On Connor's "New Directions in Contrastive Rhetoric"

Key issues:

1) Contrastive rhetoric "examines differences and similarities in writing across cultures."
2) "Different cultures have different rhetorical tendencies; the linguistic patterns and rhetorical conventions of the L1 often transfer to writing in ESL and thus cause interference."
3) The Sapir Whorf Hypothesis is based on the idea that "different languages affect perception and thought in different ways: a) language influences thought; b) language controls thought and perception."
4) Linguistic text analysis is "a tool to describe the conventions of writing in English and to provide analytical techniques with which to compare writing in students L1 and L2.

One of the things I found interesting in this article is the ambiguity or absence of attribution of sources in Chinese writing: "it is not obvious which portions of the text are attributed to whom."

This is a problem I encounter in my teaching. My ESL students often do not feel the need to cite sources, perhaps because in their country knowledge is shared. As teachers, we should try to explain to them the importance of documentation and respecting intellectual property.