Writing Center Post #5

In the Casanave article, the Whorfian principle discussion reminded me somewhat of things we teach in Rhetoric on persuasion and the function of language used to influence people, but the newer model of intercultural rhetoric expands and clarifies some of the issues in contrastive rhetoric, particularly in bringing in cultural context as an important element. I think this can be useful in certain contexts; understanding that narrative styles and conventions vary across the board will help instructors to be more specific and mindful about assuming everyone in the class is on the same page. On the other hand, thinking back to our discussion last week in connection with this article, intercultural rhetoric in the classroom setting while engaging with students can potentially be hazardous, not only because it may not be directly fruitful but more specifically because other factors prevent a clear understanding, like the danger of taking the students' beliefs about their culture as an umbrella truth for their culture. Additionally, the article points out that culture itself is a murky term; which culture(s), subcultures, when, etc. Contrastive rhetoric did come up somewhat in rhetoric teaching last semester when an international student gave me her evaluative opinion about "what Korean culture is like" that created something of a single generalized narrative for the entire country, so we discussed traditions that might contribute to her understanding of that, which opened up analysis a little more.