Tumblr: Third culture kids

I found this webpage. I laughed a lot with some of the posts : )
http://whenyoureathirdculturekid.tumblr.com
This one in particular:

When someone I've known for years still doesn't pronounce my name properly 

http://whenyoureathirdculturekid.tumblr.com/post/48610035837/when-someone-ive-known-for-years-still-doesnt

Diversity in the classroom

One of the aspects that can be drawn from Johns' article "Linguist Diversity and Instructional Practices" is that peer learning is one of the ways to encourage an inclusive environment in college classrooms, although as we saw last week, in Heath's Ways with Words there was also an example of peer learning in a lower educational level. As an international student myself, I find collaborative work and peer learning very useful although sometimes it is hard to make yourself understood by the others, specially with issues related to content that does not fit into "expected" content in a particular context (this is actually hard to explain). What I am referring to here is intimately linked to the idea that critical thinking is a social construct, as well (142). The way we learn how to think critically about all sort of things is cultural in most cases. However, I also believe that multicultural students have developed the skill to go beyond two "cultural thinking" as they usually have to simultaneously manage two ways of thinking. I have heard many times, not only among people who study languages or  any other discipline in the humanities field but also among engineers who study abroad things like "I speak German in the company I am doing an internship for, but when I have to talk to my boss sometimes we communicate in English to clarify things and I also think in Spanish at the same time, so my mind jumps from one language to another and to the social conventions of each culture as well". So , in my opinion, there is something else apart from cultural-critical thinking for multicultural people and that would be something like "multicultural critical thinking" and it consists of the ability to communicate and to engage in social interactions in which several cultures-languages are involved with the conscious awareness that you are also switching social and cultural norms.

Johns categorizes Hispanos is three groups, which I found simplistic in some way. I don't think I fully identify myself with any of the groups proposed. The only fact of categorizing students is sort of unfair because that limits the students' identities. Are these categories really necessary? I think biodatas are a good way for educators to get to know their students, who do not necessarily have to fit into this typology.

After having read Lovejoy and Delpit we can affirm that students need to know that there are different varieties of English they can employ in their writing compositions and oral tasks and that one of them is gonna lead them or not to "success" , namely Standard English. However, if they are aware of the fact that they can use different varieties for different purposes, that it is up to them whether or not they want to make the efforts to have linguistic competence in these varieties and to master Standard English in particular, their instructors will have succeed in their teaching roles. In my opinion, it is a matter of promoting cultural-sensitiveness as well as teaching linguistic, pragmatic and sociolinguistic issues.

Ethnography and education

This week's reading, the second part of Heath's Ways with Words (1983)  made me change my mind a little bit regarding ethnographic studies. While the first part of the book was a general study on the two towns (Roadville and Trackton) the second part focuses on the educational context more specifically, which I found more interesting. In fact, among the different materials that ethnographic studies provide us with, the evaluations and notes taken by the teachers (chapter 7) and the stories written by the students are one of the most descriptive and informative ways to understand the sociocultural context of a particular situation.  For example, by reading the notes taken by teachers in pages 268-271, we get first hand information about the learning and teaching processes of both teachers and students and what type of issues they think they are facing.
One of the texts that struck me the  most was one note written by a white teacher (270), who mentions that black students were like foreigners to him/her. While (s)he realizes that it was because of his lack of sensitiveness towards black students what caused misunderstanding issues and not "ignorance or lack of education", the comparison (s)he employs (that of foreigners) is still (kind of) racist. However, I must admit that for that period of time, realizing that was more than enough. Would this statement be equated to current examples of discrimination in educational settings? How would we react if we replaced blacks for "hispanos" in that sentence? From my point of view, a declaration like that would not be very politically correct. It is interesting to notice how education is linked to history and Heath's study is a good example to helps us understand it and to realize that ethnographic studies could be particularly useful when trying to implement changes in education.

Another example that I found very informative is the one in which a black girl talks to a white teacher and claims for a fairer way to be understood: "why should my 'at home' way of talking be 'wrong' and your standard version be 'right'? (271). Maybe the answer to this question would be what the black principal says"we were more concerned with our own public image than the kind of pupils we turned out" (271).

