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On the origins of contrastive rhetoric: a reply to Matsuda
Author(s) -
Ying H. G.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
international journal of applied linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.712
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1473-4192
pISSN - 0802-6106
DOI - 10.1111/1473-4192.00018
Subject(s) - linguistic relativity , rhetoric , argument (complex analysis) , linguistics , antecedent (behavioral psychology) , epistemology , ethnography , philosophy , psychology , sociology , social psychology , anthropology , cognition , biochemistry , chemistry , neuroscience
I appreciate this opportunity to respond to Matsuda’s comments on my article. In his comments, Matsuda agrees with two basic arguments I made in my paper: (1) Kaplan’s view of the relationship between language and culture is not the same as the Sapir‐Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity, and (2) it is very unlikely that the origin of contrastive rhetoric can be pinned down to a single source — the Sapir‐Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity/determinism. But he raised the question about whether Kaplan’s view of the relationship between language and culture is ‘incompatible’ with the Sapir‐Whorf hypothesis, as I put it in my paper. He also raised the question about my argument that the ethnography of communication (Hymes 1962) can be an important antecedent for contrastive rhetoric. My reply will thus take up each of these two questions.