A Review of Studies on Rhetoric Structure between Chinese and English

1. Introduction

There are many researches which focus on contrast rhetoric structure between English and Chinese in writing and reading from different aspects. Many of such studies support the argument presented by Kaplan （1966）. That is the text structure expectation between Chinese and English is quite different.

2. Investigations and Arguments

Tsao in 1983 take a study between English and Chinese through analyzing the different of coherence and cohesion of these two languages. The result is the English and Chinese organized quite different in stylistics.

Besides Tsao （1983）， Taylor and Chen （1991） also made a study to examine the theory of whether different “cultural-linguistic system” may cause varied discourse structure. Similar introductions of scientific papers are used as the materials to be analyzed. They are written by Anglo-Americans in English， Chinese writers in English and Chinese writers in Chinese separately， and all the writers selected in this research are physical scientists. After comparing these articles， Taylor and Chen （1991） conclude that， although the Chinese scientists try to accept the academic structure （there is no academic structure in Chinese writing） of English， there is still “systematic variation” exist in their academic structure. This result reveals that there is a relationship between discourse structure and “culture-linguistic system”.

Hinds （1990：98） also studied the rhetoric between English and Japanese， Korean， Thai and Chinese. Then Hinds found there are common characteristics shared by Japanese， Korean， Thai and Chinese， that is， “delayed introduction of purpose”. He argued that this “delayed introduction of purpose” can not identified by English native speakers because it is neither inductive nor deductive. Thus the text structure different between English and other four languages may the key reason which causes the reading problems between English and other four languages.

The investigation mentioned above are all support that the different rhetoric structure between English and Chinese will have effect on the reading or writing on the students whose second language is Chinese or English. However， there are many other studies do not agree this view point.

For instance， Mahan and Lo （1985） argue that the “eight-legged” articles were the old writing style of Chinese. It has already alternated by “baihua” a hundred years ago by the government of Chinese. At the beginning of the twentieth century， they did a investigation on Chinese-speaking ESL students in Hong Kong and British Columbia， the consequence is that there is little different between the text structure of Chinese and English； and the students in China now were taught in the linear style than the circular style.

3. Evaluation and Conclusion

From my point of view， the difference of rhetoric structure between Chinese and English will still influence the reading comprehension of the Chinese students. For one thing， Culture plays a very important role in the process of forming a language. Therefore the culture of Confucius still has a more or less impact on Chinese people’s lives in every aspect. The indirectness style of writing still can be found in many circumstances. For another， as a matter of fact， based on the above described situation， many students will not utilize the academic style of writing in their daily life though it was taught at school or college. Hence the distinctive consciousness on academic style of writing will not be cultivated among students. For the above situation， encouraging students to conscious the difference of text structures between Chinese and English due to culture variation may be a feasible solution to improve their reading and writing.

References：

[1]Hinds，J.1990.Inductive，deductive，quasi-inductive：Expository writing in Japanese，Korean，Chinese，and Thai.In U.ConnorA.M.Johns（Eds.），Coherence in writing：Research and pedagogical perspectives（pp.87-109）.Alexamdria，VA：Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages.

[2]Kaplan，R.B.1966.Cultural thought patterns in inter-cultural education.Language Learning XVI：1-20.

[3]Mohan，B.A.and W.A-Y.Lo.1985.Academic writing and Chinese students：transfer and developmental factors.TESOL Quarterly 19：515-34.

[4]Tsao，F(xiàn).F.1983.English and Mandarin.Annual Review of Applied Linguistics，3，99-117.

Taylor，G.，Chen，T.1991.Linguistic，cultural and subcultural issues in contrastive discourse analysis：Anglo-American and Chinese scientific texts.Applied Linguistics，12，319-336.

【作者簡介】潘春，魯迅美術(shù)學(xué)院大連校區(qū)。