A Contrastive Study Of Some Issues In English And Chinese Rhetoric

Robert Kaplan (1966) proposed a notion of contrastive rhetoric as a hypothesis to account for some persistent characteristic patterns in ESL students' writing. He felt that the unconventional variation observed in ESL writing reflected inherent differences in conceptualizing the organization of writing which arise from cultural and linguistic differences. Over the years, research in the field has been focused on exploring that basic hypothesis.The current thesis presents a comparative study of some issues in English and Chinese rhetoric, which may serve as examples to illustrate the differences as well as the similarities in the two rhetorical systems. An attempt is made in this thesis to probe into the causes and the originsof rhetorical differences that have been illustrated by looking atphilosophical, social, and educational aspects of the two languages.This study maintains the view that rhetoric and writing of any ethnic group reflect the values and language traditions of that culture. Different societies develop their own preferences according to their philosophical, socio-cultural, and educational values. The rhetoric of each culture is based on those preferences and values. Once people are socialized into those established preferences, it is hard for them to think, and hence towrite differently from those patterns which their culture prefers.The thesis comprises three chapters with each grouped into three sections. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to rhetoric. Section 1 delves into the history of rhetoric by comparing the lines of rhetorical development in the West and in China. Section 2 discusses the major features of present-day rhetoric, while section 3 lays out the groundwork for the subsequent study by introducing the concept of communicative rhetoric and aesthetic rhetoric.Chapter 2 expounds on the practice of communicative rhetoric in writing, with its focus on a contrastive study of some issues concerning words, sentences and paragraphs, the purpose of which is to show that the principles acting on the processes of the three levels of writing cannot possibly be the same between English and Chinese.Chapter 3 explicates the employment of aesthetic rhetoric in writing in English and Chinese, which is subdivided into three sections with each dealing with one specific category: phonetic devices, lexical devices and syntactic devices. Some commonly used rhetorical devices are chosen for a comparative study, which aims at exploring some distinctive features in the two languages in spite of many similarities.It is hoped that the research suggestions presented in this study will shed light on diverse approaches to writing. It is further hoped that the present study will promote culturally sensitive English writing pedagogy.This kind of study should help Chinese students understand better why they produce their English essays in different rhetorical styles from those written by native speakers of English.It is very challenging and exciting to explore this boundless field. The proposals and possibilities for theorizing as well as possible research designs are indeed limitless. Eventually the results from both research and theorizing will certainly benefit not only English writing teachers and Chinese ESL students but also the entire discipline of rhetoric and composition.Chen Lianying (Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics)Directed by Professor Zheng Lixin...