1. Saudi Contrastive Rhetoric Presented by Hamad Alluhaydan
University of Arizona
Saudi Contrastive Rhetoric
Presented by
Hamad Alluhaydan
English Language and Linguistic MA Program
Abstract
Participants
Argumentation in Arabic Rhetoric
The aim of this paper is to provide an insight about contrastive rhetoric theory with concentrating on Kaplan’s claim about Arabic-speaking students’ rhetoric through investigating some Saudi students’ writing. It gave a historical review to the contrastive theory. Then, we went through some of the most famous opponents’ and proponents’ of contrastive rhetoric. Also, this paper pointed to the significant impact of genre and culture in studying contrastive rhetoric. We also talked about major grammatical and content issues with Saudi students’ writing.
All participants are Saudi’s and they share the same cultural backgrounds even though they are in different ages. I chose participants from different majors to investigate the Saudi's cultural thought patterns and to see how Saudi students make argumentation.
According to Hatim (1997) Arabic has two argumentation forms:
1-Through-argumentative text is characterized by extensive approval of an initial thesis.
2-Counter-argumentative text includes a refutation for a cited thesis followed by a substantiation and a conclusion.
Three out of four patricians used through-argumentation. This indicates that Saudi students transfer their way of argumentation.
Name
Age
Education
Major
Region
Student 1 23
High school
Geology
Eastern
Student 2 27
Bachelor
Architecture
Western
Student 3 28
Civil engineering
Student 4 34
Master
Capital city
Major Content Issues
1-Poor reading skill has negative impact on their writing.
3-No Arabic academic rhetorical knowledge except one student.
4-Teaching method (Grammatical Translation) used to teach students reinforced repetition.
5-Less parallel sentences comparing to if condition and complex sentences.
6-I found that Saudi students make two types of repetition: repeating the meaning and repeating the words.
Kaplan’s Hypothesis
Contrastive rhetoric is an area of second language acquisition that explains problems in composition that are encountered by second language learners.
Kaplan (1966) claimed that the Arabic language :
1-Uses a system of parallels in constructing paragraphs and sentences for both negative and positive.
2-Generalization in their speech and writing.
Names
Transferring
Quantifiers
Thinking in Arabic
Repeating ideas
Student 1 7 11 No 3
Student 2 8
Yes 4
Student 3 6 14
Student 4
Research Method
Every participant provided me with an argumentative essay that they have written for an academic class or English class. I conducted an interview with every participant to ask them questions regarding to their rhetoric knowledge. These questions include and not limit to:
1-How long you have been writing in English (paragraphs)?
2-When you write in English do you ever think in Arabic? Why?
Conclusion
Arabic Text
1-Reptition and over use of quantifiers occurred with both advanced and beginner students.
5-More use of if conditions and complex sentence than parallel sentences.
6-Memorization and its negative influence on making repetition.
2-Saudi students tend to transfer their L1 argumentation and indirectness.
7-Poor reading skill caused poor writing skill.
4-Students conceptualize their ideas in Arabic when they write in English.
8-Pedagigical problems because of the conflict between L1 and
To understand the impact of Arabic context on Saudis’ writing, we need to know types of Arabic contexts. Hatim (1997) described three particular types of context, each with its own typical linguistic realization, were identified:
1-Utterances addressed to ‘one who denies’. The degree of evaluativeness will depend on the degree of denial displayed.
2-Utterances addressed to ‘one who is uncertain’. Once again, the degree of evaluativness will depend on the degree of uncertainty displayed.
3-Utterances addressed to ‘one who is open-minded’ must be minimally evaluative”.
“This texts displaying manifest varying degrees of evaluativenss or ‘managing’. This manifests itself through the use of various forms of emphasis, parallelism, and other linguistic devices of intensification” (p.48).
Main Reference
Kaplan, R. B. (1966). Cultural thought patterns in inter‐cultural education. Language learning, 16(1‐2), 1-20.
Hatim, B. (1997). Communication across cultures: Translation theory and contrastive text linguistics (Vol. 20). Univ of Exeter Pr.