|
While some cultural rhetorical differences exist and are accepted by most contrastive rhetoric researchers, a post-colonial perspective would hold that a stronger, more rigid dichotomization of Western rhetorical traditions and rhetorical traditions of other groups opens the door to the Othering of a cultural group. One way Othering is done is by positing that the members of the Othered culture write in a monolithic, prescribed way that is incompatible with Western, English rhetorical traditions. This Othering tends to discount or overlook complex factors like the heterogeneity of writers, multiplicity of writing experiences within a cultural group and their notions of audience. This study investigates how four bilingual writers from one culture attend to audience in persuasive writing in Malay and English, and the relationship between audience awareness, culture, and the quality of their written products. The findings suggest that individual differences between the bilingual writers' use of audience strategies when composing in Malay and English were intertwined with task perceptions and writing experiences, reflecting whether they were skilled or less skilled writers in general. These individual differences between writers suggest just how problematic the Othering of bilingual ESL writers is in assuming cultural and rhetorical homogeneity. Theoretical and educational implications resulting from the study are discussed.
|
