Intercultural rhetoric research: beyond texts

Abstract

This paper proposes a set of new methods for intercultural rhetoric research that is context-sensitive and, in many instances, goes beyond mere text analysis. It considers changes in the field as intercultural rhetoric has moved from the EAP study of student essays to the study of writing in many disciplines and genres. New developments in text, genre, and corpus analyses are introduced to enable researchers and teachers in the field to consider these new writing products and processes in their specific contexts. It is emphasized that future intercultural rhetoric research continues using a variety of research tools to determine base line comparisons, with appropriate tertia comparationes, to explain differences and similarities in written products, as well as in the activity of writing through a number of qualita tive approaches.

Introduction

Intercultural rhetoric research is interdisciplinary in its theoretical and methodological orientation. It draws on theories and research methods from second language acquisition, composition and rhetoric, anthropology, translation studies, linguistic discourse analysis, and genre analysis. Recently, there has been a call for reexamination of methods of intercultural rhetoric so that the increasing number of empirical studies can build a cohesive set. Such a concentrated effort would help establish the field and enhance the generalizability of the applications (Matsuda, 2002, Mauranen, 2001), as well as particularize the understandings of the results.

In considering a research methodology, we need to be mindful of new definitions of culture. Atkinson, 1999, Atkinson, 2003, Atkinson, this volume, Atkinson, forthcoming research on culture is useful for new formulations of cross-cultural writing or intercultural rhetoric. In an ethnographic study of two university writing programs (one for native speakers and the other for ESL students), Atkinson and Ramanathan (1995) showed the importance of understanding the different program cultures and their implications for students. In subsequent publications, Atkinson has advanced understanding about culture in second language teaching.

In this issue, Atkinson proposes a model of culture for contrastive rhetoric that both considers culture as a product instead of a process and examines “big” culture versus “small” culture. Instead of focusing on the big culture (i.e. national or ethnic culture), intercultural rhetoric research needs to consider the complexly interacting small cultures in any educational or other intercultural situation. Drawing on the work of Holliday, 1994, Holliday, 1999, Atkinson shows how small cultures (i.e. classroom culture, disciplinary culture, youth culture, student culture, etc.) interact with the national culture. According to Atkinson (this issue: p. 17), “In no sense, then, could the ‘cultural action’ taking place in any particular educational setting be accounted for solely in terms of the national culture in which that educational setting appeared to be located, as has often been done in the past.”

This paper examines developments in methods of intercultural rhetoric research from its early start as linguistic text analysis in the 1970s and 1980s, to more recent research on the social contexts of discourse. Intercultural rhetoric research has identified features of particular types of discourse and examined the use of language in social interaction. Today, we need to continue quantitatively oriented textual analyses. These analyses are often applied to English for academic purposes (EAP) texts, using a disciplined corpus approach with strict adherence to design features such as tertium comparationis (common platform of comparison or shared similarity) between texts and analyses. Examples of such large-scale studies are those of Moreno, 1997, Moreno, 1998, Moreno, this volume, which examine academic research articles in English and Spanish. Nevertheless, a need still exists for deeper analyses of processes, contexts, and purposes of discourse, whether applied to student writing or business writing across cultures. Instead of focusing on products, intercultural research needs to change its focus to the processes that lead to the products. Hyland (2000) provides examples of interview and survey studies to explain cultural, situational, and contextual differences in EFL writing.

Both major approaches—corpus-based text studies and qualitative contextual studies—need to be aware of the changing definitions of “culture,” which range from the “received” definition of culture as static (referring to “big,” ethnic cultures) to alternative definitions of culture as dynamic (often referring to “small” cultures, e.g. disciplinary, classroom, local) (Atkinson, this volume, Holliday, 1994). This paper will suggest directions for future intercultural rhetoric research that will be faithful to the rigorous empirical principles of the area of study but still consistent with postmodern views of culture and discourse. The first section, “From texts to social contexts,” situates the study of intercultural rhetoric in the current understanding and practice of written discourse analysis in general. The emphasis, no longer text based, is increasingly context sensitive. The following sections evaluate three major methodological approaches for written intercultural rhetoric research and mention sample studies. The approaches are text analysis, genre analysis, and corpus analysis. The three categories are non-exclusive. A common thread running through these three sections is that the new intercultural rhetoric should be sensitive to processes, contexts, and particular situations. The final section, “Ethnographic approaches for intercultural rhetoric,” introduces an entirely new concept to the analysis of intercultural rhetoric, namely, the inclusion of oral discourse. As the least developed section of the paper, it looks into the future of intercultural rhetoric research and focuses on new genres of study such as business communication.