After Kaplan’s (1966) seminal work on the examination of discourse organizations in ESL students’ English compositions, numerous studies have been conducted to investigate and compare discourse patterns between English and Chinese. A careful examination of these studies reveals that they explain differences or similarities between English and Chinese discourse organizational structures predominantly from two approaches, namely the rhetorical and cultural. To be specific, the rhetorical explanation refers to the influence of Chinese traditional rhetoric forms Ba Gu Wen (eight-legged essay) and Qi-Cheng-Zhuan-He, and the cultural to collectivism / Confucianism and inductive reasoning. Though undeniably these rhetorical and cultural explanations contribute a lot to our understanding of the relationship between English and Chinese rhetoric, these approaches “are by no means the only factors,” and meanwhile no sufficient evidence shows that they are the most salient ones either (Matsuda, 1997, p. 48).

In addition, the heavy reliance upon rhetorical and cultural explanations risks neglecting other important elements such as educational context and the writers’ various roles. What we need, therefore, is a more comprehensive and ecological view of the relation between culture, language, rhetoric, and writing. Through this short article, I hope to remind researchers in contrastive rhetoric studies, particularly studies between English and Chinese, of the necessity to take on a more dynamic and ecological view of Chinese rhetoric and Chinese ESL/EFL writers’ English writing.

The article begins with a short review of the four themes within the two main approaches repeatedly discussed in previous contrastive rhetoric studies between English and Chinese. It winds up with some useful perspectives to interpret the relation between English and Chinese rhetoric and identifies gaps to fill in a new research agenda for English-Chinese writing studies.

BA GU WEN (EIGHT-LEGGED ESSAY)

Ba Gu Wen (eight-legged essay) is probably the most widely discussed traditional Chinese rhetoric. Starting from the ancient Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the Ba Gu Wen (eight-legged essay) was the required form of essay writing in the imperial civil service examination. It is notorious for its rule-like format requirement, namely eight parts in the essay. The eight parts (with their individual meanings in parentheses) and their functions are as follows (adopted from Elman, 2000, p. 394; Kirkpatrick, 1997, pp. 232-233):

1. Po Ti 破题 (breaking/opening the topic): This should reveal the candidate’s knowledge of the source of the essay title and should be written in only two sentences;
2. Cheng Ti 承题 (receiving the topic): This comprises four or five sentences and includes the reason why the sage (Confucius) made the statement quoted in the essay title;
3. Qi Jiang 起讲 (beginning discussion): This is the real beginning of the essay. Here the candidates can use their own words, rather than discuss and quote the sage;
4. Qi Gu 起股 (initial leg): This section consists of two paragraphs, one parallel to the other in rhetorical structure. These paragraphs build up the philosophical content of the essay without exhausting it;
5. Xu Gu 续股 (transition leg): This is the prelude to the main theme of the essay where the first two lines are parallel to the second two lines, and these are the “minor legs”;
6. Zhong Gu中股 (middle leg): This is the main part of the essay, namely the central leg, and contains the main points the candidates want to raise. Parallel structure is used.
7. Hou Gu 后股 (latter leg): This develops the ideas expressed in the Zhong Gu or main part and represents the latter leg;
8. Da Jie 大结 (conclusion): Here the candidate brings the composition to a close.

This strictly formulated writing format was taught and practiced in China for several hundred years until the end of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) and some researchers (e.g., Cai, 1993; Connor, 1996) hold that due to its long-lasting existence in Chinese history and enormous social-cultural impact, the Ba Gu Wen rhetoric pattern still influences contemporary Chinese writing and native-Chinese speakers’ English writing in many ways. Some of the influences include the following:

• The Ba Gu Wen rhetoric pattern results in indirectness in Chinese writing.
• Ba Gu Wen contributes to Chinese preference for paired phrases and structures in Chinese writing.
• Ba Gu Wen is responsible for Chinese preference for analogy and allusion to history.

QI-CHENG-ZHUAN-HE (FOUR-PART ORGANIZATIONAL PATTERN)

Another influential Chinese rhetoric strategy for expository and persuasive writing is the four-part organizational pattern Qi-Cheng-Zhuan-He, which greatly influenced the formation of Ba Gu Wen (eight-legged essay). The four-part Qi-Cheng-Zhuan-He literally means beginning-elaboration-transition-conclusion. Qi 起 is the opening section with the introduction of theme; Cheng承 elaborates on the main point with supporting materials; Zhuan转 is the turning point to deviate momentarily from the discussion; and He合 is the conclusion part. Next is a household Chinese poem by the famous poet Li Bai (701-762) which is taken as the typical example of the Qi-Cheng-Zhuan-He structure in the Dictionary of Chinese Rhetoric. Kirkpatrick (1997, p. 229) translated the Chinese poem literally line-by-line into English as follows:

At the front of my bed moonlight shines, (qi)
I think there is frost on the ground, (cheng)
Raising my head, I look at the moon, (zhuan)
Lowering my head, I think of home. (he)

What makes the writing sound indirect to some English speakers is the momentary turn in the Zhuan转 (or transition) section. English compositions written by Chinese EFL/ESL students were often found to show the influence of this four-part organization pattern (e.g., Fagan & Cheong, 1987; J. Liu, 2008).

