From Contrastive Rhetoric to Intercultural Rhetoric

In “From Contrastive Rhetoric to Intercultural Rhetoric: A Search for Collective Identity,” Xiaoming Li offers alternatives to dominant discourse. I found it interesting that she initially wanted to establish her position through her language identity, describing herself as feeling more Chinese than American based on her effortless use of Chinese and need to have her articles in English proofread. I don’t know if writing is ever effortless unless she is referring to non-academic writing. In the case she was referring to non-academic writing, the comparison to her need to have articles proofread when she writes in English is not necessarily fair. The tie between language and identity certainly has many arguments that can be made for it, many of which I do not disagree with; however, relating what people do with their first language to their general identity is where I see the issue with contrastive rhetoric. She seems to set herself up as an author who has adapted to the essentializing and stereotyping as the Other while asking the reader to do none of that work with his or her own first language, probably out of consideration that many readers will have English as their first language. The treatment of English as such never asks the speaker or writer to construct that language based identity, and discussing some general features of English writing (the most popular of which seems to be “directness”) is only for the sake of establishing a norm against which other languages are measured.

In response to what she observed in her research on writing in school in China, she argued against the notion that “given the fluidity of the postmodern world, culture as indicating a bounded notion is no longer a useful category” (15). She constructs a belief to argue against and states that China has not lost its cultural identity, creating the impression that fluidity is somehow completely neglectful of culture. The problem she fails to address is that naming distinct qualities about one culture ignores similar trends happening in different forms in other cultures. For example, when she borrows Chaim Perelman’s definition of argument as attempting to change the state of affairs (16), she connects this to why argument is not taught in Chinese writing, for the culture does not welcome threats to social and political stability. She contrasts “democracy” to “dynasty.” As a reader, I wonder why she chooses not to address how the US population and government react to threats to stability. No matter how much we ask student to make an argument in writing classes, the status quo is powerful and change causes great anxiety. She reinforces the dominance of the English speaking “democracy” by not questioning its relationship to stability the same way she addresses that of China. And while I do not altogether disregard the observation she makes and its possible relationship to writing, it is an example of a generalization I find to be damaging ad have previously come across in non-academic areas of the institution.