Contrastive Rhetoric Studies on Chinese，Japanese， Arabic vs. English Expository Text

李忠英

摘 要：本文對(duì)漢語、日本語、阿拉伯語為母語的英語學(xué)習(xí)者撰寫的英語說明文和英語為母語的英美人撰寫的說明文中修辭手法的運(yùn)用進(jìn)行比對(duì)研究，揭示了第二外語學(xué)習(xí)者在撰寫英語文本時(shí)，其母語習(xí)慣對(duì)其產(chǎn)生的影響，同時(shí)探討了跨語言的修辭差異和讀者的文本結(jié)構(gòu)運(yùn)用以及文本閱讀理解之間的尚不確定的影響關(guān)系。

關(guān)鍵詞：第二語言學(xué)習(xí)者；漢語、日本語、阿拉伯語和英語；說明文；對(duì)比修辭

Arabic and English text analysis. Also， the focus here is on expository text， the review didnt touch other text types. Most studies in contrastive rhetoric research focused on the writing of ESL students for the examination of rhetorical structure differences between English and other languages. Although ESL writing could give some information on rhetoric difference， considering that students might use L1 structure in organizing their English texts， the evidence is not direct and students language difficulty in ESL writing has not been explored. In general， large scale systematic comparison of L1 texts are rare. This made the findings hard to generalize.

Methodology

Various academic resources have been used to help locate studies for this review. In general， two major sources were used： online databases， such as MLA and UMI Digital Dissertation， and the bibliographic information in books and journal articles on text structure and reading. For contrastive rhetoric studies， only those studies addressing Chinese， Japanese and Arabic were selected for review because ESL readers of these three language groups have been mostly examined on effects of text structure on comprehension.

Contrastive Rhetoric studies on Chinese and English expository texts

Contrastive rhetoric research was essentially built upon the early work by Kaplan （1966）， who examined a large number of ESL students English compositions and diagrammatized these students L1 rhetorical structure which was believed to influence the structural organization of their English writing. Following this tradition， contrastive rhetoric studies mostly focused on comparing essays written by ESL students and native English speakers to identify possible differences in rhetoric organization between English and ESL students native language. A few studies also compared essays produced by native speakers of English and languages other than English for contrastive rhetoric study.

Kaplan （1966） pioneered in the comparison of rhetoric organization between Chinese and English. Based on the examination of structures of students ESL compositions， Kaplan claimed that there was an oriental pattern as being notable for the lack of direction， represented as a spiral and a delayed statement of purpose. This distinctive pattern， as Kaplan claimed， was influenced by the traditional Chinese ‘eight-legged essay. Following the tradition set by Kaplan， Chen （1985） analyzed 60 English expository texts written by a group of ninth-grade Chinese-speaking ESL students in Singapore. These compositions were rated by five experienced English teachers， on whether the compositions followed the four categories of English three-part （introduction-body-conclusion）， Chinese four part （qi-cheng-zhuan-he啟-承-轉(zhuǎn)-合）， Chinese eight-legged， and other patterns， and whether the compositions had such characteristics of digression， repetition， and parallelism. Chen （1985） found that all the sixty students were influenced by Chinese rhetorical styles. The raters analysis indicated that 39.2% of the 60 compositions exhibited the English three-part pattern of introduction-body-conclusion， and 50.6% exhibited the Chinese four-part pattern of introduction-body-related or contrasting subtheme-conclusion. The raters also indicated that 71.4% of the compositions had examples of digression， repetition， and indirection.

While the English compositions written by ESL students could tell about the rhetoric structure of Chinese， they were limited in contributing directly to the understanding of rhetoric characteristics in L1 texts of English and Chinese. Taylor and Chens （1991） study was one of the few that directly examined this issue. Taylor and Chen （1991） examined the scientific writing by Chinese and Anglo-Americans. The subjects included three groups of physical scientists： Anglo-Americans writing in English， Chinese writing in English， and Chinese writing in Chinese. Based on Swales （1990） four moves in academic discourse， that is， establishing the field， summarizing the relevant previous research， preparing for present research by showing a gap， and stating objective of present research， Taylor and Chen （1991） found that although all three groups employed each one of the four moves， some variations also existed. For example， the Chinese scientists were less likely to elaborate the moves， wrote at less length， and cited fewer references. Major difference was found in the second move： the Chinese scientists paid less attention to summarizing the literature in their fields of study.

Contrastive Rhetoric studies on Japanese and English expository texts

Contrastive rhetoric research on Japanese and English expository texts was actively investigated by Hinds （1984， 1987）. Hinds （1984） showed how the ki-sho-ten-ketsu style （Prologue-Event-Turn & Change-Epilogue） of Japanese writing could cause Japanese expository prose to seem incoherent to English readers who were not used to the organization. Hinds （1984） examined bilingual newspaper column in Japanese and English published in Japan. The Japanese articles， mostly editorial comments about a range of topics in Japan， were translated sentence by sentence with the original rhetorical organization of the text maintained. Hinds asked native speakers of Japanese and native American English readers to evaluate the Japanese and English versions of the articles respectively on the organization properties of unity， focus and coherence. Results showed that Japanese readers rated the Japanese version of the articles consistently as of high unity， focus and coherence， while the native English readers rated the English version as low for all the three organizational properties.

