scholarly journals Building and Breaking Discursive Conventions in Academic Writing

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2 (7)) ◽  
pp. 7-29
Author(s):  
Maurizio Gotti

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.

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celia Thompson ◽  
Janne Morton ◽  
Neomy Storch

The need to establish an authorial identity in academic discourse has been considered to be critical for all doctoral students by academic writing teachers and researchers for some time. For students for whom English is an additional language (EAL) in particular, the challenges are not only how to communicate this identity effectively in English, but also how to develop from a writer who simply ventriloquizes the voices of scholarly others to an author who writes with authority and discipline-specific rhetorical knowledge. In the current project, we explored how three EAL students constructed authorial voices through the use of personal and impersonal forms of self-representation and evaluative stance in the Introduction sections of their written PhD Confirmation Reports. Our findings indicate that students combined a complex range of linguistic and rhetorical resources, such as integral and non-integral attribution of sources and attitudinal markers of stance, in their quest to project credible authorial identities as Applied Linguists. We also discovered the effect of these resources on readers to be cumulative. We recommend further research, including interviews with students, supervisors and examiners from across the disciplines, to explore and extend the scope of the present study.


enadakultura ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamar Mardaleishvili

The present article deals with the problem of defining the essence of artistic translation as the specific type of discourse and conducting such interpretation of intersubjectivity as the principle of discourse theory refers to the translator’s role and importance (‘translator icon’) within the scope of artistic translation. As the object of this study, artistic translation differs from the other types of translation by its creativeness. Creativeness of artistic translation should be considered as the interrelation of the concepts of ‘translator icon’ as well as translation style. ‘Translator icon’ is believed to be precisely revealed in translation style. According to the fact, that the research is being conducted on the basis of interdisciplinary methodology, it is very important to determine more precisely the research aspects related to the artistic translation as discourse phenomenon. ‘Translator icon’ and translation style concepts are implied here, of course. While determining translation as well as artistic translation, the modern theory of discourse should be taken into account. Correspondingly, translation should be considered as the type of discourse and artistic translation as the sub-type of this latter one. Thus, in the research process, it is very necessary to highlight the discourse principle such as intersubjectivity that implies the communicative relation between the addresser (the sender of information) and the addressee (the recipient of the information). In conclusion, it is possible to be said, that a) artistic translation differs from the other types of translation with its creativeness, b) according to the fact, that creative act implies the creator’s individual style, artistic translation is characterized with its individual creative style as well, c) it was essential to connect the concept of translation style to the concept of ‘translator icon’; d) artistic translation differs from the other types of discourse with its very peculiarity of specific realisation of the principle of intersubjectivity: within its frame the translator is at the same time the adressser and the addressee as well.


Author(s):  
Jasbir Karneil Singh ◽  
Ben K. Daniel

Expressing an authoritative voice is an essential part of academic writing at university. However, the performance of the authorial self in writing is complex yet fundamental to academic success as a large part of academic assessment involves writing to the academy. More specifically, the performance of the authorial self can be complex for English as a Second Language (ESL) student-writers. This research investigated the extent to which ESL first-year students at the Fiji National University perform their authorial voice using interactional metadiscourse in their academic writing. The study employed a quantitative analysis of corpus produced by 16 Fijian ESL undergraduate students enrolled in an EAP course. The research found that the ESL authorial voice was predominantly expressed through boosters and attitude markers, with relatively little usage of other interactional metadiscoursal elements such as hedges, engagement markers and self-mentions. Further, the research showed that this particular cohort expressed their authorial voice and identity through boosted arguments and avoiding language that directly mentions the authorial self. The study concludes that the ESL authorial self for this cohort manifests itself in a selected range of selected interactional metadiscoursal elements, requiring the need to raise the awareness of self-reflective expressions for ESL students. The study also encourages further exploration of ESL authorial identity construction in academic writing at undergraduate level and beyond.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (8) ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Xindi Zheng

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.   


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (10) ◽  
pp. 1250-1263
Author(s):  
Georgina Oana Gabor

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.


Author(s):  
Ivan Roksandic

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.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Dontcheva-Navratilova

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.


2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaëtanelle Gilquin ◽  
Magali Paquot

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.


2013 ◽  
pp. 56-61
Author(s):  
Thaddeus M. Niles

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.


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