Apart from these notes, Heath describes specific methods that were starting to be emplyed in the classrooms in order to promote a different approach towards learning. For instance, in pages 285-286, a teacher explains how she carried out a reading activity which made students start to think about this particular skill as something not only useful but also enjoyable. teachers, then started to motivate students to use reading and writing skills in their daily lives (289). Moreover, teachers became aware of cultural issues , as we Heath describes in page 290, and also she describes one particular example in which children from both communities interacted and listened to each others (291).

On Ethnography

This week's readings, Heath's Ways with Words, an ethnographic study on two communities made me think about several aspects.
In the fist place, Heath inevitably makes us wonder what education is and which agents are in charge of kid's education. As Heath narrates, "Trackton adults have had little schooling, but they believe it has made a difference for others, and it will make a difference for them. They tell their children: "go to school, learn to talk right, to read and write, and you can get on outta here". At home, children in both communitities learn language, hear their elders talk about "talkin" and "doin" right, and some have come to realize that languages, schooling and learning are critically linked to the ways one gets on at home, school and work" (1983: 29). Therefore, getting to now these homes and how things go there enables us to understand schooling at the same time. Heath's ethnographic study aims at better understanding the educational system of these two communities.
However, even though Heath is aware of the limitations of his study, we have to ask ourselves the following questions: would it be possible to carry out studies like this one at a larger scale? in what cases do we need to do it? what are the factors that determine that a particular schooling situation deserves to be ethnographically studied? And also, after having carried out the study, what are the factors that aregoing to be considered in order to implement modifications in a particular schooling situation?

My impressions while reading Heath's study were that I was reading something similar to a realistic novel and I would sometimes ask myself about the relevance of what I was reading. Some other times I would not understand what Heath wanted to express and I would have liked to see an example. Although Heath makes evaluative comments all the time, sometimes I wanted to know the why of certain things that I thought could be relevant. For instance, when Heath is interviewing two women and the laugh, Heath transcribes it but does not explain why they were laughing (1983: 64).
Therefore , an ethnographic study like this one may be interpreted in different ways by different people and thus, the outcomes of the study and the solutions proposed to implement the situation may differ a lot from each other. For example, what caught my attention was the fact that women seem to have a very different role than men. Heath says that "the link between mother and son lasts the longest and is the strongest" (68) and women write and read more than men do, so the role women have in educating the kids at home is much more relevant. Therefore, the way they have been educated is going to influence the way they will educate their kids. These are some of the aspects I focused my attention on, which because of my personality and my interests, may be different from the rest of the readers.
In my opinion, ethnography is very useful when we want to understand why something is happening in a particular situation but its role is to support or reject an already existing theory or hypothesis.

Ethnography: roles and limitations

This week´s articles about ethnography helps us to understand what the roles of ethnographic studies are as well as the limitations of this type of research. 

As Athanases and Heath (1995) and Hammersley (2006) explain, the fact that the roots of ethnography are in Anthropology determines what ethnography is: ¨the understanding of people´s perspectives, perhaps complemented by the study of various sorts of documents" (Hammersley 2006: 4).  Canagarajah refers to this type of research as the "realistic understanding" of a particular situation (1993: 603). 

However, this understanding is, in my opinion never completed for several reasons. The main one relates to subjectivity. In my opinion, the only fact of selecting a methodology as well as the setting and the participants for the study is biased. What Athanases and Heath (1995) say about students they "are cultural members" (267), thus, their opinions and behaviours represent specific samples of a particular culture, can also be applied to researchers and teachers. 

Also, despite one of the stages of Athanases and Heath´s guidelines, namely building rapport, participants in an ethnographic study may feel under pressure or "observed" and "analyzed" by the researcher, so their perspectives and opinions may not be totally honest. This relates to the tension between the emic-epic tension. How could objectivity be measured in ethnographic studies? And how can we promote more objective approaches to ethnography? One possible answer could be to carry out a study between several people instead of just one researcher. 

In the case of Canagarajah, his translations into English from the Tamil language spoken by the students convey a certain degree of "manipulation" as well. These translations, although they may seem an almost imperceptible manipulation could have been revised or contrasted by another person, and so they could have been more objective or, in other words, less personal. 

So, in my opinion, despite these limitations (among others, see , ethnography is a necessary type of research that can support other studies. Ann Mills  (2007) and  Canagarajah (1993) provide examples of how ethnography is useful in education. Actually, although this type of ethnographic studies take a long time, teachers can carry out mini-ethnographic studies right before the class starts. One of my professors at ISU interviewed each of his students (25) before the class started. Students had to complete a very short written interview (or survey) about their study-habits and their previous knowledge as well as about their personal interests and difficulties. Next, we talked to him about it and he got to understand our personalities. The outcomes of that mini-ethnograpy have determined the way he is teaching his class and what he expects us to achieve by the end of the semester. 

