Blog 9: Contrastive Rhetoric

Contrastive rhetoric is an idea that was developed in the mid-1960s as a way to define the differences in communication and rhetoric among people of different cultures, societies, and languages. In the monolingual society that the United States was during this time period, the groups of people who did not speak English as their first language were not able to proficiently express their ideas and words to their desired audience. Contrastive rhetoric became the tool used by teachers and those trying to eradicate this problem, so that rhetorical tools and works would be able to transcend languages and cultures. As Kaplan states, “CR assumes that language differs not only in Phonological, morphological, and grammatical features but in the kinds of genres available to their speakers for the organization of discourse and in the rhetorical (and syntactic) features that co-occur with those genres” (3) Contrastive Rhetoric is an exceptional tool that has been implemented to aide everyone so that language does not prevent learning and appreciation of the great works of literature across all peoples.
I feel that the Alexie article is a great example of contrastive rhetoric in that it shows the lack of true representation of a certain group of people by the mainstream media; in this case, the filmmakers of Hollywood. This article discusses the author’s overwhelming excitement to be that stereotypical Native American warrior that was consistently portrayed in the movies of his youth. However, this Indian that he wanted to be exactly like was something that he could never actually accomplish, due to the fact that the actors depicting Indians were white. The movies never really describe the lives of true Native Americans, they only portrayed the fictional heroic stories that are nearly impossible to realize. The author described the one character that he hated the most, Tonto, “I hated Tonto because he was the only cinematic Indian who looked like me” (Alexie).