Reflections on Written Discourse

I found today's class rather engaging and enriching for several reasons. The main learning point of our session today was on the various discourse types with genetic language types; i.e the dominant and unique trends in the rhetoric of various language and cultural groups.

The pictorial figures introduced by Kaplan to describe the writing styles of people in different language and cultural groups were interesting and relatively close to reality. We learnt that English rhetoric follows a linear style of writing with an introduction, topic sentence, supporting sentences and conclusion. Semitic rhetoric adopt a parallel writing style which tend to appear simplistic due to an overwhelming use of coordinating words like and, so, etc. Next, in the Oriental rhetoric, it follows a circular writing pattern which starts at the peripherals; with a tendency to 'beat around the bush', before arriving at the main point towards the end of the passage. Following this, Romance rhetoric such as that of German writers adopts a digressive approach in that the writer starts and ends with the main point but tends to digress in the middle of the essay. Finally, in Russian rhetoric, it tends to be more digressive in nature and often, the reader would find it difficult to see the direction in which the writer is digressing to.

To get a better idea of the above types of discourses dominant in the various language and cultural groups, we broke into groups to discuss an activity in which we analyzed the unique styles and characteristics of writing styles common in Arabic, Chinese, Indian and Australian writers.

I felt that it was a great way to learn about the unique styles of writing of other cultures and language groups. For instance, I learnt that in Arabic writers' use of prepositions are usually direct translations from conversations in Arabic. They also have very structure/ordered sentence structure and are itemized and repetitive in nature. In our discussion of Oriental writing, it was interesting to see how the reader needs a background so as to understand the meanings of culturally loaded words such as 'gentleman of flowers', 'hermit of flowers' etc, used by the Chinese writers. In addition, Chinese writers tend to carry hidden meanings or messages which critic the society within their essay. This can be seen through the use of several imagery and analogies to bring their point across. This could probably because expressing such views directly may be too sensitive and they might even be prosecuted too. Hence, an indirect form of writing is adopted. Another interesting observation we gathered was from our discussion on letters written by Chinese and Australians. For example, in Oriental letter writing, reasons are usually placed before requests, as compared to letters written by Australians in where it is the exact opposite, i.e requests before reasons. It was interesting to see that the letter written by an Australian was short and sweet, direct and to the point compared to that of the Chinese writer where is is rather lengthy.

In conclusion, in light of all we have learnt about written discourse, I think it is crucial and important to be aware of the different writing styles of various language groups and cultures. This is because such an awareness will enable me to use the appropriate style of writing in the respective cultures which I come into contact with. For instance, adopting an Indian writing style when I am in India, a Chinese style when I am in China and so on. This would prevent any potential miscommunication which may arise due to the use of an inappropriate writing approach.