As for the political implications of ethnography, as Hammersley says " understanding people does not require sharing their beliefs, or being obliged to offer them support"  (2006: 11) or, on the contrary, reject their ideologies.  So the aims of ethnographic research just relate to understand the context behind a particular situation and do not imply a political position on behalf of the researcher. 

New Work Orders, New Literacy Practices

As Street claims the fact that due to Globalization new work orders have appeared, together with new epistemological and communicative orders, should lead researchers to “rethink” of both dominant literacies and literacy practices of “outside and often alien”groups (2001). This rethinking can also be related to Pennycook’s transgression theory, in the sense that it requires critical awareness and the construction of “new frames of thought” (2007: 41).

In my opinion and from my personal experience, large business corporations , as stated by Street ( 2001: 5) play a major role in promoting certain types of literacies due to the development of a new work order associated with “globalization of production and distribution” (2001:3).

I have a personal experienced which I didn’t explicitly linked to the ideas  of new work orders and  literacies until reading Street’s article. I worked for IBM Global Services for almost a year in a translation project. My job was to revise documents translated into Spanish from English and to localize those documents into many Spanish-speaking countries (Venezuela, Honduras, Colombia, Perú, Spain…etc). The documents would “travel” from The USA to India and then to Spain, where we would edit them and send them to those countries. The final step was to create web pages with those documents. I worked in a team of 12 people. Our project manager was in Belgium and she would contact us (in Spain) and the clients (in India, The USA and other Latin American countries). The standards for editing (and writing) were all the same, no matter where the documents were going to be localized. Sometimes, we (Spanish workers) wouldn’t understand the language of those documents either because the translation was not appropriate or because of the local expressions employed by the translators. However, those were the expressions used for the rest of the territories.

Me and my colleagues were always questioning the accurateness and/or appropriateness of our texts and we never found specific answers for our doubts. How could people in Venezuela (one of the target audiences) be able to understand a text written in the USA, revised by people in India, translated I don’t know where, revised by workers in Spain whose boss was in Belgium? Who created the standards and what type of criteria were employed?  Were the people who created the standards aware of all the cultural groups and language varieties behind the whole localization process? Why is it call localization when there was just one single way to do it?

Street claims that researchers have the "task to make visible the complexity of local, everyday, community literacy practices and challenge stereotypes and myopia" (2001: 7) but how can researchers challenge the power of these powerful corporations whose only interest relies on making profits?

Another important aspect that can be related to this experience is the notion of "the end of language" (Street 2001: 4) and literacy. When editing those documents which were going to be localize in the Internet, language understood as a grammatical system (and lexical, morphological) was just one of the issues we had to think about. What the corporation wanted us to do was to be able to use the electronic and digital tools in order to place the content of the documents in a webpage. Therefore, they didn't really care about what it was said in the documents but about the fact of making it available to their customers (even if they would not understand the message). So the corporation valued this other type of language (semiotic system, electronic language) more than the successful expression of comprehensible (and local) meaning.

This really complex "process of interaction" depicts in a certain way what Zubair calls "Interpretative Control" (making of meaning of the private and public discourse, controlled by men even in Western Societies) (2001: 199). If we map the relationship between the participants in the communicative process, we would put The USA on the top. Next, we would place Belgium, followed by India and Spain (more or less at the same level). Finally, countries in South America would be place at the bottom.
This way of mapping the relationship between the interlocutors of a macro interactive process also proves Gee's idea of literacy as a societal construction. In fact, in Gee's words "any view of literacy is inherently political, in the sense of involving relations of power" (32).

Language policies

In the article "Enacting and Transforming Local Language Policies" ((2011), Tardy calls for a change in language assumptions in America in order to promote a multilingual space for language production (mostly in the classroom and in written forms). According to her, "individual and community values are influenced by public, institutional, and programmatic discourses, as well as values related to individuals' numerous cultural, religious, and social affiliations" (2011: 650). For this reason, both educational institutions and media have a major role in fostering an ideology towards language. The fact that there is an "absence of explicit language management" in the US can be an obstacle when trying to promote open perspectives to multilingualism, as it can lead to the spread of the "myth of linguistic homogeneity" and the English Only Movement (2011: 652). However, this explicit absence of language management can be seen as a tolerant attitude to language. In many places there are offical guvernamental institutions to promote the use (even to prescribe the "correct use") of a particular language such as the Real Academia de la Lengua Española in Spain, The Goethe Institut in Germany or La Alliance Francaise in France.
College education, teachers at high school and other levels and media can be agents for the change Tardy is calling for. By working at the local level, we can resist dominant ideologies  the myth of linguistic homogeneity.

