Intercultural Communication Studies XIV: 2 2005 Jia Xuerui- Chinese and American Rhetoric A Contrastive Analysis of Chinese and American Rhetoric

It is obviously true that discourses may share similar organizational structures. Psychologists have even testified in recent years that different cultures may share similar schema for comprehension and memory. We must, however, admit that differences in terms of discourse organizational structure as well as in many other aspects of behavior are just as obvious. It is generally acknowledged and, to more or lesser extent, verified by scholars that, even though different cultures may both use linear and configural structures in their organizing discourses, Eastern rhetoric seems to favor configural logic while Western rhetoric seems to favor linear logic. This paper is based upon a case analysis of 46 expository essays by non-English majors, 16 model essays by English majors of Peking University, and a considerable number of academic paper abstracts delivered at The Third International symposium on ELT in China.. It argues that in Chinese writing in English, the traditional Chinese configural logic mode finds their best expressions. To make a contrastive study between the patterns in the Chinese English writing and Anglo-American English patterns in English writing, this paper also includes an analysis of 31 essays of American college students and reaches a conclusion that all of the 31 essays have adopted linear logic mode. This paper makes a contrastive analysis of linear and configural logic modes on the basis of Aristotelian reasoning and the Toulmin model, which are represented in almost everyday American spoken and written discourses and the traditional pattern of Chinese discourses called “起、承、转、合” ("qi—cheng—zhuan—he") four-part structure