The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

Interpreting the culture in intercultural rhetoric: a critical perspective from English as a lingua franca studies

Interpreting the culture in intercultural rhetoric: a critical perspective from English as a lingua franca studies
Interpreting the culture in intercultural rhetoric: a critical perspective from English as a lingua franca studies
As Matsuda and Atkinson comment in a recent critique, contrastive rhetoric (CR)/intercultural rhetoric (IR) “…talks about culture without ever telling us what culture is. And without ever theorizing culture, and that’s problematic…” (2008: 297). This represents a major difficulty with IR as without a well theorised view of culture there is a danger of essentialising and stereotyping the communicative practices of different groups. This is not a new criticism of CR/IR (see for example Scollon, 1997), and attempts have been made to address some of these issues through more complex views of culture (for example Atkinson, 2004; Connor, 2008), indeed the move from CR to IR is clearly part of this. Nevertheless, given the range of contextual factors that surround the construction and interpretation of a text can such a large and contested concept as culture be of any value in textual analysis? Such questions are even more pertinent when we consider that for English the ‘non-native’ users far outnumber ‘native’ users (Crystal, 2008) leading to difficulties in identifying which particular cultures are being contrasted.

This paper will argue that the concept of culture can yield valuable insights, but a more critical approach to culture is needed in which the inner circle native speaker communities (often Anglo-American) are no longer viewed as a baseline by which other English writing practices and forms are measured. The extensive use of English as a global lingua franca (ELF) means that a focus on the native speaker is no longer sustainable and runs the risk of imposing the communicative practises of one group over the many (Fairclough, 1999; Cameron, 2002) with the culturalism, linguicism, othering, and inequality this entails. This paper will explore how the insights from critical approaches to culture and language taken in intercultural communication (Kramsch, 2009; Holliday, 2011) and ELF studies (Baker, 2009 and Canagarajah, 2007), which are increasingly turning their attention to writing (for example Horner, forthcoming; Jenkins,2010; Mauranen and Hynninen, 2010), can inform IR and make it relevant to the needs of English users in global settings. It will be suggested that many of the key areas of knowledge and skills identified as necessary to negotiate intercultural communication through ELF are equally relevant to truly intercultural writing practices.
University of Michigan Press
Baker, Will
9f1b758c-e6e0-43ca-b7bf-a0d5e1387d10
Belcher, D.
Nelson, G.
Baker, Will
9f1b758c-e6e0-43ca-b7bf-a0d5e1387d10
Belcher, D.
Nelson, G.

Baker, Will (2013) Interpreting the culture in intercultural rhetoric: a critical perspective from English as a lingua franca studies. In, Belcher, D. and Nelson, G. (eds.) Critical and Corpus-Based Approaches to Intercultural Rhetoric. Ann Arbor, US. University of Michigan Press.

Record type: Book Section

Abstract

As Matsuda and Atkinson comment in a recent critique, contrastive rhetoric (CR)/intercultural rhetoric (IR) “…talks about culture without ever telling us what culture is. And without ever theorizing culture, and that’s problematic…” (2008: 297). This represents a major difficulty with IR as without a well theorised view of culture there is a danger of essentialising and stereotyping the communicative practices of different groups. This is not a new criticism of CR/IR (see for example Scollon, 1997), and attempts have been made to address some of these issues through more complex views of culture (for example Atkinson, 2004; Connor, 2008), indeed the move from CR to IR is clearly part of this. Nevertheless, given the range of contextual factors that surround the construction and interpretation of a text can such a large and contested concept as culture be of any value in textual analysis? Such questions are even more pertinent when we consider that for English the ‘non-native’ users far outnumber ‘native’ users (Crystal, 2008) leading to difficulties in identifying which particular cultures are being contrasted.

This paper will argue that the concept of culture can yield valuable insights, but a more critical approach to culture is needed in which the inner circle native speaker communities (often Anglo-American) are no longer viewed as a baseline by which other English writing practices and forms are measured. The extensive use of English as a global lingua franca (ELF) means that a focus on the native speaker is no longer sustainable and runs the risk of imposing the communicative practises of one group over the many (Fairclough, 1999; Cameron, 2002) with the culturalism, linguicism, othering, and inequality this entails. This paper will explore how the insights from critical approaches to culture and language taken in intercultural communication (Kramsch, 2009; Holliday, 2011) and ELF studies (Baker, 2009 and Canagarajah, 2007), which are increasingly turning their attention to writing (for example Horner, forthcoming; Jenkins,2010; Mauranen and Hynninen, 2010), can inform IR and make it relevant to the needs of English users in global settings. It will be suggested that many of the key areas of knowledge and skills identified as necessary to negotiate intercultural communication through ELF are equally relevant to truly intercultural writing practices.

This record has no associated files available for download.

More information

Published date: 2013
Organisations: Modern Languages

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 209259
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/209259
PURE UUID: 569fb30a-d021-4375-acf4-cfa216636263
ORCID for Will Baker: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-0533-2795

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 26 Jan 2012 15:06
Last modified: 21 Apr 2023 01:40

Export record

Contributors

Author: Will Baker ORCID iD
Editor: D. Belcher
Editor: G. Nelson

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×