Spaces for code meshing

One possible type of discourse in which we can find and promote the use of code meshing is newspaper discourse.
In some newspapers people with a non-native American voice write opinion articles in English. The Washington Post, for instance, has a section called "The writers group" in which Esther Cepeda and other writers promote code meshing in this type of discourse:
"My column is about the American experience -- how it has evolved during my generation and what it feels, sounds, smells, tastes and looks like through the eyes of the daughter of Latin American immigrants."

"Because my personal story is very much about the way the great American melting pot bubbles and churns, the topics I write about most -- education, health, politics, business, public policy, culture -- reflect the diverse experiences and the issues that result from our country’s rapidly changing demographics."

Esther J. Cepeda is living the American story". 

http://syndication.washingtonpost.com/esther-cepeda

Little by little, people are getting used to different voices in newspaper discourse.

I have also experienced how English speakers react to code meshing in this type of discourse. I was writing a report for a school newspaper about a concert together with an American writer and I wanted to write about an expression we have in Spanish. This expression "romper una cuerda en un concierto", whose literal translation is"to break a string during a concert" means that for a concert to be great, the musicians have to break a string at some point during the show (usually by the end). So she loved the meaning of it but there is no such a expression in English for it. As the literal translation would not be understood by the readers, we decided that the best way for us to include it in the report was to explain it in context. Though her reaction towards using it was quite positive, I had the feeling that she was thinking about it as something not very appropriate. Yet, her willingness to include "an exotic" aspect in the report was a sign of tolerance towards "other voices".

Code switching and code meshing

After reading Michael-Luna and Canagarajah's descriptions of both phenomena ( 2007: 58) we can understand  what the implications of using both code switching and code meshing in communication are. Apart from the fact that code switching refers more to the lexical level of language interaction (that is why it is more common to find it in oral communication, I believe) whereas code meshing is embedded in discourse, the pragmatics of these two phenomena also vary a lot. While code switching is employed to "negotiate identities", code meshing is an act of resistance (2007: 58). From my point of view, it could be related to the cognitive realm of language use due to the complexity of the skills needed to produce discourse in which  local and vernacular aspects of a language are integrated. In other words, when people switch codes they do not have to make the same cognitive effort as when they try to integrate communicative devices for code meshing. This can also apply to the hearer or reader of that discourse. When someone switches codes in oral communication for example, it is very likely that the interlocutor knows both codes as well, so the efforts both the speaker and hearer have to make is not really big. They share the same knowledge. Thus, code switching is employed in a particular communicative situation because it is natural to do it, it is more spontaneous, I would say. Code meshing, however, as an act of resistance is not necessarily directed at people who belong to the same social/linguistic community as the speaker, so the cognitive efforts readers would have to make in order to fully understand the discourse would vary a lot depending on who the readers are.

Although, code meshing can be ascribed to the lexical level as well, another aspect that makes me think about code meshing as a device related to cognitive linguistics is the fact that it has to do with frames of thought. Last week I found out a page on facebook which could be seen as an example of code meshing. It is called "Spanish sayings" and it consists of posts about how to express popular Spanish sayings or proverbs in English. So, though the meaning of those expressions makes no sense in English when translated literally, am explanation is provided in order to understand what they mean. For instance, "enterarse de lo que vale un peine" , whose literal translation is " to realized what a comb is worth" is explained as it follows: "You may have heard this more than once from your parents. When someone has a bad behavior or has done something wrong, spaniards use this saying in a threatening way, to let you know you're about to receive your punishment. There are several theories about where it comes from. The value of the material old combs were made of and an ancient object called comb, whose utility was to torture are the main ones" (https://www.facebook.com/SpanishSayings). 


