Cine de los años 70: Documentalistas y largometrajes

Intercultural rhetoric was proposed by Ulla Connor (2004, p. 312) to replace “contrastive rhetoric.” Connor thinks “intercultural rhetoric” studies can include both cross-cultural and intercultural studies. He adopts Sarangi’s view that “cross-cultural” abstracts entities across borders, whereas “intercultural” emphasizes the analysis of the encounter between two

participants representing different linguistic and cultural backgrounds (1995, p. 22). In addition, he seems to be in agreement with Sarangi’s stance that consistency within any given cultural group should not be over emphasized (Connor, 2004, p. 309). Contrastive rhetoric belongs to research on English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL) in that it focuses on how a human being’s first language and culture interfere with his or her writing in a second or foreign language. The term “contrastive rhetoric” was first coined by Robert Kaplan, applied linguist, in 1966, and widely expanded from 1996 to today by Connor, among others. Contrastive rhetoric brings attention to cultural and linguistic differences in the writing of English L2 students.

Connor also draws from Kennedy’s (1998) and Sullivan and Porter’s (1997) definition on rhetoric as an act of communication: utterances made for a purpose (p. 304). For instance, in his

Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction, Kennedy(1998) defines

rhetoric as “a form of mental and emotional energy,” and explains that “the mental or emotional energy that impels the speaker to expression, the energy level coded in the message, and the energy received by the recipient who then uses mental energy in decoding and perhaps acting on

the message” (p. 3-5.). On the other hand, Sullivan and Porter, in their Opening Spaces: Writing

Technologies and Critical Research Practices (1997), stress the rhetorical situation in

communication (p. 25). In addition, Connor adopts the postmodern mapping framework in order to conceptualize contrastive and intercultural rhetoric: text in context theory (Fairclough 1992), the intertwining of “large” and “small” cultures in discourse (Holliday 1994, 1999; Atkinson 2004), and interaction (Sarangi 1995) and accommodation (Giles, Coupland, & Coupland 1991; Coupland & Jaworski 1997; Connor 1999b) (p. 305). Further, Connor stresses Gidden’s

structural theory in that it helps understand the ever-changing genres, models, and social practices (p. 306).

In June 2013, comparative rhetoric was defined in “A Manifesto: The What and How of Comparative Rhetoric” at the RSA Summer Institute Workshop led by Arebella Lyon and Luming Mao:

Comparative rhetoric examines communicative practices across time and space by attending to historicity, specificity, self-reflexivity, processual predisposition, and imagination. Situated in and in response to globalization, comparative rhetoricians enact perspectives/performances that intervene in and transform dominant rhetorical traditions, perspectives, and practices. As an interdisciplinary practice, comparative

rhetoric intersects with cognate studies and theories to challenge the prevailing patterns of power imbalance and knowledge production.

The objects of study for comparative rhetoric are those that “have significant ethical, epistemic, and political implications, comparative rhetoric explores communicative practices

frequently originating in non-canonical contexts and focuses on practices that have often been marginalized, forgotten, dismissed as anything but rhetoric, and/or erased altogether.” The goals of comparative rhetorical research are:

• to discover and/or recover under-represented and under-recognized cultures and their

discursive practices;

• to enrich, engage, and intervene in dominant rhetorical traditions and practices;

• to promote and practice a way of doing, knowing, and being that moves away from

defining/claiming a finite set of objects of study and that transcends borders, binaries, and biases; and

• to embrace different “grids of intelligibility” or different terms of engagement for

opening new rhetorical times, places, and spaces.

Regarding methodology, according to the Manifesto, comparative rhetoric practices the art of recontextualization characterized by a navigation among and beyond

• the meanings of the past and the questions of the present;

• what is important and what is merely available;

• studying “effects of texts” and re-membering traces/excesses/absences;

• the imperative to speak for and with each other and an awareness of its fraught processes

• an outright rejection of assumed parity, equivalence, difference, or similarity and a readiness for interdependence and heterogeneous resonance without eliding power imbalance. (Mao et al. 2015. pp. 273-274)

Increasingly, as summarized by Lyon and Mao, studies of rhetoric are orienting toward global, transnational perspectives, and comparative rhetorical research helps to challenge the euroamerica-centric paradigm by enriching our knowledge of other/non-euroamerican rhetorical practices. Comparative rhetoric emphasizes the promotion of reflective encounters via

interrogating how our own cultural make-up influences what we study and to gain a better understanding of how networks of power asymmetry and histories of cross-border and cross- cultural engagements shape and define rhetorical practices at all levels. Therefore, comparative rhetoric is a methodology that can deal with racial, global, and local issues such as bias.

