model of the communication process The concept of context of communication is considered from a socio-cultural and cognitive perspective in Figure 1. Not only does the context comprise relevant information about the immediate physical environment (setting) in which communication takes place, the relevant co-text, and other relevant texts, but it also comprises relevant information about the emotional state of the participants (their mood), their goals/needs, their expectations about the future, their anecdotal memories, their beliefs, their general cultural

Figure 1. Contextual factors affecting cross-cultural communication

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assumptions and previous knowledge and experience of the world and texts, and their mutual knowledge about all these things. According to Relevance Theory, all these factors play a role in the interpretation of texts (Sperber & Wilson 1986: 15). From the point of view of text creation, all of these factors are also important because they may and do have an influence on the form and content of the text. Figure 1 proposes a model of the communication process which takes most of these factors into account. This model draws on the well-known work by Jakob son (1960), Hymes (1962) – both quoted in Cook (1989) – Halliday and Hasan (1989: 12), and Sperber and Wilson (1986). Strictly speaking, it is not really a model; it only includes the elements or components of the system but not the relationships between the different elements, and more elements could still be incorporated. However, it does show the complexity of the communication process. It is hoped that, as research advances in this line, it will be possible to complete the model in terms of the relationships between the different elements and how each affects the others. The model presupposes a communication need on the part of the writer, which takes place in a given temporal and spatial coordinate in the history of human relations as a result of some need the person wants to satisfy. Needs may be of various kinds: physiological, security, social, esteem, self-actualization – cf. Maslow’s (1954) book, Motivation and Personality – improving one’s representation of the world – cf. Sperber and Wilson (1986) – and so on. Perhaps the most important element of the communication process is the formulation of a communicative purpose, because this is what drives the addressor to enter a given communication process and determines the selection of the different options available to achieve his/her goal. Take, for instance, the communicative purpose of applying for a job in a company. To achieve that purpose, the addressor needs to determine the right person to communicate with – that is, the addressee (status within the company, sex, age, etc.). The addressor must also choose the appropriate setting (in this case, a professional setting within the given company). Awareness of all this is important because both the type of relationship established between the participants, known as the tenor, and the particular setting will significantly affect the shape of the text. An important aspect of the setting is the physical environment where the communicative event takes place. In writing, awareness of features in the physical environment is not usually as relevant as it is in spoken communication (e.g., a written job application versus an interview), but the time of communication, another element of the setting, may be very important. For instance, time constraints that the writer may have (time/space limitations, deadlines to meet) are also important because they may have an influence on the final product of communication.


As well as deciding on the addressee and the setting, the addressor must make other decisions, such as the most convenient mode of communication (written or spoken) and through which channel (sound waves, telephones wires, paper, the Internet, etc.). These decisions also influence the shape of the text. In the case of application letters, these decisions are sometimes constrained by a previous text that tells the addressor how to apply (e.g., an advertisement of the position that reads, “send a letter of application to”). This also affects the content and form of the text. For instance, it is rather typical of application letters to begin by referring to the source from which the writer learned about the position (e.g., an advertisement in a given newspaper). In addition, the form and content of the message within the text is also affected by the co-text. There seem to be some restrictions as to how information should be presented in the text and in what order to make texts more effective from the perspective of the audience. Therefore, for cross-cultural studies it is very important to take the particular rhetorical context in which language occurs into account. The addressor must also decide if he/she is going to write seriously, jokingly, or ironically – that is, the addressor must select a tone, or key, of communication, which will also affect textual choices. Other decisions involve the field, or topic, of communication (which may include, for instance, talking about previous experience in related jobs). This factor is important, since it will have a direct influence on the semantic choices of the text. And depending on the addressee, the addressor will have to decide which language code (British English/Peninsular Spanish) and situational and dialectal variety (formal/informal; standard/some dialectal code) to use to make himself/herself best understood, and thus, to achieve his/her communicative purpose. Once these decisions have been made, or given, the addressor will have to decide what to say/write – which content to include (text content) and how to express it – in what form and layout/format (text form). At this point, we should not forget that both the content and the form of the text will be influenced by the addressor’s sex, age, personality, emotional state, particular goals – which in this case may be to create the best possible impression on the addressee – previous knowledge of the relevant world (e.g. his familiarity with the company he is going to apply for), previous experience of communicating for similar or other purposes, and sense of the addressee’s expectations. One important factor in shaping the addressor’s knowledge, experience, and ability to communicate for different purposes is the language/writing culture(s) into which he/she has been socialized. This socialization may have taken place in various environments (or small cultures) such as family, various levels of formal education, friends, workplace, a given time in history, and a given place in the world. Although each of these small writing cultures operates according to its

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own norms, values, common practices, and so on, that are learned, they are also likely to interact in complex ways (Connor 2005) that will affect a writer’s writing behaviour, both the process and the product of writing. Finally, after all the efforts made by the writer to achieve his/her communicative purpose, the intended purpose may not be perceived by the reader exactly in the same way as the purpose envisioned by the writer. The reader’s interpretation will also be affected by other relevant contextual factors (concentration, interest, emotional state, particular goals, etc.). Although the communication process is surely more complex than what this model represents, it should be emphasized that these factors may and do have an influence on the form and content of a text and should be taken into account in any characterization of texts. Although a complete characterization of all genres in these terms is still lacking, there is empirical research that supports this theoretical conception of texts as situated genres. This is the way languages and texts should be described, both intra-culturally and cross-culturally. The application of this theoretical conception of texts to the description of the English language began to flourish in the 1990s with the pioneering work by Swales (1990). This, in combination with insights from corpus linguistics, has driven linguists to analyse large amounts of data in the search for more accurate and reliable descriptions of genres. For instance, Upton (2002) sought to combine the tools of corpus analysis with the specificity of genre analysis in a way that had not been done before to provide a new perspective on a genre, like the fundraising letter, that was not well understood. There is still a need to approach more genres in this and other ways (Moreno 2003; Connor & Anthony 2005) to make language descriptions more adequate and useful for fields of application such as language teaching. As for the cross-cultural description of languages, one added problem involves the issue of corpora comparability, the issue at stake in this chapter. Although important methodological contributions are being made by linguists to describe languages contrastively while benefiting from the powerful tools provided by corpus linguistics (Rabadán, Labrador, & Ramón 2004), considerable work still needs to be done to assure that the corpora are really comparable. For instance, the corpora used by Rabadán, Labrador, and Ramón (2004) was the COBUILD-Bank of English for the English data and the CREA (Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual) for the Spanish data because these were the most comparable and representative of each language at the time. However, these corpora do not meet the methodological requirements for the type of cross-cultural study proposed in this chapter. Given the present state of knowledge about language internal variability, arguments for establishing the comparability of the selected subcorpora will need


to be more delicate than simply declaring that the selected subcorpora comprise written texts: newspapers, magazines, books and ephemera. One important reason is that newspapers, for instance, include many different genres of texts (news articles, editorials, comment articles, and interviews) which follow different rhetorical conventions. Another reason is that these genres may be represented in such different proportions that it may be impossible to consider the two corpora as statistically comparable. Thus, cross-cultural studies of the type proposed here are very likely to need to develop their own tailor-made corpora, as has been done in studies like Moreno (1996, 1997, 1998, 2004) and the chapter by Suárez and Moreno in this volume.

Research variables in cross-cultural studies Since quantitative cross-cultural studies usually compare equivalent rhetorical features of written texts across languages and cultures, they need to be based on comparable written corpora, except for two contextual factors. These two factors are likely to be the language code factor, associated with a writing culture resulting from the interaction of various small cultures, and the form and content of the text factors – i.e., the rhetorical, semantic, and linguistic configuration of texts. Research examines the effect of one (the writing culture expressed through a language code) on the other (form and content of the text). These contrastive research variables are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Contrastive rhetoric research variables

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It may be said that the language code, inescapably associated with a writing culture, is the independent variable – the one that is manipulated to see how that change affects the shape of language – while form and content of the text is the dependent variable. It includes the rhetorical/semantic/linguistic features that will be observed and measured to see how they have changed as a function of the writing culture. In order to reach reliable conclusions, the researcher should attempt to maintain constant all other relevant factors affecting the production process – what is known as the confounding factors, or variables. The problem is that in descriptive studies, like cross-cultural studies, it is not possible to manipulate the variables. When texts are collected, they are already products. All the possible variables affecting the production process already have a fixed value (e.g., the text is either written or spoken). Therefore, the only way we can perform descriptive work is to design our corpora very carefully in such a way that all relevant confounding variables are taken into account by statistical control of the sample. If the design is able to maintain constant the values of these confounding factors and manages to include the same proportion of texts representing those values in each sample, we can then say that the two corpora are equivalent to the maximum degree of similarity and each of those factors can be considered as the criteria of comparison that allow us to make a valid comparison. Table 2 includes a comparable corpus design that met this requirement. This corpus was used by Moreno (1997, 1998) in an English-Spanish contrast of the explicit signalling of various types of causal intersentential relations in research articles on Business and Economics. For instance, the independent variable was the language code (with two possible values: English versus Spanish), and the dependent variable in Moreno (1998) was the explicit signalling of premise-conclusion intersentential relations, which was broken down into more specific dependent variables. The first column in Table 2 shows the criteria of comparison that helped the researcher to make similarity judgments between the two corpora. As can be seen, these criteria of comparison correspond to the various relevant contextual factors, or confounding variables, that were hypothesized to have an influence on the form and content of the message. The second column shows the particular value each factor took on that was kept constant for both corpora. The corpora can be considered comparable, or equivalent, in all those respects. It would be possible to suggest that the criterion referred to as genre could well serve as a comprehensive criterion of comparison since it usually restricts the values of the other contextual factors. For instance, a research article (a possible value of the genre factor) is normally expressed in the written mode (a possible value of the mode factor) through graphical substance on paper (a possible


Table 2. Similarity constraints established for the design of Moreno’s (1998) EnglishSpanish comparable corpus of research articles on business and economics (adapted from Moreno 1996: 162) Criteria of comparison Value of prototypical feature perceived as a constant N of texts across the two corpora in each independent corpus Text form Genre Mode Participants Writers Targeted readers Situational variety Dialectal variety Tone Channel Format features Length Intertextuality Visual features Point of view Global communicative event Setting General purpose of communication

Global rhetorical strategy

Overall subject-matter or topic Academic discipline Level of expertise

Scientific exposition Research article Written language Researchers, professors and professionals in business and economics Researchers, professors, advanced students, top executives, politicians Formal Standard Serious Graphical substance 2,000-16,000 words of core text Including reference to other texts Including graphs, tables, drawings, footnotes, appendixes, typographical distinctions to indicate sections Objective Sharing results from research

36 36 36 36

An office, a library . . . Writer’s viewpoint: To persuade the readers to share the writer’s viewpoint Reader’s viewpoint: To improve one’s knowledge about a given field of research Demonstrating a theory Discussing the advantages of: – applying a given model – a given business practice Analysing the reasons for a given situation Proving the accuracy of a prediction Evaluating the solution given to a situation Business and Economics

36 36

Marketing-management Economics-finance Expert writers

36 36 36 36

36 36

36

36 18 18 36

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Table 2 (continued) Criteria of comparison Value of prototypical feature perceived as a constant N of texts across the two corpora in each independent corpus Textual unit of analysis Complete texts Global superstructure Introduction-Procedure-Discussion More variable superstructures: Problem-Analysis-Solution Situation-Explanation Situation-Analysis-Forecast Problem-Solution-Evaluation Predominant text types Argumentation (Depending on the Exposition focus of each section in Description the superstructure of the article)

36 11 25

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value of the channel factor). It normally takes the form of scientific exposition; the participants are usually restricted to researchers, professors and professionals, or advanced students; these texts are usually written in a formal and standard variety; their tone is usually serious; they have a recognizable format in terms of length, intertextuality and visual features; they tend to be presented as objective in viewpoint; the global communicative event in which they are framed is that of sharing results from research. The general purpose of communication, from the point of view of the writer, is usually to persuade readers to share the writer’s viewpoint, and from the readers’ perspective, to improve knowledge about a given field of research. A research article may also follow recurrent global rhetorical strategies (demonstrating a theory, discussing the advantages of applying a given model or a given business practice, analysing the reasons for a given situation, proving the accuracy of a prediction, evaluating the solution given to a problem). The predominant text types, depending on the precise section of the article, seem to be argumentation, exposition, and description. They are usually written by expert writers. Even if the above values are constant, there are still a number of factors which may escape this control by the genre factor. For example, the genre we recognize as the academic research article is actually generated within differing disciplinary cultures. These disciplinary cultures may have their own conventions of writing this kind of text. Since the disciplinary culture is associated with what is known as the topic or field factor, Moreno’s study took this variable into account in the sense that it made both corpora balanced in terms of topics. Accordingly, the resulting


sample in each corpus consisted of 18 research articles about marketing-management and 18 research articles about finance-economics. Although Moreno’s cross-cultural study examined a text-rhetorical feature in the entire research article, the study conjectured that this text-rhetorical feature might also vary as a function of the particular section within the research article. The study attempted to control for the superstructure factor. Thus, 11 research articles in each corpus followed the overall pattern of Introduction-ProcedureDiscussion, and 25 research articles in each corpus showed more variable superstructures: Problem-Analysis-Solution; Situation-Explanation; Situation-Analysis-Forecast and Problem-Solution-Evaluation. Another important factor that would escape the control of the genre criterion is the temporal factor (see temporal coordinate in Figure 1). This diachronic factor should also be taken into account because genres are dynamic entities. Any crosscultural study should also specify the temporal coordinates. Since Moreno’s study attempted to do a cross-cultural characterization of the most recent research articles at the time of the research, the sample texts were restricted to research articles written between 1990 and 1993. It is impossible to make constant certain factors (e.g., the addressor). This is a complex factor comprising other factors (age, sex, experience in writing, maturity, personality, etc.) which may affect the form of the message even within the same writing culture. Every writer has idiosyncrasies, and it is probably impossible to make two corpora similar in this respect. Still, if we conduct cross-cultural studies in an attempt to capture general tendencies of particular writing cultures, it seems that the best solution is to draw on corpus linguistics. We can design crosscultural corpora consisting of large numbers of texts written by a great variety of authors, selected randomly to represent the targeted population of texts. This way, the possible effect of idiosyncrasies is diluted within the multitude. If, based on previous research, the researcher has some ground to think that a given factor (e.g., gender) is highly influential in some respect of the rhetorical configuration of the texts, it should be taken into account in such a way that the two corpora contain the same proportions of texts written by the two genders. We need to control that factor statistically by means of stratified sampling. Finally, although developing comparable corpora in this controlled way already guarantees that many of the relevant contextual factors are taken into account, using traditional tools of corpus linguistics to assist analysis (e.g., concordances) still carries the danger of ignoring the precise rhetorical context in which language features occur. Therefore, more complex, analytical, computer-based tools should be developed (e.g., tagging the corpora for rhetorical moves and functions) before we can reasonably exploit the power of corpus analysis tools (Connor & Anthony 2005). Until that happens, cross-cultural linguists will have

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to continue their traditional manual analysis of texts in the search for rhetorical patterns of each language.

Conclusion Comparable corpora in cross-cultural research on written discourse are important. If we do not design our corpora carefully, we may not account for confounding factors and eventually may not be able to say anything reliable about the possible effect of the independent variable (the writing culture factor associated to a language code) on the dependent variable(s). If the confounding variables are left uncontrolled and we observe cross-cultural differences in relation to a given rhetorical feature, we will not be able to attribute them to the effect of the writing culture, or language code, because they may have been due to the effect of some confounding variable. If further CR studies of question type 1 (from Table 1) between any pair of languages make explicit the criteria of comparison at the level of corpus design, we may eventually build a dynamic model of Rhetorics in contrast. Such CR studies would provide us with stable foundations upon which to build further applied studies, such as language learning/teaching and translation. It is important to highlight the fact that once differences (and similarities) in discourse structure and rhetorical features (question type 1: Whether the imputed cross-cultural differences in the rhetorical configuration of texts actually exist) are identified, further qualitative research (question type 2: If they exist, which cultural or educational factors may help to account for such differences [e.g., values, norms, learning processes and educational trends]) should attempt to explain the sources of that variation by referring to cultural features of the two writing cultures. This is another important way in which cross-cultural studies can attempt to take context into account. Having discovered cross-cultural differences in rhetorical patterns of texts, the next logical step is to pinpoint which specific aspects (e.g., values, norms, common practices, and learning processes) of the writing cultures are responsible for a given variation in rhetorical behaviour. That is, not only awareness of the differences (and similarities) but also the reasons for such divergence would be helpful in applied fields such as the teaching of writing in English as L2. However, as Connor (2004) highlights, “teachers must keep in mind that no one needs to be held hostage by language and culture; students can be taught to negotiate conflicting rhetorical structures to their advantage” (Connor 2004: 271). It is also important to emphasize that the relevance of researching the first two types of questions should be established by reference to studies or teaching/learn-


ing experiences where difficulties with discourse structure are identified. Otherwise, what would be the point? That is why rigorous studies that answer questions of type 3 (Which precise difficulties with discourse structure and other rhetorical features do second language learners from a given non-English writing culture experience when writing in English as an L2?) are also important. Once linguists, discourse analysts, and rhetoricians have provided answers to the first three questions (which difficulties with discourse structure and rhetorical features are experienced; whether the imputed differences exist; and which cultural or educational factors may account for them), further studies may aim to research the fourth type of question. These studies will answer whether difficulties experienced with discourse structure and other rhetorical features by L2 learners of English are attributable to interference (or negative transfer) from the first language. Finally, the framework of comparison that Moreno (1998) used, and that Connor and Moreno (2005) proposed for cross-cultural study around the concept of genre, seems to be a valid framework as long as the given genre is comparable in the two writing cultures compared. However, there may be cases where this will not hold. For instance, there may be differences in the frequency of use of genres to achieve similar purposes of communication. (As Fusari 2005 showed, for example, direct mail fundraising letters are not as frequent in Italy as they are in the U.S., nor are the causes for which money is raised the same). If corpora are not selected carefully, it will be more difficult to determine which contextual factor is responsible for the possible differences in rhetoric. There may also be cases of genres that did not exist in one language (e.g., Spanish conditions of sales) before translations of English ones appeared. We may find that this genre written in Spanish follows the English genre expectations. Such cases will not lend themselves to interesting comparisons from a CR point of view.

Acknowledgements This chapter is part of a research project financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology – Plan Nacional de I+D+I (2000–2003) Ref: BFF2001-0112, entitled Contrastive Analysis and Specialized English-Spanish Translation: Applications and Tools (ACTRES). I am also grateful to Dr. Ulla Connor, Dr. William Rozycki, and an anonymous scholar for their comments on an earlier version of this chapter.

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References Chesterman, A. (1998). Contrastive functional analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Connor, U. (2002). New directions in contrastive rhetoric. TESOL Quarterly, 36, 493–510. Connor, U. (2004). Intercultural rhetoric research: Beyond texts. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 3, 291–304. Connor, U. (2005, July). Intercultural rhetoric – Further defined. Paper presented at the Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication’s Second Annual Conference on Intercultural Rhetoric and Written Discourse Analysis, Indianapolis, IN. Connor, U., & Anthony, M. A. (2005, July). Semantic variation in rhetorical appeals of fundraising letters. Paper presented at the “Research on Fundraising Letters: Focus on Research Methods” symposium at the 14th World Congress of Applied Linguistics, Madison, WI. Connor, U., & Moreno, A. I. (2005). Tertium comparationis: A vital component in contrastive rhetoric research. In P. Bruthiaux, D. Atkinson, W. Eggington, W. Grabe & V. Ramanathan (Eds.), Directions in applied linguistics: Essays in honor of Robert B. Kaplan (pp. 153–164). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Cook, G. (1989). Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fusari, S. (2005, July). A corpus study of philanthropic direct mail. Paper presented at the Indiana Center for Intercultural Communication’s Second Annual Conference on Intercultural Rhetoric and Written Discourse Analysis, Indianapolis, IN. Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1989). Language, context, and text: Aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hymes, D. H. (1968). The ethnography of speaking. In J. A. Fishman (Ed.), Readings in the sociology of language (pp. 99–138). The Hague, Paris: Mouton. Jakobson, R. (1960). Closing statement: Linguistics and poetics. In T. A. Sebeok (Ed.), Style in language (pp. 350–377). Cambridge, MA: Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Kaplan, R. B. (1987). Cultural thought patterns revisited. In U. Connor & R. B. Kaplan (Eds.), Writing across languages: Analysis of L2 text (pp. 9–21). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Kaplan, R. B. (1966). Cultural thought patterns in inter-cultural education. Language Learning: A Journal of Applied Linguistics, 16, 1–20. Maslow, A. H. (1954). Motivation and personality. New York: Harper. Moreno, A. I. (1996). Estudio Contrastivo Inglés-Espańol de la Expresión de las Relaciones de Coherencia Causal Interoracional: el Artículo Académico sobre Economía y Empresa. Tesis doctorales 1995. Published doctoral dissertation, Universidad de León, León, Spain. Moreno, A. I. (1997). Genre constraints across languages: Causal metatext in Spanish and English RAs. English for Specific Purposes, 16, 161–179. Moreno, A. I. (1998). The explicit signaling of premise-conclusion sequences in research articles: A contrastive framework. Text, 18, 545–585. Moreno, A. I. (2003). Matching theoretical descriptions of discourse and practical applications to teaching: The case of causal metatext. English for Specific Purposes, 22, 265–295. Moreno, A. I. (2004). Retrospective labelling in premise-conclusion metatext: An EnglishSpanish contrastive study of research articles on business and economics. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 3, 321–339. Rabadán, R., Labrador, B., & Ramón, N. (2004). English-Spanish corpus-based contrastive analysis: Transnational applications from the ACTRES Project: PALC 2003. In B. Lewandowska-


Tomaszczyk (Ed.), Practical applications in language and computers (pp. 141–152). Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Reid, J. M. (1988). Quantitative differences in English prose written by Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, and English students. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO. Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance: Communication and cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Upton, T. A. (2002). Understanding direct mail letters as a genre. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 7, 65–85.

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section ii

Contrastive corpus studies in specific genres

Metadiscourse across three varieties of English American, British, and advanced-learner English Annelie Ädel Mid-Sweden University, Sweden

This chapter focuses on the pervasive phenomenon of metadiscourse, or reflexivity in language, looking at argumentative essay writing by university students. It presents a study of three varieties of English, using two corpora of native-speaker writing (British and American) and one corpus of advanced learner writing (L1 Swedish). Considerable differences are shown to exist in the use of metadiscourse, not just between the learners and the native speakers, but also between the British and American writers. The differences are evident both in general frequencies across corpora and in the functions the metadiscourse serves. Four factors are identified as potentially accounting for the variation found: genre comparability, cultural conventions, register awareness and general learner strategies.

Reflexivity in language Humans use language to communicate their thoughts, ideas, and feelings about themselves and the world. In addition to using language to talk about the world, we use it to talk about talk. We can refer to ourselves not only as experiencers in the world, but also as communicators, and we can refer not only to the topic of discussion, but also to the situation of communicating. All human languages, whether in written or in spoken form, can be used self-reflexively to comment on linguistic matters (Hockett 1977: 173). The capacity of language to refer to itself is described by the term “reflexivity” (Lyons 1977: 5). An alternative term, coined by Roman Jakobson in the 1950s (e.g., Jakobson 1998), is the “metalinguistic function” of language. At that time, Jakobson felt a need to point out that this is not an arcane phenomenon, but rather a central feature of language in everyday use. In fact, most linguistic messages

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encode explicit information about how language is being used in the message, about how the text is organized, or about the relationship between the current addresser and addressee. One particular form of reflexivity in language is metadiscourse, which will be our focus here. A shorthand definition of metadiscourse is “text about text.” A more extensive definition describes it as “reflexive linguistic expressions referring to the evolving text itself or its linguistic form, including references to the writer qua writer and the imagined reader qua reader of the current text” (Ädel 2003). Examples are given in (1) and (2): (1)

see page 16 in brief to conclude strictly speaking I will summarize __ __ will be discussed below

(2)

You will probably think that __ Does this sound __ to you? Correct me if I’m wrong, but __ as you will see dear reader

Metadiscourse is an important category both in creating and in reading text. Recent work has argued that the reader’s understanding of, impressions of, and attitudes toward a text may very much depend on the use of metadiscourse (e.g., Crismore 1989). This argument is easy to accept if we consider that metadiscourse helps a writer to “guide, direct, and inform” her reader about how she hopes he will respond to the content of the text (Crismore 1989: 64). Since metadiscourse is such an important textual category, one might suppose that linguists’ understanding of the workings of metadiscourse was extensive. However, we have not gone much further than establishing that metadiscourse is quite common in academic writing and that it shows considerable variation in use. Although recent research has shown that the use of metadiscourse is likely to vary across genres (Crismore 1989), across disciplines (Bäcklund 1998; Hyland 1998), and across languages (Markkanen, Steffensen, & Crismore 1993; Mauranen

. The term “metadiscourse” is usually applied to written language exclusively, but it needn’t be. Metadiscursive phenomena are an essential part of spoken discourse as well, as, for example, Schiffrin’s (1980) work on “metatalk” has shown. Here, however, our main concern will be written language.

Metadiscourse across three varieties of English

1993; Vassileva 1998), the many details of this variation and its influencing factors remain to be mapped and accounted for. Any linguistic phenomenon that is characterized by variation across languages and genres is likely to be specifically problematic for L2 learners. This is a notion to which the field of contrastive/intercultural rhetoric has paid special attention – its main hypothesis being that there are culture-specific patterns of writing, and that these cause interference in L2 writing (Connor 1996). The present chapter will focus on how L2 writing compares to native-speaker writing from the perspective of metadiscourse. Specifically, Ädel’s (2003) investigation into metadiscourse forms the basis of this chapter. We will look at three varieties of English, using one corpus of advanced learner writing and two corpora of native-speaker writing (in British and American English). First, however, I will introduce the reflexive model of metadiscourse.

The reflexive model of metadiscourse Ever since studies of metadiscourse took off in the late 1980s, the theoretical model traditionally employed (Vande Kopple 1985; Markkanen et al. 1993; Hyland 1998; Hyland 2004) has made use of the three Hallidayan levels of language (i.e., the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual levels – e.g., Halliday 1994). For several different and complex reasons, however, researchers have tended not to find this model fully satisfactory. As an alternative, Ädel (2003), stressing the element of reflexivity in metadiscourse, presented a functional model that will be adopted here. It is based on three of Jakobson’s functions of language (Jakobson 1998): the metalinguistic, the expressive, and the directive. Their corresponding foci, or so-called “components of the speech event,” are the text/code, the writer, and the reader. One or more of these three functions is always dominant in metadiscourse, with the metalinguistic function the indispensable one. Together, they form the reflexive model, summarized in Table 1. The basic functions of metadiscourse are to guide the reader through the text and to comment on the use of language in the text. The focus is on the structure, discourse actions, and wording of the text, as in the examples in (1). More examples, and a taxonomy, are given in Table 2.

. Markkanen et al. (1993), for instance, claim that metadiscourse consists of either textual or interpersonal material, which stands in contrast to the ideational material of the text. It should be noted that, although Halliday’s model has been widely used for the definition of metadiscourse, Halliday himself does not discuss or define metadiscourse in these terms.

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Table 1. Functions of the reflexive model Speech event component

Function

Type of reference

text/code writer reader

metalinguistic expressive directive

reference to text or language itself reference to writer persona reference to imagined reader

TEXT: focus on structure of essay

CODE

Table 2. Taxonomy of personal metadiscourse functions from Ädel (2003) Discourse function

Example

Defining explicitly comments on how to interpret terminology. Saying involves general verba dicendi such as say, speak, talk or write, in which the fact that something is being communicated is foregrounded.

What do we mean by _ then? We have to consider our definition of _ What I am saying is _ A question I ask myself is _

Introducing the Topic gives explicit proclamations of what the text is going to be about, which facilitates the processing of the subsequent text for the reader. Focusing refers to a topic that has already been introduced in the text. Announces that the topic is in focus again, or it narrows down. Concluding is used to conclude a topic.

In the course of this essay, we shall attempt to analyse whether _ I will discuss _

Now I come to the next idea which I presented in the beginning _ I will only discuss the opponents of _ In conclusion, I would say that a single Europe would lead to. . . Exemplifying explicitly introduces an example. As an example of _, we can look at _ If we take _ as an example Reminding points backwards in the discourse As I mentioned earlier . . . to something that has been said before. As we have seen Adding overtly states that a piece of I would like to add that _ information or an argument is being added to existing one(s). Arguing stresses the discourse act being The _ which I argue for is _ performed in addition to expressing an opinion or viewpoint. Verbs used are performatives. Contextualising contains traces of the I have chosen this subject because_ production of the text or comments on (the I could go on much longer, but _ conditions of) the situation of writing.

Metadiscourse is also used by the writer to interact with her imagined reader in ways that create and maintain a relationship and that allow the writer to influence her reader, as in the examples in (2) on page 46. More examples of this type, and a taxonomy, are given in Table 3. The former type of metadiscourse is called metatext, while the latter is called writer-reader interaction (Ädel 2003). A more recent monograph of this work is Ädel (2006).


PARTICIPANT: focus on writer and/or reader of current text

Table 3. Taxonomy of personal metadiscourse functions from Ädel (2003) Discourse function

Example

Anticipating the Reader’s Reaction pays special attention to predicting the reader’s reaction to what is said, e.g. by explicitly attributing statements to the reader as possible objections or counterarguments conceived by him. Clarifying marks a desire to clarify matters for the reader; motivated by a wish to avoid misinterpretation. Negative statements are common. Aligning perspectives takes it for granted that the reader takes the writer’s perspective. The reader’s agreement is presupposed. Imagining Scenarios is a “picture this” type of encouragement that (often politely) asks the reader to see something from a specific perspective. It allows writers to make examples vivid and pertinent to the reader. Hypothesising about the Reader makes guesses about the reader and his knowledge or attitudes. Appealing to the Reader attempts to influence the reader by emotional appeal. The writer persona conveys her attitude with the aim of correcting or entreating the reader.

