Entry 5: Is your line straight, parallel, swirly, erratic or just off-track?

I apologise for publishing my entry for the week later than usual; it's been a hectic week with projects, assignments and midterm papers getting in the way post-midterm break. This week's topic is Written Discourse, and before I wrote this post, I went through the blogs of others in GEK1036. Many find this topic hard to understand, but on the other hand, I find this topic pretty interesting. In fact, it's one of the most interesting topic (and phenomenon) we've ever had. Perhaps I say this because I'm a Japanese animation (anime) reviewer and I can actually relate to this on a personal level. I love to write reviews on anime titles at The Nihon Review as AC, and my fellow reviewers and I criticise our works constructively. Mind you that this isn't an anime blog; we do edit each other's review entries meticulously. Our administrator/editor Sorrow-kun is an Australian graduate who is really particularly with our reviews' cohesion, balance between succinctness and elaboration, grammar and vocabulary, and other written discourse structures. We reviewers here regard each other's reviews as literary works, not as personal journals.

Putting aside my leisure hobby, let me explain what were discussed in last week's seminar. The first thing I noticed when I looked through the handout, is the all-familiar rhetoric visual diagrams. Frankly, these diagrams were the first to catch my attention when I took the module CS2301 Business and Technical Communication a year ago. The textbook, which I believe Dr. Deng is one of the writers, features this diagram and since then, I've been eager to know more about it (hence, taking this module as my GEM). According to Kaplan (1972)'s research findings, there are five types of paragraph development, and I'll go through each of them and relate my own thoughts:

1. English linearisation is an English expository discourse where it's basically as follows: topic statement > examples and illustrations > developing central idea for proving/arguing subject > tying all the structures together. As a writer, this is how I write my reviews; plus, I would like to extend my gratitude to Sorrow-kun for buffing up my writing skills joining NHRW a few years ago. 
2. Parallel construction is natively Semitic, and it involves series of parallel coordinate clauses. To those most familiar with English linearisation writing technique (like most of us Singaporeans), this development would often be seen as repetitive and "waffly".
3. Circularity is natively Oriental (Chinese/Japanese), and the topic is perceived in varying angles and intricately indirect. This is very much the opposite of English linearisation, and I'll elaborate more about this later on.
4. Digressive freedom is all about being liberal with what's being written, often complemented by extraneous materials. There are no rules on the direction course of a sample, but usually it should come back on topic eventually.
5. Digressive Nazi (self-proclaimed) is natively Russian, and it's the more extreme case of digressive freedom.

We can all relate to English linearisation given our dominantly English writing background, but what is exactly "constructive parallel writing"? Here's an instance: "I was in this room, and I took the chair out from it." This is generally English-linear, but if written in parallel manner, it can be phrased in two ways: semantic subordination ("I was in this room. I took a chair out from it") or grammatical subordination ("The chair was taken out from the room I was in"). To us this is English butchery awkward English but to Semitic readers, this may seem naturally valid. Why this is so? Perhaps it's based on historic writing styles. In their native Semitic language - Hebrew and Arabic - this is their nature of language. So this begs another question: Does this mean that writers with Semitic background tend to write like this, or is it their literal transcription coming into play? Actually, this is debatable and it's up to you to decide. In a nutshell, parallel writing is about seeing a situation in parallel perspectives.

In the example of semantic subordination, the original sentence is broken up into two rather than linking to just one sentence. English writers will criticise this as being superfluous (something Sorrow-kun often criticise my works for), but if one puts the two clauses together, it becomes a singular line a la English linearisation. It becomes parallel if broken into two; simply put, the two clauses concern basically the same topic and they complement each other in the same course of direction. In the example of grammatical subordination, the "boy" becomes the central pivot of the two clauses. The two clauses still progress in the same direction, with the central pivot relating them together.

Circular writing is very contrary to linear writing; rather than writing in a straight progressive direction, circular writing is about not writing in implicitly straight fashion. It is said that this writing style is adopted because writing out of individual self-expression is deemed "socially harmful" (in my previous entry on spoken discourse, I had a hunch on how there's a hint of censorship in Chinese writing, whereas there's a hint of freedom of speech in English writing. I guess my hunch was pretty accurate). By being indirect, it connotes eloquence and commendable effort by the writers. This is where the old adage applies: "There are two sides to every coin". What is seen as straightforward by English writers, is seen as shallow and ineloquent to Oriental writers. What is seen as multi-dimensional by Oriental writers, is seen as poorly digressive by English writers.

The indirectness/suggestiveness of Oriental writing involves heavy use of rhetorical questions (questions that warrants no answers), analogies and anecdotes, and they're used for various intentions. By being indirect, the readers are supposed to inherently understand what the writer is addressing about. Why do the writers do this? This is because being direct is deemed forward (read: brash) and lacking delicacy. But for English writers, being indirect is considered being extravagant and even pretentious. This apparent discrepancy is commonly observed because of the cultural backgrounds each party may come from. Oriental writers may not favour direct writing, especially if it deals with something disruptive and controversial to the eyes of the readers (or even the environment, given certain circumstances). English writers hate this form of writing, and favours direct writing. After all, under current circumstances, anything disruptive or controversial actually works for them; that's why English writers gain readership: through generating controversy. Oriental writers would get flamed instead.

Then, there's further discussion on inductive (Oriental circularity) versus deductive (English linearisation) argument methods. As a reviewer, I adopt the funnel-like deductive form of argument. Take a look at one of my reviews and Sorrow-kun's. Observe how we begin the review with something general in the first paragraph (though still related to the anime in topic), and then proceed further in a more focused manner. The deductive method is pretty much opposite, but the more important thing to ask is, why the difference in argument methods? Is it because English linearisation favours specification while Oriential writing favours generalisation? Or, is it because in terms of argumenting points, English linearisation favours seeing "a tree as a collection of leaves" (leaves = arguments) and Oriential writing favours seeing "a leave that constitutes to a tree"?


The last part of the seminar highlights the differences between English and Chinese letters. English writers strong favours succinctness a.k.a. "cutting to the chase". By being succinct, it connotes the idea of being straightforward and they want to do this because English letter writers believe that the motif of a letter speaks for itself. Chinese writers however, highly regard points related to the motif just as much. That's why they opt to write about other things first, before explaining the actual motif. If they choose to write like English writers would, it would appear shallow, ineloquent lazy-writing. Basically, the rationale is still the same as what is covered above.

This phenomenal difference between English and Oriental written discourses is something I find fascinating. I don't understand Chinese at all so I don't understand the complexities of what goes in written discourse in terms of English-Chinese transliteration, but I do understand on an intermediate level another Oriental language, Japanese. Japanese is very much similar to Chinese in terms of indirectness/suggestiveness, and they is a rationale behind it.

P.S. You may want to take a look at this comprehensive article dealing with written discourse and Japanese transliteration. It's a gem I came across while finding some material to talk about for the week's blog entries.