Yameng Liu, "Justifying My Position in Your Terms"

Liu, Yameng. "Justifying My Position in Your Terms: Cross-cultural Argumentation in a Globalized World." Argumentation 13 (1999): 297-315.

Liu, though he does not cite Starosta, takes the latter's ideas about the intercultural rhetor in quite a different direction. Liu argues that one issue that argumentation and communication scholars have not really faced is intercultural debate. The reason for this failure is the dominant notion of incommensurability between cultures that discourages people from thinking of intercultural disputation in any way that involves "shared interests and reasons" (300). Quoting Beer and Hariman, Liu notes that

As a result, within the dominant framework of international relations, the "complexities of political life are reduced to a calculus of power, justice is reduced to self-interest, appearances are reduced to the reality they conceal, and, ultimately, language is reduced to the world it would represent" (Beer and Hariman, 1996, p. 390). (Liu 299)

An example that both confirms the above and pushes against the inevitability of viewing international relations in this framework involves the use of Western terms of discourse, by non-Western political figures like Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, to debate values with the West. Liu notes that the use of Western discourse styles (dealing with issues like definition and contextualization of the terms of the debate) ends up being rejected--even dismissed--by some in the West (particularly the Western media) as a way for the non-Western leader to avoid changing his authoritarian ways. On the one hand, this confirms the idea that to the West, "appearances are reduced to the reality they conceal"; on the other, it suggests that it is not impossible for non-Westerners to use Western discourse to attempt to engage the West in discussion about fundamental values.

Liu also observes that some in the West have been trying to discuss with non-Western leaders topics such as democracy and human rights by resorting to the non-Westerners' own discursive frameworks. Liu quotes Daniel A. Bell, "a political philosopher with extensive teaching experiences in Singapore and Hong Kong," who argues that "if the 'ultimate aim of human rights diplomacy' is 'to persuade others of the value' of the rights, it is more 'likely that the struggle ... can be won' only if 'it is fought in ways that build on, rather than challenge, local cultural traditions'" (qtd in Liu 307).

Liu continues:

Juxtapose these two symmetrically reversed approaches, and a peculiar mode of cross-cultural argumentation emerges. Rather than trying in vain to meet in a neutral "battleground" for a direct argumentative confrontation before a common audience, the two opposing parties in this paradigm would each venture into the other's "territory" and seek to win the "battle" by provoking a "civil war" behind the opponent's line. (309)

That is, each side would use the other side's internal conflicts regarding values to instigate debate among members of the other culture regarding the two sides' positions. Liu calls this mode of argumentation "cross-arguing" (309).

He admits that cross-arguing is not without problems: issues such as how "cross-arguers" should argue their points in another culture:

consistently applying the cross-arguer's domestic norms would amount to exercising a kind of rhetorical extraterritoriality that is bound to antagonize the targeted audience and doom the persuasive efforts, whereas to switch codes according to what terms are being invoked is to risk losing one's identity and appearing inconsistent or even unethical by the standard of one's own community. (310).

This is no small problem; neither is another problem that Liu mentions: what happens to a position if the audience does not accept it. Liu doubts the position would be rejected by the domestic audience even if the targeted audience doesn't accept it. The question then becomes, then what should be done? Liu concludes,

One possible way out of this predicament may be to focus on what defines cross-arguing as a unique mode of argumentation, namely, the symmetrical mutuality of its operation. This essential feature decides that cros-cultural argumentation, to be at all possible, should always be a "bi-active" practice, and a clear-cut division of labor between an active persuader ... and a reactive/passive persuadee ... that serves to well in structuring intra-cultural argumentation does not apply in its organization. ... Since in cross-arguing, each party "intrudes" into the other's terministic "territory" and defends its own against the other's "counter-intrusion" at the same time, both play the same double role as a protagonist/antagonist and should bear the same burden of justification. (311-12)

The "bi-active" nature of Liu's description can undercut the problems that Starosta sees in intercultural rhetoric, where an active intercultural rhetor imposes his/her views on a more-or-less passive "native" audience.

[cross-arguing] [intercultural communication] [rhetoric] [Yameng Liu]

Mary Garrett and Xiaosui Xiao's "The Rhetorical Situation Revisited"

Garrett, Mary, and Xiaosui Xiao. "The Rhetorical Situation Revisited." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 23.2 (1993): 30-40.

This article works from Lloyd Bitzer's notion of "the rhetorical situation", taking the Chinese response to the West during the Opium Wars as an example of how "the discourse tradition is both a source and a limiting horizon for the rhetor and for the audience of the rhetorical situation" (38).