As for the pedagogical issues of introducing code meshing in the classroom, from my personal experience I would say that it does not only work but also it is a great way to lower the affective filter of students. Although we are thinking about English teaching and learning, we can use code meshing when teaching other languages. In my classes of Spanish 112 I was told to only use Spanish in the class. However, students feel under pressure if they are always told to speak the 2L and most of the times they do not have the knowledge enough to express themselves, which produces frustration and the possibilities for them to acquire the language. So, as Michael-Luna and Canagarajah point out, code switching was seen as a deficiency rather than as a resource "2007: 64). From what I have experienced, either in Spanish or English classes, if the teacher favors code meshing and code switching in the appropriate way, students start making connections in their minds and feel much more comfortable with both languages. Besides, they start using the L2 much more by themselves.

Apart from the activities and strategies Michael-Luna and Canagarajah propose, using visual support or even listening support materials in the class can help teachers to integrate code meshing in the class.
One of the problems of the strategies proposed by Michael-Luna and Canagarajah is the fact that finding linguistically and culturally relevant texts can be a hard task to do when students do not have they same background.

ARGUMENTATION AND INTERCULTURAL RHETORIC

What is the role of argumentation in intercultural/critical contrastive rhetoric? Does it constitute the largest category in which other linguistic aspects such as the pragmatics of discourse or lexical items are included or does it have the same status as other realms of discourse analysis?

From my point of view, argumentation as described by Toulmin (1958) in Connor (1996: 67) ("the expression of an opinion in the form of an assertion, preference, view or judgement" ) is just on e of the elements of a text that can be analyzed for contrastive puporses.

Rhetoric, persuasion and ethics (L1, L2 and translations)

The fact that the concept of rhetoric has not only changed the type of speech to which it applies (from oral for the ancient Greeks to current written and multidimensional discourse) but also the connotations that are linked to it (from positive to negative connotations) is due to the fact that it is commonly associated with persuasion. According to Connor, who quotes Mauranen to support this idea, studies of rhetoric can be beneficial to improve efficiency in writing and it constitutes an analytical tool to understand how discourse works (Mauranen 1993: 20 in Connor 1996: 63). Therefore, studying rhetoric or carrying out discourse analyses can help us to uncover ideologies in discourse, either if we do it in our native language or in a second language.

Going back to the idea of persuasion as the negative aspect that is often linked to rhetoric, it is important to notice that language (written or oral forms of language) is just a tool that can be employed for many reasons with different purposes and it is up to to the speaker/writer to use it ethically or unethically . So persuasion should not be equated to manipulation or deception. There are many criteria that could be analyzed in order to determine whether we are facing coercion, manipulation, deception or persuasion in discourse. In my opinion, the purpose intended by the author has a major role. Perelman´s categorization of "audience" relates different argumentation strategies to the intended audience of the discourse (1982 in Connor 1996: 70).  Other factors, such as the type of people and how aware they are of what they are being exposed to is also important when deciding if we are talking about persuasion or other types of discourse. Maybe, the most important aspect regarding to this idea is the effect that the discourse has in the public. 

To sum up, knowing that there are many factors that determine communication (and the use of certain rhetorical figures or expressions) we can carry out studies or analysis to find out how the discourse was constructed and so, we can associate certain linguistic or rhetorical aspects to the properties of the discourse we are analyzing. In contrastive rhetoric, we go one step further, by contrasting how similar or different the strategies employed in different languages are in a particular text or discourse. As we have seen in Connor´s article "Intercultural rhetoric research: beyond the texts" (2004), there is not a single methodology involved in this type of analysis. For instance, among many other possible aspects, in order to find out the purposes of an author we need to know about cognitive linguistics and pragmatics. We also have to determine the frequency (or quantity of occurrence) of a particular linguistic structure, which can be made by carrying out corpus analyses. Connor proposes a table with the different steps that can be followed to carry out contrastive analyses (2004: 299). One of the key elements of this table is the " analytical criteria to the description of the two corpora independently", a concept which is not explained. What sort of aspects can be included in this analytical criteria? Does it only refer to linguistic devices present in the texts/discourses? Once we have made the analysis of a text/discourse separately in the L1 and L2, we have to "draw conclusions about the relation between writing cultures and how textual meanings are expressed on the basis of the comparative results (2004: 299). However, how are we going to analyze cognitive aspects of language used such as topoi (common places or beliefs shared by a community in L1 and L2), scripts and frames when expressing a certain concept in L1 and L2? What about all the ideas related to stereotypes? How can we analytically analyze the representation of a stereotypical concept when it is expressed in a L2? For example, lets imagine that we are reading a text in English about the American style of life written by a student from Brazil. Would that student represent the same ideas (s)he has about Americans in his/her essay written in his/her native language? Can (s)he access the same meaning (s)he intends to convey by making use of the expressions (s)he knows? Does s(he) know what type of connotations are associated to the expressions (s)he is employing in her/his discourse? And if yes, for what purposes does s(he) employ them?
If the student is writing about politics for a history class, for instance, the results will produce a very different impact of what it is being written and it can lead to misunderstandings if not to communication breakdowns.
Another situation in which these aspects should be taken into account is for example that of a person from a country where the political leaders are not called "presidents" because the political regime in his/her country is not the same as in many Western countries. Lets think about a person from Egypt. The ideas associated to the political leaders there are totally different to what we are used to. So when that person is writing a newspaper report in English about the politics in her/his country the type of vocabulary used would convey and imply different mental frames for readers in different contexts. So a person in The US would have a different way of understanding what the writer means than a person in Egypt, even if they both know English, because their mental spaces have been developed in different cultural settings. 

