Intercultural Rhetoric

Intercultural rhetoric (IR) is the study of written discourse between and among individuals with different cultural backgrounds. IR in L2 writing pedagogy examines the influences of language, culture, and education on the production of texts with the aim of advancing intercultural communication research as well as informing writers, editors, translators, instructors, and also language learners. A new multilayered model of IR includes three major tenets: (1) texts need to be seen in their contexts with meaningful contextual descriptions, (2) culture needs to be complexified to include disciplinary cultures in addition to national/ethnic cultures, and (3) dynamic, interactive patterns of communication are important to consider, which lead to convergences among cultural differences. It is recognized that intercultural rhetoric should not be seen in its 1996 contrastive rhetoric state. The field continues to expand, as its regularly held international conferences and resulting published volumes confirm.