I do realise that all this may sound _ You probably never heard of _ before either You would be very surprised at _

I am not saying _, I am merely pointing out that _ By this I do not mean that _ If we [consider/ compare] _, we [can/will] [understand/see] _

If you consider_ , you can perhaps imagine_ Think back to when you were_ When you were that age_

You have probably heard people say that _

I hope that now the reader has understood _ In order for _ must You and I keep our minds open

Material One of the most important academic text types in L2 English composition is argumentative writing, which has been claimed to be particularly rich in metadiscourse. For this reason, it is particularly fitting to study the use of metadiscourse in argumentative essays. Two corpora of argumentative essays were used: the first set written by learners and the second by native speakers. The learner corpus is the “Swicle,” . Crismore (1989: 70), for example, states that metadiscourse is “quite prevalent” in argumentative writing, since “authors refer quite frequently to the state of the argument, to the reader’s understanding of it, or to the author’s understanding of his own argument.”

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Table 4. Sizes of the corpora Corpus

Variety

No. of words

No. of essays

Swicle Locness AmE Locness BrE

Learner English (L1 Swedish)* L1 American English L1 British English

205,000 150,000 96,500

350 175 118

*For a description of the Swicle, see http://www.englund.lu.se/research/corpus/corpus/swicle. html (successfully retrieved on January 31, 2005).

the Swedish component of the ICLE, the International Corpus of Learner English (Granger 1993, 1998). The ICLE project involves subcorpora of argumentative essay writing by university students who are native speakers of 14 different languages. Since the student writers are all learners of English at an advanced level, the focus of research is on overuse and underuse of linguistic phenomena, rather than on error analysis per se. The native-speaker material is a comparable corpus that is also offered by the ICLE coordinators, referred to by the acronym LOCNESS (the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays; Granger 1993). The LOCNESS material was produced by university students in both the United States and the United Kingdom. To enable comparison between the two varieties, the native-speaker material was divided into two corpora, one consisting of American English (AmE) and the other of British English (BrE). The corpus was also modified by excluding some essays composed at pre-university level, to make the samples maximally comparable. The sizes of the three corpora are summarized in Table 4. The ICLE is a prominent example of recent advances in the creation of computer learner corpora (CLC). By combining insights from corpus linguistic methodology and L2 research, researchers in CLC are able to describe interlanguage features with greater accuracy and greater levels of generalization than has ever been possible. The design of the ICLE project is such that results based on any, or all, of the learner corpora may be evaluated against a standard of comparison in the form of a native-speaker corpus. The ICLE subcorpora make it possible to . These languages include Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. For information about the ICLE available on the World Wide Web, see http://www.fltr.ucl.ac.be/fltr/germ/etan/cecl/Cecl-Projects/Icle/icle.htm; http://www.fltr.ucl.ac.be/FLTR/GERM/ETAN/CECL/cecl.html; and http:// www.abo.fi/fak/hf/enge/icle.htm (all successfully retrieved on January 31, 2005). . Articles on various aspects of the ICLE can be found in the 1998 volume edited by Granger listed in the References. . The term interlanguage was coined in the late 1960s to refer to “the special mental grammars that learners [construct] during the course of their development” (Ellis 1994: 44).


Figure 1. Frequency per 100,000 words of metadiscourse in the corpora

pinpoint which linguistic features are used considerably more or less by learners than by native speakers. The general idea is that “[w]hen matched with comparable native-speaker texts, a learner language corpus provides the basis for revealing the characteristics of learner language” (Johansson 1998: 7), such as interference from the L1 or possible universal features of learner language.

Results The amount of variation that was found in the use of metadiscourse in these corpora is quite staggering, as shown in Figure 1, which gives the normalized totals of metadiscourse across the three corpora. The Swedish learners heavily overuse metadiscourse by comparison with the native speakers. How do we explain this? For example, could it be that culturespecific patterns give rise to the sharp difference between nonnative and nativespeaker writing? Does the learners’ overuse have anything to do with universal strategies employed by those writing in a foreign language? Or have the learners simply not been sufficiently trained in argumentative writing? Are the corpora truly comparable? Potential explanations for the variation will be discussed later in this chapter, but I will first present the results in more detail, looking at both quantitative and qualitative findings. Figure 1 displays differences not only between the learners and the native speakers, but also between the two native-speaker groups. A most revealing way of pinpointing the differences between the AmE and BrE corpora is to break down the totals by drawing a distinction between “personal metadiscourse” and “impersonal metadiscourse.” Personal metadiscourse makes explicit reference to the writer and/or reader of the current text – for example, by means of pronouns such as I, we, and you – while impersonal metadiscourse does not make any explicit reference to the discourse participants. This is illustrated in two examples . The differences in the results were tested using Pearson’s chi-squared test or a chi-squared goodness-of-fit test, and were found to be statistically significant.

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Figure 2. Frequency per 100,000 words of personal metadiscourse in the corpora

Figure 3. Frequency per 100,000 words of impersonal metadiscourse in the corpora

below, which both involve the word mention. Example (3) represents personal metadiscourse, while example (4) represents impersonal metadiscourse. (3) As for the seemingly common misconceptions I mentioned above,... (Swicle 178). (4) Doubtlessly, the above-mentioned conditions have a beneficial effect... (Swicle 104).

The frequencies of personal metadiscourse are shown in Figure 2, and the frequencies of impersonal metadiscourse in Figure 3. Note that what the figures display are units of metadiscourse per 100,000 words. Also note that for a pronoun to count as metadiscourse, it needs to make reference to the writer qua writer and/or the reader qua reader – not just as experiencers in the world. This was true of approximately 15% of the total pronoun occurrences in the corpora in Ädel (2003). Comparing Figures 2 and 3, we see that the differences between the nativespeaker corpora are more pronounced for personal metadiscourse. In fact, all dif. In most cases, these units do not correspond to one single word. The unit of measurement for personal metadiscourse, for example, is (subject NP in the form of personal pronoun) + (finite VP). Each unit was counted as one occurrence, which allowed for consistent comparisons across corpora.


ferences are more pronounced for personal metadiscourse, but both figures still display the same relative ordering – mirroring that of Figure 1. In personal metadiscourse, the differences between the learners and the native speakers are particularly noteworthy. The learner frequencies are double those of the American writers, which, in turn, are double those of the British writers. Seen in terms of writer/reader/text visibility, the learner texts are found at one extreme, the British texts at the other, and the American texts in the middle.

Qualitative differences Let us go on to consider a more qualitative characterisation of the variation found. Example (5) presents a sentence that is typical of a style common in the learner material, marginal in the AmE corpus, and essentially absent from the BrE corpus: (5) I have decided to discuss the unpleasant experiences first of all – so let us get them out of the way! (Swicle, 357)

In several ways, this brief extract is typical of the Swedish learner style as represented in the Swicle corpus. First, the extract is personal. This is expressed by the personal pronouns I and us, which mark the presence of the writer and the reader. Second, it is interactive, also marking the presence of the imagined reader (expressed by let us). Third, it shows part of the “compositional machinery” and marks the situation and/or mechanics of writing. The writer is announcing her decisions about the structure of the text (I have decided . . .). The native-speaker writers, most notably the British writers, would be more likely not to adorn a sentence with such personal features, but instead produce something like the invented example (6): (6) The unpleasant experiences were X, Y and Z.

The first two points made above in the context of example (6) are supported by two previous studies of the Swicle. This work focuses on personal pronouns and other linguistic features of writer/reader “involvement” (Chafe 1982). In a pilot study of part of the Swicle, Altenberg (1997) concludes that Swedish learn. Analyzing written and spoken texts from the viewpoint of writer-reader relations, Chafe (1982) characterizes what he calls involvement with the audience as typical of a speaker and what he calls detachment from the audience as typical of a writer. He brings up various linguistic devices (such as the passive, first person reference, nominalizations, emphatic particles, etc.) to measure these two extremes. It should be noted that the involvement/detachment dichotomy is not a categorical distinction.

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ers are considerably more visible in their texts than native speakers of English. Although Altenberg studies involvement, his results are still likely to apply to personal metadiscourse to some degree. Another study, by Petch-Tyson (1998), compares features of writer/reader visibility across four different subcorpora of the ICLE, including the Swicle. Writer/reader visibility includes both involvement and some types of metadiscourse. Petch-Tyson shows that learners with L1s other than Swedish (Dutch, Finnish and French) are less prone than Swedish university students to use the personal pronoun I in their argumentative writing in English. This comparison indicates that the Swedish learners’ overuse of personal metadiscourse is not a general learner strategy. Another way in which Ädel (2003) found that the learner writers differed from the native speakers is that the former tended to string metadiscursive expressions together to a great extent. This phenomenon was referred to as greater “density” of metadiscourse in the learner material. An especially wordy example from a learner essay is example (7), in which sequences involving question and answer that could have been omitted have been put in square brackets: (7) [But then the question arises,] what are we saving time for? [The simple, but somewhat dejecting, answer to that question is, I think,] we do not know what we are saving our time for, or rather we have forgotten why we started to save time in the first place. [The next question then to demand an answer is], how does this time-saving mentality affect us? (Swicle, 107)

The persistent presence of the writer, the reader, and the text itself, as well as the frequent references to the use of language, tend to make the learner essays exhibit a “chatty” type of reflexivity, as we see in example (7). It is as if they are using metadiscursive expressions merely to expand their essays and get closer to making the minimum word limit. This may well be one (task-related) reason for the learners’ greater explicitness and more frequent use of reflexivity. I will connect this below to the factor “genre comparability,” discussed as one of the possible explanations for the great differences found.

The micro-level discourse functions of metadiscourse We have now seen the frequencies with which the writer persona, the imagined reader, and the current text are made visible in the different corpora, but we do not yet know what types of acts are being performed when this occurs. It may be that the differences across corpora run deeper than simple frequency of use. For example, despite not having the highest frequencies of metadiscourse, the native-speaker material may have metadiscourse performing the greatest range of


discourse functions. Alternatively, even if all three groups of writers use the same set of discourse functions, it would be valuable to know in what proportions they occur. To shed light on such questions, Ädel (2003) analyzed the micro-level discourse functions performed in texts when personal metadiscourse was used. Tables 2 and 3 present the taxonomy used for the discourse functions. They also define them and provide extracts from actual occurrences in the corpora. Note that the discourse functions can be mapped onto the three functions of metadiscourse – illustrated in the reflexive model in Table 1 – with the code/text and the participants (the writer and the reader) as the central components. The discourse functions in Table 2 primarily focus on structure and wording of the text (“metatext”), while the discourse functions in Table 3 focus on the discourse participants (“writer-reader interaction”). Figure 4 compares the distribution of discourse functions, described in Tables 2 and 3, across the three corpora. The discourse functions are shown in descending order of frequency. The results of the investigation revealed a great many differences in what the three groups used personal metadiscourse for (see Ädel 2003, for figures and more detailed analyses). The learner group showed the greatest diversity of discourse functions for personal metadiscourse. The learner writers showed a strong metalinguistic awareness and frequently dealt with terminology and definitions. The top three functions were Saying, Defining, and Introducing Topic. Example (8) in Table 5 gives a typical example, which fills the functions of defining and introducing the topic from a personal I perspective. The learner writers also exhibited greater writer visibility and more taking into account of the imagined reader than the native speakers. Linguistic self-awareness and linguistic exchanges between the writer and the imagined reader very much characterized the learner essays. The British English material showed quite the opposite tendency, showing very little metalinguistic awareness and remaining largely impersonal and monologic. There were hardly any expressions of direct reader address, nor was the writer persona particularly visible. When the writer did appear, it was to introduce the topic, to comment on the use of terminology, and to align the writer and reader’s perspectives. Example (10) in Table 5 gives a typical example, which offers an elaborate definition without making the writer or reader visible. This group has clearly adopted a writing norm that favors an impersonal style with few instances of mock interaction between the writer and reader. The American English material fell between these two extremes. The American writers made more explicit references to the structure or the wording of their essays than the British writers, but they were nowhere near the learner writers in this. They explicitly referred to their imagined readers to some degree, although not as often as the learners did. Example (9) in Table 5 gives a typical example, in which the writer invites the reader to consider a definition. The writer personas

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Figure 4. Comparison across corpora of the distribution of personal metadiscourse; the Y-axis represents frequency per 100,000 words

were more visible than in the British English material, but they did not come close to the extremes of the learner writers in making explicit appearances in their texts. Displaying one’s persona, persuading, negotiating and interacting with the imagined reader are important aspects of many types of written texts. Depending on factors such as the writing conventions of their native language, however, writers take different approaches to the type of persona they create and the type of impression they try to make on their readership. In the present material, the learners were more prone than the native speakers to construe their imagined readers as intimate friends. Many nonnative speaker essays gave an impression of the writer having an informal chat with a friend, very much based on presupposed mutual understanding and shared values, rather than an effort to persuade the general reader by means of argumentation and logical stringency. Since this is not the prototypical audience for argumentative writing (but rather for light newspaper columns or informal letters), this suggests that the Swedish learners need guidance in learning how to think of their audience. The American writers also tended somewhat in this direction, while the British writers seemed to regard their audience as a general one. Overall, the native-speaker writers made fewer appeals to the reader’s empathy and presupposed less similarity to themselves. Furthermore, the learner writers used a rhetoric of modesty, while the British writers in particular expressed themselves in terms of certainty and authority.10 10. For a discussion on this, see Ädel (2003).


Table 5. Examples of Defining from the three corpora Corpus

Example

Swicle

(8) The word “racism” is not so easy to define, but before I start writing an essay about this word and its meaning, I had better try to define my view of what lies in the word “racism”. (322) (9) Where do you draw the line between life and death? To determine this question, we have to consider our definition of life and our definition of death. (029) (10) In Article 5 the word “arbitrage” can be interpreted differently; on one hand it can mean that the president is an impartial observer and referee and does not deal with problems but on the other hand it can mean that he is in charge of the daily run of the country, obviously having a more dynamic and interventionist role. De Gaulle chose the second interpretation . . . (053)

AmE

BrE

Summing up, the three groups differ in their use of metadiscourse quantitatively as well as qualitatively. We are forced to conclude that, if we treat the LOCNESS material as a reasonable native-speaker norm, the learners do not achieve what Pawley and Syder called “native-like selection” (1983: 191). Putting one’s finger on exactly how and where advanced learners lack idiomaticity in a foreign language, or why their texts give an impression of non-nativeness, can be very difficult, but it is possible that overuse of metadiscourse is a candidate.

The influencing factors The important question raised by this review of the discrepancies in the use of metadiscourse between learner and native-speaker writing is, “What factors account for these differences?” The setup of the Ädel (2003) study did not allow for any definite statements to be made about the relative impact of the influencing factors. Instead of analyzing the causes of variation, the main aims were to develop the theory of metadiscourse and corpus-assisted methods for retrieving and analyzing it. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that the relevant factors are one or more of the following: (a) genre comparability, (b) register awareness, (c) cultural conventions, and (d) general learner strategies. By genre comparability I mean the extent to which the use of metadiscourse is dependent on the genre and the extent to which the genres are the same in the corpora under comparison. The learner and native-speaker essays do display some differences in this respect. Some of the British English essays are more expository in character in that they primarily aim to explain something or convey

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information about an issue, rather than to argue for or against an issue in a persuasive way. This factor is likely to have had some effect on the results, but we do not know how or whether, say, differences between argumentative and expository writing are likely to have a great impact on the use of metadiscourse. It clearly made a difference that the native-speaker writers had access to secondary texts on which to base their argument. One of the effects of the learner writers not having any secondary sources at their disposal was that the argumentative worlds of the learner writers ended up being very much limited to themselves and their own experiences. This tended to produce a narrative style rather than an argumentative one. The native-speaker material is somewhat problematic, not only with respect to access to secondary sources (intertextuality), but also with respect to time available (task setting). We know that in language production, the amount of time available and the possibilities for interaction profoundly influence the linguistic output (Chafe 1986). An investigation that I am currently carrying out strongly suggests that learner writers exhibit more involvement in timed than in untimed essays, and less involvement in essays for which they have access to other texts. The Swicle consists of both timed and untimed essays, while the native-speaker essays are primarily untimed. This may be one reason for the more chatty type of reflexivity exhibited in the learner material, as in example (7). Register awareness refers to the degree of the writers’ familiarity with the target register and mastery of the appropriate writing skills. It could be argued that the overuse of metadiscourse on the part of the learners constitutes a “breach of style” that is not appropriate to argumentative writing (either in English, or in Swedish). It does seem as though the learners are not very familiar with the argumentative essay format. Altenberg (1997: 130), in his study on part of the Swicle material, concluded that “the common basic deficiency among the Swedish learners [is, precisely,] a general lack of register awareness and a style of writing that is greatly influenced by spoken language.” He maintains that the Swedish students have not mastered the formal and impersonal style required for argumentative texts in English, and that they lack sufficient register awareness due to inadequate teaching. In this sense, degree of training and level of writing skill are factors that are likely to influence the use of metadiscourse. The influence of cultural conventions for writing is another factor that could account for differences in the use of metadiscourse. As Markkanen et al. (1993: 138) state, “[i]t can be assumed that the ways of using metadiscourse in writing may vary from one language to another, that the conventions followed in its use may be different in different cultures. From this it follows that when writing in a foreign language, new conventions may have to be adopted.”


It may be the case that the learners’ overuse of personal metadiscourse is partly due to writing conventions specific to Swedish. Personal metadiscourse involves overt references to the discourse participants, which are general markers of informality. In Swedish, informality in writing has been observed in many different arenas, and there is some evidence that tendencies towards informality may be particularly strong in contemporary norms for writing. As an example, a collection of academic essays published in the late 1980s describes the “informalisation of Sweden” from an interdisciplinary perspective. Anglo-Saxon and Swedish writing conventions may be different, either in the use of metadiscourse in particular, or in argumentative writing in general. Furthermore, the results suggest that there are differences between English-language cultures as well. The fact that the two native-speaker groups display such differences in their use of metadiscourse could indicate that conventions differ across varieties of English. (It is, of course, also conceivable that the American writers lack register awareness.) The fourth factor, referred to as general learner strategies, concerns the question of whether there are possible universal strategies employed by those writing in a foreign language. The results of the present investigation do indeed show discrepancies along the learner versus native-speaker axis, so one way of explaining the differences would be to attribute them to “learner language.” For example, it could be argued that bilingualism (or use of an L2) inherently involves increased metalinguistic awareness. A standard argument in the literature is that bi- or multilingual speakers become more ‘distanced’ from the languages they speak, and more prone to reflection on language itself: “Once the same object-referent is both ‘apple’ and ‘pomme,’ the speaker realizes that the words are not attributes of the object apple but of the English and French languages, respectively” (Mertz & Yovel 2000). The four factors are summarized in Table 6. The second column gives a concise characterization of the main argument proposed by the factor. The third column sums up the hypothesis. The fourth column sums up the source of the problem. The difficulty of distinguishing among the factors that influence the differences between learner writing and native-speaker writing cannot be sufficiently emphasized. In order to evaluate the various roles played by these factors, further studies are needed on (1) metadiscourse in professional L1 English writing, distinguishing between different genres and varieties, (2) metadiscourse in argumentative writing in Swedish, (3) metadiscourse in comparable learner data (preferably produced by speakers with L1s that are not closely related), and (4) the treatment of metadiscourse in instruction and learning and its effect on actual production.

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Table 6. Overview of potential explanatory factors: Four different explanations for differences across corpora Factor

Argument

Hypothesis

Source

Genre comparability

The “tertium comparationis” argument* The “instructional” argument The “contrastive rhetoric” argument The “universal claim” argument

The corpora under comparison are not comparable.

Corpus

Differences found between groups depend on background knowledge (training/instruction). Conventions for metadiscourse differ across the languages in question. There are universal strategies employed by those writing in a foreign language.

Educational community

Register awareness Cultural conventions General learner strategies

Native language

Learner status

*The term “tertium comparationis” is Latin for the third [part] of the comparison. It is used in traditional contrastive analysis to refer to the quality that two things that are being compared have in common, or the point of comparison.

Conclusion In this corpus study of metadiscourse in three varieties of English, considerable differences were found in the extent to which the three groups of writers anchored their essays in the current discourse situation. References to the structure and wording of the texts were heavily overused by the learner writers. In terms of writer/reader visibility, the learner writers were found at the extreme of visibility, the American writers in the middle, and the British writers at the extreme of impersonality. Factors identified as potentially accounting for these differences were genre comparability, cultural conventions, register awareness, and general learner strategies. The four factors were discussed, laying the foundation for further studies that aim to clarify the causes of these discrepancies. It was stressed that, without further research, we will not be able to falsify or verify hypotheses about the relative impact of these factors. This study has important implications for L2 teaching. One of the most important questions is how the differences outlined in this chapter between learner and native-speaker writing should be approached in L2 teaching. For example, L2 teachers often want to provide their students with good models for writing tasks. However, we need to ask what is meant by “good models,” considering that


the native-speaker corpora in the present study suggest that there is no uniform “Anglo-Saxon” norm. It is up to linguists to pose questions about how stable the differences between the two largest varieties suggested by the present study really are. We do not really know how conventions within the English-speaking world differ, nor do we know much about Swedish conventions for metadiscourse, or how they might differ from Anglo-Saxon conventions. Until we do, we will not be able to understand how best to adapt teaching applications. Based on the present investigation, one suggestion that needs to be made concerns argumentative writing tasks in L2 teaching. Essay writers should be given other texts as input, e.g. one or more argumentative texts as a point of departure. If essay writers were allowed to draw on other texts and quote secondary sources, their general argumentation (e.g. listing pros and cons) and their writing style would stand to gain a great deal. Such a procedure would likely reduce the number of overly personal essays drawing primarily on the writer’s experience. It would likely reduce the number of essays that have a very high involvement factor, and essays that are narrative rather than argumentative in character.

Acknowledgements Support for travelling to the ICIC conference is gratefully acknowledged from the Swedish foundations Kungliga Vitterhetsakademien (The Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities), Stockholm, and Kungliga Vetenskaps- och Vitterhets-Samhället, Göteborg.

References Ädel, A. (2006). Metadiscourse in L1 and L2 English. Studies in Corpus Linguistics 24. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Ädel, A. (2003). The use of metadiscourse in argumentative texts by advanced learners and native speakers of English. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Göteborg, Sweden. Altenberg, B. (1997). Exploring the Swedish component of the International Corpus of Learner English. In B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk & P. J. Melia (Eds.), PALC ’97: Practical applications in language corpora (pp. 119–132). Lodz: Lodz University Press. Bäcklund, I. (1998). Metatext in professional writing: A contrastive study of English, German, and Swedish. Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala University. Chafe, W. (1982). Integration and involvement in speaking, writing, and oral literature. In D. Tannen (Ed.), Spoken and written language: Exploring orality and literacy (pp. 35–53). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

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Chafe, W. (1986). Evidentiality in English Conversation and Academic Writing. In W. Chafe & J. Nichols (Eds.), Evidentiality: The linguistic coding of epistemology (pp. 261–272). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Connor, U. (1996). Contrastive rhetoric: Cross-cultural aspects of second language writing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Crismore, A. (1989). Talking with readers: Metadiscourse as rhetorical act. New York: Peter Lang. Ellis, R. (1994). The study of second language acquisition. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Granger, S. (1993). The International Corpus of Learner English. In J. Aarts, P. de Haan & N. Oostdijk (Eds.), English language corpora: Design, analysis and exploitation (pp. 57–69). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Granger, S. (Ed.). (1998). Learner English on computer. London: Longman. Halliday, M. A. K. (1994). An introduction to functional grammar (2nd ed.). London: Edward Arnold. Hockett, C. F. (1977). The view from language: Selected essays, 1948–1974. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Hyland, K. (1998). Persuasion and context: The pragmatics of academic discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 30, 437–455. Hyland, K. (2004). Disciplinary discourses: social interactions in academic writing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Jakobson, R. (1990). On language: Roman Jakobson (L. R. Waugh & M. Monville-Burston, Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Johansson, S. (1998). On the role of corpora in cross-linguistic research. In S. Johansson & S. Oksefjell (Eds.), Corpora and cross-linguistic research: Theory, method, and case studies (pp. 1–24). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Lyons, J. (1977). Semantics (Vol. 1). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Markkanen, R., Steffensen, M. S., & Crismore, A. (1993). Quantitative contrastive study of metadiscourse: Problems in design and analysis of data. Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics, 28, 137–151. Mauranen, A. (1993). Cultural differences in academic rhetoric: A textlinguistic study. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Mertz, E., & Yovel, J. (2002). Metalinguistic Awareness. In J. Verschueren, J.-O. Östman, J. Blommaert & C. Bulcaen (Eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics: 2000 Installment (no pagination). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pawley, A., & Syder, F. H. (1983). Two puzzles for linguistic theory: Nativelike selection and nativelike fluency. In J. C. Richards & R. W. Schmidt (Eds.), Language and communication (pp. 191–226). London: Longman. Petch-Tyson, S. (1998). Writer/reader visibility in EFL written discourse. In S. Granger (Ed.), Learner English on computer (pp. 107–118). London: Longman. Schiffrin, D. (1980). Metatalk: Organizational and evaluative brackets in discourse. Sociological Inquiry: Language and Social Interaction, 50, 199–236. Vande Kopple, W. J. (1985). Some exploratory discourse on metadiscourse. College Composition and Communication, 26, 82–93. Vassileva, I. (1998). Who am I/who are we in academic writing? A contrastive analysis of authorial presence in English, German, French, Russian and Bulgarian. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 8, 163–190.

A genre-based study of research grant proposals in China Haiying Feng City University of Hong Kong

Despite an increasing interest in the study and analysis of research grant proposals (e.g., Connor 1998, 2000; Connor & Mauranen 1999; Connor & Wagner 1999; Feng & Shi 2004), this newly emerged genre has so far not been addressed in the Chinese context. This chapter presents results of a genre analysis of nine successfully funded Chinese research grant proposals written by nine Chinese scholars. Proposals were analyzed in terms of the rhetorical moves and strategies. Interviews with the grant writers were also conducted. The study revealed some distinctive features of Chinese grant proposal writing that are attributable to various local contextualities, such as “face” and “networking” concerns, research and literacy traditions, sociopolitical structure and economic conditions.

Introduction There has been an increasing interest in the study of the grant proposal in the past decade or so (e.g., Connor 1998, 2000; Connor et al. 1995; Connor & Mauranen 1999; Connor & Upton 2004; Connor & Wagner 1999; Myers 1990; Tardy 2003; Van Nostrand 1994), because of the genre’s important status as the initial step in the process of knowledge production (Berkenkotter & Huckin 1995) and its unique communicative purpose of striking a balance between self-promotion and humility (Connor & Mauranen 1999; Myers 1990). Connor and Mauranen (1999) is the first study that analyzed the functional components of the genre. Based on the move analysis developed by Swales (1990) and Bhatia (1993), they identified ten moves: (1) Establishing the territory in which the proposed research is placed, (2) Indicating a gap in the territory, (3) Stating the goal of the proposed study, (4) Specifying the means of how the goal will be achieved, (5) Reporting previous research, (6) Presenting anticipated achievements, (7) Describing benefits of the study, (8) Introducing the research team and making a competence claim, (9) Making an

64 Haiying Feng

importance claim of the proposed research, and (10) Making a compliance claim to indicate relevance of the proposal to the objectives of the grant funder. Using these ten moves, Connor (2000) later examined rhetorical variations in 14 research grant proposals and confirmed her move identification by interviews with the five grant writers. The study found that the move specifying research means occupied more space than any other single moves in the sample proposals. The move of establishing research territory had a wide range of variation in length among individual proposals. Moves presenting benefits, making importance claim or competence claim occurred in only half of the sample proposals, whereas moves that indicated research territory, gap in the territory, goal of the proposed study and means to achieve the goal occurred consistently in the entire sample set. Following Connor and Mauranen’s move-scheme, Feng and Shi (2004) analyzed nine successful Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) research grant proposals, all in the field of Education between 1998 and 1999. Most of the moves identified in Connor and Mauranen (1999) were also found in this study of SSHRC proposals except the move of compliance claim. A move of communication of results, which was not present in Connor and Mauranen (1999), was identified in the study. This move describes how the researchers plan to communicate the results of the proposed study to the general public as well as to the academic community they are in. Consistent with the findings of Connor (2000), the study noticed that English grant writers preferred to devote considerable space to describing research means, and to set the scene for the reader by establishing the territory and indicating the niche repeatedly within as well as across all content sections. The studies reviewed thus far have described the genre mainly in the English context. It would be interesting to extend the studies to examine the grant writing in other sociocultural contexts. As Upton and Connor (2001) argued, genres have national/ethnic cultural expectations, and “crossing cultural boundaries requires re-learning at least part of the genre in light of its construction in the new culture” (p. 314). There have been some studies analyzing grant proposals written by Finnish scholars (Connor et al. 1995) and Latino personnel (Connor & Wagner 1999). However, as far as I know, no research has investigated research grant writing in China, where it is a newly emerged genre with no more than two decades of history. Two Chinese national research foundations – the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (see http://www.nsfc.gov.cn/) and the National Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Sciences (NPOPSS) of China (see http://www.npopss-cn.gov.cn/) – were founded respectively in 1986 and 1991. The ensuing emergence of grant proposal writing in China could in some measure be seen as a milestone indicating that Chinese academia and its system began to gradually change from central planning to marketization. With a rich

A genre-based study of research grant proposals in China

history and a rapidly-changing society behind them, how do Chinese scholars approach research grant proposal writing? The study aims to offer an exploratory description through text analyses of nine successful NPOPSS grant proposals and interviews with the successful grant writers. In comparison with the findings of my previous study of nine Canadian SSHRC grant proposals (Feng & Shi 2004), this study specifically aims to address the following research questions: 1. What are the distinctive moves and strategies adopted in Chinese research grant proposals? Do they differ from those used in English language research grant proposals? 2. What are the rationales behind the successful Chinese grant writers’ textual choices? How do grant writers perceive the grant writing practice in the current Chinese context?