INDUCTIVENESS (INDIRECTNESS) VERSUS DEDUCTIVENESS (DIRECTNESS)

According to Kaplan (1966), English discourse patterns for commercial and some scholarly written communication evolved from Anglo-European culture, and they are linear, transparent, and deductive in their organization. An alternative to this convention is inductive organization, which is also linear and transparent, but the sequencing of information is different. That is to say, a series of examples is presented before the central statement or thesis is provided at the end of the paragraph or document. This form of organization is characteristic of creative writing in English. Through examining about 600 ESL students’ English compositions, Kaplan (1966) claimed that Asian writing, including Chinese, is characterized as being inductive or indirect, and its paragraph development looks like “turning and turning in a widening gyre” and “the subject is never looked at directly” (p. 10).

The Chinese rhetoric preference for indirectness is said to be related to the Confucian concept of Zheng Ming (正名), which literally means “rectification of names.” By Zheng Ming, each member of the society should act according to the expected role and position in the social hierarchy. Through the process of rectification, social harmony is said to be achieved. This psychology of social hierarchy is manifested in Chinese rhetoric and encourages indirectness by which the conditions of a composition are presented before articulating the main thesis. This Confucian philosophy or way of organizing society is thought to underlie the traditional rhetoric traditions as Ba Gu Wen (eight-legged essay) and Qi-Cheng-Zhuan-He.

COLLECTIVISM VERSUS INDIVIDUALISM

It has been argued that the collectivist ethic is reflected in the processes of education and socialization, and in Chinese schools, which represent a kind of social group; teachers encourage students to say what is socially shared and accepted rather than express something individual and personal (i.e., a unique contribution that fills a current need) (Carson & Nelson, 1994). In American university peer response group interaction, Chinese ESL students are usually found to not be able to respond analytically and constructively but instead take social-hierarchy-preserving strategies which might not be helpful for writing development (Carson & Nelson, 1996).

CRITIQUE OF THE RHETORICAL AND CULTURAL APPROACHES TO ENGLISH-CHINESE RHETORIC

Generally, the assumption underlying the rhetoric approach is problematic in at least the following three aspects. First, by far there is not a wide consensus on the nature of Zhuan in the four-part Qi-Cheng-Zhuan-He rhetorical pattern or its influence on Chinese writing (e.g., Cahill, 2003; Kirkpatrick, 1997), and therefore there might be multiple interpretations of the four-part rhetorical pattern, some of which might not necessarily connote indirectness. Actually, Kubota (1997) has long pointed out that this four-part rhetorical pattern might be found in L1 English writing and thus doubted the legitimacy of using this concept to characterize discourse organization structure (p. 469). Second, the difficulties encountered by Chinese L2 writers are not necessarily caused by L1 rhetoric patterns. Second-language acquisition has been regarded as a process of creative construction and the evolving system constitutes the interlanguage continuum. The interlanguage system is distinct from both the L1 and L2 (Odlin, 1989). L2 writers’ writing in L2 is just the evolving interlanguage system, which is different from L1 writing and is not always a product of native-language influence (Mohan & Lo, 1985). Last but not least, cross-linguistic transfer is not necessarily negative and unitary but also could be positive and bidirectional (Uysal, 2008).

As far as the cultural approach is concerned, I find the strong and obvious link between textual differences and global cultural differences too simplified. Attributing ESL students’ L2 writing problems and difficulties to L1 rhetoric and culture might face the danger of stereotyping and overgeneralizing. This cultural approach tends to treat L2 writers from certain language and cultural backgrounds as a group and thus routinely categorize their difficulties to L1 rhetoric interference while other important variables, such as register variation or educational context, have been largely neglected. In fact, L2 writers may write differently though they come from the same language and cultural background.

Actually, there are many factors (such as writers’ perceived audience and purpose, and writers’ educational, particularly their writing, experience) other than rhetoric and culture working beneath textual differences, and we need to avoid linking all variations in contrastive rhetoric research to differences in these two approaches.

TOWARD AN ECOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF ENGLISH-CHINESE CONTRASTIVE RHETORIC

Current contrastive rhetoric calls for a “context sensitive” approach to examine and explain why writers write in this way (Connor, 2004, p. 295). This context-sensitive approach might include the scrutiny of the nature of writing task and its influence upon writers’ task response and text construction, the examination of L1 and L2 educational background, L2 writers’ writing experience, and their own perceptions of writing process and difficulties, and so on. These expanded approaches enable researchers to look beyond the texts, the final products, and have the chance to see how the text is produced.

Nature of Writing Tasks

It is widely known that different registers have different rhetorical structures and discourse conventions (Biber & Conrad, 2009), and thus any static view of Chinese writing as being indirect or inductive and English writing direct or deductive would face the serious danger of overgeneralization. For example, in English, scholarly communication may honor deductive style while creative writing would favor an inductive one. Meanwhile, Chinese EFL students do not necessarily write in an inductive way all the time, but on the contrary they have also been found to like directness and deductive style in their English writing, particularly for argumentative essays (Yang & Cahill, 2008). More recently it has been found that even Confucians love to argue and a desire for direct and deductive style is not rare in Chinese ancient policy essay writing (You & Liu, 2009).

