Annyong Haseyo ~
For today’s seminar, we were taught about the different writing discourse from different cultures. Before today, I thought that the way of writing is universal and everybody would adopt similar way of writing style. However, I was wrong. The way of writing is still very much determined by the social and cultural values of the writer. Although I have gone through many years of formal education in Singapore where I was taught about structured writing manner, I still do not consider myself a good writer and often face the challenge of expressing myself in words.
This week’s Activity 2 on the comparison of an English and Chinese writing style is a good example of how writers from 2 different cultural backgrounds present their ideas in a written form. For text A, we may see how ideas are presented in a linear manner which allows the reader to understand the passage in a very straight-forward way. The presentation of the arguments is logical and direct to the point where the readers are able to grasp the gist of the passage easily.
On the other hand, text B’s presentation of the ideas were made in such a way that readers must decipher the meanings themselves. That is to say, the ideas are not as straightforward as text A where the readers may easily understand the meanings within the passage. In text B, readers are expected to pick up what the writer wish to bring across through the expression of ideas/arguments in descriptive forms.
In my opinion, I believe cultural values do play an important part in determining how people express themselves. For the Chinese people, we are often taught to be humble and respectful. As in the example of a Chinese-speaking student writing a letter to Royal Australia, the student first introduce himself/herself and later carried on to commend the programme before making any request and ended in a very polite way, feeling afraid that he/she might impose too much on the programme’s producer. However, an Australian student wrote in such a straight-forward way which, in my opinion, is kind of rude as he did not even bother to state his intention and think that the producer is obliged to send him what he requested.
Combining what I have said, I feel that we usually avoid direct confrontations and misunderstandings by using other subjects to express our true meanings. One logical reason for such a phenomenon would be in the past, people are taught not to speak ill of the Chinese government in public. Therefore, scholars and poets would express their resentments against the government through the use of descriptive poems which, to many people, may just sound like a piece of writing that speaks good about flowers, animals and the like. I also feel that it is killing two birds with one stone as not only the poet can avoid any unnecessary trouble with the government, he can also gather like-minded people for a greater purpose, e.g. overthrown of corrupted authority, as we can see from countless examples in China’s history.