The study Data Nine grant winners of the National Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Sciences (NPOPSS) of China (http://www.npopss-cn.gov.cn/) were solicited for onehour interviews because of their successful grant proposals. NPOPSS proposals were chosen because they are at a national level and from the broad area of social sciences and humanities, so that they could be as comparable as possible with the data of Feng and Shi (2004) – successful Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) standard research grant proposals. Due to the difficulties in data collection, however, the proposals obtained are limited in number while quite wide in the range of disciplinary areas and years of application (1996–2001), as shown in Table 1. The purpose of this study is, therefore, not to make generalizations about the generic features of Chinese grant proposal writing. By referring to previous studies on other Chinese academic genres, by combining textual analysis with interviews of grant writers, and by comparing and contrasting with previous analysis of SSHRC English grant proposals, the study aims to provide some preliminary findings that would be of some use for further research. Table 1 summarizes the participants’ profiles in the alphabetical order of their last names. Three of them were female and the rest were male. Among the nine proposals collected, three of them (P1, P6, and P7) applied for “youth projects” (qin nian xiang mu) while the rest applied for regular projects. As authors of suc-

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Table 1. Participants’ profiles Grant Pro- Gender posers

Discipline

Professional Academic Youth/Regular Year of the proposal Title Degree scholar

P1

Male

Lecturer

PhD

Youth

1998

P2

Female

Cultural Studies Education

PhD

Regular

2001

P3

Male

Linguistics

Associate Prof. Professor

2001

P4

Male

Professor

P5 P6

Male Female

Professor Lecturer

BA PhD

Regular Youth

1999 1998

P7

Female

Lecturer

MA

Youth

1998

P8

Male

Professor

MA

Regular

1996

P9

Male

English Literature Linguistics Language Education Social Studies Political Philosophy Linguistics

PhD (Ger- Regular many) PhD (U.S.) Regular

Associate Prof.

MA

Regular

1996

2001

cessful proposals, these scholars were the most desirable informants (Huckin & Olsen 1984). Table 2 summarizes the NPOPSS data, while Table 3 summarizes the SSHRC data. The nine NPOPSS proposals range from 994 to 4,032 Chinese characters, with a total of 23,922 characters (see Table 2). While the average length of the SSHRC proposals is 3,814 words (see Table 3), the average length of the NPOPSS proposals is 2,658 Chinese characters, which approximates only 1,772 English words based on my verbatim-translated versions of the Chinese proposals. Since no better method can be found to compare text length in such differing languages as English and Chinese, rough comparison based on translated versions serves the purpose of giving readers a direct feel of the length contrast.

Method Structural move analysis was performed following the identification criteria developed by Swales (1990), Bhatia (1993), and Connor and Mauranen (1999). The idea of move analysis is “to interpret regularities of organization in order to understand the rationale for the genre” (Bhatia 1993: 32). “Strategies,” rhetorical options to realize the moves (Bhatia 1993), were also identified in order to see how Chinese grant writers may realize moves differently than English grant writers.

1040 26% 341 8% 118 3% 747 19% 267 7% 225 6% 287 7% 165 4% 842 21% 0 0% 4032 100%

Territory

Sum

Communication of Results

Competence Claim

Achievement Claim

Benefit Claim

Research Means

Research Difficulties

Objectives

Importance Claim

Niche

P1

Move Type

620 17% 187 5% 0 0% 832 22% 190 5% 1045 28% 187 5% 65 2% 479 13% 125 3% 3730 100%

P2

494 20% 151 6% 171 7% 712 29% 0 0% 279 11% 165 7% 29 1% 390 16% 81 3% 2472 100%

P3

1140 31% 310 8% 82 2% 232 6% 0 0% 0 0% 221 6% 0 0% 1713 46% 0 0% 3698 100%

P4

533 26% 106 5% 46 2% 312 15% 0 0% 94 5% 34 2% 103 5% 844 41% 0 0% 2072 100%

P5

682 18% 20 1% 563 15% 558 15% 0 0% 394 11% 608 16% 0 0% 870 24% 0 0% 3695 100%

P6

150 9% 188 11% 0 0% 462 27% 94 5% 128 7% 182 11% 0 0% 527 30% 0 0% 1731 100%

P7

Table 2. Length (in Chinese characters) and percentages of move types in the NPOPSS proposals

69 5% 413 28% 128 9% 382 26% 112 7% 18 1% 376 25% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 1498 100%

P8

112 11% 33 3% 0 0% 205 21% 43 4% 206 21% 214 22% 0 0% 181 18% 0 0% 994 100%

P9

538 18% 194 8% 123 4% 494 20% 78 3% 265 10% 253 11% 40 1% 650 23% 23 1% 2658 100%

2/9

8/9

4/9

9/9

8/9

5/9

9/9

6/9

9/9

9/9

Average No. of ProLength posals with the Move

A genre-based study of research grant proposals in China 67

68 Haiying Feng

Table 3. Average length (in English words) and percentages of move types in the nine SSHRC proposals Moves

Average length (English words) No. of proposals with the move

Territory

992 26% Niche 244 6% 128 Importance Claim 3% Objectives 385 10% 0 Research Difficulties 0% 1207 Research Means 32% 146 Benefit Claim 4% 128 Achievement Claim 3% 413 Competence Claim 11% Communication of Results 171 5% Sum 3814 100%

9/9 9/9 9/9 9/9 0/9 9/9 8/9 6/9 6/9 9/9

The analysis was both quantitative and qualitative; length of each move and percentages of the total length were calculated, and each move was also analyzed in terms of its content and co-text. Discourse-based interviews with each participant were transcribed and analyzed in terms of the successful grant writers’ views of the grant application practices in China, and their reflections over their written products and grant writing processes. All the analyses, including the analyses of textual features and interviews, were crosschecked with a second rater. All the analyses were performed on the original Chinese versions of the proposals and interview transcripts. English examples shown in this chapter are for readers’ convenience.

Results and discussion The first section, “Moves and Strategies,” describes the moves and strategies adopted in the NPOPSS proposals, and how they differ from those adopted in the


English SSHRC proposals. The next section compares the move types used with those in the CARS model. The following sections discuss specific strategies used with two individual moves, “research means” and “competence claim.” The findings of the interview data, including the grant writers’ explanations of their textual choices, are integrated into the discussions of the two textual features.

Moves and strategies Following Connor and Mauranen (1999), ten moves were identified in the nine NPOPSS Chinese grant proposals (see Table 2). These are Establishing a research/ real-world territory (Territory), Indicating a niche (Niche), Outlining objectives or research questions (Objectives), Describing anticipated research difficulties (Research Difficulties), Describing research means (Research Means), Claiming the importance of the research (Importance Claim), Claiming anticipated achievements (Achievements Claim), Claiming research value or benefits (Benefit Claim), Claiming research competence (Competence Claim), and Describing means of communication of results (Communication of Results). The move Research Difficulties is unique to the NPOPSS Chinese grant proposals. Through discussing potential theoretical or methodological research difficulties, it serves the purpose of demonstrating that the grant writer has had a deep consideration of the proposed study. Reporting previous research, which was assigned an independent move in Connor and Mauranen (1999), was not identified in this study as a move for two reasons. First, the review of previous research is never a homogeneous chunk; it may spread over all moves (Crookes 1986; Hopkins & Dudley-Evans 1988) and carry different rhetorical functions. In addition, as Samraj (2002) argued, it is arbitrary to distinguish topic generalizations from reviews of previous research simply by the level of specificity and presence of citations. The second and the more important reason is, as I will discuss later, reviews of specific previous studies are few and far between in the Chinese proposals. Therefore, Reporting previous research was unnecessary to be assigned a move. Metadiscourse, which was identified as a move in the SSHRC proposals serving the function of introducing and justifying the structure or the content of the ensuing discourse, was not present in the NPOPSS proposals, given the short length of the Chinese texts. In general, however, the Chinese grant writers write within the same schematic structure as English grant writers. With the exception of Research Difficulties, the other nine moves identified also existed in the SSHRC English grant proposals. As Table 2 shows, Territory, Niche, Objectives, and Research Means were core moves in both the English and Chinese proposals. The consistent occurrence of Benefit Claim and Competence Claim in the sample set, plus the occurrence of

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Importance Claim in six proposals, all indicate that the Chinese proposals were no less promotional than the SSHRC proposals. The move of Communication of Results, however, existed in only two Chinese proposals. Compared with its existence in all nine SSHRC proposals, we can see that Chinese scholars may not be under the same pressure as English scholars in making their research public. Comparing the length of text each individual move type uses, we can see that the SSHRC English proposals tend to devote much more space than the NPOPSS Chinese proposals in the move of Territory and Research Means, while the Chinese proposals focus more on Objectives, Benefit Claim, and Competence Claim. Moreover, the strategies the NPOPSS Chinese proposals used to realize the function of a move sometimes differ greatly from the strategies employed by the SSHRC English grant proposals. Table 4 summarizes some major differences identified in Table 4. Contrastive strategies of four moves adopted in NPOPSS proposals and SSHRC proposals Moves

Strategies adopted in the NPOPSS Proposals

Strategies adopted in the SSHRC Proposals

Territory

Content-oriented: focus on introducing what this research is about; When the literature is reviewed: a. list items of previous research without comments; b. topic generalization c. theoretical Negative evaluations of previous research with agent implicit

Research-oriented: detailed review of the literature, focusing on introducing what previous researchers have done in the field of study

Niche

Critical evaluations of items of previous research; Together with “Territory,” form a tide-like structure Descriptions of research design, including participants, sample, data collection and data analyses

Brief move with diversified contents included, such as typing and printing, review of the literature, networking; Boilerplates – descriptions that can be applied to method sections of any study Claim their research competence Competence Explicitly claim their research comClaim petence by informing the reader their by reporting in detail their previous professional status, the rewards they have research in the related field of study got, their time available for the proposed research, and their health conditions; List research resources, including research facilities and access to the literature; Celebrity endorsement

Research Means


four moves: Territory, Niche, Research Means, and Competence Claim. Details are illustrated with examples in the following three subsections. I first discuss the distinctive strategies identified in Territory and Niche together in the next section.

Strategies adopted from the CARS model The Create-a-Research-Space (CARS) model (Swales 1990), which is often seen in English academic genres, exists in all nine Chinese NPOPSS proposals. Example (1) in Figure 1 is an excerpt constituting the first part of P4’s proposal, from which we can clearly see a CARS model. Sentence 1 and clause 2a establish the research territory and claim the centrality of the proposed research topic. Then from clause 2b to 4d, the writer attempts to indicate a niche in the territory. In the last paragraph beginning with sentence 5, the writer shows how this niche can be occupied by stating the objectives. Sentence 6 includes a benefit claim. Despite the use of the CARS model in the Chinese grant proposals, the strategies the Chinese grant writers used in realizing the CARS model are obviously distinctive from those in English grant proposals. First, in Territory, while the SSHRC English grant proposals tend to report items of previous research, the Chinese proposals usually just generally discuss the research territory. Moreover, the main purpose of this “topic generalization” (Swales 1990) is to introduce the niche, as we can see in example (1). With only one clause (2a) used to generalize the research field, the second half of the sentence (2b) quickly turns to the discussion of niche. This is quite similar to the situation in the English SSHRC grant proposal abstracts, where length limits need to be considered. In some cases, the NPOPSS Chinese proposals realized the Territory move by introducing content-related background knowledge; that is, they introduced what the proposed research is about instead of what has been researched in the area, as we can see in the following examples: (2) (Trans): Sino-Tibetan is a phylum consisting of hundreds of languages and used by 14 hundred million people . . . . (P5) (3) (Trans): The Renaissance in Europe is a world-shaking ideological and cultural movement in the world civilization. It changed not only the historical development of Europe, but also the fate of human beings. In this movement, deity standard which perceives deity/divinity/God as the center of the Universe was replaced by human standard which believes that human beings

. The original Chinese text samples are given in the Appendix.

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Figure 1. Example (1)


are the center of the Universe; human is no longer the slave of the deity/God, the value and the dignity of human have won respect, the desire of human has been satisfied, and the individuality of human has been emancipated/liberated. European Renaissance is the historical phenomena emerging when Capitalism first burgeoned; it is the inevitable result of the social, economic and cultural development after Middle-ages; it brings about a revolution in the areas of natural sciences, painting, sculpture, music, literature and arts. European Renaissance begins in Italy and formed an inundate trend of humanism. This research project will investigate . . . and compare. . . . (P4)

Another noteworthy difference lies in the move of Niche. In the study of English SSHRC grant proposals, some grant writers were found following a niche-centered, tide-like structure in reviewing the literature to serve promotional as well as interpersonal purposes. An example of such structure is shown in Figure 2. As can be seen in this particular structure, the recurrences of the Territory and Niche should not be considered simply as “recycling of moves.” Rather, the running of the text is like the tide, one wave after another, washing up, washing back, washing up again, pushing the discussion of the topic forward. In order to show the originality of the proposed research, the grant writers were in pressing need to point out the niche in the previous research. To avoid being too blunt and to facilitate solidarity with the reader, a “multiple wave” structure was often strategically used to tone down the negative evaluation of the literature, and to head off possible objections. Promoting the proposed study by pointing out the niche in the existing academic ecosystem and at the same time avoiding face-threatening acts are perhaps the same concerns of the Chinese grant proposals. However, the Chinese grant writers seem to have adopted a different strategy: they attempt to avoid mentioning specific books or articles when negative evaluations of previous research are unavoidable. In Figure 1, for instance, the writer does not tell us the specific titles of these books on foreign literature history on which he gives his sharp critiques. In later sentences, he uses references such as “their chapters on European literature,” “these discussions,” “they,” “some of them” to make the work he has sharply criticized agent-implicit. In sentence 4, in which he criticizes the foreign research on the Renaissance, he uses a general term, “western scholars,” as the agent who, in the grammatical sense, should be responsible for all those weaknesses he discusses in 4a, 4b, 4c, and 4d. But who are these western scholars? This finding confirms what Taylor and Chen (1991) and Bloch and Chi (1995) have argued in their studies. Although Chinese scholars consider taking a critical position acceptable and important, they usually choose not to identify by name the research they critically review. Although English writers may also choose not

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Figure 2. Example of niche-centered tide-like structure in English proposals

to name those they criticize, they would still put the reference in parentheses or in superscript numbers (see Bloch & Chi 1995: 236). That partly explains the predominant use of non-integral citations in the SSHRC proposals. The Chinese grant writers go a step further, leaving out specific citations. They seem to be very


much concerned with face-saving in this particular genre. The author of P2 expressed such concerns in an interview: “I would of course not specify the particular research, for I don’t want to offend scholars of this community while indicating the weaknesses of the previous research.” In my discussion with the author of P8 about the use of boosters in his proposal, in order to show me that his confidence was not coming from nothing, the author of P8 mentioned a book written by a professor from N University. He told me that the book was considered to be the most updated and authoritative work in the field at that time, but there were still many weaknesses. I then asked him why he did not cite this work in establishing the territory and indicating the niche, and he said, If I had done that, I would have offended those grant reviewers who came from N University. And other grant reviewers would also think, “How could you depreciate a book written by an authoritative figure of the field even before you start your own research?” My proposal would have been turned down if I had written like that. I dare not to write like that. (P8 author)

While saving face and valuing the precedent are major explanations the NPOPSS grant writers offered for their agent-implicit niche-indication behavior, another possible motive, although the grant writers did not and would not admit it, could be that they can critique the previous research more sharply in this way to create a research space. As they know, general and vague arguments are most difficult to attack. All nine proposals have the Niche move, but only one proposal (P1) has critiqued specific studies in establishing a niche. Among the four options for this move – counter-claim, gap, question and continuation (see Swales 1990: 142) – eight out of nine proposals have chosen gap (directly indicating the limitations of the previous research) in realizing the move, which is obviously rhetorically sharper than the other three options. P2 has used both the strategies of gap and continuing a tradition, and P5 has used counter-claim. In this sense, Chinese scholars are no less contentious than English scholars, at least in this promotional genre.

Strategies adopted in the research means move Compared with English grant proposals, Chinese grant proposals do not use as much text to describe research means. While the Research Means move in the SSHRC research grant proposals had approximately 1207 words on average, constituting approximately 32% of the total length in the NPOPSS proposals, Research Means had an average length of only 265 Chinese characters, constituting approximately 10% of the average total length. One proposal (P4) did not have

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the Research Means move at all. In the proposals that offered sketchy descriptions of proposed research methods, diversified contents were included. The Chinese grant proposals included literature review, typing and printing, networking, and so on in the Research Means move. This is different from the SSHRC English proposals, whose Research Means moves described mainly the research design, including participants, sample, data collection and data analysis. In the Chinese proposals, collecting and then reviewing literature is considered to be an important part of the research work instead of pre-research work. In some cases, it is even the sole work of the research, as we can see in example (4): (4) (Trans): If this proposed project is approved/sanctioned, (we) attempt to proceed in the following 3 stages: First, Preparatory Stage (July, 1996-Aug., 1996) 1. Discuss and decide the outline of “National language policies” and respective writers for each country, 2. Specify the means by which to collect literature, 3. Each one comes up with a reference list; select some of the books or articles to copy or purchase. Second, Individual Investigation/Research Stage (Sept, 1996-June, 1997) Each research team member comes up with one or two research reports on the part of the work they undertake. Decide the writer(s) who will write up the final report. Third, Comparing Stage (Sept, 1997-June, 1999) (P9)

In the following two sketchy examples, the research methods were described to include formal and informal discussions among co-researchers, corporate course offerings and seminars, expert evaluations, and even typing and printing. These descriptions were not found in the Research Means move of the SSHRC English grant proposals. (5) (Trans): After the project gets funded, besides corporation in the forms of informal discussion, formal discussion, and course offering together, we would also adopt methods such as field investigation and seminars to further discuss the following issues respectively: . . . (P3) (6) The research methods of this project mainly include: (1) Collecting materials; (2) research on a special topic; (3) academic seminar; (4) Evaluations by experts; (5) typing and printing. (P8)

P2’s Research Means move is the longest among the Chinese proposals. However, it seems like a boilerplate, which can be applied to the method section of any study, as in example (7).


(7) (Trans): This project will insist on combining theory and practice, using teaching practice as the fundamental basis and final evaluation criterion of the theoretical research. The project will attach importance to the link between history and present life, respect historical experience, and pay attention to the various emerging issues. The project will lay emphasis on contrastive studies, draw on the update research achievements overseas, and develop the useful and discard the useless by relating to the reality of Chinese elementary education curriculum reform and development. The project will be conducted by combining theoretical research and experimental research. Research Plan: The principal investigator will be responsible for the progress of the research. The research will be divided into several sub-projects according to the different research areas each co-investigator specializes in. Each co-investigator will be responsible for one sub-project and the submission of mid-term and final research results. The co-investigators will discuss with each other at every stage, communicate the research results at the present stage and make plans for the next stage. Progress Plan: Stage one: Sept, 2001-Sept, 2002 To set up the research team and divide the work preliminarily, to collect more literature materials based on the materials we have had, to get ready for the start of the research, and to make plans for the general research project and each sub-project. To hold several small-scale meetings to discuss the research plans, and to finally decide the detailed research plan of this stage (stage one). Stage two: Sept, 2002-Sept, 2003 To prepare for the materials (literature) and conduct a small-scale experimental research. To design teaching experiments, and the contents and methods of questionnaires and interviews. To submit the mid-phase research results, to communicate the results among sub-project groups, and to further design the progress plan of the general research project. Stage three: Oct, 2003-Oct, 2004 To further the research of the midphrase, to substantiate the research report, to invite experts to evaluate the research, to complete the project and submit the research results to relevant upper-level institutions. Research results will be published subsequently in academic journals. (P2)

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The writer first states her research rationale, which contains a lot of clichés, such as “to combine theory and practice,” “to connect history with present situation,” and “to develop the literature by filling its niche.” The research plan she then proposes also seems to consist of boilerplates that can be cut and pasted to other proposals with few changes. She mentions “small-scale experimental research” in Stage two, however, without any elaboration on the research design, unlike English grant writers. In the interview with P2’s author, she told me that they ultimately did not conduct the experiment or the post-experimental survey. “I decided to focus only on the theoretical part. It doesn’t matter, as long as I have some publications come out,” she said. The participating scholars offered quite a few explanations for their brief and kaleidoscopic descriptions of research methods. One major explanation they offered concerns the evaluation criteria of grant proposals. In their view, the research design is not what they need to consider at the stage of writing the proposal; the grant committee would pay more attention to the research record of the applicants rather than the research design. In the words of P8’s author, the grant committee would consider most “whether this grant applicant has already written some books or articles.” A detailed proposal of research methods, in the eyes of the committee, can not indicate the writer’s research competence at all, while the writer’s previous publications can. Some informants mentioned the impact of central planning and time constraint. The authors of P4 and P8 for instance, who have either been “expert reviewers” or served on the grant committee of NPOPSS several times, indicated that, unlike in western countries, where researchers generally have the freedom to choose research topics they think worthwhile, in China, the government imposes stringent instructions on research orientations. According to these informants, the NPOPSS every year announces a list of research topics. Scholars are required to choose topics from the list and develop proposals. If a scholar chooses a research topic that is not on the list, that scholar most probably will not be funded. After the announcement of research topics, there is usually a tight deadline for proposal submissions. Therefore, applicants usually do not have much time to carefully consider the topics they choose and design a study accordingly. The author of P3 described his case as follows, Actually I didn’t know what to write, and I can even say I didn’t know at that time what I should specifically do to go about the research. So I just wrote down what I could think of, some of which might not be relevant, such as the discussions among the team members. I know I should write something like data collection and data analysis, but at that time since I was in a hurry to write up the proposal and submit for application, I didn’t have much time to give deep consideration. (P3 author)


In my talk with P2, I critiqued her research methods section as boilerplates without substantial content. Her answer drew our attention to an issue that has actually been discussed by several previous studies (e.g., Bloch & Chi 1995; Calvert & Shi 2001; Gao, Li, & Lu 2001): the underdevelopment of the social sciences in China and the lack of academic training of Chinese scholars. P2’s author introduced the fact that during the Cultural Revolution almost all scholarly publishing ceased and universities shut down. It was not until late 1970s that academic journals began to reappear and the university entrance examination system resumed. The ruin of academic traditions during the Cultural Revolution, and the hindered scholarly communication with western countries due to political and economic pressures, all make the reestablishment of disciplinary knowledge hard and slow. P2’s author admitted that her generation, which received high education in the late 1970s or early 1980s and is now the leading force of Chinese academics, did not have systematic training on research methods. When I asked the informants if research methods are currently taught in Chinese universities, the authors of P4, P5, and P8 said that they would give their graduate students guidance on research methods through apprenticeship, while other scholars admitted that they had never heard of a course teaching specifically research methods. The explanations offered by the informants, although different, are actually related to each other. It may well be the lack of an empirical research tradition that gave rise to the policies set by the funding agency, including the grant proposal evaluation criteria and tight submission deadline. These policies and practices may somehow further contribute to Chinese scholars’ ignorance of the importance of research methods, particularly in grant proposal writing.

Strategies adopted in the Competence Claim move Competence Claim is a move serving to demonstrate to the grant committee the researchers’ competence in successfully undertaking the proposed research. This move exists in both the NPOPSS Chinese grant proposals and the SSHRC English grant proposals, but as a comparison of Table 2 and Table 3 indicates, the Chinese grant proposals comparatively devote much more space (650 characters on average, constituting 24% of the average total length) to this move than the English proposals (about 413 words on average, consisting of 11% of the average total length). The heavy weight devoted to this move again reveals that Chinese grant writing is no less promotional than English grant writing. Interestingly, whereas the English grant writers usually claim their research competence through detailed discussions of their own previous work, the Chinese grant writers prefer to explicitly claim their research competence by listing

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both relevant and irrelevant publications, and by informing the reader of their professional status, the rewards they have received, their time available for the proposed research, and even their health conditions. Listing research resources is also an effective means in claiming research competence. This may be due to the fact that many Chinese academics have limited access to academic literatures (especially those of foreign countries) and are unable to afford some basic research facilities such as a personal computer. Having some research resources already at hand could be an advantage and a condition of getting the grant. The following example shows all these strategies in claiming the competence for taking up the proposed project: (8) . . . (Trans): The principal investigator of this project is professor, supervisor of PhD students, Head of Philosophy Department of . . . University. His book . . . has won the reward of . . . and his book . . . has been translated and published in Korean. (He) has published over a hundred articles, dozens of books, constituting approximately 3 million Chinese characters. (He/his work) has certain influences overseas. The principal investigator has been in the field of Chinese traditional philosophy for many years, has quite strong research competence and administrative and organizational abilities, has broad connections in the academy, and has rich experience in organizing cooperative research. Secondly, the principal investigator is not engaged in any other research project right now, and therefore has enough time and energy for this proposed project. . . . At present, the main research resources of this project include: (1) the topic-related domestic and overseas materials/literature our research team members have collected in recent years; (2) Reports of the relevant research achievements released by domestic and overseas academic journals and research institutions; (3) Latest research achievements in the relevant research area; (4) Two personal computers owned by our research team can be used for this research project, including typing and printing the research results; these two computers also have access to the Internet, therefore can ensure the efficiency of this proposed research. (P8)

In some proposals, we can even see the use of “celebrity endorsement” in the Competence Claim move: (9) (Trans): We plan to invite . . . , . . . , . . . , . . . , and . . .who works with Chinese Minority Committee to be advisors of our research project. (P9)


“Celebrity endorsement” is a strategy often used in business genres such as advertising. In example (9), some “big names” of the field are mentioned in order to show that under the guidance of these people, the research team will be able to successfully complete the project. Considering the Chinese normal practice (that so-called “advisors” do not engage in the research project in the real sense), the cited sentence in example (9) is probably no more than “celebrity endorsement.”

Summary This chapter presents results of a genre analysis of nine successful NPOPSS Chinese grant proposals written between 1996 and 2001. Analysis of rhetorical moves and strategies showed that the Chinese grant proposals followed a similar discourse structure and displayed similar stylistic features to those identified in English grant proposals. In particular, the adoption of the CARS model and the considerable space devoted to the Competence Claim move suggest a strong promotionalism, which we can also see in English grant proposals. Differences between Chinese grant proposals and English grant proposals were still evident, however. Compared with English grant proposals which tend to support their strong claims with elaborate arguments (Connor 2000; Feng & Shi 2004), the Chinese grant proposals were comparatively brief in general, and implicit in moves such as Research Means. In addition, different strategies were adopted by the Chinese grant writers in realizing moves such as Niche, Research Means, and Competence Claim. These differences were explained by the grant writers interviewed as results of some contextual factors – lack of research resources; lack of an empirical research tradition; grant application and evaluation practices; and Chinese scholars’ concerns about plagiarism, “face,” and networking.

Conclusions and implications With only nine proposals in the corpus, all in the field of humanities and social sciences, this study must be cautious in making generalizations concerning Chinese grant proposal writing. Nevertheless, by relating findings to previous studies of other academic genres in Chinese and of Chinese research traditions, and at the same time by comparing findings with those concerning English grant proposal writing, the study may offer some useful insights for Chinese grant writers, research grant agencies, and Chinese academia, as well as contrastive discourse analysts.

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Since the research grant proposal is a new genre in China, most Chinese scholars are dealing with the genre intuitively, with very little writing support from either the universities they are in or the research foundations. This study of successful national-level Chinese proposals may be of interest to novice Chinese grant writers, for it helps to demystify this occluded genre and its rules in China. It may also be of use to Chinese research foundations by alerting them to the weaknesses in Chinese grant proposal writing in the aspects of literature review and research design. Since detailed literature reviews and descriptions of research designs could help grant reviewers make fair judgments about the quality of proposed projects, it is suggested that grant agencies make some relevant changes in their application policies and evaluation practices to encourage Chinese grant writers to pay more attention to these two parts. The study brings to our attention issues concerning the lack of research resources and lack of empirical studies in the “soft” disciplines in China. The material and logistical problems, which may also exist in other developing or Third World countries as described by Canagarajah (1996), are now being solved with the rapid increase of funding every year and economic development in China. However, lack of a well-established empirical research tradition, especially in the field of social sciences, is not a problem that can be solved in one day. In view of this, this study hopes to serve as a reminder to Chinese scholars who are in the fields of social sciences that more attention should be given to the establishment of an empirical research tradition. Finally, this study attempts to convey the idea that it is inappropriate to label textual differences reflected in writings of different ethnic cultures simply as cultural differences; rather, the differences may be attributable to various local contexts, such as research and literacy traditions, sociopolitical structure, and even economic conditions. It calls for more studies of various academic genres in Chinese to look for Chinese writing patterns and investigate the underlying influential factors. Diachronic studies of research grant proposals are also needed to see how grant proposal writing in China may experience changes in this rapidly changing society.

Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the warm support of the Chinese scholars who kindly offered me their proposals and participated in the interviews. Many thanks to Dr. Bertha Du-Babcock and Prof. Vijay Bhatia for their valuable comments on the earlier draft of this chapter. I would like to give special thanks to the editors of this volume for their encouragement and their constructive criticism, which


are helpful for me not only in revising this chapter, but also in improving my own academic writing in general. Any errors that remain are entirely my own.

