A conversation on contrastive rhetoric: Dwight Atkinson and Paul Kei Matsuda talk about issues, conceptualizations, and the future of contrastive rhetoric

This conversation took place on the evening of September 25, 2004, in an old house on an island in Maine. Because contrastive rhetoric (CR) may be at a crucial point in its history – and one which invites fundamental rethinking – we decided to match this exploratory moment with an equally exploratory genre: the academic conversation. Our intent was not to come to univocal agreement or to state a general theory; instead, we sought to develop our thoughts and feelings about CR through friendly but serious dialogue. It should be clear that both of us have complex feelings about CR. We thought that this was an opportune place from which to begin to examine its future possibilities and implications.