A Contrastive Study Between English And Chinese Argumentative Rhetoric From The Perspective Of Writing Textbooks

Contrastive rhetoric is mainly devoted to the study of problems in the second language writing by comparing the rhetorical patterns of the mother tongue and the second language. American scholar Kaplan pioneered the term comparative rhetoric in his seminal article in 1966, "Cultural Thought Patterns in Intercultural Education". He interpreted comparative rhetoric as the cross-language, cross-cultural comparison through his 22 years of exploration and practice. At present, many domestic and international researchers, taking advantage of a variety of linguistic theories and approaches, have conducted the contrastive rhetoric researches from different angles and made great achievements. They have been applied to ESL (EFL) teaching, especially in college English writing teaching, to help researchers identify the problems in writing, and propose the methods to improve the writing teaching and the students’writing ability. However, these studies mainly take students’ESL writing as the text for analysis to contrast with the writing in target language. Few contrastive studies have been conducted based on the writing textbooks.Therefore, this thesis is mainly devoted to a contrastive study between English and Chinese argumentative rhetoric from the perspective of writing textbooks, which lays its theoretical basis on the theories of contrastive rhetoric and makes use of some relevant approaches adopted in contrastive rhetoric as its analytical framework. This study chooses two widely used and representative English argumentative writing textbooks in native English-speaking countries, namely The College Writer and College Writing Skills with Readings, and two popular Chinese argumentative writing textbooks used in Chinese colleges, namely Argumentation Writing Course (《议论文写作教程》) and College Argumentation Writing Course (《高校议论文写作教程》), as the data source. The writing textbooks will be analyzed from the aspects of organizational pattern, placement of thesis, reasoning strategies and persuasive appeals as well as references separately, attempting to find out the similarities and differences between English and Chinese argumentative rhetoric based on the statements of writing textbooks.The results of this study show that the English writing textbooks prefer to adopt the linear progression, while the Chinese writing textbooks tend to adopt the spiral development in addition to the linear development. The English writing textbooks claim to state out the thesis directly right at the beginning of an argumentative writing, while the Chinese writing textbooks point out that the Chinese argumentative writing sometimes may be indirect and tend to put off the thesis statement till or near the end, though the thesis can be stated out in the beginning. The English writing textbooks prefer the deductive reasoning or otherwise the inductive reasoning in the argumentative writing, whereas the Chinese writing textbooks introduce the quasi-inductive way of reasoning, besides the deductive and inductive reasoning. Both English and Chinese writing textbooks indicate that the argumentative writing can make use of opinions of experts or authorities, proverbs and poems etc., while more references tend to be used in Chinese argumentative writing in a wider scope.This contrastive study will provide a new perspective for cross-cultural study of argumentative rhetoric. The results of this study will provide useful guidance for ESL writing and ESL writing teaching, enlighen the ESL writing textbook writers and editors to pay attention to the distinct English and Chinese argumentative rhetoric, and help enhance teachers and students’ rhetoric awareness. The results can also supply useful references for the cross-cultural writing and reading of argumentation, and offer a basis for effective cross-cultural communication and understanding. The results of this study will also enrich the contents of and approaches for the contrastive rhetoric researches.