Scientific Writing: A Universal or a Culture-Specific Type of Discourse?

Abstract

Studies of cross-cultural rhetorical variation, and how the influence of the cul- ture and the linguistic and structural aspects of a person's L1 may affect his/her writing in an L2, are often labelled Contrastive Rhetoric research. This paper reviews the field of Contrastive Rhetoric (CR) with a special focus on academic/scientific and professional contexts. A revision of Kaplan's (1966) pio- neering work in CR, and the subsequent criticism it has received, is followed by a comprehensive overview of how this area of research has evolved in recent years, and by a survey of the latest variables which are being considered in contemporary CR research. On the basis of the results obtained in these CR studies, this paper discusses the issue of whether scientific discourse is universal or whether it is culture-specific, i.e. governed by socio-cultural factors.