intercultural rhetoric

Kaplan’s article (1966) is significant in that he viewed the struggles second of language learners as cultural differences instead of “cognitive deficit” (Casanave, 2003, p. 29). It cannot be denied that his argument had a huge impact on second language teachers when many teachers couldn’t understand why their foreign students were so poor at writing unlike their native peers.

Nonetheless, it can’t also be denied that his analysis could have improved in some way. As Kubota (1998, as cited in Casanave, 2003) points out, more evidence is needed to argue that there are “culturally unique patterns” (Casanave, 2003, p. 36). I felt uneasy when I read Kaplan’s example and analysis of Korean student’s essay which was written in English, a language that he/she didn’t have a good command of.

In addition to the fact that L1 patterns was analyzed based on writing in L2, there was a strong possibility that other factors came into play or several factors interacted with each other in the piece, let alone the low L2 proficiency. The student might not have had enough enthusiasm to invest all his/her energy. He/she might not have had enough knowledge about that topic. Or the writing task might not have been that important so he/she didn’t try his best.

To Americans, the word Korean may bring a single image. To me, one of the Koreans, the word in my head is too complicated and multifaceted because every Korean looks different to me. Each of them has their own set of small cultures. In this sense, I strongly agree with Connor (2004)’s claim that small cultures as well as national and ethnic cultures need be taken into account, and social and political contexts need to be investigated by appropriate research methods such as interviews with writers and readers or focus groups.

Of course, in order to do that, we need more complex and multiple methods, which are obviously harder and more complicated to collect and analyze than simply with written texts. However, as Atkinson (2008) argues, how can researchers explain “a highly complex phenomenon” with simple tools?