Culture has been considered as one of the most complex words. No scholar has given it an exact definition, beginning in the 18th century when Tyler (1871) defined culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” to Byron (1947) who defined culture as “human energy organized in patterns of repetitive behavior”. However, every definition of culture by a particular scholar seems to be insufficient. In 2004, Atkinson provided a discussion on culture by the sets of binary oppositions i.e. received culture vs. postmodern culture vs. cultural studies culture; culture as product vs. culture as process; culture in the head vs. culture in the world; and big culture vs. small culture, and tried their relevance to CR studies and research.It can be gleaned from the many definitions of culture that it has undergone reformulations. It has evolved and become an important aspect of CR studies. The study of culture has legitimized the study of CR because it applies the notion of cultural differences found in the written texts and written practices. This argument may seem limited but the study of CR has been accepted in this respect.
Aside from culture, contrastive rhetoric has also been reformulated. Connor (2004) renamed CR as intercultural rhetoric. In fact, the changing definition of culture has contributed a lot to the changing nature of contrastive rhetoric studies, now also known as intercultural rhetoric research, a term that best reflects the dynamic nature of this field in applied linguistics. There is indeed logic and wisdom in this new name because Connor (2004) posited that the theories and methodologies in intercultural research make use of interdisciplinary approach. Primarily theories and methods are drawn from L2 acquisition, composition and rhetoric, genre analysis, etc. Recently, the methodologies were examined and informed scholars to be mindful of the new definitions of culture, which could be useful in the reformulations of studies in cross-cultural writing and intercultural rhetoric.
As far as I am concerned, the new definitions of culture and the renaming of CR to intercultural rhetoric seem to be more pragmatic. In terms of L2 teaching, especially in the teaching of writing, the evolution of the two concepts, culture and intercultural rhetoric, does not encourage the use of English as the benchmark of CR studies. In terms of research, the combination of the new definition of culture and the interdisciplinary approach of intercultural research makes CR studies broader and more interesting than what Kaplan started in the 60s. In intercultural rhetoric, researchers have called for the expansion of studies to include not only written product but also other aspects of second-language writing like educational, cognitive, and social or cultural dimension of compositions of L2 writers. Besides, intercultural rhetoric also considers text analysis, genre analysis and corpus analysis as necessary tools in doing research. The interlocking of cultures in the written output of L1 and L2 learners should not be undermined though culture is still a “great unknown” (Atkinson, 2004) in CR studies. (March 4, 2008)