References Berkenkotter, C., & Huckin, T. N. (1995). Genre knowledge in disciplinary communication: Cognition/culture/power. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Bhatia, V. K. (1993). Analysing genre: Language use in professional settings. London: Longman. Bloch, J., & Chi, L. (1995). A comparison of the use of citations in Chinese and English academic discourse. In D. Belcher & G. Braine (Eds.), Academic writing in a second language: Essays on research and pedagogy (pp. 231–274). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Calvert, P. J., & Zengzhi, S. (2001). Quality versus quantity: Contradictions in LIS journal publishing in China. Library Management, 22, 205–211. Canagarajah, A. S. (1996). “Nondiscursive” requirements in academic publishing, material resources of periphery scholars, and the politics of knowledge production. Written Communication, 13, 435–472. Connor, U. (1998). Comparing research and not-for-profit grant proposals. In Written discourse in philanthropic fund raising: Issues of language and rhetoric (pp. 45–64). Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Center on Philanthropy. Connor, U. (2000). Variation in rhetorical moves in grant proposals of US humanists and scientists. Text, 20, 1–28. Connor, U., Helle, T., Mauranen, A., Ringbom, H., Tirkkonen-Condit, S., & Yli-Antola, M. (1995). Tehokkaita Eu-projektiehdotuksia: Ohjeita kirjoittajille [Strategies in successful proposals for European Union research grants]. Helsinki, Finland: TEKES. Connor, U., & Mauranen, A. (1999). Linguistic analysis of grant proposals: European Union research grants. English for Specific Purposes, 18, 47–62. Connor, U., & Upton, T. A. (2004). The genre of grant proposals: A corpus linguistic analysis. In U. Connor & T. A. Upton (Eds.), Discourse in the professions: Perspectives from corpus linguistics. (pp. 235–256). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Connor, U., & Wagner, L. (1998). Language use in grant proposals by nonprofits: Spanish and English. New Directions for Philanthropic Fundraising(22), 59–74. Crookes, G. (1986). Towards a validated analysis of scientific text structure. Applied Linguistics, 7, 57–70. Feng, H. Y., & Shi, L. (2004). Genre analysis of research grant proposals. LSP & Professional Communication, 4, 8–32. Gao, Y., Li, L., & Lü, J. (2001). Trends in research methods in applied linguistics. English for Specific Purposes, 20, 1–14. Gilbert, G. N. (1977). Referencing as persuasion. Social Studies of Science, 7, 113–122. Hopkins, A., & Dudley-Evans, T. (1988). A genre-based investigation of the discussion sections in articles and dissertations. English for Specific Purposes, 7, 113–122. Huckin, T., & Olsen, L. (1984). On the use of informants in LSP discourse analysis. In Pugh, A. and Ulijn, J. (Eds), Reading for professional purposes (pp. 120–129). Heinemann, London. Myers, G. (1990). Writing biology: Texts in the social construction of scientific knowledge. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Rose, S. K. (1993). Citation rituals in academic cultures. Issues in Writing, 6, 24–37.

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Samraj, B. (2002). Introductions in research articles: Variation across disciplines. English for Specific Purposes, 21, 1–17. Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Tardy, C. M. (2003). A genre system view of the funding of academic research. Written Communication, 20, 7–36. Taylor, G., & Chen, T. (1991). Linguistic, cultural, and subcultural issues in contrastive discourse analysis: Anglo-American and Chinese scientific texts. Applied Linguistics, 12, 319–336. Upton, T. A., & Connor, U. (2001). Using computerized corpus analysis to investigate the textlinguistic discourse moves of a genre. English for Specific Purposes, 20, 313–329. Van Nostrand, A. D. (1994). A genre map of R&D knowledge production for the US Department of Defense. In A. Freedman & P. Medway (Eds.), Genre and the new rhetoric (pp. 133–145). London: Taylor & Francis.

Appendix Example 1

（1）“八五”, “九五”期间, 对外国文学史的研究是热门课题.(2a)虽然至今出版的外国文学史已有十余种,(2b) 但是有关欧洲文艺复兴时期文学的章节大同小异,内容简单,空泛,缺乏有深度的理论剖析.(3a) 这些论述侧重对欧洲文艺复兴时期重点作家的生平介绍和主要作品的评析, 而忽略了对文艺复兴这一历史时期的系统,深入的研究;(3b)它们往往满足于前人的研究成果, 有些甚至是将欧美出版物编译,拼凑而成;(3c) 在对文艺复兴时期欧洲诸国的国别研究中, 未能将它们置于欧洲这一氛围中进行全面,有机的论述, 对于主要国家之间的相互关系和影响则基本没有涉及. （4a）在国外有关文艺复兴的研究中, 西方学者往往过分地强调人文主义者某些片面的观点; （4b）在讨论个人主观能动性时,往往过分夸大人的作用; (4c)在论述人摆脱神的桎锆时, 往往放纵人的私欲和享乐主义;(4d)在宣扬人性时,往往片面强调个性的解放. （5）本课题旨在运用马克思主义的唯物史观对欧洲文艺复兴的兴起，繁荣和衰亡过程进行综合的研究；实事求是地评述中世纪文学传统的影响，哲学和宗教与文学的关系，人性与文学等一系列颇有争议的问题；客观地分析欧洲文艺复兴时期各国文学的特点，以及相互间的影响。本课题的研究成果将深化我国在这一领域的研究，其研究方式也将为我国的外国文学研究闯出一条新路。

Example 2

汉藏语系是一个有数百种语言, 14亿人口使用的大语系. . . .

Example 3

欧洲文艺复兴是世界文明史上一场翻天覆地的思想文化运动, 它改变了欧洲的历史进程, 也改变了人类的命运. 在这场运动中, 以神为宇宙中心的神本位被以人为宇宙中心的人本位所取代; 人不再是神的奴隶, 人的价值, 人的尊严赢得了尊重, 人的欲望得以实现, 人的个性得到了解放. 欧洲文艺复兴是资本主义萌芽时期出现的历史现象，是中世纪之后社会经济文化发展的必然结果, 也引发了自然科学,绘画,雕塑,音乐,文学和艺术领域的一场革命. 欧洲文艺


复兴发轫于意大利, 形成了一股势不可挡的人文主义思潮. 本课题将纵向探讨文艺复兴形成，发展和衰亡的社会，思想因素，横向对比文艺复兴时期欧洲主要国家 – 意大利，法国，英国，西班牙，葡萄牙和德国 – 之间的相互关系，相互影响。

Example 4

本课题如能批准, 拟分3个阶段进行: 一, 准备阶段 (1996 年7月至8月) 讨论确定 “国家语言政策”撰写提纲和相应国家的撰稿人, 明确搜集资料的途径和方法, 每人列出有关参考资料的书目,筛选后复印或购置. 二, 专题研究阶段(1996年9月-1997年6月) 各人完成各自承担的研究报告1-2种. 确定综合报告的撰稿人. 三, 综合比较阶段 (1997年9月-1999年6月)

Example 5

课题获得批准后,我们除继续以非正式讨论,正式讨论,共同开课的形式进行合作外，还将采取实地考察,召集小型学术会议等方法, 对下列问题逐一进行更深入，广泛的探讨和论证: . . .

Example 6

本课题的科研手段主要包括：（1）资料收集;（2）专题研究; （3）学术讨论（4）专家评议；（5）计算机录入与打印。

Example 7

本课题坚持理论与实践相结合，将教学实践作为理论研究的根本基础和最终检验标准。本课题重视历史与现实的联系，尊重已有的历史经验，关注显示中的各种问题。本课题注重国内外的比较研究，及时吸收国外有关研究成果，结合基础教育课程改革和发展的实际对其进行扬弃和取用。本课题采用理论研究与实验研究相结合的方法进行。 . . . 研究工作方案：由项目负责人全面负责研究工作的进行。根据课题组成员的不同学术优势和专业特长，将各项研究内容分为若干子课题，项目负责人和课题组各个成员分别作为子课题负责人，承担子课题的具体研究工作，并且提交中期及最终研究成果。各子课题组之间在每阶段进行若干次交流，讨论，对本阶段的研究成果进行交流，并作出下一步研究的具体计划。进度计划：第一阶段：2001年九月-2002年九月组建研究队伍并进行初步分工，在原有资料的基础上进一步扩大收集范围，做好开题准备，作出总课题及子课题具体研究计划。召开若干次小型会议对各子课题研究计划和总课题研究计划进行讨论，并最终确定本阶段的详细研究计划。第二阶段：2002年九月-2003年九月资料准备及调查并进行小规模的实验研究。设计教学实验，问卷及访谈内容与方法。拿出中期研究成果，各

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子课题组之间互相交流研究成果，对总课题的进展做进一步规划。第三阶段：2003年十月-2004年十月继续对中期成果的深入研究，充实研究报告，请有关专家对本研究进行评审，鉴定，结题并送报相关主管部门。研究成果以论文的形式陆续在刊物上发表。

Example 8 本课题负责人 . . . 为教授，博士生导师，现任 . . . 大学哲学系主任。所著《 . . . 》获 . . . 奖，所著《 . . . 》被译为朝鲜文在韩国出版，发表论文百余篇，著作十余部，近三百万字，在海外有一定影响。多年来，本课题负责人一直从事中国传统哲学的研究，具有较高的学术研究能力以及较强的行政管理和组织能力，在学术界有着广泛联系，组织合作研究的经验也很丰富。其次，本课题负责人目前没有主持其他科研项目的研究工作，有较充分的时间和精力保证本课题的顺利进行。 . . . 目前，本课题研究的主要资料设备包括：（1）课题组成员近年来收集到的国内外公开出版或发表的与本课题有关的资料；（2）国内外报刊，研究机构经常性发布的相关成果报导；（3）本课题在实施过程中获得的相关领域的最新成果；（4）本课题组目前个人拥有的二部电脑可供本课题的研究使用，包括研究成果的录入和打印等；本课题组成员的个人电脑还具备与国内外有关电脑网络连网的能力，可以充分保证本课题研究工作的效率。

Example 9 拟聘请 . . .，. . .， . . .， . . . 及国家民委 . . . 为本课题组的顾问。

Different cultures – Different discourses? Rhetorical patterns of business letters by English and Russian speakers Maria Loukianenko Wolfe Iowa State University

The chapter presents a cross-cultural analysis of rhetorical patterns in Russian and American business correspondence. The choice of linguistic features to be analyzed was guided by previous research in English as a Second Language, English for Specific Purposes, and Professional Communication studies. A few areas of Hofstede’s (1984) theory of cultural dimensions, such as power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and individualism/collectivism, were adapted for the linguistic and rhetorical analysis of the American and Russian business letters, and the data were tested in terms of these cultural dimensions. The results help illustrate the approach that could be taken while teaching intercultural rhetoric in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) business writing courses as well as Business Communication courses.

Introduction The economic globalization that we are experiencing at the beginning of the 21st century calls for a new perception of business communication across cultures. International business with various intercultural enterprises and corporations is becoming the cornerstone of the world economy. The English language has become the main and probably the preferred medium for facilitating the processes of business communication across borders and between people speaking languages other than English. Consequently, understanding the potential risk of miscommunication between cultures becomes extremely important, as miscommunication may result in significant damages and losses in the world market. Current business communication research and practice address the issue of intercultural communication (Miles 1997; DeVoss et al. 2002). However, most of the studies (Hagen 1998; Edwards 2000; Eustace 1996; Stevens 2000, 2001) limit

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their reflection to factoids about cross-cultural misunderstanding. In these studies, the Western model of communication becomes dominant, thus marginalizing the native communicative patterns of participants in communication across cultures and labeling the presence of “otherness” in students’ writing as well as business communication practices as problematic and negative. Hagen (1998) fairly describes her approach to the study of business writing in Russia: “I was still thinking like an American, making American assumptions” (p. 110). Lack of cultural sensitivity has lasting pedagogical consequences as well. In 1997, Miles expressed awareness of the problem nonnative English speaking students have with professional communication curricula: The division of labor is such that the non-native English speakers comprise a great number of clients and business people, but are almost nonexistent in our classes. The result is a rather ethnocentric portrayal of American students as active producers and all “others” as passive consumers from somewhere else... Non-native English speakers are not seen as an active audience who co-construct meaning, but a passive one who functions as little more than barriers to “success(pp. 186, 188) ful communication.”

The current theoretical research and practice necessitate efforts of professional communication and contrastive rhetoric studies to find ways to help students move beyond the recipes for “successful communication” and become active “producers” of meaning who can critically reflect on intercultural communication and decide for themselves what rhetorical patterns they would choose to communicate with foreign partners. To be able to define these different rhetorical patterns across cultures, researchers need to draw from an analysis of real-life data, e.g., business correspondence. Such an analysis may assist in designing professional communication curriculum that would provide students with more complex understanding of intercultural discourse. It may also help avoid the risks of – underestimating the complexity of the issue of intercultural communication. – seeing nonnative English speaking students as passive recipients of knowledge and nonnative business partners as unable to construct knowledge. – oversimplifying professional communication curricula and narrowing them down to a set of “tips” for communicating across cultures. The present study exemplifies an approach to studying business correspondence (business sales letters written by native English and Russian speakers) that may help avoid these risks in professional communication classrooms. Using the data of sales and promotional letters, I construct and test a framework that suggests ways to explore how both American and Russian writers and

Different cultures – Different discourses?

readers “draw on their own backgrounds, values, and communities” while they create a written text (a sales letter) and also the ways they “respond to verbal, visual, and cultural cues in the text before them” (Thrush 1997: 174). This comparison of the rhetoric of American and Russian business writing through the suggested framework should also help Business English instructors define the patterns to be attended and taught to native Russian speakers by Business English courses. It could also become a classroom technique to teach our students not simply patterns and models of professional communication in another language, but help them understand language as a living and breathing phenomenon, and texts “not merely as static products but as functional parts of dynamic cultural contexts” (Connor 2002: 493). The objectives of this study are the following: – to define linguistic features of the letters to be used for the analysis. – to explain how Hofstede’s (1984) theory of cultural dimensions can be adapted for a theoretical inventory to frame the analysis. – to test the developed framework with limited data (business letters written by native English and Russian speakers) to illustrate the approach that could be taken while teaching the aspect of cross-cultural rhetoric in Business Communication courses. – to analyze the letters through the suggested framework and to offer possible methodological considerations for Business English instructors who work with native Russian speakers. My work was guided by previous research done on teaching ESL and English for Specific Purposes, and in Professional Communication studies. Among the research that I drew from were analyses of Russian and other Eastern European data (Artemeva 1998; Precht 1998), Asian data (Boiarsky 1995; Wu & Rubin 2000), and similar empirical research of professional texts (Eustace 1996; Louhiala-Salminen 1996). These studies demonstrate “how individuals from different cultures can have different expectations regarding the same kind of document” (Constantinides et al. 2001: 32). All of these studies assisted me in developing the framework I used, and led me to the decision of what specific linguistic features of the letters I needed to analyze. Thus, Artemeva (1998) focuses on text structure of technical reports and analyzes what features of organization, format, and content caused most misunderstanding (e.g., structures of sentences and paragraphs, transitions, etc.). Precht (1998), who analyzes letters of recommendation from different cultures, performs qualitative research of the letters’ linearity, symmetry, and data integration. In her study, she refers to Bhatia’s postulates of genre analysis, where “patterns are

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identified within the requirements of the communicative purpose of the genre” (qtd. in Precht 1998: 248). She makes a connection between this communicative purpose and specific linguistic elements she studies, such as topical organization, length of sentences and their position in the texts, and types of sentences (e.g., topic sentences). She also views data integration in terms of reader vs. writer responsibility (p. 249). Studies of Asian data (Japanese, Chinese, and Taiwanese) provide a more detailed spectrum of linguistic features that assisted in my analyses. Thus, Boiarsky (1995) looks at organizational patterns (linearity) of business letters and sequence of information, as well as specific features of content, e.g., particular statements in non-English data that the authors used to establish trust (p. 247). Differences in style and format of the letters (e.g, openings and salutations) and graphic features were explained by culturally different relationships between the writer and the reader, degrees of formality, and rhetorical purpose of communication (p. 248). This particular reference to culture also informed the approach I am using in the present study. Research by Wu and Rubin (2000), although quantitative in nature, provided me with most of the directions and specifics for my own research. They compare “writing features” of the texts written by students from Taiwan and the U.S., such as indirectness, personal disclosure, collective self, assertiveness, and features of content. Indirectness of the texts was determined by placement of the thesis statement (p. 160), personal disclosure by relative frequency of first person singular pronouns, collective self by relative frequency of first person plural pronouns (p. 161), etc. Although my own study was qualitative, I found Wu and Rubin’s approach very helpful for introducing dimensions of culture in contrastive analysis of rhetorical features I saw in the texts from different cultures. After reviewing previous research, including my own studies of small samples (three to four texts) of Russian and American data, I was able to define the linguistic features of business letters that could be most valuable for conducting analysis of the texts, with cultural dimensions in mind. I narrowed them down to such specifications as reference to previous communication, salutation, form of command/request (explicit versus vague), placement of the thesis/purpose statement, form of providing contact information (in the text of the letters versus in the letterhead only), and form of reference to self (as an individual versus as a group). In the study, the data were analyzed to determine the presence of these features. Since I intended to analyze linguistic features of the texts through the prism of culture, I decided to align these specifications with cultural dimensions to make my framework complete. To do so, I used Hofstede’s theory of cultural dimensions based on his research of work-related value orientations (1984), which by itself can provide yet another view on managing cultural differences. Somewhat


generalized by itself (Beamer 2000), Hofstede’s terminology nevertheless became handy for my study and helped me frame an approach to guide the research. Let me elaborate on Hofstede’s theory and its relation to my study. Hofstede (1984) postulates four major cultural dimensions: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism-collectivism, and masculinity-femininity that he uses to analyze and explain differences in the way people from different cultures communicate at work. I assumed that his first three cultural dimensions should find their illustrations in my data through specific linguistic features I described earlier. Speaking about the masculinity/femininity dimension though, I hesitated to define cultures as well as management and conversational styles in terms of gender roles, and gender-situated and stimulated discourses. According to Hofstede, masculinity/femininity represents the most accepted management styles that are defined not in terms of gender roles but rather conversational and negotiation styles (Hoecklin 1995: 68). However, some studies of conversational styles, such as Tannen’s (1984), argue for male/female speech patterns to be defined by culture rather than gender. Also, Boiarsky (1995) refers to some cultures, where, for example, indirectness is not a typical female speech trait but a “cultural convention that crosses genders... . In these societies men as well as women use indirect speech pattern because directness is considered inappropriate and rude behavior regardless of gender” (Boiarsky 1995: 246). Because of these cross-gender characteristics of discourse, I find Hofstede’s ascribing different language and rhetorical variables to gender features to be highly disputable. Of course, gender is a worthy topic for contemporary studies in rhetoric, which can and should inspire a separate research in professional communication. However, for my study, I am not using the cultural dimension of masculinity-femininity, in part because of its problematic terminology. Consequently, my framework became reduced to dimensions of power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and individualism/collectivism only. The cultural dimension of power distance creates difference in workplace power relationships in the two countries, which may result in different rhetorical patterns in business sales letters. For instance, in cultures with larger power distance, business people feel more comfortable when formal hierarchies are actively supported and reinforced on all levels of interaction including written communication. “Superiors and subordinates consider each other as unequal; the hierarchical system is felt to be based on some existential inequality. Indigenous organizations centralize power more and subordinates are expected to be told what to do... . There are more visible signs of status, and contacts between superiors and subordinates are supposed to be initiated only by superiors [emphasis added].” (Hoecklin 1995: 30). In low power distance cultures, superiors and subordinates are considered more as equals; superiors have power and authority not by simply

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default of their hierarchical position but because they have earned it and from now on they have to actively maintain this status. On a linguistic level, features of written business discourse (in my study, business sales/product promotion letters) illustrating the difference in power distance might be defined by reference to previous communication and salutation. These patterns are likely to demonstrate the distance maintained by the communicators. Uncertainty avoidance is best represented by the amount of formal rules that need to be followed during communication in a certain culture, and rejecting deviant ideas and behavior. In countries with a high uncertainty avoidance index, “management reduces uncertainty and provides coordination and control by emphasizing who has authority over whom and in what way this authority can be exercised” (Hoecklin 1995: 35). In cultures with a low uncertainty score, on the contrary, people feel less comfortable with strict control over their performance; they value more freedom and flexibility in the decision-making process. Originally, according to Hosftede, uncertainty is related to the perception of future events and present diversity: managers in low uncertainty avoidance cultures are optimistic and flexible decision-makers who accept and appreciate diversity of opinions, whereas managers in high uncertainty avoidance cultures are just the opposite. However, in my study I use the term “uncertainty avoidance” to explain a reason to provide sufficient context for a business situation and thus promote and facilitate decision-making, something that I found quite illustrative in my data. This dimension of uncertainty avoidance, thus, can be discussed through the analysis of the ways the writers provide sufficient information, clarity of writing, and directness of stating the purpose statement. The degree of uncertainty avoidance might be measured holistically by looking at such features of the letters as form of command/request, placement of the thesis/purpose statement, and form of providing contact information. These features might become explanatory in terms of reducing the amount of uncertainty in the letters. Individualism/collectivism is an opposition of priorities: a concern for yourself as an individual as opposed to concern for the group to which you belong. As Hofstede (2001) puts it, “in the collectivist society the personal relationship prevails over the task and over the company and should be established first; in the individualist society, in contrast, the task and the company are supposed to prevail over any personal relationships” (2001: 239). A possible speculation in this respect is that this discrepancy between individualist versus collectivist cultural orientation can be analyzed linguistically through the way the authorship of the written text is revealed. The writers from collectivist cultures would tend to write from the group, while the writers from individualist cultures would write from themselves and thus would take the sole responsibility for their writing. They would refer to their individualist or group identity possibly through the signature at the


Table 1. Framework specifications Power Distance Uncertainty Avoidance

Individualism/Collectivism

– – – – –

Reference to previous communication Salutation Form of command/request (explicit versus vague) Placement of the thesis/purpose statement Form of providing contact information (in the text of the letters versus in the letterhead only) – Form of reference to self (as an individual versus as a group)

end of the letters, or/and the choice of pronouns (cf. Boiarsky 1995; Wu & Rubin 2000). “The languages spoken in individualist cultures tend to require speakers to use the I pronoun when referring to themselves; languages spoken in collectivist cultures allow the dropping of this pronoun. It is also remarkable that the language spoken in the most individualist countries, English, is the only one ... that writes I with a capital letter” (Hofstede 2001: 233). Therefore, it might be possible to define the individualism/collectivism dimension in a written text by the way the writer’s identity and authorship (an individual or a group) is revealed. For my study, I decided to use Wu and Rubin’s idea of defining the authors’ personal disclosure and collective self (p. 161), and analyzed the author’s identity in my data (her individualist versus collectivist cultural orientation) through form of reference to self. Overall, the framework I suggest for my study (see Table 1) is designed to combine cultural influences on the texts with their linguistic realizations in discourse, and to help understand rhetorical conventions of the letters. These relations between culture and language that I am trying to address with my framework, were fully acknowledged by Hofstede (2001: 21); he is very much concerned with the role language plays as a ‘culture’s consequence’ in international business and management due to inevitable language (and thus cultural) transfer when, for example, managers have to interact through a mediator/interpreter or maintain correspondence in their second/third language. However, Hofstede does not see the linguistic side of the problem in cross-cultural business communication in its full complexity, which makes his theory somewhat problematic and easily subjected to stereotyping. Hofstede accepts only the potential danger of the language transfer during the process of translation. Such a view may give premises to ascribe rhetorical equivalents to certain conventions, which might then promote stereotypes and lead to mechanical transformation of a text from L1 into L2 without analyzing its rhetorical function(s) in the culture. As a result of such mistranslation, the L2 version of the same text may fail to maintain its rhetorical force, and thus the communicative purpose of the L2 text may never be achieved.

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This problem of stereotypes and their implications for both research and teaching can and should be addressed more thoroughly in a separate study. As both a student of rhetoric and a nonnative speaker myself, I believe that the problem goes beyond native language (L1) interference. Texts written in different cultures are already constructed differently in their original L1 versions. For example, business letters may have the same formal purpose and supposedly follow the same writing conventions. But originating in different cultures and written in two different languages, they may not be similar in their form and content. Therefore, I believe that the problem lies not only or even primarily with the language transfer in the process of translation from one language into another, but is caused by the different cultural and rhetorical perspectives that the two texts acquire in their native contexts. Considering the way I adapted Hofstede’s (1984) terminology to the specific objectives of the study, and keeping in mind the above critique, I argue that his theory of cultural dimensions can be useful for linguistic research in the area of international business communication, primarily because it can be transferred into a workable framework for looking at, comparing, and analyzing the differences between written texts. The present study is an example of such an adaptation. Let me elaborate on the methods of my research.

Data sources The American data were collected from various sources. In the process of collecting, I established some criteria for my data. Thus, I wanted letters that were not “junk mail” – i.e., they had to be targeted at a specific (not any) person as a potential client or a partner. The author had to know exactly who she was writing to (know the name or position) and have a specific reason for writing a letter. It was important for my study because “junk mail” does not exist in Russia, and thus it would be invalid to include it in the data. Part of the letters I accumulated myself by searching through my mail and collecting all relevant samples I came across. Also, some of the American letters were given to me by Kelly Petersen, a former M. A. graduate student at Iowa State University. She is also interested in written business communication and courteously shared her collection of data. The Russian letters all came from the same source, a secretary at administrative quarters of a Russian oil and gas corporation in Samara region. Although coming from the same place, the Russian letters are written by various authors and sometimes addressed to different people. As I mentioned earlier, it is often difficult to access business data; thus obtaining precise information about the authors and addressees of the letters, which would


shed even more light on the nature of communication and writers’ rhetorical decisions, was impossible for this study.

The study I decided to narrow the focus of the study to business letters, as this genre is the most common way of business corresponding in English for Russian business people. More precisely, I was looking at actual sales/product promotion letters. Although the formal rhetorical purpose of all the letters looked the same (to establish partnership/to sell the product), the assumption was that the two written discourses produced by American and Russian speakers are different due to different cultural backgrounds and conventions. As Purves puts it, “Several researchers have called for the expansion of contrastive rhetoric to include not only the analysis of written products but also an examination of those educational, cognitive, and social dimensions of composition that enter into cross-cultural writing” (qtd. in Connor 1996: 157). These dimensions may produce a certain impact not only on the way businesspeople convey information and give rhetorical force to their messages, but also on the way they foster successful business. I tried to fully consider this comment for my research. However, due to the unavailability of complete information related to the authors of these writing samples (educational background, social status of the authors, etc.), this study focused on cross-cultural analysis of the texts only. The purpose of the letters in both American and Russian data is either to sell a product/service directly or to establish business contacts first and then sell the product.

Procedures I managed to accumulate fifteen letters written by native English speakers and addressed to native English speakers, and seventeen letters written by native Russian speakers and addressed to native Russian speakers (See Appendix A for the letters catalog). The letters written in Russian were translated into English for a wide English-speaking audience. However, in the study I analyzed the original Russian letters in order to preserve the accuracy of the Russian business rhetoric and eliminate the possibility of L1 transfer during the translation, which could have significantly affected the results of the study. The style, organization, and format of the originals were preserved to the best of my abilities for an English speaking audience to better comprehend the traits of Russian business rhetoric. Because of confidentiality issues, all personal names and names of the companies have

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been changed, and all contact information (telephone and fax numbers, e-mail addresses, and Web pages’ URLs) has been removed. The data were analyzed in accordance with the offered framework, which derived from the cultural dimensions of Hofstede’s study (1984). The letters were numbered and the texts of both American and Russian letters were broken down and put into tables with the framework specifications (See Appendix B for the complete tables with the data).

Results and discussion In designing and conducting my study, I was moving from the linguistic features of particular texts (that are subject to specific rhetorical situations) to cultural dimensions, unlike other studies involving cultural dimensions (Beamer, Hofstede, and others). By doing this, I attempted to avoid generalizations about the communicative patterns I was observing. Thus, the cultural dimensions are perceived in my study not as universal but rather as suggestive categories. Second, my analysis employs the terminology of cultural categories/dimensions to explain dynamic features of specific discourse; this terminology thus becomes descriptive for my study, not prescriptive. The reader should realize that a different set of data may result in a different set of findings. With this in mind, I present the data analysis in terms of the cultural dimensions the data reflect.

Power distance The data show that the authors of the American letters refer to previous communication significantly more than do the authors of the Russian letters and try to use any opportunity to remind the reader that, to a certain extent, they have already established contact. At times this reference to previous communication even looks like an attempt to “continue the conversation.” I assume that the writer feels comfortable with the reader’s power status, which in this case is not perceived as a communication barrier (“I enjoyed our visit ...”; “from our conversation ...”; “as promised ...”). Even if the previous personal encounter did not exist, the American authors still try to refer to any type of connection that gives them a chance to create a first positive appeal to the reader. For example, they remind the reader of, and convey thanks for, approaching the writer with a question. By doing this they may support the image of the writer as approachable (“Thank you for your interest ...”; “Thank you for your inquiry ... “).


The Russian data, on the contrary, do not display such a way of “bridging the gap.” Although in some cases I assume some kind of previous contact exists between the participants, the Russian writers do not seem to employ this technique to strengthen their position as “being equal and approachable” with the reader, and the writers sound vague in claiming this position: “Позвольте воспользоваться предоставленной возможностью и выразить Вам глубокое уважение [Let us use the given opportunity to express our deepest respect]” (emphasis added). In this case the writer may potentially increase the power distance by expressing the high degree of deference. Another difference between the American and Russian letters is the surprising inconsistency in the way the salutation is composed in the Russian data as compared to the American data. While the American writers simply stick to letter-writing conventions, the Russian writers feel free to change the font of the salutation, handwrite it, capitalize it, make it an exclamatory phrase, or even skip it. I assume here that for the Russian authors the salutation does not play the same formal conventional role as it does for the American authors: to greet the addressee in the most appropriate, polite, and recognizable form. The authors of the Russian letters seem to use the salutation more as a way to attract attention to their correspondence and to make it somehow stand out. Thus, the salutation is not simply an established convention that ultimately recognizes a business letter as a genre of business correspondence; it has extra functions. Its purpose in the Russian letters is to make a difference and to draw the reader’s attention. This makes it an interesting rhetorical move. It is surprising, however, that such a significant amount of the Russian data (seven letters out of seventeen) demonstrates negligence in respect to this technique. This suggests that it is not the primary, or the only, way to interest the reader. In addition, the Russian authors may not even consider the reader’s attention as important as it probably should be. Also, the American writers seem comfortable using an addressee’s first name for salutation purposes. In the cases when the American writers do not know the name of an addressee, they use the addressee’s generic title (e.g., “Colleague”, “Principal”). Thus, the power distance between the American writers and their readers either hardly exists or is not emphasized. The Russian authors also prefer to address their readers by first name, which includes patronymics as well (e.g., “Иван Иванович” [Ivan Ivanovich]). Such patronymics are traditionally used in Russian culture to express respect and to stress an unequal status of the communicators. Additionally, the Russian authors seem to avoid the liberty of using generic titles instead of names for salutation purposes. It seems that they would rather skip the salutation altogether than take the risk to challenge the power status by calling the addressee simply “Colleague,” for instance.