They continue,

Thus, a discourse tradition directly or indirectly participates in a rhetoric situation in at least three ways: it generates needs and promotes interests in an audience that must to be met by new discourses [huh?]; it cultivates an audience's expectations about the appropriate forms of discourses, the proper subject matter, the right modes of argumentation, and so forth in relation to a given circumstance; and it also affects an audience's recognition and interpretation of a rhetorical exigency. (38-9)

[Although this article is also not about rhetorical pedagogy, per se, it is about how a rhetorical situation can be perceived differently by an audience depending on the audience's discourse traditions. This might have an effect on how students receive a teacher's teaching, for instance. Hmmmm….]

[Mary Garrett] [intercultural communication] [rhetoric] [rhetorical situation] [Xiaoxui Xiao]

William J. Starosta's "On Intercultural Rhetoric"

Some of the next few posts will be based on summaries I'm doing for my lit. review part.

I'm having a little trouble with the following article for several reasons, one being that I can't figure out if it has been cited much. According to Google Scholar it hasn't. I wonder if that means it hasn't been considered "important" to the field... If any of my reader(s) has heard of it, let me know!

Starosta, William J. "On Intercultural Rhetoric." Methods for Intercultural Communication Research. Ed. William B. Gudykunst and Young Yun Kim. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1984. 229-238. Rpt. in Intercultural Communication: A Global Reader. Ed. Fred E. Jandt. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2004. 307-314.

Starosta's essay is a theoretical look at the idea of intercultural rhetoric. By "rhetoric," Starosta seems to be referring to (he doesn't specifically define "rhetoric") attempts by someone(s) from one culture to persuade someone(s) from another culture. Actually, he does define "'rhetorical' intercultural discourse" as

that interaction that initially places cultural interactants into set sender and receive roles as a result of programmatic expectation, colonial relationship, or an active notion of cultural hierarchy. (308)

[That seems to me to be an odd/old notion of rhetoric--the old sender-receiver roles... It seems to put the "receiver" in a much more passive position than most contemporary views of audience would accept.]

Starosta calls intercultural rhetoric "extractionist" (by attempting to "'extract' the native" from his or her cultural perspective [310]) and exploitative (311). He argues that it

breeds cultural disharmony. When one psychologically, physically, or existentially removes a native from her or his cultural setting in order to modify the preference of that native, the result is the alienation of that person from the native setting. Successful inculcation of external ideas requires the disparagement of historically "correct" solutions. (311, emphasis in original)

[To be honest, I have to say at this point that he seems to have a pretty static view of culture, but I might be wrong about that... But I can think of some examples of how, for instance, some Chinese during the May Fourth era were psychologically and existentially (if not physically) removed from their cultural setting and alienated from their culture. Wen-Hsin Yeh's book about higher education in Republican China is even titled The Alienated Academy, which seems to support Starosta's view here.]

And now he gets to history:

Intercultural rhetoric stresses the here-and-now. Intercultural rhetoric broadens the range of abstractions at the command of the receiver. It telescopes centuries of tradition into a word such as "tribalism" or "paganism," and dismisses age-old practices with a glib dyslogism. Intercultural rhetoric, more than any intracultural force, champions frustrations and raises expectations. Soon the fruits of change, the promises of rhetoric become the expected reward for the "faithful" and the neoorthodox, and constraints to achievement of these rewards become viewed as part of a conspiracy of "traditionalists." Present circumstance is too bitter a reality to taste, and too disappointing to accept. It must be viewed as "becoming," if not yet "arrived," with apology being offered for the persistence of present form and circumstance. (312, emphasis in original)

[Now what the heck does this last sentence mean?]

Starosta admits that his

reasoning carries [him] from a view of culture that is fairly stable and immune to outside influence, through a stage where a few persons listen to outside voices, through a further stage where these individuals constitute a channel to reach others, to an end stage where change is routine, and mechanical voices call the tune. The irony of this process is that, by definition, the "answers" from the outside forces cannot be truly suited to needs. (313)

So his view of culture here is as something that is stable. Earlier he suggests that cultures "are self-promoting" "because they succeed in allowing their adherents to survive in a difficult world" (307).

Perhaps instead of calling this essay theoretical, I should call it a manifesto of sorts. Starosta notes toward the end that some of the things he says "are offered without apparent substantiation" (313), which I agree appears to be the case. It's hard to get a clear sense of what specific examples he might have in mind. On the other hand, there is some extent to which I can see how his depiction of "intercultural" rhetors almost forcing their views on "natives" might apply to the situation in China. However, I can't but think that what actually happened is more complicated than the process he describes, mainly because I don't see the "natives"--the audience of the intercultural rhetor--as being as passive as he seems to think.

[intercultural communication] [rhetoric] [William J. Starosta]