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Comparing Eastern and Western Rhetorical Thought
Comparing Eastern and Western Rhetorical Thought
Comparing Eastern and Western Rhetorical Thought
ENG 262_2_2008-2009
TMA 4: Unit Four
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A. Make an overall assessment of the features of Western rhetoric and contrast western
rhetoric with Eastern rhetoric and its manifestations and features. What place does the
Philippines occupy between these oppositions? Justify how or why.
To compare Western rhetoric to that of its Eastern counterpart, one must first define
what it is to qualify as “West” and “East”. It would be easy enough to define “West”
in terms of geographical definitions – West here being nations in the Western
hemisphere (North and South America) and the East covering countries in the
opposite side of the world (Europe, Asia, Africa, Middle East). West and East,
however, has come to mean more than just what lies opposite each other across the
meridian line. The classifications of West and East, after centuries of modern human
history has come to ultimately describe how the globe is divided politically and socio-
economically – where nations and their peoples stand in the global economic and
political schema. Thus, the West has come to mean the more industrialized and
more developed, ergo more prosperous, countries like the countries of Europe
(Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, etc.), the North American continent (the United
States and Canada) and even Australia. The East, on the other hand, encompass less
industrialized (or newly industrializing) to underdeveloped countries in Asia, Russia,
Africa and the beleaguered Middle Eastern countries. Here the distinctions seem
easy to identify; the West being the rich First World capitalist (imperialist?) economies
and the East being the struggling nations of the Third World. But taking a longer look
at this construct will reveal that the schism is not based simply on GNP bottom lines
and even a shallow review of recent history will reveal that West and East actually
determine how much power a nation wields in global realpolitik. Thus, even if Saudi
Arabia, let’s say, controls all the world’s oil resources, it’s not enough to land a seat
with the big boys since the country exerts no real power on international affairs. This
rather meticulous exploration on distinguishing the West from the East attempts to
discover what may have implications on the kind of rhetoric used and valued in both.
First let us define Western rhetoric as the rhetoric used by the Anglo-American
speakers and writers of English (the British and Americans) as well as the Romance
discourse of the French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish and the East as the rhetoric
employed by Asian, Arabic or Semitic and Slavic (Czech, Russian, Polish and
Ukrainian) peoples. The table below lists salient features and attributes of each kind.
WESTERN
RHETORIC
• Paragraph development follow a linear pattern
English • Coordination is considered an inferior way of
connecting structures, with subordination as the
preferred cohesive device.
AGNES FIDELIS GLORIA-PINZON
ENG 262 TMA 4
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EASTERN
RHETORIC
• Paragraph development is based on a series of
SEMITIC: Arabic, Farsi, parallel coordinated clauses
AGNES FIDELIS GLORIA-PINZON
ENG 262 TMA 4
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Having thus enumerated and described cross cultural rhetorical differences, we move
on to the difficult task of locating Philippine rhetoric in this construct. It is difficult
because Philippine rhetoric does not fit as snuggly into the Asian model as one would
expect. For one, Philippine writing for the most parts, as with almost everything
“Philippine”, follows western models. Philippine literature in English, as we’ve
discussed in a previous class, had for its beginnings the American colonizers’ very
intention of training and molding young Filipinos to slowly but completely ease the
flow of influence and insure assimilation of the new colonial culture. From its early
stages Philippine writing in English has always reflected its acquiescence to its
western roots, especially in academic writing. I remember composition classes in
1
Miller, Laurie. Internationals Writing in English: An Introduction to Contrastive
Rhetoric from the George Mason University, English Language Institute. Retrieved from
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2339047/Cultural-Differences.
2
Roach, Michael. International Business Meets Contrastive Rhetoric. Retrieved from
http://www.experiencethread.com/articles/documents/article53.pdf.
3
Salonga, Aileen. Module 10: Cultural Expectations from Problems in Rhetoric, UP Open
University
AGNES FIDELIS GLORIA-PINZON
ENG 262 TMA 4
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college stressing the importance of sticking to a main idea and avoiding a style that
is prone to clutter and verbosity.