In my opinion, these are just some issues that should be included in contrastive rhetoric analyses. Apart from the ethnographic, textual and pragmatic parts of the research studies there should also be a cognitive one that deals not only with "problem-solving" issues or "the writing process" (Connor 1996: 75) but also with how a text/discourse is deconstructed by the audience when that audience does not share the same cultural background with the author.
Regarding translations tudies, it is not very clear how to link them to intercultural rhetoric studies. Should research in translations be included within the analysis of the production of a discourse in a L2? Could discourse analysis in translation texts be considered a part of contrastive/intercultural rhetoric? Would the analytical criteria described by Connor be suitable for analysing translated texts?

Contrastive Rhetoric

Connor’s article Intercultural rhetoric research: beyond the texts (2004) shows that the study of contrastive rhetoric has been an object of study during the last decades and that it is still in its formative stages as a discipline. There are several aspects in her article that show some kind of evolution of contrastive rhetoric in contrast to her book from 1996 (Contrastive Rhetoric. Cross-cultural aspects of second language writing).

Although both texts emphasize the idea that contrastive rhetoric is interdisciplinary, the  (sub-) disciplines included in order to describe it vary from text to text. For instance, in the book she talks about several theories or disciplines that should be included when carrying out studies on contrastive rhetoric: theory of applied linguistics, linguistic relativity, rhetoric, text linguistics, discourse types and genres, theory of literacy and theory of translation.  In the article, corpus analysis as a methodological discipline and an ethnographic approach to contrastive rhetoric are added to the previous ones.

The fact that there is so much variation when trying to describe contrastive rhetoric and that there is not an approach to it support the idea that this is a discipline whose theoretical basis are not set yet.  However, as Connor points out, contrastive rhetoric is important not only in order to understand cultural differences among languages that lead to breakdowns in communication or to issues related to unbalanced power relationships in SL writing but also because getting to know more about shared and different aspects in SL writing can help us to achieve general understanding of language communication and language universals (1996: 5-7).  

I have personally experienced moments of chaos before carrying out a contrastive analysis for my Master thesis in translation studies. My idea was to contrast newspaper discourse in Spanish and its translation into English. The first problem I had to deal with was the type of text (or discourse?) I was going to analyze. My corpus consisted of opinion articles. However, the features of this type of text (or or genre?) are not the same in both languages.  Secondly, what was the right or appropriate amount of texts to analyze? Other questions followed: what was I going to analyze? It was just a master thesis so the scope of the analysis should not be too big. I decided I was going to look at reported speech structures. As far as the linguistic structures for reported speech were concerned, for what purposes were they employed in the original texts? Do people use reported speech in Spanish and English for the same pragmatic purposes? What are these purposes? Does the translator follow the author’s intentions or is (s)he positioning in a different way? If yes, what strategies does (s)he use in order to do so? Are they very obvious or do they require further analysis? All these questions were impossible to be answered so I got to the conclusion that I was being too ambitious. I listed all the approaches and/or methodologies that related to my study:

1.       Theories of translation

2.       Corpus linguistics

3.       Discourse analysis

4.       Cognitive linguistics

5.       Ethnography of discourse

6.       Theory of newspaper discourse

7.       Argumentation theory (rhetoric and persuasion)

8.       Pragmatics (Parochial pragmatics).

Having experienced this chaos, I think it is of paramount importance to establish a clear definition of contrastive rhetoric. However, is it possible to include the same disciplines in studies of contrastive rhetoric across cultures or the disciplines include in the description of contrastive rhetoric will vary depending on which languages are the object of the studies? We can only answer this question by carrying out contrastive studies in many different languages. Does this mean that in order to define what contrastive rhetoric is we first have to collect data from many languages instead of following an already existing clear set of procedures?

