In applied linguistic circles, there has been a major reappraisal of the theory of linguistic relativity in the last few decades, a renaissance in contrastive analysis research, especially at the level of discourse, and a gradual merging of the fields of text linguistics and discourse analysis. In the light of these developments, a new conceptual framework for defining contrastive rhetoric needs to be established. Recent shifts in discourse linguistics from an early emphasis on grammatical and other forms used to mark cohesive relationships between sentences, to the inclusion of larger units of social context related to the functional uses of language, to the study of whole systems of communication within cultures and societies have been roughly paralleled by developments in contrastive rhetoric, which has also moved beyond the level of text to include both the situational and cultural contexts of writing. Contrastive rhetoric can thus be best defined today, not as the alienated, hybrid offspring of text linguistics, but more accurately as the emerging field of contrastive written discourse analysis.