Entry 4: Linear Oriental Writings?

Week 5: Written Discourse

This week’s lecture on written discourse has enabled me to understand the cultural-specific ways of writing by selected cultural group, particularly the Chinese. Kaplan (1972) pointed out that the “oriental” written discourse takes a circular form whereby the writer often looks at a topic from a variety of angles, adopting an indirect approach and only coming to the topic sentence at the end.

Having received my entire Chinese Education in Singapore, I had been taught to write in a slightly different manner. I could still recall how my Higher Mother Tongue teacher taught me to tackle writing a Chinese argumentative essay at O Levels, or what some of us know as “ 报章报道”.

The entire essay would usually be written in this typical format:

1. Brief Introduction of the topic
2. State your stand for the subject matter
3. Topic Sentence 1 with substantiation in relation to your stand
4. Topic Sentence 2 with substantiation in relation to your stand
5. Recommendations to rectify/improve the current situation
6. Conclusion

As one would be quick to pick out, this style of writing seems to coincide with the style of writing that we were taught at A Levels to tackle the General Paper. Also, this format follows a typical expository discourse in English beginning with a topic statement, followed by subdivisions supported by examples and illustrations.

However, Kaplan (1966) highlighted that “Oriental” writing is usually indirect, and the indirectness could be the influence of the “eight-legged essay”, an essay form that has been the standard device of the civil service examinations from the middle of 15^th century to early 20^th century. His conclusion can seem somewhat over simplistic, as I feel that he fails to consider his observation along side with the social-pragmatic factors that surrounded China in that era.

Bearing in mind that Kaplan study was done in 1966, most of his respondents could have been brought up in the post Civil War Era (1949 – present). At that time, many sensitive political issues could not be discussed openly by the media and educational institutions. This could have inadvertently led to the formation of an indirect style of writing, so that the journalists and scholars could use various rhetorical questions, analogies and anecdotes to reveal their intention in an indirect way.

This leads me to ponder if we were to compare the paragraph development of current local Singaporean Chinese writers and Mainland Chinese writers, would we pick a vast difference in their written discourse?

With the process of globalization taking place and the assortment of westernized media/literature that are hurl at the Chinese people, it could impact of their style of written discourse in a huge way and this could result in a “blurring” of writing style amongst the various language groups.