ContrastiveRhetoricStudiesonChinese,Japanese,ArabicvsEnglishExpositoryText-精品文档

1、Contrastive Rhetoric Studies on Chinese ， Japanese， Arabic vs. English Expository Text Arabic and English text analysis. Also ， the focus here is on expository text ， the review didn t to uch other text types. Most studies in contrastive rhetoric research focused on the writing of ESL students for t

2、he 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 diffi

3、culty 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 ， only those studies Various academic resources have been used to help locate studies for this review. In general ， two major source

4、s were used： online databases ， such as MLAa nd UMI Digital Dissertation ， and the bibliographic information in books and journal articles on text structure and reading. For contrastive rhetoric studies addressing Chinese ， Japanese and Arabic were selected for review because ESL readers of these th

5、ree 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 Eng

6、lish 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 spea

7、kers 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 rh

8、etoric 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 ，

9、 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 experienc

10、ed English teachers ， on whether the compositions followed the four categories of English three-part （introduction-body-conclusion）， Chinese four part （qi-cheng-zhuan-he 启-承-转-合）， Chinese eight-legged ， and other patterns ， and whether the compositions had such characteristics of digression ， repeti

11、tion ， 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 patt

12、ern 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 wer

13、e 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 subj

14、ects 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 p

15、resent 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 len

16、gth ， 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 Engl

17、ish expository texts was actively investigated by Hinds （1984， 1987）. Hinds （ 1984） showed how the ki-sho-ten-ketsustyle （ 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. Hin

18、ds （ 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 sentenceby sentence with the original rhetorical organization of the text maintained. Hinds asked native spea

19、kers 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，

20、 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 speak

21、er 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 re

22、aders tend to rely on landmarks along the way of their reading. Therefore， it is the writer s 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 migh

23、t be very subtle ； therefore it is the reader s responsibility to determine the relationship between parts of an essay and build textual coherence. Conclusions and Direction for Future Research In summary， contrastive rhetoric ， mostly based on the comparison of English native speakers writing and E

24、SL 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 rhetorica

25、l structure. First， although Kaplan s 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 deductiven

26、ess while others used Swale s 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

27、， 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