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Being an undergraduate with Japanese and Asian Studies minors of course entitles me to take some pretty interesting classes. In one of my classes – Language and Society of Japan – we break into small groups to present chapters of our textbook in PPT format. This is our handout concerning Robert B. Kaplan’s article Cultural Thought Patterns in Inter-Cultural Education.

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In this article Robert B. Kaplan analyzes the differences between the teaching of reading and composition to foreign students versus the teachings of reading and composition to American students. He discusses the meaning of rhetoric by referring to it as being a mode of “finding all available means” for the achievement of a designated end. It is concerned with what goes on in the mind as well as analysis, data gathering, interpretation, and synthesis. He believes that a descriptive approach to the teaching of English seems to work best.

Diversity affects the whole system of institutions that are tied to the language. Logic is not universal, but rather is evolved out of culture. Every language offers to its speakers a ready-made interpretation of the world. The English language and its related thought patterns have evolved out of the Anglo-European cultural patterns.

The Platonic-Aristotelian Sequence, as noted by Kaplan, identifies four key cultural patterns. He goes into these four patterns in grave detail; Semitic, Oriental, Romance/European, and Russian. We must inevitably see the universe from a centre lying within ourselves and speak about it in terms of a human language by the exigencies of human intercourse. Any attempt rigorously to eliminate our human perspective from our picture of the world must lead to absurdity. Just because a foreign student can write a coherent essay in his native language does not mean that he can do so in English, nor does that mean that an American, of whom can write a coherent essay in English, can do so in another language. Understanding all of the vocabulary and grammar of a language does not teach you the cultural thought pattern of a language, which can differ from different groups of people who speak the same language, such as America and Great Britain.

Summary of Ideas

1. Platonic-Aristotelian Sequence: Kaplan conducted an experiment to see how foreign students would write an essay in a language that is not their native language. His hypothesis is that the foreign students use the thought patterns of their native language, even if they are exemplarily fluent in the second language in which they are writing the essay in.
   1. English: In English, it is common and an accepted rule to use indentions in formal writing. This small detail is something that could define the writer as a diligent individual or an amateur. It is not mandatory, but considered respectable to separate one’s thoughts clearly when composing in English. A paragraph is understood to describe only one topic or one aspect of a topic. Coherence is the quality attributed to the presentation of material in a sequence which is intelligible to its reader. There were 600 to 700 foreign student compositions used in Kaplan’s experiment.
   2. Arabic: Paragraph development is based on a complex series of parallel constructions, both positive and negative. Such development in a modern English paragraph would strike the modern reader as archaic or awkward and more importantly it would stand in the way of clear communication.
   3. Oriental: Languages that fall in the category or ‘oriental’ are widely considered being an approach by indirection. The development of the paragraph may be said to be “turning and turning a widening gyre”- the circles or gyres turn around the subject and show it from a variety of tangential views but the subject is never looked at directly. Things are developed in terms of what they are not, rather than in terms of what they are.
   4. European: Languages of Europe, such as French, Spanish, and English are considered to have much greater freedom to digress or introduce extraneous material.
   5. Russian: Structure of the Russian sentence is entirely different from the structure of the English sentence. But some of the linguistic difficulty is closely related to the rhetorical difficulty. Russian in comparison to English has long run on sentences and awkward punctuation.
2. Descriptive vs. Prescriptive: Kaplan contrasts the differences between description and prescription. Both have recognized the existence of cultural variation as a factor in second-language teaching, the recognition has so far been limited to the level of the sentence including grammar, vocabulary and structure. Despite the grammatical similarities, the verbal universe is divided into a multitude of sectors
3. Teaching Devices: Scrambled Paragraphs: Students are asked to rearrange sentences in what appears to them to be a normal order. Demonstrate the diversity of views or cultures represented in the classroom.

Terminology

1. Rhetoric: A mode of “finding all available means” for the achievement of a designated end.
2. Description: A statement, picture in words, or account that describes; descriptive representation.
3. Prescription: Denotes normative practices on such aspects of language use as spelling, grammar, and syntax. It includes judgments on what usages are socially proper and politically correct.
4. Synonymous Parallelism: “His decedents will be mighty in the land and the generation of the upright will be blessed.”
5. Synthetic Parallelism: “Because he inclined his ear to me therefore I will call on him as long as I live.”
6. Antithetic Parallelism: “For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: But the way of the wicked shall not perish.”
7. Climatic Parallelism: “Give unto the Lord, O ye sons of the mighty, give unto the Lord glory and strength.”

Questions

1. Do you agree with Kapan’s analysis on the cultural thought patterns of the four main genres of languages, Semitic, Oriental, Romance/European, and Russian?
2. Do you believe that logic is universal? Why or why not?
3. For the foreign students, have you/do you still face challenges with cultural rhetoric when composing an essay in English? Explain the differences between American English rhetoric and that of your native language’s cultural rhetoric that you have noticed.

Comments

After analyzing Kapan’s article on Cultural Thought Patterns in Inter-Cultural Education, we believe that there are differences in the rhetoric between different languages due to the cultures and not so much on the languages themselves. Although there are grammatical similarities between languages, contrastive rhetoric becomes most apparent when utilizing grammar in an expository setting.

English teachers, when teaching foreign students, must understand that their students come from different cultures which use various forms of rhetoric in their formation of discourse. Teachers must also make this blatantly apparent to their foreign students so as to increase general understanding and retention. We believe that it is vitally important that English teachers not overload their foreign students and aim too high. The students, after all, are returning to their home countries soon enough. They will remember only the basics of ideas and theories.

Reference

Kaplan, Robert B. Cultural Thought Patterns in Inter-Cultural Education. University of Southern California.

Sincerely,

夢の目

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