The Interplay between Culture and Writing

Scholars suggest that writing is culture-embedded and L1 rhetorical norms and strategies transfer and influence L2 writing. The theoretical underpinnings behind this premise, on the other hand, have been incomplete and most research in this area has serious limitations. Following an overall picture of the recent developments in L2 writing and contrastive rhetoric fields, this book reports the findings of a large-scope study, which examines whether writers from shared cultural backgrounds display common rhetorical and process patterns, and whether these patterns differ while writing in L1 vs. L2. In those investigations, not only the written texts, but also the processes underlying the products were examined through stimulated recall interviews, and the findings were explained in relation to previous writing instruction in L1 and L2, which served as the "small cultural context." The results revealed some common rhetorical and process preferences and their bidirectional transfer. However, although most patterns could be traced to the educational context, various other factors, such as L2 level, topic, and audience were also found to account for these patterns and their transfer.