Contrastive rhetoric (CR), the study of cultural influence on written discourse has provided educators with a way to conceptualize and address anomaly in grammatically correct English texts since its birth in the mid-1960s. The development of this notion, particularly in the past 10 years, can be characterized as evolving from a narrow, formalistic, prescriptive classroom technique to a complex, wide-ranging field of research. Evolving theories of composition, error, and particularly textuality have increased the releveance of a renewed study of CR. The results of recent research suggest that analysis of pragmatic differences across languages may be more fruitful than examining strictly formal differences. This approach in turn suggests directions and implications for the teaching of writing in cross-language settings. (VWL)