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Uncertainty avoidance Generally, the data illustrate that the American letters are more precise and direct in stating a request for further action; only four of the American letters demonstrate a vague request for an action, and there are no letters in the American data that do not request any action from the reader. Six of the Russian letters out of seventeen have a vague request, and six have no request at all. Therefore, I assume that the Russian letters may not necessarily aim at initiating any specific action on the reader’s part. They do not necessarily anticipate any tangible movement or change after the recipient reads the letter. Most of them include an invitation rather than an aggressive call for an action (e.g., “просим ... посетить”; “надеемся на Ваш ... ответ”; “предлагаем” – “we ask ... to visit”; “we hope for your ... answer”; “we are offering”). Additionally, the American letters employ more graphics in their “stating the purpose” section in order to clarify and simplify the anticipated action (e.g., “Mail by February 15, 2002 OR Fax by February 22, 2002 to 609 000-0000”). The only visible graphic feature I found in the Russian data is a list of products offered by a company, which serves an informative rather than a persuasive purpose (letter 12). The data illustrate that the American writers attempt to achieve their purpose, an “agreement” with a customer, in a quite aggressive and straightforward way. In all letters but one, the thesis statement was in the first paragraph of the letter. Most of the American authors chose it to be the first or the second sentence in the paragraph. In some of the letters (8, 9, and 11), they break down the message into a few sentences, thus making a larger part of the letter serve the primary author’s intention: to persuade the reader to “buy” the product/service. This deductive organization of letters creates an image of the American authors as managers who are “expected to be decisive and assertive” (Hofstede 1997: 96). They try to win the reader from the very beginning of their correspondence. The Russian writers, on the contrary, seem to exercise more subtle methods of persuading the readers. They are not as straightforward with the claim statements as their American colleagues are. In fact, three of the seventeen letters are vague in stating the main purpose of communication. Only in six letters do the writers place the thesis statement in the first paragraph. In most of the letters it occurs in the second, fourth, sixth, seventh, or even ninth paragraphs. In many cases the thesis takes the last position in the text of the letter (e.g., in letters 5, 6, 10, 13, 14, 15, and 16). These delayed statements demonstrate the writers’ restraint from any open pressure on the readers and preference to resolve the situation by negotiating through further dialogue if the readers wish. The Russian authors seem to picture managers who “use intuition and strive for consensus” (Hofstede 1997: 96)


and exemplify a low level of uncertainty avoidance. This strategy, however, might not be understood by American businesspeople, who as Precht (1998) also noted, “immediately justify their reasons for writing” (p. 251). The form of providing contact information deserves specific attention in the study of the data. In my analysis I examined how this information is presented in the text of the letters. Generally all the letters, American and Russian, utilize letterheads as a part of the letters’ layout, in which the authors/companies provide the necessary contact information. In the actual texts of the letters, however, this information is not always openly disclosed. For this study I was more interested in the in-text information rather than the letterheads, since I see a letterhead as a collective image/authorship of the company or corporation. The fact that the authors of the letters use the letterheads for this type of documentation gives little information about the rhetorical decisions a particular author makes; it is simply an accepted form of the paper layout for business letters. Alternatively, the decision to give the contact information in the text of the letter along with the same information in the letterhead will give some food for thought about the effectiveness of communication in terms of meeting its purpose – to sell the product/service. Thus, almost all the American letters have contact information in the text of the letter along with the same information displayed through the letterhead. Only three Russian letters provide more or less full contact information in the texts of the letters; among the rest, one letter (17) gives only Web contacts (as if the company exists only virtually), and one letter refers the reader to the letterhead (10 – “Наши реквизиты указаны в верхней части страницы” – “Our contact information is given at the top of the page”). Obviously, the Russian authors do not make an attempt to facilitate further communication, and thus make the reader fully responsible for finding a way to contact the writer/the company. The American letters, along with the contact information, explicitly indicate what action is expected from the reader (e.g., “please call me at ...”; “In placing a telephone order, please call ...”, etc.). One of these letters (letter 1) even includes both the contact information and the action input as early as in the third paragraph of the letter to stress the importance of the anticipated action. To compare, only one Russian letter says, “Call us” (letter 9). Thus, the writers of the American letters try to avoid uncertainty in communication; they make sure their readers know the purpose of the letter, what the readers are expected to do after they read the letter, and how to do it in the most efficient way. The Russian writers do not seem to be concerned with the tangible results their letters produce, since their correspondence leaves the reader with more questions than answers and directives.

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Individualism/collectivism Reference to the self can be a very complex notion; therefore, to make the data manageable, I reduced my observation to the authors’ means of identifying herself through a letter by referring to the self either as an individual (“I,” “my,” “me,” etc.) or as a community/collective image (name of the organization/company). I decided to disregard use of the pronoun “we,” as it is not easy with qualitative research to follow the dynamics of the meaning change of this pronoun; in some cases it may refer to a collective image of the author as a team (“We are committed ...” – an act of a team), while in other cases it may refer to the author herself as an individual representing a group (“We send you ...” – an act of one person). The data show that the American letters have eleven instances of the author’s reference to self as an individual and eight instances as a group/company. The Russian letters have four individual references (all are in letter 17) and twenty group references. Additionally, the Russian data demonstrate more lexical variation in displaying the group identity of the authors. Thus, along with the names of the companies, the Russian writers use the combinations “наше предприятие” [our company] and “наше издательство” [our publishing house] to refer to the self. Also, a “no-subject” sentence, a grammatical structure typical to formal Russian discourse, adds to the collective image of the authors of the letters. In this structure, there is no subject and the verb is almost always plural. Therefore, when the reader correlates the plural verb with the imagined subject, this subject becomes plural as well (e.g., “обращаем Ваше внимание” – “[we] address your attention”).

Overall conclusions In terms of the study’s framework, the data suggest the following: 1. The American authors attempt to reduce power distance by referring to previous encounter(s) with the reader, and by always using the convention of salutation and trying to address the reader personally (even if they do not know the reader’s name). The Russian authors maintain power distance by avoiding personal greetings to the reader and displaying inconsistency in salutation conventions, which assumes even more “reading between the lines.” 2. The American letters generally state the purpose in clear terms and employ deductive organization by placing the thesis statement at the beginning of the message. The authors take specific care to provide all necessary information that can facilitate the expected action (exact dates, contact information in the text of the letters, methods to perform the expected action). The Russian

Different cultures – Different discourses? 101

authors seem to assume that their readers share the same information with them; the letters are vague and ambiguous, often without a statement of the purpose of communication or any direction regarding the expected action of the recipient. The Russian letters also add to uncertainty in their inadequate manner of providing contact information. 3. The Russian authors prefer to use a collective image of self, while the American authors usually refer to themselves as individuals. Acting as an individual might imply the American authors’ readiness to take personal responsibility for the decision they are calling for in their messages. There is not as much individual responsibility revealed in the collective image of the Russian authors. Additionally, very little action, if any, is expected in the Russian letters. As compared to the American letters, the Russian letters seem not to take the communication to the level of making business decisions and taking actions. They are suggestive rather than persuasive. The words “hope,” “offer,” and “suggestion” are common in the Russian data. The Russian letters seem to aim at establishing personal contacts first before getting to the point of making a business decision or signing a partnership contract. This strategy is generally associated in Russia with meaningful and efficient business collaboration. These discrepancies suggest the different perspectives on business communication exhibited in business sales letters. For the American authors, the purpose of communication is clearly to sell the product/service. The Russian authors of the letters seem to use this communication simply to announce their companies’ existence on the market and leave the decision exclusively up to the reader. This speculation about the communicative purpose of the letters is consistent with Swales’s (1990) understanding of genres as “a means of social action, one situated in a wider sociorhetorical context and operating not only as a mechanism for reaching communicative goals but also of clarifying what those goals might be” (p. 44, emphasis added). In the context of the Russian data, the genre of a business sales letter acquires new characteristics; the Russians take an additional step in the selling process and use the written message to establish more general contacts first. Only after the readers are comfortable enough to make their own decisions about the action gently suggested by the message would the business contact be made. A contract may be initiated by an oral agreement after both sides personally meet each other. I suggest that in this interpretation, the genre of the Russian letters may be placed somewhere between business sales letters and business goodwill messages. However, to prove this hypothesis, new research must be designed and performed. The techniques of creating business “personal” contacts employed by the Russian authors might be potentially risky for those who would use them for an


American audience. It is likely that when native Russian speakers write business letters to their native-speaking American partners, they will more than likely transfer both their L1 linguistic features and their L1 rhetorical conventions to the letters written in English. This transfer may potentially cause communication problems, as English-speaking businesspeople do not share an identical set of cultural assumptions, rhetorical patterns, or perhaps even genre conventions with Russians. Therefore, it is crucial for teachers of Business English to introduce Russian learners to appropriate rhetorical conventions that are recognized by their American partners. However, Russian rhetorical strategies might additionally become recognized by American audiences and even become potentially beneficial when, for instance, the purpose of the communication is simply to establish contacts and express goodwill intentions. Therefore, it would be reasonable to discuss the differences between the letters as differences only, without measuring their effectiveness/correctness, since both the American and the Russian letters seem to follow the conventions in accordance with their purposes. It would be helpful, therefore, for Russian students, as well as American students in professional communication courses, to discuss first the rhetorical purposes of the documents that are technically the same but created under different cultural and rhetorical influences. This discussion could enable students to consider these purposes and influences along with language patterns to create business messages that are not simply correct, but more importantly, effective. In this research, a few limitations could be impacting the results. For instance, the availability of data affected the scope of the study. Many researchers notice how difficult it is to obtain data from real work-related situations, especially in a business context. As St John (1996) writes about companies participating in such studies, “For them the issue is one of confidentiality and, perhaps a concern over how the data would be used” (p. 4). Another limitation of the study was the language of the letters. I narrowed my research to monolingual written business communication only, as my task was to look at the structures and patterns that originate in American and Russian business cultures and might be reflected in business discourse. If I had bilingual data or data involving multicultural audiences (e.g., Russian authors writing in English, or Russian authors writing to American partners), the complexity of these data would pose additional challenges, such as setting methods and defining the extent of L1 transfer, measuring the level of the communicators’ language proficiency and their familiarity with the target culture, and its effect on communication. Although very engaging, these concerns do not fall within the scope of my research. To accumulate such data would also take me a longer period of time because I do not have access to any of the U.S.-Russian enterprises. However, such concerns might be of interest for further research in the area of U.S.-Russian business interaction.


The study presented a synthesis of cultural dimensions with their effects on specific rhetorical conventions that could be introduced in teaching business English specifically in Eastern European countries, where traditionally (unlike in the U.S.) the focus of professional communication studies has been on “terminology, text types, and translation” (Louhiala-Salminen 1996: 40; cf. Kohls 1990). Such an understanding of cultural mechanisms could offer students an approach to analyzing rhetorical choices they make in each particular intercultural writing situation.

References Artemeva, N. (1998). The writing consultant as cultural interpreter: Bridging cultural perspectives on the genre of the periodic engineering report. Technical Communication Quarterly, 7, 285–299. Beamer, L. (2000). Finding a way to teach cultural dimensions. Business Communication Quarterly, 63(3), 111–118. Boiarsky, C. (1995). The relationship between cultural and rhetorical conventions: Engaging in international communication. Technical Communication Quarterly, 4, 245–259. Connor, U. (1996). Contrastive rhetoric: Cross-cultural aspects of second language writing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Connor, U. (2002). New directions in contrastive rhetoric. TESOL Quarterly, 36, 493–510. Constantinides, H., St. Amant, K., & Kampf, C. (2002). Organizational and intercultural communication: An annotated bibliography. Technical Communication Quarterly, 10, 31–58. DeVoss, D., Jaskin, J., & Hayden, D. (2002). Teaching intracultural and intercultural communication: A critique and suggested method. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 16, 69–94. Edwards, N. (2000). Language for business: Effective needs assessment, syllabus design, and materials preparation in a practical ESP case study. English for Specific Purposes, 19, 291– 296. Eustace, G. (1996). Business writing – Some aspects of current practice. English for Specific Purposes, 15, 53–56. Hagen, P. (1998). Teaching American business writing in Russia: Cross-cultures/cross-purposes. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 12, 109–126. Hoecklin, L. A. (1995). Managing cultural differences: Strategies for competitive advantage. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Hofstede, G. H. (1984). Culture’s consequences: International differences in work-related values (Abridged ed.). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Hofstede, G. H. (1997). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind (Rev. ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Hofstede, G. H. (1996). Riding the waves of commerce: A test of trompenaars’ “model” of national culture differences. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 20, 189–198. Kohls, S. (1990). Business Russian: A reference and textbook. Skokie, IL: Passport Books.


Louhiala-Salminen, L. (1996). The business communication classroom vs. reality: What should we teach today? English for Specific Purposes, 15, 37–51. Miles, L. (1997). Globalizing professional writing curricula: Positioning students and re-positioning textbooks. Technical Communication Quarterly, 6, 179–200. Precht, K. (1998). A cross-cultural comparison of letters of recommendation. English for Specific Purposes, 17, 241–265. St. John, M. J. (1996). Business is booming: Business English in the 1990s. English for Specific Purposes, 15, 3–18. Stevens, B. (2000). Russian teaching contracts. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 14, 38–57. Stevens, B. (2001). Cross-cultural service learning: American and Russian students learn applied organizational communication. Business Communication Quarterly, 64(3), 59–69. Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Tannen, D. (1984). Conversational style: Analyzing talk among friends. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Thrush, E. A. (1997). Multicultural issues in technical communication. In K. Staples & C. Ornatowski (Eds.), Foundations for teaching technical communication: Theory, practice, and program design (pp. 161–177). Greenwich, CT: Ablex. Wu, S.-Y., & Rubin, D. L. (2000). Evaluating the impact of collectivism and individualism on argumentative writing by Chinese and North American college students. Research in the Teaching of English, 35, 148–178.

Appendix A Catalog of the letters American data Letter 1. The letter is written on January 15, 2002 to the reader M. The author is the President of an English training software company. The purpose is to promote new software. Letter 2. The letter is written on February 12, 1999 to the reader K. The author is a sales manager of a printing company. The purpose is to sell printed materials. Letter 3. The letter is written on August 3, 1999 to the reader K. The author is a sales representative of an athletic magazine. The purpose is to sell to the reader advertising services. Letter 4. The letter is written on March 5, 1999 to the reader K. The author is an account executive of a magazine for the recreation market in colleges and universities. The purpose is to sell to the reader the products and services they offer in a catalog. Letter 5. The letter is written on September 15, 1998 to the reader K. The author is a representative of an Internet provider company. The purpose is to reinforce the reader’s use of the services.


Letter 6. The letter is written in January 2002 to the reader M., who is addressed as “Colleague.” The author is a program director of a testing program. The purpose is to make the reader accept the offered service and participate in school-based administration of a test. Letter 7. The letter is written on July 12, 2000 to the reader K., who is addressed as “Principal.” The author is a sales manager in a gym equipment company. The purpose is to make the reader buy Sound Relief Wall Pillows, a sound reducing system. Letter 8. The letter is written on March 27, 2000 to the reader J. The author works for an athletic magazine targeted at high school and college audiences. The purpose is to make the reader consider advertising in the magazine. Letter 9. The letter is written to the reader M., who is addressed as “Colleague.” The author is a marketing manager working for Cambridge University Press. The purpose is to promote new publications. Letter 10. The letter is written on January 8, 1999 to the reader K., who is addressed as “Superintendent.” The author is a sales manager in a gym equipment company. The purpose is to sell Gymnasium Cover Guard, a floor protection system. Letter 11. The letter is written on February 22, 1999 to the reader K. The author works for a gym equipment company. The purpose is to sell wrestling mats. Letter 12. The letter is written to the reader Z. The author is a Vice President and Business Manager in a credit card company. The purpose is to promote a new credit offer. Letter 13. The letter is written on January 29, 2003 to the reader M. The author works for a credit card company. The purpose is to assure the reader will use the fraud protection service. Letter 14. The letter is written in Spring 2003 to the reader M., who is addressed as “Customer.” The author is a product manager working for an energy corporation. The purpose is to promote a new energy efficiency program. Letter 15. The letter is written to the reader M. The author is a Senior Vice President in a credit card company. The purpose is to reinforce the reader’s use of credit services.

Russian data NOTE: “The reader N.” in the Russian data is a generic term for a gas and oil corporation. The term may be specified (e.g., “the N. sales manager”) by the letter. If not indicated otherwise, the addressee is the corporation staff generally (“the reader N”). Letter 1. The letter is written on July 30, 2002 to the reader N. The author is a crane plant staff member. The purpose is to establish partnership and to sell equipment. Letter 2. The letter is written to the reader N. The author is a manager in a company producing measuring tools and devices. The purpose is to sell the product. Letter 3. The letter is written on October 31, 2002 to the N. President. The author is a vice president of a supplier company. The purpose is to establish partnership and sell services.


Letter 4. The letter is written on October 16, 2002 to the N. President. The author is a vice president of a business consulting firm. The purpose is to sell services. Letter 5. The letter is written on August 20, 2002 to the N. President. The author is a department chair of a State Academy of Marketing. The purpose is to promote a new publication and the Academy education services. Letter 6. The letter is written on August 12, 2002 to the reader N. The author is the president of a company producing valves and other equipment. The purpose is to sell equipment. Letter 7. The letter is written to the reader N. The author is a publishing house. The purpose is to promote a new publication. Letter 8. The letter is written to the N. President. The author is a supplier company. The purpose is to establish partnership and sell chemicals and equipment. Letter 9. The letter is written on May, 16, 2002 to the N. President. The author is a representative of a legal advice company. The purpose is to promote services. Letter 10. The letter is written on August 20, 2001 to the N. President. The author is a manager in a publishing house. The purpose is to promote a new publication. Letter 11. The letter is written on October 24, 2002 to the reader N. The author is a vice president of a supplier company. The purpose is to establish partnership. Letter 12. The letter is written on October 28, 2003 to the N. President. The author is a sales manager in a supplier company. The purpose is to establish partnership and sell services. Letter 13. The letter is written on November 19, 2003 to the reader N. The author is the president of a supplier company. The purpose is to sell services. Letter 14. The letter is written on September 5, 2003 to the reader N. The author is a sales manager in a supplier company. The purpose is to sell equipment and chemicals. Letter 15. The letter is written to the reader N. The author is the president of a supplier company. The purpose is to establish partnership and sell services. Letter 16. The letter is written on January 8, 2004 to the N. President. The author is the president of a supplier company. The purpose is to sell services. Letter 17. The letter is written on October 1, 2003 to the N. President. The author is the president of a printing company. The purpose is to establish partnership.


Appendix B Power distance Reference to previous communication Table 2. Power distance: Reference to previous communication in the American letters 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

– “It was nice meeting you, I enjoyed our visit.”; “I have used a smaller size than the sample that you gave to me.” “From our conversation, attached is the media kit for Athletic Management . . .” “As promised, enclosed is your copy . . .” – – – “Thank you for your interest in Athletic Management.” – – “Thank you for your inquiry relative to ABC, Inc. wrestling mats.” – “In connection with your recent dispute . . .” – –

Table 3. Power distance: Reference to previous communication in the Russian letters (originals) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

– – – – – – – – – – [vague] – “Позвольте воспользоваться предоставленной возможностью и выразить Вам глубокое уважение.” – – – – – –


Table 4. Power distance: Reference to previous communication in the Russian letters (translations)

1 2 3 4 5

– – – – –

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

– – – – – [vague] – “ Let us use the given opportunity to express our deepest respect.” – – – – – –

Salutation Table 5. Power distance: Salutation in the American letters 1 2 3 4 5

“Dear Megan:” “Katy,” “Dear Katy,” “Dear Katy,” “Dear Katy,”

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

“Dear Colleague:” “Dear Principal,” “Dear Jack:” “Dear Colleague,” “Dear Superintendent of Buildings & Grounds:” “Dear Name,” “Dear Marie A. Zhivago,” “Dear Megan Larson,” “Dear Valued Customer:” “Dear Megan Larson,”


Table 6. Power distance: Salutation in the Russian letters (originals) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

“Уважаемые господа!” “Уважаемые господа!” – “УВАЖАЕМЫЙ ПЕТР ПЕТРОВИЧ!” “Уважаемый Иван Иванович!” – “Уважаемые господа,” – “Уважаемый Иван Иванович” “Уважаемый(ая) Иван Иванович!” (handwritten) “Уважаемые господа,” – – – “Уважаемые господа!” – “Уважаемый Иван Иванович!”

Table 7. Power distance: Salutation in the Russian letters (translations) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

“Dear Sirs!” “Dear Sirs!” – “DEAR PETR PETROVICH!” “Dear Ivan Ivanovich! – “Dear Sirs,” – “Dear Ivan Ivanovich” “Dear Ivan Ivanovich!” (handwritten) “Dear Sirs,” – – – “Dear Sirs!” – “Dear Ivan Ivanovich!”


Uncertainty avoidance Form of command/request Table 8. Uncertainty avoidance: Form of command/request in the American letters 1

2 3

4 5 6

7 8 9

10

11

12

13 14

15

“Please be sure to stop by ELLIS booth at the Iowa Language and Cultural Concerns Conference, February 20-21, 2002, in Des Moines, Iowa. []Come see what all the ELLIS excitement is about at the Iowa Conference or call Pam now for more information.” “When ordering, you may take advantage of quantity breaks.” “You can start an effective advertising program with our April/May 99, Gym & Indoor Facility Components issue of Athletic Management. To reserve your space, please call me at . . .” – [vague] “All that is left for you to do is to follow the instructions from page 30-35 in the enclosed manual” “To participate in the April 2002 ELPT school-based administration, please complete the Preregistration Order Form and return it by the following deadlines: Mail by February 15, 2002 OR Fax by February 22, 2002 to 609 000-0000” “If you are interested in learning more about Sound Relief, Please contact ABC” – [vague] “please use the enclosed special order form/price list. . . . In placing a telephone order, please call 1-800-000-0000 Monday through Friday between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. ET and mention this order form code: ME2ESL . . . please visit our website at www. cambridge.org/esl-efl . . . please contact your local representative” “Enclosed you will find our Gymnasium Cover Guard brochure and a brochure for our most popular Gym Divider Curtain model, the Fold-Up system. . . . If you are interested in our Cover Guard or possibly in our Gym Divider Curtain, please contact us direct at (515) 000-0000.” [vague] “Enclosed, please note the price listings for various standard sizes at the three common thickness. Included at the bottom of the page are items of choice included in the price. Extras are listed as additional cost items.” “Simply call us at 1-800-000-0000 to transfer high-rate credit, department store and other balances to your AT&T Universal credit card account. . . . Or, call us to request a personalized balance transfer check made out directly to you . . . you must respond by February 23, 2004.” “Please complete the enclosed document, have your signature notarized, and return the Fraud Information Form to us before 02/29/03.” [vague] “Luckily, Success Energy makes it easy to practice energy efficiency and participate in our cash incentive program for energy efficiency. . . . If you’d like additional details on how we can help, visit us on-line at www.xxx.com, or call our Efficiency Solutions Hotline at 1-800-000-0000.” “call the customer service number on the back of your card. Or manage your account anywhere, anytime with our Online Account Services at www.xxx.com.”


Table 9. Uncertainty avoidance: Form of command/request in the Russian letters (originals) 1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11

12

13 14 15 16 17

– “Просим рассмотреть возможность применения нашей продукции на Вашем предприятии.” “По Вашему запросу вышлем имеюшиеся у нас лицензии на интересуюшие Вас виды деятельности.”[vague] – [vague] – “Просим Вас посетить выставку, познакомиться с нашей экспозицией и получить интересующую Вас информацию, касающейся нашей продукции и условий её поставки.” – [vague] – [vague] – “По вашему запросу Вам будет предоставлена подробная информация о нашей компании и о нашей работе.” – [vague] – “Будем рады в получении любых заказов на поставку оборудования от Вашего предприятия и гарантируем их оперативное и качественное выполнение. Надеемся на Ваш скорый ответ с указанием необходимого Вам оборудования.” [vague] – “В заключении предлагаем Вам просмотреть перечень поставляемой нами продукции: – задвижки стальные; задвижки нержавеющие; клапана (КОП, СППК и др.); фланцы; вентиля; электроприводы; крепеж . . .” – “Предлагаем Вам заключить договор на поставку химической продукции и стать одними из наших клиентов.” – “Просим сообщить реквизиты для заключения договора и предоставить календарный график поставок.” [vague] – “Информацию о нас и о нашей продукции можно найти на сайте www.xxx.ru.”

111


Table 10. Uncertainty avoidance: Form of command/request in the Russian letters (translations) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12

13 14 15 16 17

– “We ask you to consider the possibility of using our produce at your factory.” “Upon your request we will provide copies of our licenses for the services you are interested in.”[vague] – [vague] – “We ask you to attend the exposition, look at our exhibit, and get the information you need about our produce and the shipment.” – [vague] – [vague] – “Upon your request detailed information about our company and our services will be provided.” – [vague] – “We will be glad if you place an order for the equipment supply and we guarantee fast and quality service. We hope to promptly receive your answer with an indication of the equipment you need.” [vague] – “ In conclusion, we suggest your looking through the list of the supplied items: valves taps [list of the supplied items of the equipment . . .]” – “We are offering you to sign a contract for chemicals’ supplies and become one of our clients.” – “We ask you to give specifications for signing the contract and to provide the schedule of supplies.” [vague] – “The information about us and our produce can be found online at www.xxx.ru.”


Placement of the thesis statement/purpose statement (bottom-line of the message) Table 11. Uncertainty avoidance: Placement of the thesis statement/purpose statement (bottom-line of the message) in the American letters 1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8

9

10 11

12 13 14

1st paragraph, 3d sentence – “TEC will be working with CER to provide marketing and support to Iowa ESL/Bilingual Education customers” 1st paragraph, 2nd sentence – “Thank you for giving Modern Graphics the opportunity to quote on some of your printed material needs.” 1st paragraph, 1st sentence – “From our conversation, attached is the media kit for Athletic Management, and Coaching Management magazines.” 1st paragraph, 1st sentence – “As promised, enclosed is your copy of the inaugural issue of RECREATIONAL SPORTS & FITNESS” 1st paragraph, 2nd sentence – “All that is left for you is follow the instructions” 1st paragraph, 1st sentence – “The College Board will offer a two-hour version of the SAT II: ELPT (English Language Proficiency Test) in participating high schools on Tuesday, April 23, 2002.”; “Mail by February 15, 2002 OR Fax by February 22, 2002 to 609 000-0000” 2nd paragraph, 1st sentence – “ABC, Inc. has designed a solution to your gym echo and sound problems: Sound Relief Wall Pillows.” 1st paragraph, 2nd and 3rd sentences, 2nd paragraph, 1st sentence – “Following is information about the upcoming June/July issue which provides advertisers with additional exposure at the ABCDE Conference. Also enclosed is 2001 media kit information and sample of last year’s June/July issue. Additionally, I’ve enclosed information on our magazine, Coaching Management Baseball.” 1st paragraph, 1st two sentences – “Welcome to the 2001 Cambridge Books for Language Teachers catalog. In this catalog you will find a wide range of books covering all areas of language teaching . . .” 1st paragraph, 2nd sentence – “One way to keep that brand-new shine for as long as possible is to protect the floor with our Gymnasium Cover Guard.” [vague] – 1st paragraph, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th sentences – “Enclosed, please note the price listings for various standard sizes at the three common thickness. Included at the bottom of the page are items of choice included in the price. Extras are listed as additional cost items.” 1st paragraph, 2nd sentence – “Start saving with two great low Annual Percentage Rates (APRs) when you transfer balances to you’re AB&C Universal credit card account.” 1st paragraph, 1st sentence – “In connection with your recent dispute, we are enclosing an Affidavit and Fraud Information Form that will allow us to resolve your claim.” 2nd paragraph, 1st (and only) sentence – “Success Energy makes it easy to practice energy efficiency and participate in our cash incentive programs for energy efficiency.”

15 1st paragraph, 1st sentence – “You’ve earned a higher credit limit on your Country One card simply by handling your account responsibly.” Also, 2nd paragraph, 1st sentence – “Plus, because you’ve shown us you can manage your credit, we want to be sure and support your continued growth.”