Another question that can be answered by studies of contrastive rhetoric is that what would happen to a person whose native language is not English and who has to write a master thesis in English but his/her writing skills in his/her native language are not very developed? What type of discursive patterns is that person going to employ in her thesis? Do those patterns belong to his/her native language or not, as (s)he has not the writing skills necessary to do it?

Diaspora and language production

You`s article on Chinese white-collar workers and the cultural and linguistic production they develop due to the diasporic consciousness they are suffering from, is an example of how linguistic creativity works for people who make use of two or more languages or dialects in their writing.
I was deeply touched by this article and by the implications of diasporas in the creation of narratives.
According to You, the type of discourse created by Chinese white-collar workers is multimodal (they use imagines as well as linguistic devices), multidialectal and multilingual (2011: 426).  As far the linguistic devices in the discourse are concerned, the metaphors, proverbs and lexical items employed ( among many other figures of speech) show the duality of being in-between two or more cultures, what Bhabha has called "third-space".  This type of discourse is creative because the linguistic strategies employed in it project hybrid discourse patterns. As shown by some of the examples in the article, Chinese white-collar workers use English as a vehicle for self-reflection and some of their writing would be considered "ungrammatical" or "incorrect" by native English speakers. How could we differenciate from "correct use of the language" and "linguistic creativity" is something that should be further analyzed. The criteria to establish boundaries between these two ideas might be set in terms of the success of what is being communicated.
The general tone of the examples provided by You shows some sort of sorrow, yet there is some room for hope and future happiness. The meaning itself of the word "diaspora" implies some kind of suffering and not a self-imposed exile.
As previously mentioned, this article was specially interesting to me because I pictured myself and my generation (in Spain) as the objects of the study carried out by You. We could be described in similar terms and the context in which we have to live our lives has made us spread around the world in search of better opportunities and a fairer social reality. Many young Spaniards, very well educated and willing to work, are leaving the country because of the economic, social, educational and institutional crisis there. Therefore,  mostly (but not exclusively) via the Internet, they are creating a multilingual narrative whose features could be explained depending on the cultures and languages with which they communicate in their daily lives. Thus, their identities are constantly being negotiated via their discourse. The fact that the Spanish language is spread worldwide and that it is nowadays the second language most present in the Internet makes it difficult for them to adapt themselves to more standarized English patterns of discourse. This fact makes the situation be totally different from other types of language production of other linguistic or cultural communities with a diasporic consciousness. How to balance the use of English and Spanish in order to negotiate their identities in this type of hybrid discourse is a question that will determine the extent to which Spanish speakers feel the need to use the English language in an English-speaking country like the US.

Another important idea that can be drawn from Canagarajah's article The Place of World Englishes in Composition: Pluralization Continued (2006) is that diasporic language production influences native speakers of English when they interact. In this context, the Internet can be regarded as a space for freedom of speech and free from connotations of power as it is almost impossible to distinguish between native and multilingual speakers of English (2006: 590). For instance, if we read a piece of news in The New York Times people from all around the world can comment on it. How do we know those people are not native speakers? To what extent does their discourse influence the discourse of native speakers? The Internet is once again a space that promotes equality among citizens.

To conclude, I would also like to point out at Canagarajah's idea of "personal engagement" when producing a particular type of discourse (2006: 597). In this sense, diasporic language production shows this personal involvement with the language (actually, with two languages usually) and it is a reason for transgressing, an act of resistance.