Hinds （1987） continued the discussion of the ki-sho-ten-ketsu pattern （Prologue-Event-Turn & Change-Epilogue） and proposed a new typology of language based on speaker and/or writer responsibility as opposed to listener and/or reader responsibility. According to Hinds （1987）， Japanese writing demands more active role of the reader than the English pattern which is more writer-responsible. He showed that， for English readers， unity is very important because readers tend to rely on landmarks along the way of their reading. Therefore， it is the writers responsibility to provide appropriate transition statements so that the reader can build a coherent representation of the writers logic. On the contrary， in Japanese， landmarks or transition statement might be very subtle； therefore it is the readers responsibility to determine the relationship between parts of an essay and build textual coherence.

Hinds work， although widely quoted， was also critiqued. Some scholars pointed out that Hinds target text analysis was only based on one newspaper， and the narrow focus on one genre made the results hardly generalizable to other genres within the type of expository text. For example， Fukuoka & Spyridakis （1999） pointed out that most of the expository texts examined by Hinds and others are not truly informational with a clear purpose to provide factual information. Therefore， they focused their examination of organization of Japanese expository texts with 18 articles published in three Japanese journals which had clear purpose of conveying factual information on business， science and technology. Based on the identification of a general statement and the numeric value assigned to this statement， Fukuoka & Spyridakis （1999） examined the organization structure of each passage and they found an interesting pattern： articles in the journal of Nikkei Business showed a tendency for general statements to appear toward the end of the passage （inductive）. In contrast， articles in the journal Newton showed a tendency for general statements to appear toward the beginning of the passages （deductive）. Articles in the third journal， Kagaku， did not show a clear tendency of inductive or deductive organization. Fukuoka & Spyridakis explained that although all of the expository texts in the three journals aimed to convey factual information to the readers， it depended on the authors overall goal in the production of the passages. For example， Japanese authors may tend to develop passages inductively when stating their opinions based on their interpretation of the facts. In contrast， it appears that authors may develop expository passages deductively when describing facts and simply announcing a main theme.

Contrastive Rhetoric studies on Arabic and English expository texts

Contrastive rhetoric research on Arabic and English expository texts was also built upon early work by Kaplan （1966）， who， based on the English compositions written by Arabic ESL students， claimed that Arabic writing is characterized by a series of parallel constructions. Kaplan suggested that subordination is preferred in many situations in English while coordination is preferred in Arabic； this took place both at the sentence level and the paragraph level. In terms of organization of paragraphs into whole piece of discourse， instead of developing paragraphs in the manner of English where there is usually a general statement followed by a series of specific examples， Arabic develops paragraphs through a series of parallel constructions， both positive and negative. This finding was late supported by Ostlers （1987） study which compared English compositions written by a group of Saudi Arabian students with ten randomly selected English paragraphs from books. Ostler （1987） found that these Arabic-speaking ESL students compositions had a significantly higher number of coordinated sentences than the English passages.

Conclusions and Direction for Future Research

In summary， contrastive rhetoric， mostly based on the comparison of English native speakers writing and ESL students English compositions， has contributed to the understanding of how expository texts are organized in English and other languages. However， not all the analyses produced consistent results. Some problems still exist with this strand of research on cross-linguistic examination of rhetorical structure. First， although Kaplans early work is influential， not all analyses were conducted on this basis. There lacks a unified system for prose analysis. This can be partly seen in the examination of Chinese expository texts where some focused on the dichotomy of inductiveness and deductiveness while others used Swales four move scheme for the comparison of academic writing. In addition， although most of studies examined rhetoric structure of texts under the superordinate term of expository text， these texts for many cases actually belong to different genres， such as academic writing， newspaper columns and journal articles. This lack of unified system for expository prose analysis and the focus on different genres made the results hardly comparable for generalizing reliable predictions on students performance on reading English expository texts.

References

[1]Kaplan， R. B. （1966）. Cultural thought patters on intercultural education. Language Learning， 16， 1-20.

[2]Chen， P. （1985）. An analysis of contrasting rhetoric： English and Chinese expository prose， pedagogical implications， and strategies for the ESL teacher in a ninth-grade curriculum. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation， Pennsylvania State University.

[3]Swales， J. （1990）. Genre analysis： English in Academic and research settings. Cambridge： Cambridge University Press.

[4]Hinds， J. （1984）. Contrastive rhetoric： Japanese and English. Text， 3（2）， 183-195

[5]Hinds （1987）. Reader versus writer responsibility： A new typology. In U. Connor & R. B. Kaplan （Eds.）， Writing across languages： Analysis of L2 text （pp. 141-152）. Reading， MA： Addison-Wesley.

[6]Fukuoka， W.， & Spyridakis， J. H. （1999）. The organization of Japanese expository passages. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication， 42（3）， 166-174.

[7]Ostler， S. E. （1987）. English in parallels： A comparison of English and Arabic prose. In U. Connor & R. B. Kaplan （Eds.）， Writing across languages： Analysis of L2 text （pp. 169-185）. Reading， MA： Addison-Wesley.