Table 12. Uncertainty avoidance: Placement of the thesis statement/purpose statement (bottom-line of the message) in the Russian letters (originals) 1

1st paragraph, 1st sentence – “ОАО ‘Красилово крановый завод’ обращается к Вам с коммерческим предложением о взаимовыгодном сотрудничестве.” 2 2nd paragraph, the end of the 1st sentence – “Мы готовы предложить Вам уровнемерную продукцию выпускаемую нашим предприятием:” 3 1st paragraph, 1st sentence – “В связи с началом договорной кампании на 2002 год приглашаем Вас к сотрудничеству с нашим предприятием.” 4 2nd paragraph, 1st sentence – “Предлагаем Вам сделать первый реальный шаг и провести экспресс-диагностику системы управления Вашего предприятия.” 5 [vague] – 2nd paragraph, 3rd (last) sentence and 3rd paragraph, 1st (and only) sentence – “Предлагая Вашему вниманию эту книгу, надеемся, что она заинтересует Вас и будет полезна при разработке стратегии управления персоналом в Вашей Компании. Направляем Вам также информационный буклет о деятельности кафедры в новом учебном году и будем рады видеть Вас и Ваших коллег среди участников наших программ профессиональной переподготовки и повышения квалификации.” 6 2nd (last) paragraph, 1st (and only) sentence – “Просим Вас посетить выставку, познакомиться с нашей экспозицией и получить интересующую Вас информацию, касающейся нашей продукции и условий её поставки.” 7 1st paragraph, 1st sentence – “Наше издательство предлагает вашему вниманию книгу Дениса Еврина “Добыча. Всемирная история борьбы за нефть, деньги и власть”, второе издание.” 8 1st paragraph, 1st sentence – “Фирма Алмаз предлагает Вам поставку лабораторной посуды из стекла, фарфора, кварца (прозрачного и не прозрачного), термометров технического и медицинского назначения, ареометров всех видов, предметных и покровных стёкол, фильтров мембранных и биологических любого назначения и щетинно-щёточные изделия, а также химреактивы (ХЧ.Ч.ЧДА).” , or/and 4th (last) paragraph, 1st (and only) sentence – “Надеемся, что мы заинтересовали Вас своим предложением и будем рады сотрудничать с Вами.” 9 1st paragraph, 1st sentence – “Юридическая компания Ю. Носов и Партнёры предлагает Вам сотрудничество по работе в Федеральном арбитражном суде Поволжского округа.” 10 [very vague] – 6th paragraph, 1st (and only) sentence – “Искренне рады сотрудничеству с Вами.” and/or 7th paragraph, 1st (and only) sentence – “Пакет документов прилагается.” 11 6th paragraph, 1st and 2nd sentences – “Сегодня мы готовы предложить Вам поставки широкой номенклатуры промышленного оборудования. Перечень предлагаемого нами оборудования указан в Каталоге, который мы прилагаем к настоящему письму.” 12 2nd paragraph, 1st sentence – “ООО “Техношара” предлагает Вам профессиональные услуги по комплектации производственных объектов трубопроводной арматурой и соединительными деталями трубопроводов.”


Table 12 (continued) 13 4th (the last) paragraph, 1st (and only) sentence – “Исходя из вышесказанного, имеем возможность предложить взаимовыгодное сотрудничество и высылаем прайс-лист по состоянию склада в настоящий момент.” 14 7th (the last) paragraph, 2nd (the last) sentence – “Предлагаем Вам заключить договор на поставку химической продукции и стать одними из наших клиентов.” 15 [vague] 9th (the last) paragraph, 1st (and only) sentence – “Надеемся на долговременное и взаимовыгодное сотрудничество!” 16 2nd (the last) paragraph, 1st (and only) sentence – “Просим сообщить реквизиты для заключения договора и предоставить календарный график поставок.” 17 1st paragraph, 1st sentence – “Обращаюсь к Вам с предложением о сотрудничестве.”

Table 13. Uncertainty avoidance: Placement of the thesis statement/purpose statement (bottom-line of the message) in the Russian letters (translations) 1 2 3 4 5

6

7

8

9

1st paragraph, 1st sentence – “Open Joint-Stock Company ‘Krasilovo Crane Factory’ is addressing you with a business proposal of the mutually beneficial partnership.” 2nd paragraph, the end of the 1st sentence – “We are ready to offer you the equipment that our factory produces:” 1st paragraph, 1st sentence – “In view of the beginning of the 2002 contract campaign we offer you cooperation with our enterprise.” 2nd paragraph, 1st sentence – “We offer you to make the first real step and conduct an express diagnosis of the management system at your company.” [vague] – 2nd paragraph, 3rd (last) sentence and 3rd paragraph, 1st (and only) sentence – “We offer this book for your attention and hope that it will be of interest for you and will be helpful for strategic development of human resources management in your company. We are sending you also an information booklet on the Department schedule for the new academic year and we will be happy to see you and your colleagues among the participants in our professional training programs.” 2nd (last) paragraph, 1st (and only) sentence – “We ask you to attend the exposition, look at our exhibit, and get the information you need about our products and the shipment.” 1st paragraph, 1st sentence – “Our publishing house offers you the second edition of Dennis Evrin’s book ‘Exploitation: The World History of Fight for Oil, Money, and Power’.” 1st paragraph, 1st sentence – “Company ‘Almaz’ offers you a supply of glassware made out of pyrex, porcelain, quartz (transparent and matte), technical and medical thermometers, areometers of all kinds, slides, all purpose membrane and biological filters, and chemicals (ChP. P. PFA).”, or/and 4th (last) paragraph, 1st (and only) sentence – “We hope that we made you interested in our offer and we will be glad to be your partners.” 1st paragraph, 1st sentence – “Law company ‘U. Nosov and Partners’ offers you assistance in Povolzhsk Federal arbitration court procedures.”


Table 13 (continued) 10 [very vague] – 6th paragraph, 1st (and only) sentence – “We are sincerely glad to cooperate with you.” and/or 7th paragraph, 1st (and only) sentence – “A set of the documents is enclosed.” 11 6th paragraph, 1st and 2nd sentences – “Today we can offer you a supply of broad range of industrial equipment. The list of the equipment we offer is in the Catalog which we enclose with this letter .” 12 2nd paragraph, 1st sentence – “Joint-Stock Company ‘Technoshara’ offers you professional services in supplying pipe steel frameworks and pipe joints to build up production sets.” 13 4th (the last) paragraph, 1st (and only) sentence – “ Due to the stated above, we have an opportunity to offer a mutually beneficial partnership, and are mailing a price-list in accordance with the present assortment in store.” 14 7th (the last) paragraph, 2nd (the last) sentence – “We offer you to sign a contract for chemicals’ supplies and become one of our clients.” 15 [vague] 9th (the last) paragraph, 1st (and only) sentence – “We hope for a long-term and mutually beneficial partnership!” 16 2nd (the last) paragraph, 1st (and only) sentence – “We ask you to give specifications for signing the contract and to provide the schedule of supplies.” 17 1st paragraph, 1st sentence – “I am addressing you with an offer of partnership.”


Form of providing contact information (in the text of the letters) Table 14. Uncertainty avoidance: Form of providing contact information (in the text of the letters) in the American letters 1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15

“Pam can be reached at (866) 000-0000 or on the Internet at [email protected]. Pam will be contacting you in the near future to introduce herself and to offer assistance with implementing an ELLIS strategy.” – “please call me at 630-000-0000 ex 00, or I will be in contact after you have had time to review the media kit.” – “If you have any questions about your account, please feel free to call our technical support number at 233-0000.” “If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us by phone (609 000-0000), fax (609 000-0000), or e-mail ([email protected]).” “please contact ABC, Inc. at 515-000-0000. You can also find us on the web at www.xxx. com.” – “In placing a telephone order, please call 1-800-000-0000 Monday through Friday between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. ET and mention this order form code: ME2ESL . . . please visit our website at www.cambridge.org/esl-efl . . . please contact your local representative (see enclosed)” “If you are interested in our Cover Guard or possibly in our Gym Divider Curtain, please contact us direct at (515) 000-0000.” – “Simply call us at 1-800-000-0000 to transfer high-rate credit card. . . . Call us anytime tollfree at 1-800-000-0000 to take advantage of these two great low rates” “[signature, title] Phone: (800) 000-0000, ext. 000-0000 Fax: (800) 000-0000” “If you’d like additional details on how we can help, visit us online at www.xxx.com, or call our Efficiency Solution Hotline at 1-800-000-0000.” “call the customer service number on the back of your card. Or manage your account anywhere, anytime with our Online Account Services at www.xxx.com.”


Table 15. Uncertainty avoidance: Form of providing contact information (in the text of the letters) in the Russian letters (originals) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

– – – “Готовы предоставить дополнительную информацию. Наши телефоны (095) 00000-00, -00.” – – – – “Наш адрес 420049, Казань, ул. Черри, дом 0. Звоните (8432) 00-00-00.” “Наши реквизиты указаны в верхней части страницы.” – – – “Тел/факс (8432) 00-00-00, 8-9033-000000.” – – “Информацию о нас и нашей продукции можно найти на сайте www.xxx.ru. С уважением, [signature] e-mail: [email protected].”

Table 16. Uncertainty avoidance: Form of providing contact information (in the text of the letters) in the Russian letters (translations) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

– – – “We are ready to provide additional information. Our telephones are (095) 000-00-00, -00.” – – – – “Our address: 420049, Kazan City, Cherry Street, 0. Call us at: (8432) 00-00-00.” “Our contact information is given at the top of the page.” – – – “Telephone/Fax (8432) 00-00-00, 8-0000-000000.” – – “The information about us and our products can be found online at www.xxx.ru. Yours faithfully, [signature] e-mail: [email protected].”


Individualism/collectivism Form of reference to self Table 17. Individualism/collectivism: Form of reference to self in the American letters 1 2 3

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

“X . . . Y . . . Z . . . continually strives . . .”; “XYZ will, of course, continue to answer . . .” “I enjoyed our visit”; “Thank you for giving Modern Graphics the opportunity to quote . . .”; “I have used a smaller size . . .”; “ please give me a call” “Athletic Management is targeted”; “Our editorial is in tune with the market. Athletic Management keeps readers informed . . .”; “We provide you . . .”; “We send you . . .”; “please call me at 630-000-0000 ex 00, or I will be in contact . . .” “I’ll call you soon . . . please give me a call.” “I have also enclosed” “After we receive your form, we will send you”; “We look forward to your school’s participation”; “please contact us” “ABC, Inc. has designed a solution . . .”; “please contact ABC, Inc.”; “find us on the web”; “We look forward to hearing from you!” ““I’ve enclosed information”; ““we list all companies”; “we’ll distribute product literature”; “I will call you to follow-up”; “please contact me.” “we are delighted”; “we’re offering”; “we accept”; “We are committed”; “We wish you” “We at A.B.C., Inc.”; “we have an established . . . network”; “please contact us” “contact us” “we want”; “call us”; “Call us anytime” “we are enclosing”; “will allow us”; “return . . . to us”; please contact us” “We’ve included”; “We can have”; “we’ll either give you”; “how we can help”; “visit us online” “you’ve shown us”; “we want to be sure”; “we’ll periodically review”

Table 18. Individualism/collectivism: Form of reference to self in the Russian letters (originals) 1

2 3

4 5

“ОАО ‘Красилово крановый завод’ обращается к Вам”; “направляем Вам” – “nosubject” sentence, plural; “надеемся, что наше сотрудничество” – “no-subject” sentence, plural; “Коллектив ОАО ‘Красилово крановый завод’” “ОАО ‘Завод НОВОРУСДЕТАЛЬ’”; “Мы готовы предложить”; “просим рассмотреть” – “no-subject” sentence, plural “приглашаем Вас к сотрудничеству”, “предлагаем Вашему вниманию”, “обращаем Ваше внимание”, “вышлем имеющиеся у нас” – all “no-subject” sentences, plural; “работ выполняемых ЗАО САМАРАТЕХНОМОНТАЖ” “Предлагаем Вам сделать”; “Предлагаем выдержки из отзывов”; “Готовы предоставить” – all “no-subject” sentences, plural; “обработка анкет проводится нами” “Поздравляем Вас”; “Позвольте пожелать”; – all “no-subject” sentences, plural; “Нам приятно сообщить”; “мы выпустили новую книгу”; “Предлагая Вашему вниманию эту книгу, мы надеемся, что она заинтересует Вас”; “Направляем Вам также . . . и будем рады видеть” – “no-subject” sentence, plural


Table 18. (continued) 6 7 8 9

10 11

12

13 14

15

“наше предприятие” “Наше издательство”; “Надеемся, что эта книга” – “no-subject” sentence, plural; “ООО “Издательство ‘ДеНаш’” – instead of the signature “Фирма “Алмаз” предлагает Вам”; “Фирма “Алмаз” имеет многолетний опыт”; “Надеемся, что мы заинтересовали Вас . . . и будем рады сотрудничать” “Юридическая компания ‘Ю. Носов и Партнёры’ предлагает Вам”; “Мы специализируемся”; “нами были накоплены”; “которые мы и предлагаем”; “мы с удовольствием окажем Вам содействие”; “нами накоплена хорошая практика”; “Обращайтесь к нам”; “Будем рады видеть Вас” – “no-subject” sentence, plural “Искренне рады сотрудничеству с Вами.” – “no-subject” sentence, plural “Наша компания”; “коллектив наших специалистов”; “Мы выбираем”; “мы пытаемся создать”; “мы готовы предложить”; “предлагаемого нами оборудования”; “мы прилагаем”; “Вы можете рассчитывать на нас”; “Мы гарантируем”; “Будем рады . . . и гарантируем”; “Надеемся” – the last two – “no-subject” sentences, plural “ООО “Техношара” является”; “Мы работаем”; “ООО “Техношара” предлагает”; “Мы готовы рассмотреть”; “предлагаем Вам” – the last one – “no-subject” sentence, plural “ООО ‘ТПС’”; “мы оставляем цены”; “имеем возможность предложить . . . и высылаем” – the last one – “no-subject” sentence, plural “ООО “Экшн” предлагает”; “предлагаем продукцию” – “no-subject” sentence, plural; “ООО “Экшн” отдает предпочтение”; “предлагаем Вам”; “Надеемся” – the last two – “no-subject” sentences, plural “Наше предприятие”; “Мы производим”; “Наши специалисты”; “используем гибкую систему скидок”; “Отгрузку продукции осуществляем”; “Надеемся” – the last three – “no-subject” sentences, plural

16 “Наша организация”; “просим Вас сообщить” – the last one – “no-subject” sentence, plural 17 “Обращаюсь к Вам”; “Мне известно”; “Смею заверить Вас” – “no-subject” sentences, singular (“I”); “мы констатируем факт”; “Мы . . . торгуем”; “Уверен, что, . . . и по этому предлагаю” – “no-subject” sentence, singular (“I”); “Мы ориентируемся”; “Наша Фабрика”; “Информацию о нас”


Table 19. Individualism/collectivism: Form of reference to self in the Russian letters (translations) 1

2 3

4 5

6 7 8 9

10 11

12

13 14 15 16 17

“Open Joint-Stock Company ‘Krasilovo Crane Factory’ is addressing you”; “are sending you” – “no-subject” sentence, plural; “hope that our partnership” – “no-subject” sentence, plural; “The Open Joint-Stock Company ‘Krasilovo Crane Factory’ staff ” “Open Joint-Stock Company ‘NOVORUSDETAL Factory’”; “We are ready to offer”; “ask you to consider” – “no-subject” sentence, plural “offer you cooperation”, “offer for your attention”, “address your attention”, “provide copies of our licenses” – all “no-subject” sentences, plural; “services provided by JointStock Company ‘SAMARATECHNOMONTAZH’” “offer you to make”; “offer you to refer to the feedback”; “are ready to provide” – all “nosubject” sentences, plural; “data analysis takes us a week” “congratulate You”; “Let us wish”; – all “no-subject” sentences, plural; “We are happy to announce”; “we have published a new book”; “We offer this book for your attention and hope that it will be of interest for you”; “are sending you also . . . and will be happy to see” – “no-subject” sentence, plural “our company” “Our publishing house”; “hope that this book” – “no-subject” sentence, plural; “‘DeNash’ Publishing House’ Ltd.” – instead of the signature “Company ‘Almaz’ offers you”; “Company ‘Almaz’ has been partners for many years”; “We hope that we made you interested . . . and we will be glad to be your partners.” “Law company ‘U. Nosov and Partners’ offers you”; “We specialize”; “we have accumulated”; “which we offer”; “we will be glad to assist you”; “we have a record of success”; “Address us”; “will be glad to see you” – “no-subject” sentence, plural “are sincerely glad to cooperate with you.” – “no-subject” sentence, plural “Our company”; “Our highly professional staff ”; “We choose”; “we try to create”; “we can offer”; “the equipment we offer”; “we enclose”; “you can count on us”; “We guarantee”; “will be glad . . . and guarantee”; “hope” – the last two – “no-subject” sentences, plural “Joint-Stock Company ‘Technoshara’ is”; “We work”; “Joint-Stock Company ‘Technoshara’ offers”; “We are ready to consider”; “suggest your looking” – the last one – “no-subject” sentence, plural “‘TPS’ Ltd.”; “we make the prices”; “have an opportunity to offer . . . and are mailing” – the last one – “no-subject” sentence, plural “‘Action’ Ltd. offers”; “offer the produce” – “no-subject” sentence, plural; “‘Action’ Ltd. prefers”; “offer you”; “Hope” – the last two – “no-subject” sentences, plural “Our company”; “We produce”; “Our specialists; “use flexible discount system”; “Provide the product shipment”; “Hope” – the last three – “no-subject” sentences, plural “Our organization”; “Ask you to give” – the last one – “no-subject” sentence, plural “Am addressing you”; “Am aware of ”; “Let me assure you” – “no-subject” sentences, singular (“I”); “we state the fact”; “We . . . sell”; “Am sure that, . . . and thus am offering” – “no-subject” sentence, singular (“I”); “We focus”; “Our Factory”; “The information about us”

Spanish-language newspaper editorials from Mexico, Spain, and the U.S. Chin-Sook Pak, Rebeca Acevedo Ball State University / Loyola Marymount University

The study examines discourse patterns among various Spanish-speaking regions within one single genre of newspaper editorials, as compared to English language editorials. It focuses on the varieties of Spanish used by Latino communities in the United States as represented by El Diario (New York) and La Opinión (Los Angeles) and compares the findings with previous studies on the genre from newspapers such as The New York Times, El País (Madrid), and El Universal (Mexico). Rhetorical and stylistic features such as sentence and paragraph length and complexity, editorial titles, placement of the main topic and the use of attribution to sources as a device of argumentation were analyzed. The results demonstrate regional differences among various Spanish-speaking countries, and between the two Spanish-speaking areas in the U.S.

Introduction Decades of research in contrastive rhetoric have provided scholars, teachers, and students with useful insights to understanding the forms, contents, and contexts that shape different types of texts across a variety of cultures. Cross-cultural discourse studies of common text types such as newspaper genres, business letters, student compositions, research articles, and job interviews can be beneficial for students and global professionals as they learn about the users and uses of these genres within the context of the target culture (Andersson & Gunnarsson 1993; Bhatia 1993; Connor 1996; Jenkins & Hinds 1987; Lai & Wong 2000; Mauranen 1992; Pak 1997; Tirkkonen-Condit & Lieflander-Koistinen 1989). In the case of Spanish-speaking cultures, much of earlier research, which was principally driven by pedagogical interests in ESL contexts, has focused on the genre of student compositions comparing discourse patterns between Spanish and English (Bar-Lev 1986; Carlson 1988; Lux 1991; Montaño-Harmon 1991; Ostler 1988; Reid 1988; Santana-Seda 1975; Scarcella 1984; Vasques-Ayora 1977). These studies identified

124 Chin-Sook Pak, Rebeca Acevedo

general discourse patterns in the texts written by Spanish speakers as being more abstract, having longer sentences with elaborate constructions, and having longer and digressive introductions. However, the diversity within Spanish-speaking communities has not been given much attention. Because the texts were compared based on language groups (i.e. English vs. Spanish), there is relatively little non-anecdotal information on how different groups of Spanish-speaking cultures organize their texts. Even within the growing number of recent studies on other genres such as those related to academic research articles (Burgess 2002; MartínMartín 2002; Martín-Martín & Burgess 2004; Moreno 1997) the cross-cultural analysis has been based on language groups. Spanish is the official language of twenty countries plus the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and is also spoken as the first or second language in immigrant communities in diverse European countries, in Canada, in the United States, as well as in Guam (Azevedo 2005: 1). Considering the variety of groups that share the Spanish language, it may be difficult to identify general rhetorical tendencies that describe the Spanish norm of writing even within one genre. Indeed, in the case of English, Kachru (1995) points to numerous varieties of English that exist in different parts of the world and rejects the assumption that “there is a native English norm of writing which is clearly identifiable” (p. 172). The aim of the present study is to examine discourse patterns among various Spanish-speaking regions within the single genre of newspaper editorials. In particular, the study focuses on the varieties of Spanish used by the immigrant communities in the United States as represented by El Diario (from New York City) and La Opinión (from Los Angeles) and compares the findings with those presented in previous studies on newspaper editorials from Mexico and Spain (Pak 1996, 1997, 2000). By analyzing a number of rhetorical and stylistic features such as sentence and paragraph length, sentence and paragraph complexity, editorial titles, placement of the main topic and the use of attribution to sources as a device of argumentation, the present research highlights regional differences not only among various Spanish-speaking countries but also between two Spanishspeaking areas in the United States. In order to fulfill particular communicative purposes, each newspaper employs a set of distinctive discourse features that sets it apart from the others. Newspaper editorials were selected because they constitute a useful and reliable set of data for conducting cross-cultural discourse analysis. First, editorial style is known to be less contaminated by the effects of translation from foreign sources than that which may occur in news reports. It does not provide straightforward information, but rather presents soft news (i.e., analysis of news). Second, because editorials play a vital role for the newspaper, they are written by experienced professionals, and the editorial is considered to be among the most pres-

Spanish-language newspaper editorials from Mexico 125

tigious forms and polished text types in the newspaper (de Miguel 1982; Gunesekera 1989; Harriss, Leiter, & Johnson 1992; Hulteng 1973; Hynds 1984; Love & Morrison 1989). The Spanish language editorials in this study are written by native speakers of Spanish highly trained in their respective countries. Third, they are highly valued texts that are not literary texts but carefully crafted discourses representative of both the political and ideological attitudes of the newspaper and their regional and national background (van Dijk 1988). The editorial, at least in a major newspaper, typically represents the metropolitan values of a society. In this respect, editorials of different cultures constitute useful opinion sources for obtaining cross-cultural perspectives for language students, teachers, and global professionals.

Data Thirty recent newspaper editorials from El Diario/La Prensa (New York) and another thirty from La Opinión (Los Angeles) were analyzed and their findings compared with previous Contrastive Rhetoric studies on the genre from newspapers such as The New York Times, El País (Madrid), and El Universal (Mexico City) (Pak 1996, 1997, 2000). The editorials from El Diario were randomly selected during February to May of 2004. The samples from La Opinión are those randomly selected from February to June of 1999. The data from El País, El Universal, and The New York Times (a total of 90 editorials) are from the month of June 1994. The comparability of topics was not a criterion considered in the data selection for a number of reasons. First, the aim of the current study is to compare the findings with previous cross-cultural analysis of newspaper editorials that were already selected from the past. Second, because each newspaper often focused on topics of regional interests, selection of comparable topics created difficulty in obtaining the quantity of editorials desired (thirty editorials from each representative newspaper). Third, the random selection process allowed the researchers to see, in a beneficial way, which topics were of the most importance to the Spanish-speaking communities in each region as represented by the selected newspapers. The newspapers were selected based on the quality and the circulation size. The Spanish language newspapers in the U.S. are regional papers that target Latino populations in specific areas. Although El Diario (New York) and La Opinión (Los Angeles) are of much smaller circulation size than the national newspapers such as El País (Madrid) and El Universal (Mexico City), the two former newspapers are considered the oldest and most well-respected Spanish-language dailies in the U.S., serving as leading advocates for the Latino community (Hernandez 2004). El Diario is widely circulated in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.


La Opinión is widely circulated in California and Nevada. Information on editorials of The New York Times is included for points of comparison.

Background information on the newspapers In order to conduct any kind of text analysis at the level of discourse, it is essential to consider the contextual environment in which the text type being analyzed is embedded. Recent discourse analysts have focused not only on forms but also functions within a particular context. For example, Swales (1990) offers a functional view of genres by focusing on their communicative purposes and highlighting the relationship of texts to their uses and users. He defines genres as communicative events that fulfill some kind of communicative purpose. Thus he claims that the communicative purpose shapes the “schematic structure of the discourse and influences and constrains the choice of content and style” (p. 58). To explore the context of the editorials, telephone interviews were conducted with the chief officer of the opinion page of each newspaper. A list of questions was provided to the interviewees in advance, and the interviews lasted between 10 to 30 minutes depending on the time allocated by the interviewees (see Appendix A for the list of questions). The interview findings suggest that the perceived purpose of the editorials, the reader profile, the writing process, and the stylistic features of each newspaper vary. The editorials of all newspapers are persuasive and evaluative in nature, but the perceived functions differ slightly. While El Diario and The New York Times strongly emphasize the argumentative nature of editorials (i.e., clear presentation of the position of the paper), the Spanish language newspapers from Los Angeles, Madrid, and Mexico City hold that the explanatory and informative functions of the editorials are as important as the argumentative function of presenting the paper’s position. In fact, La Opinión, El País, and El Universal have many more editorials in the sample analyzed that explain the situation rather than argue for a particular stance on issues. Table 1 summarizes the interview findings on the perceived function of the editorials. The difference in the function of the editorial genre has also been noted in past cross-cultural studies. For example, Tirkkonen-Condit and Liefländer-Koistinen (1989) compared editorials from The Observer (Britain), Frankfurter Rundschauter (Germany), and Helsingin Sanomat (Finland) and note that while the chief thrust . The interviewees are Ms. Everlyn Hernández, the Opinion Page Editor of El Diario; Mr. Gerardo López, the general editor of La Opinión; Steven Wismen, a member of the Editorial Board for The New York Times; Mr. Hermann Tertsch, the “Subdirector de Opinión” of El País; and Mr. Alfonso Maya Nava, the “subdirector editorial” of El Universal.


Table 1. Function/purpose of the editorials Newspaper

Function

El Diario/La Prensa (New York) La Opinión (Los Angeles)

To signal issues of importance; to set agenda city- and statewide; to let the readers know the newspaper’s position. To inform about relevant issues for the community; to provide a voice for the readers. To inform and persuade about the paper’s point of view; to help the reader to decide what to think. To frame and explain current issues. To guide the readers and help them navigate through the chaotic realm of information.

The New York Times El País (Madrid) El Universal (Mexico City)

of English and German editorials is to argue for an opinion, the main function of Finnish editorials appeared to be to provide readers with background material upon which they can form their own opinion. They conclude that “argumentation can be seen as a potentially face-threatening activity, and it may be that in Finland the necessity to come to the ‘point’ early and in a manner which makes the thesis knowable to the addressee is sacrificed to politeness, i.e., to neutrality and delay in the expression of the thesis” (p. 180). Andersson and Gunnarsson (1993) have also conducted contrastive analysis between Swedish and German editorials in order to examine whether a unique Swedish editorial pattern exists and whether this is related to characteristic traits of Swedish culture. They conclude that while the German editorials were principally argumentative with a “thesis-argumentation-conclusion-(recommendation)” pattern, the Swedish editorials appeared to show “how things are”; that is, the Swedish editorials tend to be more informative in nature than argumentative. In this respect, the principal function of a named genre in different cultures may not be the same. For some cultures, editorials are typically used to state an argument for the newspaper’s position while for others they are more often used to explain events and to allow the readers to take their own stance on the issues discussed. However, the findings from these studies are limited to cultures that are represented by different language groups and do not provide any information about different cultures that share the same language as the users of the genre. The interview findings of the present study also reveal that the newspapers address different audiences – the small elite group of Spanish and Mexican editorial readers vs. the larger diverse group of editorial readers in the U.S. La Opinión, El País, and El Universal claim to target more sophisticated and influential readers, while El Diario and The New York Times are more inclusive in their approach to readers. In this sense, the differences in the perceived functions and readership are likely to affect the nature of the editorial discourse used in these newspapers.


Table 2. Readership and stylistic concerns of the editorials Newspaper

Readership

Stylistic Concerns

El Diario/La Prensa Mainstream folks in the news Be concise and accessible to an av(New York) media; decision-makers in the erage reader; provide bilingual versions to meet the demands community at the grassroots of a wider readership. level or elected official level Well-educated and informed La Opinión Be clear, concise, and direct; use (Los Angeles) readers; members of heteroquality language. geneous Latino community; state and local authorities The New York Times Both the general public and spe- Be clear and positional; use vocabulary accessible to the general cialists in various fields public. Elite and well-informed group of Be concise; show respect for indiEl País (Madrid) viduals; use quality language. readers such as professionals, decision-makers, and government officials An influential group of people Be brief; use highly elevated El Universal language. (Mexico City) such as politicians and other decision-makers

In fact, El Diario and The New York Times stress the accessibility of the language to general readers. Meanwhile, La Opinión, El País, and El Universal emphasize the quality aspect of the language (i.e., elevated style). Table 2 summarizes the interview findings related to the perceived readership and stylistic concerns.

Quantitative and stylistic analysis of editorials Editorial, paragraph, and sentence length El Diario has the shortest editorial length, with an average of 335 words per editorial, while the editorials from Spain and Mexico have the longest, with 544 and 547 words, respectively. However, editorial length may be determined by factors such as the particular layout format dictated by each newspaper. For example, the editor of the opinion page of El Diario states that the newspaper attempts to keep its editorials short, to about an average of 315 words, in order to maintain space for both Spanish and English versions. Table 3 summarizes the quantitative figures for the editorial, paragraph, and sentence length. Along with The New York Times, El Diario has the shortest paragraph length in terms of the number of words, while El País and El Universal have the longest paragraphs. With regard to sentence length, the Mexican editorials produced the


Table 3. Editorial, paragraph and sentence length Average

El Diario/ La Opinión The New York El País El Universal La Prensa (Los Angles) Times (Madrid) (Mexico City) (New York)

Words per Editorial Words per paragraph Words per sentence Sentences per paragrah Paragraphs per Editorial

335 49 26 1.9 6.9

449 72 26 2.8 6.2

447 61 20 3 7.3

544 110 27 4 4.9

547 85 39 2.2 6.4

longest sentences, with an average of 39 words per sentence. The editorials of the U.S. newspapers in the sample have shorter sentences: 26 words per sentence for El Diario and La Opinión, and 20 words per sentence for The New York Times. In general, this finding appears to be in line with the claim that sentences written by native speakers of Spanish tend to be longer than those written by native speakers of English (Lux 1991; Ostler 1988; Reid 1988; Santana-Seda 1975; Secanella 1981; Vasques-Ayora 1977). However, the figures for average sentence length among the five newspapers cannot be viewed as English short sentences versus Spanish long sentences. The difference in the sentence length among the various Spanish-speaking regions is also significant. If the figure for the Mexican newspaper stands at one end of the spectrum and the figure for the English-language American newspaper stands at the other, then El Diario, La Opinión, and El País fall somewhere in the middle but closer to The New York Times.

