structural linguistics to language teaching, and is based on the
following assumptions:
a the main difficulties in learning a new language are caused by inter-
ference from the first language (see language transfer)
b these difficulties can be predicted by contrastive analysis
c teaching materials can make use of contrastive analysis to reduce the
efects of interference.
Contrastive analysis was more successful in phonologythan in other
areas of language, and declined in the 1970s as interference was replaced by
other explanations of learning difficulties (see error analysis, interlan-
guage). In recent years contrastive analysis has been applied to other areas
of language, for example the discourse systems (see discourse analysis).
This is called contrastive discourse analysis.
see also comparative linguisticscontrastive discourse analysisn
see contrastive analysis
contrastive pragmaticsn
the study of cultural differences in the way speech acts and other aspects of
speaking are realized, such as by comparing differences between the ways
people from two different cultures realize the speech act of “apologizing”.
contrastive rhetoricn
the study of similarities and differences between writing in a first and
second language or between two languages, in order to understand how
writing conventions in one language influence how a person writes in
another. Writing in a second language is thought to be influenced to some
extent by the linguistic and cultural conventions of the writer’s first lan-
guage, and this may influence how the writer organizes written discourse
(discourse structure), the kind of scriptor schemethe writer uses, as
well as such factors as topic^1 , audience, paragraph organization, and
choice of vocabularyor register.
see also contrastive analysis
contrastive stressn
see stress
consultative speech /stylen
sometimes used to refer to a style of speaking used with others who do not
share the speaker’s background knowledge or experience and hence need
more background knowledge than is normally used in colloquial speech.
contrastive discourse analysis