JJ Post

The primary difficulty I find with using concepts like CR and IR are that it is impossible to generate empirical data that would either support or refute the claims made by C/IR proponents. Many of the examples in the text are anecdotal at best and entirely subjective at worst. The C/IR idea also assumes an "all else being equal model" outside of the cultural/lingual hybridity stated in the text- there are certainly going to be individual-level influences that are going to be generated by different learning styles including learning disabilities and it would be an enormous challenge to control for this. This creates a sort of vagueness of what C/IR actually is which is perfectly exemplified by the fact that the name of C/IR isn't even agreed upon as accurate description of its intent. Ultimately these issues make it difficult to make valid generalizations about how any student or group of students may or may not have issues translating discourse and structure between languages. In contrast, the C/IR model could be useful on a per-student basis where a tutor could "interrogate" a student to ascertain where the student falls on the rhetorical spectrum and could be a valuable tool to root-out some difficulties the student may be experiencing.