Number of sentences in a paragraph In their study of academic essays written by college students, Santana-Seda (1977) and Ostler (1988) note that paragraphs written by Spanish speakers tend to contain fewer sentences. They found a high percentage of one- and two-sentence paragraphs written by native speakers of Spanish, whereas this appears to be rare in English. In the genre of newspaper editorials, however, the results appear to be mixed as can be seen in Table 4. While the majority of paragraphs in El Diario and El Universal consist of one or two sentences, the majority of paragraphs in El País, La Opinión, and The New York Times have three or more sentences. Although El Diario employs the greatest number of one-sentence paragraphs, its paragraphs are very short in comparison to the other newspapers. El País has the greatest number of sentences in its paragraphs. In this respect, the Spanish-language newspapers from New York and Madrid present two extremes in the sample. Thus, paragraphs written by native speakers of Spanish, at least for the genre of newspaper editorials in the sample,


Table 4. Paragraph size in terms of the number of sentences Sentences per Paragraph

El Diario/ La Opinión The New York El País La Prensa (Los Angeles) Times (Madrid) (New York)

El Universal (Mexico City)

1-Sentence Paragraphs 2-Sentence Paragraphs 3-Sentence Paragraphs 4 or MoreSentence Paragrahs

49.8%

9.1%

5.5%

2%

37.8%

28%

26%

26.4%

5.4%

26.4%

13%

29%

32.6%

29.7%

17.1%

9.2%

35.9%

35.5%

62.7%

18.7%

do not necessarily use fewer sentences than those written by native speakers of English.

Sentence type Secanella (1981) and de Miguel (1982) note that opinion articles in Spanish newspapers tend to produce long sentences. In order to further investigate the complexity of sentence construction, the number of subordinations (i.e., the number of dependent clauses) in a sentence was examined. Table 5 presents the percentage of sentence types in the sample editorials of each newspaper. The majority of sentences in The New York Times editorials are simple (52.6%). The English-language newspaper tends to avoid long sentences with more than two subordinations. Sentences with three or more subordinations constitute less than 2% of total sentence types. Editorials written in Spanish, by comparison, are more tolerant of long sentences with numerous subordinate clauses. Nevertheless, there are different patterns among the various Spanish newspapers in the sample. The Spanish-language newspapers in the U.S. prefer a simpler sentence structure; they employ a smaller number of sentences with multiple subordinations than do the newspapers from Spain and Mexico. Furthermore, in examples of sentences with more complex structures, El Diario tends to employ subordinations that are shorter in length than those in other Spanish-language editorials. As an example, the following sentence from El Diario is 37 words long and uses four subordinate clauses: La gente que vive cerca de negocios de comida y/o bebida dicen que la bulla ha aumentado desde que se prohibió fumar en estos lugares, porque ahora la gente sale a las calles a fumar y conversar.


Table 5. Sentence type Sentence Type

El Diario/ La Prensa

La Opinión The New El País York Times

El Universal

Simple With 1 Subordination With 2 Subordinations With 3 Subordinations With 4 or More Subordinations

40.9% 37.1% 14.6% 4.6% 2.8%

46.2% 31.0% 14.1% 6.2% 2.5%

21.3% 26.9% 24.0% 16.8% 11.0%

52.6% 33.2% 12.5% 1.2% 0.5%

39.7% 36.5% 17.9% 5.3% 5.6%

[People who live near eating and drinking establishments say the noise has gotten worse since the city initiated the smoking ban in restaurants, because now people stand out on the sidewalks, smoking and talking.] (“Una ciudad a todo volumen,” March 8, 2004, El Diario)

The Mexican editorials in the sample, however, prefer longer, more complex sentence structure, at times allowing up to eight subordinations as in the following example of a 105-word sentence: Esta preocupación se hizo presente ayer entre los hombres de negocios que se reunieron en el Salon del Empresario en México con motivo de la introducción en él de Raúl Bailleres Chávez, junto con Adolfo Autrey, Manuel Clouthier del Rincón y Salvador Chávez, al señalarse que el EZLN sigue siendo una bomba de tiempo que puede ser peligrosa si es usada por quienes pretenden desestabilizar al país, y que las negociaciones deben continuar hasta lograrse la paz, aunque no descartaron su apoyo al gobierno en el caso de que las conversaciones fracasen y eventualmente se tengan que emplear otros recursos para someter a los rebeldes. [This concern became apparent yesterday among the business men who met in the Salon del Empresario in Mexico with the purpose of introducing in it (the Salon) Raúl Bailleres Chávez, together with Adolfo Autrey, Manuel Clouthier del Rincón and Salvador Chávez upon indicating that the EZLN continues to be a time bomb that can be dangerous if it is used by those who try to destabilize the nation, and that the negotiations must continue until the peace is achieved although they did not discard their support of the government in the event that the conversations fail and that possibly other resources have to be used in order to force the rebels to yield.] (“Inteligencia y diálogo con EZLN,” June 11, 1994, El Universal)

Although these samples represent one of the more extreme examples, the fact that the Mexican editorials allow more than 27% of sentences to have three or more subordinations is an indication that El Universal favors an elaborate and complex sentence style for their editorials to address its highly influential and educated read-


ers. In fact, Secanella (1981) claims that sentences that exceed thirty to thirty-five words are not comprehensible for an average Spanish newspaper reader (p. 76). In summary, The New York Times employs the greatest number of simple sentences, and El Universal uses the greatest number of complex sentences. The Spanish-language newspaper editorials appear to allow more subordinations than the English-language editorials in the sample. However, the two Spanish-language newspapers from the U.S. use shorter sentences with less subordination than the varieties from Mexico and Spain.

Editorial titles All editorials have titles; however, there are stylistic differences among the editorials. The titles in newspapers from the U.S. and Mexico tend to be more informative; they often summarize the content of the editorials, which reflect the main topic and the position of the newspaper. El Diario and The New York Times appear to be more argumentative, using more forceful and direct language (e.g., commands, obligation modals such as “must” and “should,” and clear identification of the agents involved). La Opinión and El Universal employ more descriptive language and take a softer stance without specifying responsible parties. These variations are in line with interview results concerning the perceived functions of the editorials for each newspaper; that is, the informative function is given as much importance as the argumentative function, especially for La Opinión and El Universal. Table 6 provides examples of the titles in the corpus. The titles in El País are shorter and often do not reveal as much information regarding the content of the editorial as those in the other newspapers. This may be because the editorials from Spain presume greater background knowledge on the part of the readers (i.e., the title may provide hints to only the “insiders,” or the titles have functions – for example, to grab the readers’ interest). At this stage of analysis, however, given the limited sample size, it may not be possible to generalize on the explicit vs. implicit nature of the titles among the editorials. The style of editorial titles is also in line with patterns of recommendation language found in the different newspapers. For example, El Diario and The New York Times often take a more direct approach to argumentation, typically by identifying specific actors and using explicit language (i.e., ample use of obligation modals and commands): Los funcionarios municpales de Freehold deben olvidar las artimañas pretendidamente legalistas y dar ejemplo de acatamiento de lo ordenado por la jueza. [The Freehold city officials need to stop playing games and obey the judicial man(“Jornaleros tienen derecho a congregarse,” March 23, 2004, El Diario) date.]


Table 6. Sample editorial titles in the newspapers Newspaper El Diario

Editorial Title • • • • •

La Opinión

• • • • • The New York Times • • • • • El País • • • • • El Universal • • • • •

Venezuela: dejad que el pueblo decida (Let the people of Venezuela decide) Ni una muerta más en Juárez, México (No more death in Juarez), Asegúrese el sistema escolar lo escuche (Make sure the school system is listening) Latinos deben luchar contra la SIDA (Latinos must fight against AIDS) Mentir es erróneo y a veces illegal (Lying is wrong and illegal at times) Relegados por Hollywood (Neglected by Hollywood) El cuidado con los medicamentos (How to take medications) Cumbre sobre violencia juvenil (Summit on juvenile violence) Ayuda a Centroamérica (Aid to Centroamerica) ¡Adiós Pescador Osuna! (Farewell to Pescador Osuna) Bad Choices for the School Board The Harm in Family Welfare Caps A Budget: Delayed and Deficient A Strike Wisely Ended AIDS Babies Deserve Testing La mejor hipótesis (The best hypothesis) Negociación incierta (Uncertain negotiations) Un acuerdo endeble (A fragile agreement) Uno contra once (One against eleven) Preso y abogado (Prisoner and lawyer) Los mexicanos exigen la verdad (Mexicans demand the truth) Desarrollo iberoamericano (Iberoamerican development) Un gobierno con vision de futuro (A government with a vision) El diálogo, clave para la paz (Dialogue is key to peace) Retos y rezagos de la OEA (OEA’s challenges and backlogs)

U.S. ratification will help stigmatize chemical arms and deter states from acquiring them. The Senate’s duty seems clear. (“Ratify the Chemical Arms Ban,” June 29, 1994, The New York Times)

However, given the importance placed on the explicative function of their editorials, La Opinión, El País, and El Universal appear to show a pattern of implicit style by making recommendations that are more general and global in nature and exhibit a less aggressive character in comparison to the two newspapers from New York. The following are examples of implicit recommendations made by La Opinión, El País, and El Universal:


El debate sobre el tema esta abierto y no hay que permitir que se cierre de vuelto. Lo cierto es que en este asunto, todos estamos en el mismo barco. No hay que permitir que se hunda. [The debate over this topic is open and we should not allow it to close. What is for certain is that in this matter, we are all in the same boat. We should not allow it to sink.] (“Cuidado con los medicamentos,” May 11, 1999, La Opinión) ...la mayor parte de la sociedad es partidaria de una paz pronta y digna, donde quepan todos los intereses en disputa y donde se diseñe un nuevo esquema de convivencia nacional. [The majority of society is in favor of a quick and worthy peace where all the concerns in dispute fit in and where a new scheme/plan of national coexistence is designed.] (“Necesario retorno a negociaciones,” June 25, 1994, El Universal) No parece ocioso, aunque el reglamento no lo diga, que ese informe se presente al Parlamento y éste sepa si el recién nacido estatuto se ha convertido en una norma de vida o ha quedado en un catálogo de buenas intenciones. [It does not seem pointless, even though the regulation does not say it, that such report be presented before the Parliament and this would let us know if the recently born statute has been converted into a norm for life or has remained in a catalogue of good intentions.] (“Los derechos de los quintos,” June 27, 1994, El País)

Placement of the main topic Past studies that compare rhetorical patterns of student essays written by native speakers of English and Spanish have noted that Spanish texts tend to have longer introductions and avoid introducing the topic directly (Bar-Lev 1986; Ostler 1988; Scarcella 1984). That is, while texts written by native speakers of English introduce the topic immediately, texts written by native speakers of Spanish delay the presentation of the topic. The main topic is defined as the central topic or issue discussed in the editorial and is differentiated from the main thesis, which is an explicit statement that summarizes the position of the newspaper on the main topic. Since many editorials in the corpus have an informative function instead of an argumentative function in that they present and discuss important issues without necessarily taking a stance, the analysis of the position of the main thesis is omitted in this study. The editorials in the corpus were assigned to three classifications: the main topic presented (1) within the first sentence of the editorials, (2) within the first paragraph, and (3) after the first paragraph. If the topic was mentioned in the first paragraph and this contained only one short sentence, then the editorial was classified in the first category. However, if the first paragraph contained one long sen-


Table 7. Placement of the main topic Placement of Main Topic Newspaper

Total # of (within the editorials first sentence)

(within the first paragraph)

(after the first paragraph)

El Diario La Opinión The New York Times El País El Universal

30 30 30 30 30

6 9 16 18 9

6 0 0 3 0

18 21 14 9 21

tence with many preparatory phrases before the introduction of the main topic, then the second category was assigned. The results are shown in Table 7. Almost all of the editorials introduce their main topic within the first sentence or the first paragraph – that is, at the beginning of the editorial. Although El Diario appears to have a number of editorials that present the main topic after the first paragraph, this cannot be interpreted as delayed introduction of the topic. The editorials in this newspaper have the shortest paragraph length, with an average of just 49 words per paragraph in comparison to 72 (La Opinión), 61 (The New York Times), 110 (El País), and 85 (El Universal) words per paragraph for the others. With the exception of the editorials from Spain, the Spanish-language newspapers in the corpus do not delay introducing the main topic.

Use of attribution of sources As evaluative texts that try to inform and convince their readers, newspaper editorials employ devices of argumentation. This section, in particular, investigates one device of argumentation – the use of attribution (i.e., attributing ideas/statements to sources), as in the following examples. Un portavoz del Departamento de Protección Ambiental dice que la mayoría de quejas es por acondicionadores de aire en azoteas, música a todo volumen y clientes bulliciosos en tabernas. [A spokesman for the city Department of Environmental Protection said . . .] (“Una ciudad a todo volumen,” March 8, 2004, El Diario) Según una encuenta nacional reciente, dos tercios de los estadounidenses – y tres de cada cuatro mujeres – opinan que es más importante aumentar las restriciones sobre las armas, que proteger el derecho a poseerlas. [According to a recent national survey . . .] (“Pleito contra los fabricantes de armas,” May 27, 1999, La Opinión)

The effect and the importance of the use of attribution in journalistic and academic texts have been discussed by a number of researchers (Al-Shabbab 1986;


Table 8. Frequency and sources of attributed statements Type

El Diario / La Prensa (New York)

La Opinión The New York El País (Los Angeles) Times (Madrid)

El Universal (Mexico City)

Political Figures Individuals Parties Others Experts/Studies Individuals Studies/ Organizations Others Total no. of sentences with attribution

20 (41%) 15 1 4 19 (40%) 5

12 (41%) 10 1 1 15 (52%) 1

16 (37 %) 13 3 0 23 (53 %) 9

11 (73%) 6 0 5 3 (20%) 0

40 (69%) 38 1 1 18 (31%) 18*

14 10** 49 (100%)

14 2** 29 (100%)

14 4 43 (100%)

3 1 15 (100%)

0 0 58 (100%)

*These include lawyers, businessmen, and religious figures. **Examples include “critics” and “supporters.”

Crismore, Markkanen, & Steffensen 1993; Hulteng 1973; Secanella 1981; Trew 1979; Vande Kopple 1985). The chief thrust of attribution is to appear to build evidence, which strengthens the credibility of the arguments and thus the evaluation offered by the newspaper. Secanella (1981) also claims that attribution is a necessary element for maintaining the truth-value of statements as well as enhancing the comprehension of information (p. 93). Similarly, Trew (1979) argues that the credibility of the newspaper depends on “which forces it gives expression to, or more formally, which organizations and institutions and public figures it takes as valuable sources of information and comment” (p. 140). In this respect, attributions can be used to create “intellectual or persuasive force” (Crismore et al 1993: 52). In addition, Al-Shabbab and Swales (1986) note that attribution can not only assign some degree of authority to the statement but also protect the newspaper from “accusations of bias, invention, unreliability, and so on” (p. 37). Thus, the use of attribution in editorials can both increase credibility and also protect the newspaper by reducing and shifting responsibility. Table 8 presents the frequency of attributed statements and the typical sources of attribution in the five newspapers. A glance at the frequency of attributed statements in each newspaper would reveal that while El País shows the least concern for attributing statements to specific sources, El Universal shows the most concern. The low frequency of attribution in the editorials from Spain is in line with findings from the interview with the


director of the opinion page of El País. For the Spanish newspaper editorials, making attributions to a special source is thought to be unnecessary since the editorials are intended for an elite group of well-informed readers (Tertsch 1994, personal communication). The Mexican editorials, on the other hand, frequently attributed statements to sources, usually politicians. In spite of the interview data elicited from the subdirector of the opinion page of El Universal, which suggest that there is little need to attribute statements to particular sources, the Mexican editorials do employ the highest number of attributions. El Diario, La Opinión and The New York Times stand somewhere between the editorials from Spain and Mexico. Among the types of sources, the editorials made frequent attribution to political figures and experts in particular fields. Especially common is the tendency to quote statements from leaders of both the nation and the city. Other frequent sources of attribution include experts in a relevant field (e.g., lawyers, scientists, and so forth) and studies and surveys. Although all five newspapers employ political and expert sources, the composition of those sources varies slightly. The newspapers from Spain and Mexico place more emphasis on sources related to politics. Over two-thirds of attribution consists of political figures (e.g., 73% for El País and 69% for El Universal). Although the editorials in The New York Times also have many examples of statements that are attributed to individual political figures, the most frequently attributed source type is that of specialists/experts/ reports from various fields (e.g., “A scientist who worked on chemical arms for many years, Vil Mirzayanov, has accused Russia of . . .” and “Public health authorities have issued soothing statements that . . .”). Furthermore, the specialist category for the Mexican editorials consists of different types of specialists. Unlike the scientific nature of the sources employed in the American editorials, the specialists in the Mexican editorials include businessmen, influential lawyers/prosecutors, and high-ranking religious leaders of the country. Many of these individuals could also belong in the political category of attributed sources. In the case of the Spanish-language editorials in the U.S., the sample data show a concern for supporting statements with sources from both the political arena and experts in the field, much like The New York Times. The Spanish-language editorials use a greater number of sources from the “Experts/Studies” category than the Spanish-language newspapers from Mexico and Spain. However, at times their “scientific” sources tend to be more general and ambiguous in nature, as in the following examples: “Ni una muerte más,” dijeron las mujeres en marchas y reuniones, especialmente a donde llegaron los miembros de la organización Justicia para nuestras Hijas, for-


mada por familiares y deudos de las asesinadas y desparecidas que llegan, según cifras oficiales a 300, pero según diferentes organismos, ya suman las 500. [according to official figures . . . according to different sources] (“Ni una muerta más en Juaréz, México,” March 21, 2004, El Diario) Según algunas encuestas y por la tendencia existente en los países latinoamericanos, el líder histórico de la izquierda, Schafik Handal, habría superado en votos al empresario Elías Antonio Saca, candidato de la derechista ARENA, que ya lleva en el poder desde 1989. [According to some surveys. . . .] (“El Salvador y la democracia,” March 22, 2004, El Diario) Pero sus críticos dicen que Bush introdujo el tema de reforma de inmigración como una trama en un año de elecciones para obtener el voto hispano. [“But his critics say that Bush. . . .] (“Promesa de inmigración de Bush,” February 18, 2004, El Diario) Según estimaciones oficiales, unos 16 mil estudiantes de escuelas públicas recibirán los beneficios del programa durante su despliegue. [According to official estimates. . . .] (“Para después de clases,” May 13, 1999, La Opinión) En el contexto de estas reflexiones es que hay que ver un estudio, publicado ayer, que afirma que las malas experiencias con medicamentos cuestan al país 100 mil muertes al año. [. . . a study published yesterday. . . .] (“El cuidado con los medicamentos,” May 11, 1999, La Opinión)

In summary, all newspaper editorials employ attributed statements to support theses, to provide additional background information, and to present counterviews. However, frequency and preference for source types vary among them. In his advice to young American editorial writers, Prentice (1981) argues that “[c]redibility is a commodity that is earned when the opinion is backed up with facts, statistics, authoritative data, evidence, defensible hypothesis, and other information knit together by the twin strands of logic and reason” (p. 5). Indeed, in the editorials of The New York Times, statements made by specialists/experts of various fields often support the newspaper’s position. In this respect, the American newspaper places high value on specialist and scientific opinion and other types of evidence to support its arguments. Likewise, the Spanish-language newspapers in the U.S. tend to manifest a need for attributing their statements to sources from specialists and studies, although at times their sources present some ambiguity (e.g., “According to some surveys . . .”). El Diario and La Opinión do not follow the patterns of editorials from Mexico and Spain. While the editorials from Spain do not make many attributions, those from Mexico place importance on presenting


the opinions of the country’s leading political figures in order to gain support for its position or even to provide the main position of the newspaper.

Conclusion The goal of this study was to examine discourse patterns among various Spanish-speaking regions within one single genre of newspaper editorials. More specifically, by expanding on previous work in cross-cultural analysis of newspaper editorials in Spain, Mexico and the U.S., this study investigated discourse features found in bilingual communities as reflected in the Spanish of New York City (El Diario) and Los Angeles (La Opinión). Given the number of rhetorical and stylistic features examined uniformly among the Spanish varieties as represented by editorials from the four Spanish-language newspapers, there does not appear to be a native Spanish norm for writing editorials. The U.S. varieties not only differ from those of Mexico and Spain but also demonstrate noticeable rhetorical differences from each other. With the exception of one finding (that Spanish texts tend to have longer sentences), significant variations exist among the cultures represented by the four Spanish-language newspapers. In particular, the Mexican newspaper contrasts sharply from the others in that El Universal adopts the most distanced approach to addressing readers. The presentation of an editorial’s position is typically delayed; attacks on individuals are infrequent; and recommendations are typically made at global levels. El Universal has the most complex and elaborate sentence constructions and appears to show greater respect for influential political figures than any other newspaper in the sample. The sheer number of attributions made to political figures in the Mexican editorials highlights the influence that political leaders exert on the content of those editorials. The editorials from Spain, on the other hand, are not as elaborate and implicit in style as the Mexican editorials. The two U.S. Spanish-language newspapers, El Diario and La Opinión, share some features, such as shorter sentences and paragraphs, less complex sentence structure, and more concern for attributing statements to expert sources. In this respect, they differ from the patterns found in the editorials from Mexico and Spain and employ features more characteristic of The New York Times. However, El Diario also differs significantly from La Opinión by placing more emphasis on the argumentative function and the accessibility of the language. In fact, among the newspapers in the corpus, El Diario shares more features with The New York Times than any other (e.g., shorter sentences and paragraphs, the use of explicit language via commands and obligation modals, and identification of specific actors). Al-


though La Opinión shares some features with the two newspapers from New York, it addresses a more well-informed group of readers and places as much emphasis on the informative function of the editorials as do the samples from El Universal and El País. In sum, each newspaper employs a set of distinctive discourse features that sets it apart from the others. It may be misleading to talk about a Hispanic norm even for the editorials of the Spanish-language U.S. newspapers. The editorials of the five newspapers, however, do share a number of features that further define the editorial genre, at least in so-called “quality” newspapers. First, an editorial is a linguistically challenging text that allows complex sentence structures. In their article, “On Hierarchies of Reading Skills and Text Types,” Lee and Musumeci (1988) place editorials as an evaluative text type that requires high-level reading skills such as inferring, guessing, hypothesizing, and interpreting. Indeed, editorials are classified as a “superior-level” text type for reading in ACTFL (American Council on Teaching of Foreign Languages) Proficiency Guidelines. Second, as an evaluative and persuasive text, the editorial frequently makes recommendations. In order to state and support the position of the newspaper, the editorial also uses devices of argumentation such as attribution, a feature shared with some other newspaper genres. Third, because editorials tend to be typically short in length, the main topic is introduced early. The results of these findings, however, must be carefully evaluated within the context of the cultures that produce these editorials. Factors such as the targeted audience, the particular journalistic culture, educational background of the editorial writers, the political orientation of the newspaper, and the sociopolitical situation of the period during which the editorials were written can affect the communicative purpose(s) and possibly the particular discourse pattern. Furthermore, there is no ethnographic data available on the readers of Spanish-language editorials. The information provided about the readership is based on the interviewee’s assumptions. Nevertheless, the findings of such a study have valuable implications for those involved in the teaching and studying of cross-cultural communication strategies. By examining how different cultures articulate persuasion within the contexts that shape such useful genres as editorials of prestigious newspapers, global professionals and foreign language learners can not only improve critical reading of these texts, but also recognize and appreciate the pluricentrality of cultures sharing the same Spanish language – in this case, Spain, Mexico and the United States.


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Martín-Martín, P., & Burgess, S. (2004). The rhetorical management of academia criticism in research article abstracts. Text, 24(2), 171–195. Mauranen, A. (1992). Reference in academic rhetoric: A contrastive study of Finnish and English writing. In A. Lindeberg, & N. Enkvist (Eds.), Nordic research on text and discourse: NORDTEXT Symposium 1990 (pp. 237–250). Turku, Finland: Åbo Akademi. Maya Nava, A. (personal communication, November 7, 1994). Montaño-Harmon, M. (1991). Discourse features of written Mexican Spanish: Current research in contrastive rhetoric and its implications. Hispania, 74, 417–425. Moreno, A. (1997). Genre constraints across languages: Causal metatext in Spanish and English RAs. English for Specific Purposes, 16, 161–179. Ostler, S. (1988). A study of the contrastive rhetoric of Arabic, English, Japanese, and Spanish. Unpublished Ph.D dissertation, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA. Pak, C.-S. (1996). Newspaper editorials from the New York Times, El País, El Universal: A comparative applied genre analysis. Unpublished Ph.D dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. Pak, C.-S. (1997). According to which source? An analysis of the use of attribution in American, Spanish, and Mexican newspaper editorials. Global Business Language, 2, 106–118. Pak, C.-S. (2000). Cross-cultural persuasion strategies: A study of newpaper editorials from Spain, Mexico, and the U.S. The Journal of Language for International Business, 11(2), 23– 37. Prentice, T. (1981). Editorials need facts to convince. Scholastic Editor, 61, 5–6. Reid, J. (1988). Quantitative differences in English prose written by Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, and English students. Unpublished Ph.D dissertation, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO. Santana-Seda, O. (1975). A contrastive study in rhetoric: An analysis of the organization of English and Spanish paragraphs written by native speakers of each language. Unpublished Ph.D dissertation, New York University, New York. Scarcella, R. (1984). How writers orient their readers in expository essays: A comparative study of native and non-native English writers. TESOL Quarterly, 18, 671–688. Secanella, P. M. (1981). El lid, fórmula inicial de la noticia. Barcelona, Spain: A.T.E. Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Tertsch, H. (personal communication, October 31, 1994). Tirkkonen-Condit, S., & Lieflander-Koistinen, L. (1989). Argumentation in Finnish versus English and German editorials. In M. Kusch, & H. Schroder (Eds.), Text-InterpretationArgumentation (pp. 173–181). Hamburg, Germany: Helmut Buske Verlag. Trew, T. (1979). ‘What the papers say’: Linguistic variation and ideological difference. In R. Fowler, B. Hodge, G. Kress, & T. Trew (Eds.), Language and control (pp. 117–156). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. U.S. Census Bureau. (2003). The Hispanic Population in the United States: March 2002. Retrieved July 2003, from http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p20–545.pdf. Vande Kopple, W. J. (1985). Some exploratory discourse on metadiscourse. College Composition and Communication, 36(1), 82–93. van Dijk, T.A. (1988). News analysis: Case studies of international and national news in the press. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.


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Appendix A Interview questions to a chief officer of the opinion page of the newspapers 1. El propósito y las funciones de los editoriales [Purpose and the function] – ¿Cuál es el propósito principal de los editoriales para su periódico? [What is the main purpose of the editorials for your newspaper?] – ¿Qué efecto quiere tener en sus lectores? [What kind of influence do you aim to have have on your readers?] 2. Los lectores de los editoriales [Readers] – ¿Quiénes son los lectores de los editoriales de El Diario? ¿Tiene alguna información demográfica? [Who are your readers? Do you have any deomgraphic information?] – ¿Sabe qué porcentaje de los lectores del periódico leen la sección editorial? [What percentage of the readers of your newspaper read the editorial section?] 3

El proceso de escribir los editoriales [Writing process] – ¿Quién escribe los editoriales? [Who writes the editorials?] – ¿Hay alguna guía o normas específicas que los redactores siguen cuando escriben los editoriales? ¿Utilizan algún libro de estilo como guía? [Are there any specific guidelines/policies/preferences for writing editorials? Do you follow any specific reference books for the style?] Ej., la estructura general [general structure] la selección del tema [topic selection] el estilo de título [the style of the title] la longitud del editorial [the editorial length] el uso de citas directas [use of quotes] la referencia a una fuente específica [attribution to sources] la selección del vocabulario [vocabulary selection]


Appendix B Editorials from the corpus: Spanish language newspapers from the U.S El Diario/La Prensa (New York) Table 9. El Diaro/La Prensa editorials No. Date

Editorial

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Promesa de inmigración de Bush Con A-Rod Nueva York recupera su brillo Muerte por electrocución en NYC Lugar seguro para niños abandonados El desempleo bajó, pero no para todos La historia inconclusa de Puerto Rico Venezuela: dejad que el pueblo decida ¿Dónde está el dinero? La clase trabajadora no tiene dónde vivir Una ciudad a todo volumen Mentir es erróneo, y a veces ilegal Adiós a la educadora de mayor rango España y la nueva realidad política Reformando la educación bilingüe Ni una muerta más en Juárez, México El Salvador y la democracia Jornaleros tienen derecho a congregarse Se acentúa clima bélico en el mundo Richie Pérez: la lucha continúa DMV conoce de manejo, no inmigración New York City a FEMA: pague la factura Mets a celebrar sus 40 años Reconocimiento de los inmigrantes Asegúrese el sistema escolar lo escuche NJ propone latino a la Corte Suprema Renovación dolorosa, pero necesaria El derecho a la protesta (con permiso) El sistema escolar falló a Luperon Sección 8 no debe ser modificada Latinos deben luchar contra el SIDA

2-18-04 2-19-04 2-21-04 2-26-04 2-27-04 3-1-04 3-3-04 3-5-04 3-5-04 3-7-04 3-10-04 3-11-04 3-16-04 3-17-04 3-21-04 3-22-04 3-23-04 3-24-04 3-29-04 4-1-04 4-12-04 4-13-04 4-15-04 4-19-04 4-22-04 4-25-04 5-3-04 5-10-04 5-11-04 5-14-04


La Opinión (Los Angeles) Table 10. La Opinión (Los Angeles) editorials No. Date

Editorial

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Chávez y el cambio en Venezuela Mantener el censo No a la intolerancia Una nueva era Sí a la Proposición 1 Relegados por Hollywood El odio en las escuelas Una visión sobre el transporte El cuidado con los medicamentos Cumbre sobre violencia juvenil Para después de clases Abuso policial Una enmienda para la NRA Referéndum en Guatemala La crisis rusa Zedillo en California Cambios en el PRI Una ley inconstitucional Ecos de una visita Nueva oportunidad para los centroamericanos Voto contra las armas Ayuda a Centroamérica Sobre carga pública Pleito contra los fabricantes de armas ¡Adiós Pescador Osuna! Acusación a Milosevic Cumple 75 años la Patrulla Fronteriza Alivio sí, celebración no Desenlace electorales Creció el Metro, pero . . .

