Cross cultural rhetoric: Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Truthout has mirrored a recent Washington Post item, Message of H.E. Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad To the American People, too long to reproduce here in full. If one applies Western norms of argument and discourse to this document it does, of course, appear bizarre, even mad. Without at all endorsing Ahmadinejad or his position, I would like to raise something that would occur to any ESL/TESOL teacher with training in and experience of cross cultural rhetoric, and that is to remember we are not reading in that document discourse grounded in a style or tradition we regard as “natural,” even though that “naturalness” is almost entirely a cultural construct we have become blind to. On the other hand, even within his own cultural context Ahmadinejad would appear zealous and sectarian: for example, not only does he give the appearance of being a Qu’ranic literalist, he goes further, endorsing Shiite apocalypticism with his coded reference to the Mahdi in “O, Almighty God, bestow upon humanity the perfect human being promised to all by You, and make us among his followers.” If I have read that sentence correctly, that is.

On the Bush Senior Gulf War, but relevant to thinking about the present situation and this document, read this PDF: Cross Cultural Rhetoric and the Gulf Crisis by James McLeod and Goh Abe. See also, on the current conflict, Cross-Cultural Communication: U.S. and Iraq by Devin Stewart, Associate Professor and Chair, Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies at Emory University.