As noted in the course material, when people coming from other cultures are
exposed to or taught the standards of Western or Anglo-American rhetoric, they have
a tendency not only to view these as universal and the norm but they actually tend to
prefer it over their native standards of discourse; “Japanese native speakers tend to
prefer the linear pattern of English after they have been exposed to it…(and)…
similarly Korean academics schooled in the West often carry with them and teach the
Western style of writing when they go back to their home country.” 3. It’s tempting to
wonder if this hold true for us Filipinos as well – do we prefer the way others think,
write and express themselves over the way we’ve thought, written and expressed
ourselves. Admittedly, there was a time in our nation’s history when we thought of
everything West as best and we patterned each facet of our lives after our American
big brothers. Although we may blush now at the incredulity of such a thought and
strong stirrings of nationalism are suddenly invoked in us, this is a sad but undeniable
(and unforgettable) truth. But I’ve come to believe that this might not longer be
absolutely the case. We have ceased to write, speak and think in English as we have
been taught in the past and we might have actually adopted the language to express
our thoughts, our feelings, our beliefs, our joys, our fears, our triumphs and our
struggles - and by doing so, we have also chosen freedom from strictures of form
and style as adapted from western models: writing, speaking and thinking in a way
that is inimitably and indomitably Filipino.
B. Pick a short poem of any type, on any subject, by any author as the text you will be using
for analysis. Using what you have learned from the Unit, analyze the type of rhetoric it
employs, and give meaning to the logic, form and structure by identifying elements that
conform with the features of the given rhetorical stage/direction you have chosen.
I had some difficulty as I was trying to understand this particular task of the
assignment. I was not exactly clear on what the task demanded as we had
accomplished a rhetorical analysis earlier on in the course (Why did Kamal die?).
What I understood from the instruction was that I needed to analyze a more difficult
rhetorical piece, this time a poem, with the objective of paying attention to and
understanding not only what the author was trying to say but also on how he was
attempting to say it. My interpretation here is thus limited to just that – my
understanding of the author’s line of argument and his efforts at getting this across
to his readers.
AGNES FIDELIS GLORIA-PINZON
ENG 262 TMA 4
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Dr. Geminio Abad is not only father to Ms. Jugo but he is also an esteemed educator –
roles that give him credibility and authority to write this particular poem. He writes
using a reflective tone of one ahead in years and experience. His voice is somber
and his treatment of the subject grave and serious, almost as if he is bequeathing a
vital secret. He writes as a matter of life and death, beginning and ending with:
I teach my child
To survive.
I begin with our words,
The simple words first
And last.
He draws readers with words that inspire and evoke stirrings of passion and fervor;
words that give clarity of purpose to one’s life and existence, words that bring out
only that which is pure and true:
The author claims that these very words are the words that make up man, that lift
him beyond the mundane and the ordinary, words that bestow upon him a more
noble existence. Man, after all, is spirit and is boundless:
His logic is that at birth through infancy, each child seeks to make sense of the world
around him, albeit
in silence and after having acquired the skill of language, that ability to understand
and acquire new knowledge grows to even greater proportions. A whole different
world opens up for the child and from that point on, he will be defined by his
experiences, by his words.
My child
Is without syllables
To utter him,
Captive yet to his origin
In silence.
By every word
To rule his space,
He is released;
He is shaped by his speech.
Then a child’s life unwinds, almost uncontrollably as each experience builds upon
another, with time passing in a blur of moments and memories.
Then we begin to realize the enormity of our responsibility to all children; how our
words and the words we teach them impact their lives and make a difference in how
they will grow up in this world. The author cautions us adults against words that
destroy instead of build up, hurt instead of nurture, inflict instead of inspire, limit
instead of set free. The poem also warns against words that are empty and untrue.
The poem ends as it began with the author’s repeated lesson to parents and teachers
alike of the wisdom of teaching children what matters most in order to survive and
thrive in a world that will test their strength and their will.
And so,
I teach my child
To survive.
I begin with our words,
The simple words first
And last.