The Autoethnographic Undertaking: A Day in Ron Pelias’ Life

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (10) ◽  
pp. 1250-1263
Author(s):  
Georgina Oana Gabor
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Ivory Tower ◽  
Cultural Meanings

Ronald Pelias revolutionizes the style of academic writing by illustrating an innovative version. He prompts academics to understand and take responsibility for the personal, engaged dimension of academic writing. Academic discourse can integrate, rather than exclude, readers’ perspectives. Autoethnography brings the “ivory tower” of the academy closer to everyday life. Pelias’s piece functions as an incentive for our own critical and (self-)revelatory engagement in our interactions with people, cultural meanings, and our own bodies. If we face up to the challenge, society becomes a place for transformation, rather than conformation—which our writing sufficiently prepares to hear our voices.

Doing Fieldwork in the Andamans

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Zehmisch
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Andaman Islands ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Anthropological Theory ◽  
Local Perception ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
A Site

Chapter 2 contextualizes the Andaman Islands as a fieldwork location. It has two major objectives: First, it serves to introduce the reader to the Andamans as a geographical, ecological, and political space and as a site of imagination. This representation of the islands concentrates on the interplay of discourses and policies which have shaped their global, national, and local perception as well as the everyday life of the Andaman population. Second, the chapter underlines the conflation of anthropological theory, fieldwork, and biographical transformations. It demonstrates how recent theoretical trends and paradigm shifts in global and academic discourse have become enmeshed with the author’s experiences in and perceptions of the field. Elaborating on these intricate personal and professional ‘spectacles’ of the fieldworker, the author thus contextualizes the subjective conditions inherent in the production of ethnography as a type of literature.

scholarly journals Building and Breaking Discursive Conventions in Academic Writing

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2 (7)) ◽  
pp. 7-29
Author(s):  
Maurizio Gotti
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Economic Discourse ◽  
Authorial Identity ◽  
Individual Style

The present article examines the complex and constantly developing relations between characteristics typical of academic discourse and individual style. The analysis has been conducted from the diachronic perspective since it compares the argumentative styles of various authors in different stages of the development of English academic and particularly of economic discourse. Analyzing the authorial identity as an element of discourse identity in the works of two celebrated scholars Robert Boil and John M. Mains, the article demonstrates how the leading scholars contribute to the establishment of new principles of academic discourse overcoming the barrier between the established norms and authorial preferences.

scholarly journals Transitivity Structure of Research Articles: Variations across Sections

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (8) ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Xindi Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Meaning Construction ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
Writing Courses ◽  
Experiential Meaning

This study investigates the transitivity structure of research articles and examines the variations of process types across sections, aiming to explore experiential meaning construction in academic discourse. The corpus for this study consists of ten applied linguistics research articles published from 2018 to 2020 in the top journals of the discipline. Features of the transitivity structure of the whole research articles are presented. The distribution of different process types is also examined in relation to the rhetorical purposes and stylistic features of the abstract, introduction, method, results and discussion, and conclusion sections. The findings reveal that transitivity structure could largely reflect the stylistic features of research articles, which are characterized as being informative and objective as well as interpersonal. Results also show that the distribution of process types may contribute to the regularity manifestation and purpose fulfillment of distinctive sections. This study has implications for both academic writers and academic writing courses.   

scholarly journals Jaqueline McLeod Rogers and Catherine G. Taylor, Across the Disciplines: Academic Writing and Reading, Toronto: Pearson Canada, 2011. 470 pages.

1969 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Roksandic
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Academic Discourse

Key words: academic writing, academic discourse, writing in the disciplinesJaqueline McLeod Rogers and Catherine G. Taylor, Across the Disciplines: Academic Writing and Reading, Toronto: Pearson Canada, 2011. 470 pages.

LEXICAL BUNDLES INDICATING AUTHORIAL PRESENCE: A CROSS-CULTURAL ANALYSIS OF NOVICE CZECH AND GERMAN WRITERS’ ACADEMIC DISCOURSE

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Dontcheva-Navratilova
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Important Indicator ◽  
Lexical Bundles ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Novice Writers

With the widespread use of English as the lingua franca of academia, there is a growing need of research into how non-native speakers striving to be socialized in target academic discourse communities deal with variation in meaning and organization of academic texts across fi elds, languages and cultures. An important indicator of competent linguistic production is the mastering of the register- and genre-specifi c formulaic expressions termed lexical bundles, which are defi ned as sequences of three or more words with frequent co-occurrence in a particular context (Biber et al. 1999). While recent studies have addressed disciplinary and novice-expert differences in the use of lexical bundles, cross-cultural variation in bundle use remains underexplored. This paper investigates lexical bundles indicating authorial presence in a specialized corpus of Master’s degree theses from the fi elds of linguistics and methodology written by German and Czech university students. The aim of the study is to compare how novice Czech and German authors use lexical bundles indicating authorial presence, to consider whether and to what extent the novice writers have adapted their writing style to the conventions of Anglo- American academic writing, and to discuss the role of the L1 academic literacy tradition and instructions received in writing courses for the modelling of novice writers’ academic discourse. The analysis shows that the variety and frequency of interpersonal bundles in Czech and German novice writers’ discourse do not approximate to the standard of published academic texts in English. The fi ndings also indicate that while the considerable similarities in the way Czech and German novice writers use the target structures for constructing authorial presence refl ect their common roots in the Central European tradition of academic discourse, the divergences may be attributed to a difference in the degree of adaptation to Anglo-American writing conventions.

