| Cross-cultural comparative analysis of textual patterns between L1 and L2 English writing has long dominated the research agenda of traditional Contrastive Rhetoric(CR).However,various criticisms have been leveled against the traditional CR framework,calling into questions the theoretical assumptions and research designs.The problematic beliefs and methodologies previously adopted in this line of enquiry have left the otherwise large body of research findings incomparable,if not conflicting.It has been argued that the essentialized and stereotyped understanding of culture and decontextualized text-based analysis,among other things,should be held accountable for the “myths”.Under the framework of Intercultural Rhetoric(IR),which represents a paradigm shift from CR,the present study aimed at comparing textual construction,as realized through move structures,rhetorical strategies and lexical bundles,of English essays produced in the context of Cross-border Writing Activity by Chinese and American college students.Mindful of the flawed assumptions and methods undergirding the traditional CR model,I drew on the tenets of IR to navigate the study,all the way from data collection to the discussions.Under this brand new IR paradigm,some major issues were revisited and reexamined with a view to yielding useful insights into the scholarship of cross-cultural studies of textual patterns.Specifically,three overarching research questions were investigated.They are,1.What similarities and differences in textual construction can be found when Chinese and American college students respond to the same rhetorical situation?2.In what ways does textual construction contribute to voice expression in the two sets of essays?3.In what ways are the similarities and differences in textual construction interpreted in light of the caveats of Intercultural Rhetoric?To better guide the current undertaking,a synthesized theoretical framework was proposed.This framework integrated the constructs of genre,lexical bundles and voice to allow for a multilayered portrayal of textual construction of student essays in a specified and situated writing context.To be exact,the simplistic and static classification of student essays into direct and indirect,a problematic but prevalent dichotomy in previous studies,was critiqued;alternatively,the present study attempted to investigate the move structures of student essays written for real audiences and with clear communicative purposes.What makes the framework sophisticated enough is the incorporation of voice construct,which shows how different discursive and non-discursive sources are utilized to construct distinctive authorial identities.Ultimately,a post-modern re-conceptualization of culture and context-sensitive text analysis championed by IR have been proved particularly instrumental when it came to interpreting the texturing of the two groups of essays.Methodologically,data were collected from the Cross-border Writing Activity,where students of both sides wrote to compare and contrast two films they were required to watch,one Chinese and one American.Upon completion of the essays,they posted them on a website specially designed for the activity,and then they were expected to make comments on one another’s essays.After the online exchanges,both groups of students were required to post their reflections of the task on the website as well.This cyber space defined a clear writing situation and provided a site whereby to observe writer-reader interactions.Two separate corpora,CECS and CEAS,were built,each comprising 95 essays produced by each group of students.All the data came from the five rounds of cross-border writing activities that took place during the period from 2015 to 2017.After pilot coding and coding proper,with both stages involving interratership,frequencies of textual features at multiple levels in both sets of data were tallied.Then Chi-squared tests to compare the frequencies of a particular item in CECS and CEAS were run to indicate statistical significances.To triangulate the interpretation of the textual features,students’ online interactions and post-task reflections were referred to in addition to a focus group interview.Fully wary of the pitfalls in which some previous studies have been unwittingly caught,the present study sought to resist the temptation to privilege one rhetoric over the other,which has characterized the deficiency model widely seen in previous cross-cultural comparative projects.Instead,appreciations and negotiations of differences were celebrated.Another disclaimer worth making is that the film essays written by students from both sides were never meant to represent the genre of film review per se in respective cultures.The move structures of the essays only serve as a descriptive model whereby to compare the textual construction of both groups of students.The present study has reported some important similarities and differences,both categorical and scalar,in textual construction between the two groups of essays.At the level of move structure,both groups of students employed a variety of move configurations to organize their film essays despite one important shared pattern,M1-M2-M4-M6(Essay Titles-Engaging the writing task-Comparing the moviesClosing the essay).The diversified textual patterns employed in both corpora,however, guarded us against essentializing the two groups of writers through a cross-cultural lens.Also,the predominant patterns in each corpus displayed significant differences.The pattern of M1-M2-M4-M6(Essay Titles-Engaging the writing task-Comparing the movies-Closing the essay)was found to be the single most frequently adopted one in American students’ essays.In contrast,Chinese students showed strong preference to another pattern M1-M2-M4-M5-M6(Essay Titles-Engaging the writing taskComparing the movies-Expanding the discussion-Closing the essay)on top of the shared pattern of M1-M2-M4-M6.I argue that the M1-M2-M4-M5-M6 pattern favored by Chinese students to organize their film essays virtually embodies the logic manifested by the traditional Chinese textual structure Qi-Cheng-Zhuan-He(QCZH),with Move 5,relating to reality by moving out of the film context,corresponding to the Zhuan part.Analysis of online interactions and task reflections revealed that this pattern had received positive uptake from the American readers.This context-dependant and non-prescriptive interpretation of the discourse functions of QCZH structure runs counter to previous research that oftentimes identified the Zhuan part as the source of incoherence problems,such as digression or circularity.A far cry from being problematic,the present study also found that QCZH structure was harnessed by Chinese students to exercise their particular voices,such as the collectivist voice.With regards to rhetorical strategies,striking differences were found despite the fact that both groups of students adopted some similar strategies to realize the moves,such as the deductive/direct way of stating the thesis.For example,Chinese students used way more proverbial expressions such as sayings or quotes in their essays than their American peers did.The other is that Chinese students also preferred to appeal to social values in the closing move,such as employing the strategies of making recommendations,calling for actions etc.Their American counterparts,on the other hand,seemed to refrain from doing the same.They instead tended to assume a detached overtone,just providing a summary of the similarities and differences of the two films in the end.These differences were discussed in relation to some Chinese literacy traditions.Online comments,reflections and group interview also unveiled some small culture factors that should be taken into account when interpreting different texturing features.Different from previous research that labeled the use of sayings or quotes as deviation from the mainstream English rhetorical conventions,those proverbial expressions found appreciations in American students.Lexico-grammatically,the use of four-word lexical bundles was compared.Both Chinese L2 writers and American L1 writers used almost the same number of bundle types,which differed from previous studies that found that L2 learners have tended to outperform L1 writers in bundle use.This is probably due to context-sensitive and content-based bundle analysis adopted in the present study.Structurally,American students were found to employ more NP and PP-based bundles,which are mainly used to realize Move 4,comparing the films,while Chinese students used more VP-based bundles in Move 5,expanding the discussion and other morally-positioned strategies.These lexical bundles also help the writers express different voices.Both groups of students capitalized on discursive and non-discursive sources at both global and local levels to exercise different voices,a task-committed and objective voice in American students’ essays and a socially-oriented,subjective and creative voice in Chinese students’ essays.The analysis of the contributions of textual construction to voice construction has expanded the repertoire of voice elements beyond word and sentence levels.In other words,discursive sources at multiple levels synergize to help writers express distinctive voices in written discourse.Finally,this dissertation concluded with some pedagogical implications that the major findings may lend to the writing instruction in China.Against the backdrop of English as a lingua franca,the present study called for a dynamic and non-essentialist understanding of English language and culture to avoid perpetuating an abstract and normative view of English rhetoric in teaching English writing to Chinese learners of English.Furthermore,as an Intercultural Rhetoric-informed study,this dissertation represented an attempt to open up an alternative avenue to investigate the textual construction of student essays,celebrating the affordances of different rhetorical traditions to the literacy development and embracing the variegated small cultures in the meaning-making process. |
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