ABSTRACT
Classically, linguistics has been interested in the description of syntactic structure. In 1966, Kaplan’s seminal article “Cultural Thought Patterns in Intercultural Education” laid the groundwork for what has become known as contrastive rhetoric, a branch of linguistic study that points out the nature of rhetorical differences among cultures, using discourse structure as the site for investigation. Kaplan’s article has been especially valuable for teachers in English-as-a-second-language (ESL) classrooms, as it describes culturally based schemas at the paragraph level in written discourse.