ON IDENTITY AND PEDAGOGY

Ibrahim's article Becoming Black: Rap and Hip-Hop, Race, Gender, identity, and the Politics of ESL Learning (1999) offers an empirical example of the idea of transgressing (Pennycook 2009) in ESL Learning. Starting with the ideas that "learning is neither aimless nor neutral, nor it is free of the politics of identity" (1999: 365) and that " learning it is an engagement of one's identity,a  fulfillment of personal needs and desires" (1999: 366),  teachers of ESL should promote the learning of a particular type of English taking into account the context in which it is carried out and the students' needs. Students are human beings whose culture is embedded in a society which often imposes standards that show unbalanced power relationships. As Ibrahim states, "we are imagined, constructed and treated" (1999: 349) as something by an already existing hegemonic discourse, and so are students. From my point of view, teachers should challenge this "social imaginary" by means of a transgressive approach towards ESL teaching, mostly, because the process of "becoming" that students undergo , in other words, the process of "building on peoples' conceptions (1999: 354) is a way of transgressing itself (if we understand transgression as expanding the limits of thought). According to Ibrahim, "choosing the margin is simultaneously an act of investment, an expression of desire, and a deliberate counterhegemonic undertaking" ( 1999: 365) and rap " is an act of resistance" (1999: 365-366). Therefore, if we think about language and the self as inseparable entities (though we may find them not hierarchically equal), the language we learn will be a great part of our identity and vice versa. Enabling students to develop their own linguistic choices is an act of social justice as it will create balanced relationships between different social groups which no longer would have to feel like they are in the margins of society.
In fact, a critical approach towards language pedagogy is what Alim proposes (2007) in order to fight the current approachs that support to the maintenance of the "cultural tension" between several social groups, only allowing those who have "cleaned their language" to self-fulfillment, mostly in terms of economic growth.
A critical perspective towards multicularism in the classroom is intimately related to Pennycook's idea of transculturation. A new understanding of culture is neccessary in order to successfully promote critical language pedagogies. In the first place, culture is no longer understood as a concept that conveys fixed and very well established ideas about a particular community. As Pennycook states (2009), it is about "critiquing traditional notions of culture for their unificatory principles of social homogenization (...), ethnic consolidation (...) and intercultural delimitation (...)". From my personal experience, as far as language education is concerned this perspective towards culture is plausible in a multicultural classroom in a context of a country where there is one official language, as it may happen in the USA. However, I wonder how to create policies that legally convey this meaning in schools located in regions where two languages are co-official and one of them has a higher status than the other one. I am thinking about Catalonia, for instance. In this region in the North-East of Spain, both Catalan and Spanish are official languages and people tend to think about themselves as being more involved in one of the two main cultures there: either they considered themselves to be more Spanish than Catalan or the other way round. They are politically nationalistic (either Spanish or Catalan) and they do not believe in the idea of culture as a hybrid space where both can be integrated. Kids, at schools, often fight the " two-race binary" idea (McConaghy 2000) because the atmosphere in which they grow up promotes it. They often have to choose one language, which will determine their future good or bad command of the two languages.
My question is, how do we implement the translocal perspective towards culture in this type of context so that people can act in accordance with it in their daily lives?

Globalization and World Englishes

Pennycook’s idea of globalization as a form of resistance is a key point in order to understand the diversity of world Englishes. Globalization is also a representation of plurality, which promotes “local diversity by human contact across cultural boundaries” (Kubota 2002). Therefore, in globalization there is a place for “change, adaptation, reformulation” , in Pennycook’s words, there is a place for “wordliness” (2007). According to Kubota, there are several processes involved in globalization: increased local diversity, increased emphasis on English and increased linguistic and cultural nationalism ( Kubota 2002 in Pennycook 2009).

Globalization, thus enable us to transgress pre-existing knowledge and to explore “the boundaries of thought” (Pennycook 2009). In Pennycook’s opinion, both Fanon and Foulcault’s theories apply to its “Transgressive theory” in the sense that they both promote new frames of thought (2009).  One of the concepts of this Transgressive theory is translation because it enables us to look for meanings as an interpretative task across cultures. Writing, as a skill, shows negotiation of meaning as well. According to Bolton, transcultural writers represent the idea of WE when writing in English (2010).

As I have previously mentioned, this perspective on globalization should be the start point for teachers of English for speaker of other languages as it is the targeted element of one of the processes described by Kubota.  Matsuda, P.  and Matsuda, A. (2010) state that the majority of users of English have learned it as an additional language, not as their native language. Therefore, they claim that linguistic as well as functional varieties of English should be taken into account when teaching the language. They also propose several principles for teachers to have in mind: teach the dominant language forms and functions as well as the non-dominant ones, make it clear for learner to distinguish between what works in English and what leads to errors, teach the rhetoric strategies according to the context in which they linguistic exchange takes place and also help them be aware of the fact that there are power issues which will place them under a lower status than a native speaker has.