The differing natures of writing tasks might influence writers’ task interpretation and consequent composing strategies which include the consideration of potential audience and expected purpose, and thus, the concept of register variation must be understood and embraced by educators and researchers. Contrastive rhetorical study from a register variation perspective, an ethnographic study of naturally occurring, authentic texts and language use, helps avoid an essentialist view of rhetorical practice in English and Chinese.

L1 and L2 Educational Background

In order to get away from the prescriptive and deterministic perspectives on L1 and L2 relation implied by cross-cultural and rhetorical explanations, recent contrastive rhetoric has increasingly paid more attention to the influence from ESL/EFL writers’ educational background.

According to Carson (1992), Chinese L1 education emphasizes modeling and memorization. Teachers normally exemplify these by explaining model compositions. Students are generally required to memorize some passages and lessons, and memorization is thought by both students and teachers to be a good way to develop students’ writing abilities. Carson (1992) claimed that L1 literacy education will indirectly influence foreign language education and will also influence ESL students’ L2 learning. For example, Chinese ESL students would find English writing hard to learn because English writing emphasizes the process of planning, writing, and revising rather than memorizing and learning forms. Thus, Carson (1992) suggested that the knowledge of Chinese ESL student writers’ L1 literacy background helps build effective strategies in ESL writing classroom and called for empirical studies in this regard.

Recent years have seen increasing attention given to this line of study. For example, through analyzing online instructional materials, L. Liu (2005) found that L1 English and L1 Chinese argumentative writing is similar at a macro-level structure but different in the process of argumentation. Similarly, after examining L1 Chinese writing manuals, Yang and Cahill (2008) argued that Chinese writing also advocates directness and deductive style in argumentative writing. It is clear that these findings are quite new and revealing and more studies are needed in the future in order to get more first-hand and systematic data on L1 Chinese and L2 English writing.

Writers As Individuals

It has been widely acknowledged that the writers themselves also play a central role in written production, and their experience and knowledge about L1 and L2 writing has an equally important role in text formation. Matsuda (1997) once emphasized that if one is explaining L2 writing only by examining the influence from rhetoric, culture, and education, then other factors such as writers’ past writing experience “would be ignored” (p. 49). Thus, a meaningful English-Chinese contrastive rhetoric study needs to consider writers’ various roles in the process of textual production.

By exploring student writers’ past experience in L1 and L2 writing instruction and their perceptions of their writing problems and difficulties, we can answer the question of why and how students write in this way. Therefore, writers themselves need to be taken as an important subject of study by itself in contrastive rhetoric.

CONCLUSION

To recap, numerous English-Chinese contrastive rhetoric studies have been carried out during the past few decades, and these studies have contributed to our understanding of the problems and difficulties in English writing by Chinese writers. However, these studies have also raised several concerns: They predominantly illuminate the differences between English and Chinese writing and the difficulties of Chinese ESL/EFL writers resulting from rhetorical conventions and cultural ideologies. The rhetorical conventions of Chinese writing are the traditional rhetoric forms Ba Gu Wen (eight-legged essay) and Qi-Cheng-Zhuan-He, which manifest inductively sequenced evidence and implicit arguments. These rhetorical preferences may be mandated and reinforced by the cultural ideologies of collectivism and social hierarchy.

Though rhetoric studies in this line might provide significant clues to contrastive rhetorical phenomena between English and Chinese, rhetorical conventions and cultural ideologies are by no means the only factors (Matsuda, 1997, p. 48). Other more context-sensitive factors such as the nature of writing tasks, L1 literacy and L2 education backgrounds, and writers’ past writing experiences and perceptions of their own writing processes and difficulties have proved to be significant and revealing. In addition, Connor (1996) pointed out that “the traditional contrastive rhetoric framework is no longer able to account for all the data, and an expanded framework is needed” (p. 18). Consequently, because English-Chinese contrastive rhetoric research is still full of divergent and inconsistent conclusions, a study that employs an expanded framework by incorporating applied linguistics and sociocultural studies will provide a more comprehensive and ecological interpretation to Chinese ESL/EFL writers’ writing difficulties and problems. Moreover, a proper research agenda for English-Chinese writing studies needs to address conceptual gaps and consider the role of multiple academic domains. In other words, the answer to understanding differences between English and Chinese writing may not necessarily lie in applied linguistic, education, or culture studies alone. Rather, it may be useful to draw on the academic domains of political science, history, sociology, literature, and psychology as well.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the editor and reviewers for their valuable comments on the earlier draft of this article. Of course, all errors remain my own.

Liu Xinghua is a lecturer of English from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, and currently is a PhD student at the Department of English Language and Literature, University of Reading, UK.. Apart from his general interest in SLA, he is also interested in discourse studies, corpus linguistics and psycholinguistics.