| The traditional definition of contrastive rhetoric (CR) emphasizes prescribing and teaching differences in rhetorical patterns. This paper raises questions about traditional CR and analyzes recent developments, which move from differences to similarities in rhetorical patterns, within the context of increasing globalization. Through surveying Chinese-English CR, China's New Culture Movement, and China's New Concept Writing Competition, this paper proposes seven hypotheses with an emphasis on exploring the commonly accepted themes and the possibility of reaching convergence in cross-cultural communication. Using Burke's definition of rhetoric as the theoretical framework, this paper conducts a case study on Chinese and English movie reviews. Tagmemic rhetorical analysis, pentad analysis, classical rhetorical analysis, and genre analysis reveal a variety of findings. Those analyses demonstrate: commonly accepted themes initiate and sustain cross-cultural communication; divergence in rhetorical patterns is a reflection of personal preferences; convergence occurs as long as people make an effort to construct shared situated knowledge. |
