ABSTRACT
Contrary to Kaplan’s contrastive rhetoric, some scholars tend to go to the other extreme - blur or mitigate the difference between English and Chinese writings on the ground of the economic development and the cultural change in China. However, denying or neglecting the difference is not comparative rhetoric. To make clear the problem will help teachers make policies and take appropriate teaching strategies. This chapter tries to motivate scholars to support comparative rhetoric by showing them from emic perspective some evidence and statistics about the rhetorical mode specific to Chinese paragraphs. The investigation includes two parts - Chinese textbooks and Chinese model essays. The research results show that the Chinese textbooks bear no systematic theory or instruction on Chinese paragraph writing and even no concept of topic sentence and that the denotation of “paragraph” in Chinese is totally different from the corresponding English term. Moreover, the paragraphs without topic sentences dominate in number in the model essays; coordination instead of hierarchical relation between sentences constitutes non-deductive and non-inductive paragraphs; emotional language is preferred even in argumentative writing. The key point is those model essays are highly praised for their persuasiveness by the Chinese readers. The conclusion can be drawn that the Chinese paragraph writing is not close to modern English rhetorical paradigm.