2-3-99 2-4-99 2-5-99 2-7-99 4-6-99 5-7-99 5-9-99 5-10-99 5-11-99 5-12-99 5-13-99 5-14-99 5-15-99 5-16-99 5-17-99 5-18-99 5-19-99 5-20-99 5-21-99 5-22-99 5-24-99 5-25-99 5-26-99 5-27-99 5-28-99 5-29-99 5-30-99 6-5-99 6-10-99 6-12-99

The rhetorical structure of academic book reviews of literature An English-Spanish cross-linguistic approach Lorena Suárez, Ana I. Moreno University of León

Since the 1990s, there has been an increasing interest in the study of genres (Swales 1990). Recent research on the academic journal book review (BR) has shown that the BR in English is shaped according to a rhetorical structure that gives it genre status (Motta-Roth 1998). However, it is not known whether this rhetorical structure is shared by comparable texts in other languages. This chapter carried out an English-Spanish cross-linguistic study of the rhetorical structure of BRs on the basis of two comparable corpora of 20 BRs of literature in each language. The main results show that, despite sharing similar overall patterns of organization, the Spanish BRs of literature develop more descriptive moves and are less likely to end with criticism-loaded strategies.

Introduction Never before have scholars had such easy and wide access to scientific knowledge as they do today. It is virtually impossible for academics to process all available information on any given scientific topic, not to mention to distinguish truly valuable work from what is not. In this respect, the subgenre of the academic journal book review plays a very important role since it introduces new books to a particular discipline and, at the same time, assesses how valuable their contribution may be to the development of the field. According to Gea Valor and del Saz Rubio (2000–2001: 166), “in this genre, the writer informs the reader about the contents and structure of a recently-published book – usually the work of a fellow researcher – and most importantly evaluates the book according to various criteria, such as adequate treatment of the subject, usefulness for the prospective reader and possible future applications.” As a result, book reviews (BRs) have be-

148 Lorena Suárez, Ana I. Moreno

come an important source of information for scholars in a particular disciplinary field about which books may or may not be worth reading or acquiring. However, as acknowledged by a number of professors from The University of León (Spain) and The University of London (UK) in informal interviews, writing a book review is not always a welcome task for academics. Yet academic journal book reviews are still written and published, and writing a book review is usually considered one of those tasks academics may have to do in their career. The interesting point is that the academic journal book review is one of those genres whose communicative function is widely recognized by the expert members of the discourse community involved in producing and interpreting academic book reviews. In spite of this recognition, little is known about the features which contribute to making this class of communicative events a genre in its own right (see Swales 1990: 58 for a definition of genre). As the leading work by Swales (1990) clearly shows, one of the factors that play a very important role in the overall characterization of a genre is the rhetorical structure of the text. In fact, some research has recently explored how the schematic structure of the academic book review helps to shape this genre in order to make it recognizable by expert members of the discourse community. Starting with Motta-Roth’s (1998) pioneering empirical study of the rhetorical structure of 180 book reviews in English from the fields of Chemistry, Economics and Linguistics, this genre has been shown to be organized according to a series of moves and subfunctions that can be easily recognized. For instance, a typical move, or fragment of text with a recognizable general rhetorical function, is Outlining the book. A typical subfunction, or smaller fragment within that move, that performs a more specific rhetorical function in relation to its general purpose, is Stating the topic of each chapter. A typical subfunction within the closing move, Providing closing evaluation of the book, is Recommending the book despite indicated shortcomings. Subfunctions in this move are called options since they are mutually exclusive (i.e., unlike the subfunctions within the other sections or moves of the book review, they cannot co-occur). Their function is to close the book being reviewed, usually through a verdict on such a book (see Method of Analysis below). The results from Motta-Roth’s (1998) study in relation to the overall rhetorical organization of book reviews seem to have been confirmed by other scholars such as De Carvalho (2001), who analyzed a corpus of English and Portuguese academic book reviews from the Literary Theory field in terms of their rhetorical structure, and Nicolaisen (2002), who submitted a corpus of Library and Information Science book reviews in English to move analysis. A comparison of their results reveals no crucial differences in the overall rhetorical organization of book reviews across these disciplines, in the sense that the major rhetorical functions

The rhetorical structure of academic book reviews of literature 149

performed by the different moves also take place. In this respect, it would be possible to hypothesize the existence of a common pattern of overall rhetorical structure across disciplines. In spite of these common features, there seem to be slight differences within the overall rhetorical structure of book reviews across disciplines that might lead to hypothesize a certain degree of disciplinary variation. For example, in her study of the rhetorical structure of English and Portuguese academic book reviews of literature, De Carvalho (2001) detected a tendency for book reviewers from the two cultures to fuse moves Outlining the book and Highlighting parts of the book in a single move. In fact, her results led her to reduce Motta-Roth’s (1998) four moves to three by fusing moves Outlining the book and Highlighting parts of the book into only one move. The existence of disciplinary variations in the rhetorical structure of book reviews can also be conjectured from Nicolaisen’s (2002) findings within the last move Providing closing evaluation of the book of Library and Information Science book reviews. Within this move, she detects the existence of two options (Disqualifying [sic] the book despite indicated positive aspects and Neither recommending nor disqualifying the book – the latter consisting in a neutral summary-conclusion of the book) which were not present in Motta-Roth’s (1998) corpus of academic book reviews within other academic disciplines. A logical implication from these studies is that until more light is shed on the possible influence of the disciplinary factor on the rhetorical configuration of book reviews, further studies of the academic book review as a genre should at least control for this confounding factor in the design of their corpora (cf. Connor & Moreno 2005). On the other hand, the present paper also hypothesizes possible variation in the rhetorical structure of academic book reviews as a factor of the language culture. This conjecture is substantiated by De Carvalho’s (2001) study of book reviews from two writing cultures: American and Portuguese. While all the texts in her corpora seem to share a common communicative purpose, interestingly different rhetorical features are identified which may be due to differing cultural expectations. As Moreno (2004) explains, the idea that the rhetorical structures of texts in different languages might vary greatly and that such variation should be taken into account in language teaching programs has received considerable attention since it was first proposed by Kaplan (1966). Following this tradition, the present study deals with one possible question raised by the Kaplan hypothesis, i.e. whether differences actually exist in how academic book reviews of literature are internally organized to achieve their communicative purpose in two writing cultures: Spanish and English. Answering this question will contribute valuable knowledge to the field of Contrastive Rhetoric.


Research questions and variables The major research question that the present study attempts to answer can be broken down as follows: – Do English and Spanish book reviews from academic journals on Literature conform to a similar rhetorical structure? Answering this question will allow us to make some statement about the existence of a common genre for both writing cultures in terms of its rhetorical organization. – If there are differences in terms of rhetorical structure, what is their nature? This will allow us to make some statement about differing expectations of the rhetorical structure of this genre as a function of the writing culture. In other words, the study sought to research the possible influence of the writing culture, i.e., the independent variable, on the rhetorical structure of literary academic book reviews, i.e., the dependent variable.

Data To answer our research question, the study analysed the rhetorical structure of 20 academic book reviews in English and 20 comparable academic journal book reviews in Spanish. This collection of BRs has been named the LIBRES (Literary Book Reviews in English-Spanish) corpus. The reason why it is so small is that it has been compiled with a view to being approached from various complementary perspectives (e.g. Moreno & Suárez 2006). The criteria of comparability for selection of the present corpus were based mainly on Connor and Moreno’s (2005) proposal. As Connor and Moreno (2005) argue in connection with cross-cultural studies, “in large-scale textual analyses of written genres . . . it is important that we are comparing elements that can in fact be compared . . . A common platform of comparison is important at all levels of research” (Connor & Moreno 2005: 157). One of these levels or phases of the research involves the selection of primary data. That is, in order to make a comparison valid, we need to compare text types or genres in which to observe linguistic and rhetorical features which are comparable between the two writing cultures. As Moreno (2007) argues, in this volume, to achieve a maximum of comparability, or similarity, between two corpora it is necessary to control as many relevant confounding factors as possible. This will make it possible to attribute any possible similarities or differences in the rhetorical structure of the texts to the effect of the independent variable, i.e. the writing culture. The academic disci-


pline, directly related to the field factor (cf. Moreno 2007), is a likely confounding factor. Therefore, the present study has decided to control for it statistically by collecting only texts from one major academic discipline (Literature) and four subfields (Drama, Poetry, Novel, and Literary Theory) in order to make the two corpora as similar as possible in this respect. Another reason for choosing such a discipline was that the only other existing contrastive study on academic journal book reviews between English and another language, Portuguese, was also based on Literary Theory (De Carvalho 2001). Compiling a similar corpus would make it easier to compare results. Likewise, since it is possible to distinguish between various subgenres within the book review genre, the present study narrowed its focus down to only the academic journal book review subgenre (i.e. book reviews that appear in academic journals). This restriction helped to control for certain contextual factors, such as the purpose of communication, the type of participants, the setting, the medium of publication, and so on, which might affect the rhetorical and linguistic configuration of the texts (cf. Moreno 2007). The texts in the corpora of the present study were drawn following conventional sampling procedures from four academic journals, which are the following and cover the aforementioned subfields:

English journals The Review of English Studies (texts from 2002) English Literature in Transition: 1880-1920 (texts from 2002) Notes and Queries (texts from 2000) Studies in Romanticism (texts from 2001) Spanish journals España Contemporánea (texts from 2001) Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea (texts from 2002) Revista de Literatura (texts from 2000) Revista de Poética Medieval (texts from 2001) The number of book reviews drawn from each of the four journals in each corpus was five. Only book reviews published from 2000 onwards were selected for the sake of relevancy. Thus the present study will attempt to capture the essence of the genre in as specific a period as possible, and in particular, as it is conceived today, since the temporal factor might also affect the rhetorical configuration of texts (cf. Moreno 2007). Another important confounding factor taken into account was text length because the extension of an academic review may determine whether it belongs to the book review genre or to related genres such as the book note, which is notably


Table 1. Number of words in book reviews in the corpus Number of Words Total number of words, all BRs Average number of words per BR in each corpus

English

Spanish

21,382 1,069.1

22,084 1,104.2

longer. Thus the length of all the reviews in the corpus ranged from 569 to 2,063 words. Table 1 shows the average number of words per book review and the average number of words in each corpus. The overall correspondence of length between the English and the Spanish corpora also contributes to their comparability. Lastly, by contrast to Moreno (1998), who controlled for the superstructure factor statistically in the design of her corpora, the present design left that factor uncontrolled precisely because this was the dependent variable under research.

Method of analysis The methodology employed in the present study was directed to answering the aforementioned research questions. In order to describe the rhetorical patterns of textual organization preferred by English and Spanish academic book review writers, all the book reviews in the two corpora were analyzed in terms of moves, subfunctions and options. Motta-Roth’s (1998) rhetorical model of book review moves was followed initially. The moves were identified by inferring the rhetorical function developed by the various sections in the entire text in connection with the overall purpose of the text. The subfunctions and options – the former being non-exclusive and the latter, referred to as subfunctions by Motta-Roth (1998), being exclusive – were identified as minor functional units realizing the different moves. After applying this model to our corpora, the rhetorical scheme that emerged was very similar, except for a few differences. The scheme is shown in Figure 1 and can be considered as an adapted version of Motta-Roth’s (1998) model. It represents the rhetorical structure of the book reviews from academic journals on Literature. The italicized moves, subfunctions and options highlight the differences that have arisen by contrast with Motta-Roth’s (1998) scheme. The meaning of the new subfunctions and options will be explained later. By way of illustration of how this model accounts for the rhetorical structure of one particular book review, the Appendix shows a coded version of a prototypical book review from the English corpus. The information in the subheadings of


Figure 1. Move analysis applied to the English and Spanish corpora of BRs

the Appendix indicates the moves and, separated by a semicolon, the corresponding subfunction(s) or options realizing them. The major differences compared to Motta-Roth’s (1998) model are the following: Move 1. Introducing the book contains five variations. One relates to subfunction 1.1.1. Developing an aspect of the general topic. This subfunction, which was not present in Motta-Roth’s (1998) study, contains more detailed information of the general content of the book, which is dealt with in the subfunction called 1.1. Defining the general topic of the book. An example of subfunction 1.1.1. Developing


an aspect of the general topic of the book is given below. A fragment of subfunction 1.1. Defining the general topic of the book within the same move is also given to show the change from the general topic of the book being reviewed to a more specific aspect of its content. In example (1), the square brackets at the beginning and the end of each fragment signal the beginning and end respectively of the subfunctions. The code at the end of the example indicates the book review from which the text fragment has been extracted. (1) [. . . the debates and tensions which Tamar Katz explores in Impressionist Subjects . . . arguing that the impressionist techniques of modernist fiction represent more than an experiment in form . . . (Defining the general topic of the book )] [. . . She seeks to show how debates about women’s nature and social-spiritual impact informed the modernist commitment to interiority with its ambiguous connection to particular sensations and abstract, mysterious truths . . . (Developing an aspect of the general topic)] [elt440–17E]

The fragment of text coded as Defining the general topic of the book in example (1) deals with the topic of the book under review in general terms. The reader gets the basic idea that the book is about debates and tensions related to Impressionist Subjects. The fragment of text coded as Developing an aspect of the general topic develops this topic by providing specific information about those debates and tensions. That is why the second paragraph has been assigned to subfunction Developing an aspect of the general topic. The second difference from Motta-Roth’s (1998) scheme within move 1. Introducing the book relates to subfunction 1.6. Informing about the writing technique/ methodology used by the writer, which tells readers about the writing technique or method employed by the author and was not acknowledged by Motta-Roth’s (1998) scheme. Consider example (2): (2) [La autora elige para su tarea un método histórico-inductivo. Es decir, selecciona los poemas que comparten el criterio de verbalizar explícitamente una fórmula de despedida, y los estudia sistemáticamente para extraer los rasgos que puedan definir el género en cuestión. (Informing about the writing technique/methodology used by the writer)][rlit243–7S] (Trans.) [The author chooses a historical-inductive method for her task. That is to say, she selects those poems that share the criterion of explicitly verbalizing a farewell formula, and she studies them systematically in order to draw the features characterizing the genre in question. (Informing about the writing technique/methodology used by the writer)][rlit243–7S]


In this text fragment taken from a Spanish book review, the book reviewer describes the methodological tool used by the author of the book. The reviewer regards it as an historical-inductive method, whereby such an author focuses only on poems containing a farewell formula and analyzes them in the search for common patterns that make it possible to talk about a distinct genre. The last three differences from Motta-Roth’s (1998) study in relation to move 1. Introducing the book have to do with the fact that some of the fragments within move 1. Introducing the book were of a fuzzy function, in such a way that a given fragment of text could be said to develop two rhetorical functions at the same time. This phenomenon affected the following pairs of subfunctions, though only in the Spanish corpus: 1.1. Defining the general topic of the book and 1.4. Making topic generalizations; 1.1. Defining the general topic of the book and 1.6. Informing about the writing technique/methodology used by the writer; 1.1.1. Developing an aspect of the general topic and 1.6. Informing about the writing technique/methodology used by the writer. In cases like these it has been necessary to introduce a new category in the scheme since it was not possible to assign these fragments to two categories at the same time. Example (3) shows a fragment of a book review from the corpus developing the functions 1.1. Defining the general topic of the book and 1.4. Making topic generalizations at the same time. (3) [El modernismo simbolista, sentido como provocación por parte de quienes sentían el desarraigo, la escisión del yo y la desmembración de la totalidad, contra la práctica arrolladora del realismo-positivista durante la Restauración, es inseparable de las opciones modernizadoras del conjunto social español hacia 1900, pese a quienes, a lo largo del siglo XX, trataron de divorciar ideológicamente el llamado intelectualismo noventayochista del no menos supuesto reaccionarismo atribuido al estetismo decadente, algunos de cuyos miembros fueron juzgados ad libitum, con argumentos biográficos a veces extrapolados de debilidades políticas muy posteriores. (Subfunctions defining the general topic of the book & making topic generalizations)] [ec117–5S] (Trans.) [The symbolist modernism, seen as provocation by those who felt the rootlessness, the split in the ego and the dismembering of totality, against the overwhelming practice of positivist realism during the Restoration, is inseparable from the modernizing options of the Spanish society around 1900, in spite of those who, throughout the 20th century, tried to separate ideologically the so-called intelectuallism of the 90’s from the not less supposed reactionarism attributed to the decadent aesthetism, some of whose members were judged ad libitum, with biographical arguments sometimes extrapolated from much later political weaknesses. (Subfunctions defining the general topic of the book & making topic generalizations)] [ec117–5S]


The text fragment in example (3) has been assigned to subfunctions 1.1. Defining the general topic of the book and 1.4. Making topic generalizations on the grounds that it was difficult to decide which of the two subfunctions was being realized. On the one hand, it might be interpreted that the book reviewer is adding some insight from his/her own knowledge, in which case the subfunction performed would be 1.4. Making topic generalizations. On the other hand, the reader may also understand such a fragment as part of the content of the book, in the sense that all the ideas contained in the fragment can be attributed to the author of the book. Given the difficulty in deciding between the two subfunctions, the present study found it necessary to consider cases like this as a fuzzy category comprising the two subfunctions. There are also differences with respect to Motta-Roth’s (1998) scheme in relation to the other book review moves. For example, subfunction 1.1. Defining the general topic of the book from move 1. Introducing the book and subfunctions 2.1. Providing an overview of the organization of the book and 2.3. Citing extra-text material from move 2. Outlining the book are difficult to keep apart in one fragment of the English corpus, as shown in example (4). (4) [In ten richly detailed chapters supported by sixty-eight illustrations, Kate Flint examines the complexities of looking and seeing and recording and interpreting the visible world (Fusion of moves outlining the book & introducing the book; fusion of subfunctions providing an overview of the organization of the book, citing extra-text material & defining the general topic of the book)] [elt76–11E]

A similar case of fusion of subfunctions relates to moves 2. Outlining the book and 3. Highlighting parts of the book. Both in the English and the Spanish corpora, some of the book reviews selected for the study fused these two moves in a single one. This tendency seems to corroborate the results obtained by De Carvalho’s (2001) study (see introduction), who analysed a corpus of book reviews from a related academic discipline, Literary Theory. The subfunctions that specifically appeared fused across these two moves in the two corpora were 2.2. Stating the topic of each chapter from move 2. Outlining the book and 3.1. Providing focused evaluation from move 3. Highlighting parts of the book. A clear example is shown in the book review in the Appendix, which presents a section where the topic of each chapter and focused evaluation are provided at the same time. Less frequently, and only in the Spanish corpus, subfunctions 2.1. Providing an overview of the organization of the book from move 2. Outlining the book and 3.1. Providing focused evaluation from move 3. Highlighting parts of the book were also fused. In cases like these, a new category has been introduced since one function is inseparable from the other.


There are also a number of differences in relation to Motta-Roth’s (1998) scheme in move 4. Providing closing evaluation of the book. One difference has to do with the fact that in the present corpora there were no realizations of MottaRoth’s (1998) Definitely disqualifying [sic] the book because there was no single case in all the book reviews where the authors simply did not recommend the book under review. That is why, in this study, Motta-Roth’s (1998) Option 10A was reformulated as 4.1. Definitely recommending the book instead of Definitely recommending/disqualifying the book. An example of option 4.1. Definitely recommending the book from the English corpus in the present study is shown in example (5). (5) [As Labbe points out, even in recent studies which have focused on different aspects of the Romantic romance, critics have exhibited a discomfort with the terms offered by romance as a genre. Her own exploration of the culturally disruptive potential of violence is welcome for allowing readers to confront a wide and varied range of texts. Whether she is reassessing well known poems or exploring the less familiar, her readings are lively and refreshing. By challenging earlier critical assessments and bringing neglected works to the fore, she is demanding a reappraisal of our definition of Romanticism itself. Impeccably researched and usefully annotated, her book will be valuable to scholars and students both of the individual poets discussed and of the Romantic period as a whole. (Definitely recommending the book)] [res147–20E]

Throughout example (5), the final paragraph of the review, the reviewer implies a recommendation of the book by bringing up some definitive positive remarks, which are not fully justified because they are based on the discussion of the book that has preceded, and by referring to the benefit that the public can receive from reading it. The second important difference in move 4. Providing closing evaluation of the book relates to the fact that in the present corpora this move could be realized through an option chosen from among four. This contrasts with Motta-Roth’s study, where this move was constrained to only two options. The two new options that emerged in the present corpora are 4.3. Not recommending the book despite indicated strengths and 4.4. Providing neutral summary-conclusion of the book, whose existence as part of the rhetorical structure of book reviews has recently been reported by Nicolaisen (2002) in her study of Library and Information Science book reviews.


4.3. Not recommending the book despite indicated strengths is the opposite option of 4.2. Recommending the book despite indicated shortcomings. The importance of this option lies in the fact that it is the only one that implies non-recommendation of the book under review in the corpus of the present study. Let us consider example (6). (6) [Given Jasper’s method of treating his subject, I would suggest that it is his engagement with the minute particulars – the appropriate analogy, the engaging comparison, the startling reading of a particular text or painting – that will reward a patient reader. His claims for reconsidering the positions of Coleridge and Arnold as biblical critics, his fascinating analysis of Turner’s paintings as biblical criticism, and his claims for a renewed understanding of the relevance of romanticism to modern theological issues are certainly parts that we all should be grateful for. For my part, however, I would prefer a more systematically developed and more historically informed argument; and thus I find that this volume in “Perspectives in Romanticism” – despite some strong individual parts – does not fully deliver what the series promises. (Not recommending the book despite indicated strengths)] [srw611–3E]

The move 4. Providing closing evaluation of the book shown in example (6) opens with a series of positive remarks on the book being reviewed, to later on change the direction of the evaluation into a couple of criticisms leading to not recommending the book. It should be noted how this strategy, consisting of condemning the book after having raised some positive points, produces a mitigating effect of the global non-recommendation and of the specific upcoming criticisms in particular (Belcher 1995; Gea Valor & del Saz Rubio 2000–01). This divergence in relation to Motta-Roth’s (1998) study of book reviews in Linguistics, Economics and Chemistry suggests that there might be disciplinary differences as to how appropriate it seems for authors not to recommend a book and, in case this is so, which options are more acceptable in each disciplinary culture. Further qualitative research should attempt to find out the possible reasons for this variation. Lastly, according to the new emerging option 4.4. Providing neutral summaryconclusion of the book, the reviewers choose to close the review without giving a

. Though Motta-Roth (1998) did allow for the possibility of finding her subfunction 10B (Recommending the book despite indicated shortcomings) with the opposite meaning, she did not state that possibility explicitly as a distinct option. In the present study it was necessary to give the option Not recommending the book despite indicated strengths a separate status. In addition, we have decided to use the phrase not recommending instead of disqualifying because it is a more straightforward term.


final judgement of the book. Instead of providing the reader with a verdict, they simply present a brief summary or conclusion of the book. An example of this option is shown in example (7). (7) [At the end of the day, in Professor Howe’s view, Twain as a novelist cannot win; history and reality inevitably defeat the novel. There is no room here for any notion as quaint as the transforming power of the novelistic imagination. (Providing neutral summary-conclusion of the book)] [n&q383–15E]

This book review ending does not clearly attempt to recommend the book under review. It rather describes the conclusion that Professor Howe, the author, reaches. This section has described the method of analysis applied to the corpus of book reviews of the present study. Such a method of analysis in terms of rhetorical moves, subfunctions and options has identified new items with respect to Motta-Roth’s (1998) schematic model, namely subfunctions 1.1.1. Developing an aspect of the general topic; 1.6. Informing about the writing technique/methodology used by the writer; Fuzzy category 1.1. Defining the general topic of the book/1.4. Making topic generalizations; Fuzzy category 1.1. Defining the general topic of the book/1.6. Informing about the writing technique/methodology used by the writer; Fuzzy category 1.1.1. Developing an aspect of the general topic/1.6. Informing about the writing technique/methodology used by the writer; Fusion of moves 1. Introducing the book and 2. Outlining the book; Fusion of subfunctions 1.1 Defining the general topic of the book, 2.1. Providing an overview of the organisation of the book, and 2.3. Citing extra-text material; Fusion of moves 2. Outlining the book and 3. Highlighting parts of the book; Fusion of subfunctions 2.1. Providing an overview of the organization of the book and 3.1. Providing focused evaluation; Fusion of subfunctions 2.2. Stating the topic of each chapter and 3.1. Providing focused evaluation; option 4.3. Not recommending the book despite indicated strengths; and option 4.4. Providing neutral summary-conclusion of the book. The following section deals with the contrastive results obtained in the study.

Contrastive results This section presents the contrastive results of the analysis of the book reviews in terms of moves, subfunctions and options, carried out independently in the two corpora. Table 2 provides an account of the absolute and relative frequencies of each of these categories for each writing culture. Given the fact that subfunctions are not mutually exclusive (i.e. the subfunctions within a move can co-occur), the sum of the frequencies of subfunctions


Table 2. Frequency of moves, subfunctions and options in the English and Spanish corpora English BRs (20) n % Move 1. Introducing the book Subfunction 1.1. Defining the general topic of the book Subfunction 1.1.1. Developing an aspect of the general topic Subfunction 1.2. Informing about potential readership Subfunction 1.3. Informing about the author Subfunction 1.4. Making topic generalizations Subfunction 1.5. Inserting book in the field Subfunction 1.6. Informing about the writing technique/methodology used by the writer Fuzzy category 1.1. Defining the general topic of the book/1.4. Making topic generalisations Fuzzy category 1.1. Defining the general topic of the book/1.6. Informing about the writing technique/methodology used by the writer Fuzzy category 1.1.1. Developing an aspect of the general topic/1.6. Informing about the writing technique/methodology used by the writer Move 2. Outlining the book Subfunction 2.1. Providing general view of the organization of the book Subfunction 2.2. Stating the topic of each chapter Subfunction 2.3. Citing extra-text material Fusion of moves 1. Introducing the book & 2. Outlining the book Subfunction 1. Defining the general topic of the book, 2.1. Providing general view of the organization of the book & 2.3. Citing extra-text material Move 3. Highlighting parts of the book Subfunction 3.1. Providing focused evaluation Fusion of moves 2. Outlining the book & 3. Highlighting parts of the book Fusion of subfuncts. 2.1. Providing general view of the organization of the book & 3.1. Providing focused evaluation Fusion of subfuncts. 2.2. Stating the topic of each chapter & 3.1. Providing focused evaluation

Spanish BRs Comparison (20) n % X2

19 18

95% 20 90% 15

100% 1.026 75% 1.558

1

5% 3

15%

1.111

1

5% 2

10%

.36

1 3 5 0

5% 15% 25% 0%

35% 15% 50% 15%

5.625** 0 2.667 3.243

0

0% 1

5%

1.026

0

0% 1

5%

1.026

0

0% 2

10%

2.105

7 4

35% 20 20% 8

100% 19.259*** 40% 1.905

6 2 1

30% 12 10% 4 5% 0

60% 20% 0%

3.623 .784 1.026

1

5% 0

0%

1.026

13 13 3

65% 8 65% 8 15% 7

40% 40% 35%

2.506 2.506 2.133

0

0% 1

5%

1.026

3

15% 6

30%

1.29

7 3 10 3


Table 2 (continued) English BRs (20) n % Move 4. Providing closing evaluation of the book Option 4.1. Definitely recommending the book Option 4.2. Recommending the book despite indicated shortcomings Option 4.3. Not recommending the book despite indicated strengths Option 4.4. Providing neutral summary-conclusion of the book

Spanish BRs Comparison (20) n % X2

18 3 11

90% 17 15% 11 55% 4

85% 55% 20%

.229 8.707*** 5.042*

3

15% 1

5%

1.005

1

5% 1

5%

.002

*p = .05; **p < .05; ***p < .01

within moves 1. Introducing the book and 2. Outlining the book is higher than the total frequency of appearance of each move because these moves may contain one or more than one subfunction. That is why the relative frequency of appearance of subfunctions within each move has been calculated in relation to 20, which is the total number of book reviews, i.e. the total possible absolute frequency for each subfunction. By contrast, options within move 4. Providing closing evaluation of the book, are mutually exclusive; thus, their relative frequency has been calculated in relation to the total frequency of appearance of that move in each corpus. The frequencies of move 3. Highlighting parts of the book and its only possible subfunction, 3.1. Providing focused evaluation coincide necessarily. The right column in Table 2 provides statistical information in connection with the comparison of the frequencies of the use of each category across the two writing cultures under study. The results of the present study were submitted to statistical analysis through the Chi-square test of homogeneity in a contingency table. The Chi-square test is a type of non-parametric test used to compare frequencies in studies dealing with data measurable with nominal scales (cf. Brown 1988). The statistical comparison of the frequencies of use of the various moves, subfunctions and options at a p

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