The tradition of studying contrastive rhetoric through the analysis of texts is now broadening out to address more dynamic and complex issues of context and personal experience. Focusing on expository text, this paper examines the potential of using data from interviews with second-language writers to explore the ways in which writing differs between languages and cultures. It reports on a study of 17 university staff and postgraduate students, all seasoned academic writers in both their mother tongue and English, who were interviewed about their understanding of rhetorical differences between the two languages and the implications of these differences for their own experience as writers. It concludes that, while interview-based data on cross-cultural rhetoric have limitations in terms of generalizability, productivity, and verification, the process and its outcomes can contribute both to research and to the teaching of writing.
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