Too chatty

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaëtanelle Gilquin ◽  
Magali Paquot
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
L1 Transfer ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Developmental Factors ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Corpus Data

The study reported on in this paper uses corpus data in order to examine how upper-intermediate to advanced EFL learners from a wide range of mother tongue backgrounds perform a number of rhetorical functions particularly prominent in academic discourse, and how this compares with native academic writing. In particular, it is shown that one of the problems experienced by EFL learners is that they tend to use features that are more typical of speech than of academic prose, which suggests that they are largely unaware of register differences. Four possible explanations are offered to account for this register confusion, namely the influence of speech, L1 transfer, teaching-induced factors and developmental factors.

scholarly journals Announcing the ESL-WOW for Self-Directed Writing Support

2013 ◽  
pp. 56-61
Author(s):  
Thaddeus M. Niles
Keyword(s):  
Community Colleges ◽  
Adult Learners ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Discourse Communities ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
The Public ◽  
Online Resource ◽  
New Entrants

ESL-WOW (Writing Online Workshop), a new online resource for students aiming to develop academic writing skills, has been available to the public at no charge since December 2012. Students can visit www.esl-wow.org to learn more about the academic conventions that confound new entrants into academic discourse communities, or to learn more about what makes writing clear and cogent in general. While the site is designed for adult learners and students entering community colleges, a wide variety of intermediate and advanced learners can certainly benefit from the materials offered by the ESL-WOW.

scholarly journals The Critical Situation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Basbøll
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Academic Competence ◽  
Academic Work ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Rhetorical Situation ◽  
The Core ◽  
Critical Situation ◽  
Academic Writer ◽  
A Performance

Academic writing is the art of writing down what you know for the purpose of discussing it with other knowledgeable people. In so far as students and scholars approach it in these terms, they often tend to focus on the role of knowledge. Students imagine that they must demonstrate what they know to their examiners (who know more than they do) and scholars imagine that they must communicate what they know to their colleagues (who don’t yet know their results). This is completely understandable since knowledge is at the core of academic work, but both scholars and students sometimes lose sight of the discussion. They think of the discourse as a performance rather than a conversation. In this paper, therefore, I will explore the formation of academic discourse and the building of academic competence in terms of the rhetorical situation (not just the epistemic resources) of academic readers and writers.  This shift of focus has some important implications. Academic writing is not merely the communication of ideas or the transmission of facts; much more importantly, it is the exposure of ideas to criticism. The academic writer is not interested in “ideas worth spreading,” to invoke the famous slogan of TED talk, but in ideas worth testing. To sharpen the point, we might say that academic writers are always writing for people who are qualified to tell them that they are wrong. As writing consultants and information specialists, we help scholars and students face this situation squarely. 

scholarly journals Developing Academic Thinking in the EFL Writing Classroom: A Rationale for General-academic Writing Assignments

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 125-134
Author(s):  
Jan Zalewski
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Writing Classroom ◽  
Writing Assignments ◽  
Efl Writing

With the evidence for disciplinary variation in academic discourse constantly growing, the idea of teaching core academic thinking in writing seems to have become increasingly problematic. The paper offers a rationale for two general-academic writing assignments, each focusing on teaching one fundamental aspect of what is defined as the intellectual stance underlying academic writing in general. The two aspects are problematizing and subject position. Problematizing and assuming a new subject position in the context of academic writing prove to be troublesome tasks for many entering college students. The assignments are designed to help students cope with these problems.  They are based on a reactive approach rather than on modelling academic discourse, with the teacher helping students to reflect on their rendering of familiar experiences.

scholarly journals Investigating Grammatical Colloquial Features in EFL Learners’ Theses by Chinese English Learners

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 138
Author(s):  
Nan Wang
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Analysis Method ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Doctoral Dissertations ◽  
English Academic Writing ◽  
Chinese English Learners ◽  
Pragmatic Paradigm

<p>Researches into colloquialisation in academic writing have become increasingly popular in recent years. However, little has been conducted to the dimension of grammar. Thus, through the corpus-based quantitative and qualitative analysis method, the present study compiled three corpora extracted from Chinese MA theses, PhD dissertations and international journals, aiming to explore the grammatical colloquial features and non-colloquial features in Chinese EFL learners’ theses. Compared with international journals, both MA theses and PhD dissertations displayed strong colloquial tendency. The similarities between MA theses and PhD dissertations outweigh their differences. Besides, doctoral dissertations are not less colloquial than MA theses. The statistical evidence suggests that the EFL learners in China lack the register consciousness of academic writing and fail to comply with the conventional pragmatic paradigm of academic discourse. With the intention to deepen EFL learners’ stylistic awareness and decrease their colloquial tendency, the study offers some suggestions, seeking for the pedagogical implications for English academic writing.</p>

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document