While working on the final paper for this course, I didn’t just learn about the various traditions of different cultures, I learned a new way to think about these cultures; one semester later, I believe we have just scratched the surface. One of my first epiphanies came when comparing the Chinese emphasis on memory to our Greek traditions, which also placed a huge emphasis on memorization and repeating things as they were told (memory is one of the five rhetorical cannons after all). I realized, then, that the Chinese emphasis on memory is not a foreign concept at all. Memory is a rhetorical component in both cultures that was maximized in one, but minimized in another.

This has implications beyond even the important revelation that commonalities exist in cultures as vastly different as China and America. Essentially, I realized both that our rhetorical traditions have changed, and that they will continue to change. “The way we do things” is not set in stone, and even if it was, the flow of time would carve new shapes into it just as rivers carve out massive canyons. Our rhetoric will change. We have no power over this. What we do have the power to decide is how it will change. How ought we change, evolve, our rhetorical traditions?

Fortunately, the world is a giant think tank filled with countless ways of doing things. The mentality I arrived at in my work in this course is that cultures should interact with and leave lasting impressions and influence on one another. Cultures should learn from one another. The solutions to our problems in teaching writing to all students, not just minorities, can be found by looking at other cultures. We needn’t replace our own methods, nor should we, but we can build on our foundations finding inspiration in the plethora of ideas and strategies that the world has already provided us with.

This is the frame of mind that I arrived at in my studies, and this is what I believe a truly reflective encounter between two cultures is. How can we both become better from our meeting? The is a seemingly infinite amount of work to be done along these lines, but that means that our potential for growth is just as infinite.