Comparative rhetoricians translate, interpret, and analyze local texts and have conversations or talk back to the universalized or prevailing discourse. In this process, according to Mao, the target audience is taught unfamiliar and indigenous terms that unfold ideographs from the original culture and/or texts and contexts. The rejection of often assumed and biased realities, no matter differences or similarities, made comparative rhetorical studies a literacy process for understandings and misunderstandings. Therefore, using a comparative rhetorical lens in transnational rhetoric and communication studies helps improve transnational literacy. On the other hand, transnational rhetorical studies started with transnational feminist rhetoric (Dingo, 2012) with networking arguments that investigate how women’s lives are shaped by policy arguments. “Trans” before “national” indicates a state of being and a process that exists and happens between and among nation states. However, sometimes transnational can happen within one nation state when people travel, immigrate, etc. because national belonging, nationality(ies),

and places of dwelling can intertwine together. For instance, a Latina’s literacy can be studied as transnational and translingual literacy when it involves the nations where the languages

originated from and the places/nation-states where the speaker lived (Marcia Farr, 1994; pp. 65- 66). Schiller, Basch, and Blanc-Szanton (1992) argue that the experience and consciousness of the migrant population can be called “transnationalism” (p. 1). They define transnationalism as a processes during which immigrants build social fields that link their country of origin and their country of settlement together. The migrant population was referred to as “transmigrants” (p. 1), who develop and maintain multiple relations on familial, economic, social, organizational, religious, and political levels that go beyond national borders. Transmigrants take actions, make decisions, feel concern, and develop identities within their social networks.

Transnationalism can be understood as a product of world capitalism (Block, 1987, p. 136; Nash and Fernandez, 1983; Wakeman, 1988), the result of cultural flow (Appadurai and Breckenridge, 1988; Hannerz, 1989) and as social relations (Sutton and Makiesky-Barrow, 1987; Portes and Walton, 1981, p. 60; Rouse, 1988, 1989; Richman, 1987). Dingo considers

“transnational” as “networks of global institutions, supranational organizations, and nation- states” (p. 144). Owing to transnational references to address issues in fields such as international relations, global epidemics, economic stability, environmental protection, and so on,

transnational rhetoric and communication tends to shed a more political and activist light on global issues, e.g., the wide spread of global communication technology and the growing economic and political interdependency (Michelle, 2009, pp. 247-259), NGOs (Dingo, 2012), etc.

Ben-Rafael et al. (2009) uses “transnationalism” to describe the diasporas and the advent of a new world (dis)order when doing international comparative social studies. Transnational is

different from “international” which designates activities in contact with official bodies—states, universities, associations or parties—belonging to different states; “transnational” refers to the relations run across states and societies, focuses on people and groups, and does not necessarily refer to official bodies; “transnational,” different from “international,” associates with the dispersal condition of social entities and actors that share an allegiance to some common attributes in different states and societies (Ben-Rafael et al., 2009, p. 1). Stearns (2005) claims that examining the development of Western cultures and particular nation states can be part of a local-global historical dialogue. The search for identity, itself, is a valid world history topic when thinking of diaspora, globalization, and the flow of human beings in an intensified information world. He stresses that the uses of history to strengthen identity and political maintenance are less important than more global understandings because this will require conversions on goals and choices that might have negative yet huge impacts (pp. 114-115). I am concerned with the implications and influence caused by worldwide population flow and the transnational literacy needed in not only venues of higher education, transnational corporations, and so on, but also the global public sphere, especially when it comes to ethical dimension of immigration, uses of technology, and citizenship.

My research is not the first to carry out transnational studies with a comparative lens. In 1988, Wakeman discussed “transnational and comparative” social research (p. 85). He found the gap between two schools of scholars: one that focuses more on the cultural aspect and one that focuses more on the business and foreign policies (p. 86), which suggests a need for both sides to think about a more holistic framework. Meanwhile, he emphasized the transnational cultural flow that creates diasporas with different national characteristics, and more importantly, the forces of media (movies, magazines, computers, etc.) that “close the cultural distance and

accelerate the traffic between overseas populations and their home societies,” (p.87.) therefore he advises to pay attention to key interactions that are caused by official/(trans)national policies and elites, those that are the result of informal and nonofficial networks, movements and exchanges among national populations:

• transnational implications of labor flows

• postwar global religious fundamentalism

• cross-regional and cross-country sectoral analysis of capital development

• the paradox of Americanization

• media studies

• the globalization of English and Arabic

• the revival of “national character” studies and their relationship to the study of “political culture” (p. 87)

I use a transnational framework to address and cope with the challenges brought forth by global capitalism, information flow and contra flow, technological innovations, and so on, which are all part of Wakeman’s suggestion. Further, these issues are all embedded with postcolonial, racial, and rhetorical contexts. For instance, I am concerned about how postmodern identities and subjectivities are shaped and troubled by increasing collisions of ideologies due to postcolonial influences, world order established after WWII, etc. I apply the comparative rhetorical

framework to look at transnational texts and contexts as a way to intervene in postcolonial power dynamics and investigate the possibilities of a cosmopolitan postmodern agency in a world with overwhelming technologies and media. I explore the possible ethics, spirituality, and creativity that can be used in the teaching of technical communication to address contemporary

schizophrenic rhetorical situations that are frequently associated with the growingly unavoidable but narrow-minded nationalism.

Before I frame a transnational rhetoric and communication model for the education of world citizens, I examine institutional and organizational ethics that guide our current practices in order to show what has been done, what should be done, and rewards and challenges for those who work in the field of technical communication and writing studies in general.