ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Kenneth Burke’s “perspective by incongruity” and its implications concerning dialogic editing. Perspective by incongruity is an attempt to transform trained incapacity and reorient self into new ways of understanding. In the editing process, the editor and the writer come together with their perspectives. Challenges arise when the writer is a non-native speaker and has not only a shared responsibility to edit but to bring unique cultural perspectives to the writing project. Each brings not only a philosophical perspective and sense of direction that guides a project but also a respective personal perspective entwined with and enriched by cultural embeddedness and bias.
The first section addresses the tension in our communicative activity as writers and editors. The next section examines how Burke’s perspective by incongruity creates and promotes a respectful and ethical dialogic editing process. We explore the implications of perspective by incongruity in the intercultural editing process for the relationship between editor and non-native English writer and between editor and an assemblage of diverse voices. Finally, we discuss how Burke’s perspective by incongruity promotes dialogic editing as an intercultural process that constitutes a layered interweaving of disciplinary understandings, cultural perspectives, and (inter)personal insights.
