“What Kind of Venues Should I (not) Publish In?”

In this edition of The Question, Sage D’Vice is back with answers to help you make sense of the question of publishing. The debate abounds about the mathematics of academic genres. But as we learn, journal articles, chapters, edited volumes, and monographs come with their own considerations, and institutional setting can make all the difference.

Decoloniality, Language and Literacy

Through a range of unconventional genres, representations of data, and dialogic, reflective narratives alongside more traditional academic genres, this book engages with contexts of decoloniality and border thinking in the Global South. It captures the learning that takes place beyond the borders of disciplines and formal classroom spaces.

Expressing Lesser Relevance in Academic Conference Presentations

While marking importance and relevance in academic discourse has been a widely researched topic, markers of lesser significance have so far been understudied. The article therefore focuses on some of the discoursal means of expressing lesser importance in conference presentations. The corpus of the study comprises recordings of 20 presentations in English at international linguistics conferences by speakers of various cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The methodology follows Deroey and Taverniers’s (2012) study of lecture discourse, whereby depending on the way lesser importance is expressed, the markers are grouped under five categories. Their methodology is checked against the data provided by the transcriptions of the conference recordings to ascertain the extent to which it is applicable to other spoken academic genres. The ultimate objective is to provide steppingstones for interpreting information and distinguishing between what is important and relevant and less so in conference presentations, as well as for the identification of presenters’ motivation for employing this type of metadiscourse.

Metadiscursive Markers and Text Genre: A Metareview

Given the interest in the study of metadiscourse as the communication of ideas and the way people use language in different communicative situations, this paper attempted to find the degree of confluence between metadiscourse markers from different studies and to show how patterns of metadiscourse analysis based on various written genres can be applied to a wider range. The mean values for the frequency of marker use and their respective deviations were determined by comparing a significant number of studies on metadiscourse elements. To ensure comparability, those following Hyland’s model were chosen. The units of analysis were grouped into two broad categories based on discursive characteristics: Academic genres (research articles, theses, and textbooks) and non-academic genres, which included documents ranging from newspaper editorials or opinion columns to Internet texts and other forms of digital communication. The results of our study highlight that the disparity in interactive markers between academic and non-academic texts is relatively small. This difference has been identified by previous studies, and it is confirmed herein that the difference may be related to the use of academic language, the topic, or the object of study. In contrast, the mean values of the interactive markers in non-academic texts are considerably higher than those in academic texts. At the same time, the texts seem to be organised along two axes (interactional and interactive) in distinct areas. Despite our initial assumptions that the data would be subject to individual variations, that differences would be found between different sections of the same genre within the same academic discipline, and that the results would vary if certain texts were added or excluded, we observed certain trends in the behaviour of the documents, although it prevailed that, within each category, the texts should be studied individually.

A Comparative Analysis of Sorry for and Sorry about in Two Corpora

The ultimate goal of this paper is to provide a comparative analysis of Sorry for and Sorry about in the COCA and BNC. When it comes to the COCA, it is interesting to point out that the types Sorry for and Sorry about show the same pattern in the TV/movie and fiction genres and the academic genre, whereas they show a different pattern in the blog, web, magazine, newspaper genres and the spoken genre. With respect to the BNC, it is significant to note that Sorry for and Sorry about show the same pattern in the fiction genre and the spoken genre, whereas they show a different pattern in the newspaper and magazine genres and the misc, non-academic and academic genres. It can thus be inferred that these two types are synonymously used, but they are slightly different from each other in their use. A major point to note that in the COCA, Sorry for is the furthest type from Sorry about in the TV/movie genre, whereas Sorry for is the nearest type to Sorry about in the academic genre. A further point to note is that in the BNC, Sorry for is the furthest type from Sorry about in the spoken genre, whereas Sorry for is the nearest type to Sorry about in the academic genre. The COCA clearly shows that Sorry for people is the most preferable one for Americans, followed by Sorry for Mr., Sorry for me, and Sorry for Mrs., in that order. The COCA shows, on the other hand, that Sorry about dinner is the most preferable one for Americans, followed by Sorry about lunch, Sorry about Mr., Sorry about agent, and Sorry about that, in descending order. The COCA clearly indicates that the expression Sorry for being is the most preferable one among Americans, followed by Sorry for interrupting, Sorry for having, Sorry for getting, and Sorry for making, in descending order. The COCA also shows that the expression Sorry about being is the most preferable one for Americans, followed by Sorry about getting, Sorry about calling, and Sorry about leaving (Sorry about having), in that order. It is worth noting that only two nouns (Mr. and things) can be the collocations of both Sorry about and Sorry for. It is also worth pointing out that eleven of thirteen seven gerunds are linked to both Sorry about and Sorry for. This in turn suggests that Sorry about and Sorry for are interchangeably used, but they are somewhat different from each other in their use.

Mobilizing knowledge

Many linguistic studies have analyzed the ways in which reported speech is used to mobilize knowledge in academic writing, but there have been far fewer such studies of knowledge mobilization in non-academic genres. This study analyzes the functions of reported speech in a Canadian quasi-judicial public inquiry report, a genre that is intertextually situated between research genres (through academic expert witnesses) and policy genres (through its role in making policy recommendations to the government). All instances of explicitly marked citation and reported speech in the commission report were identified and coded by function. The findings show citation and reported speech had specific functions that contributed to knowledge mobilization by discursively creating evidence, transporting worldviews and values, and changing knowledge status in the legal genres. The analysis also raises theoretical questions in linguistics, resulting in the argument that reported speech is not a static, formal category but a discursive status negotiated by the participants.

Batyar Songs in Viktor Morozov’s Creativity

Relevance of the study. The batyar subculture has already become the subject of many scientific works of Polish and Ukrainian researchers as a social phenomenon with its own jargon and cultural traditions. In particular, this issue has become central in the works of U. Jakubowska, A. Kozytsky, O. Kharchyshyn, Y. Vynnychuk, N. Kosmolinska, W. Szolginia and others. Batyar songs as a layer of Lviv city music got a new life thanks to the creativity of V. Morozov, realized in the publication of three albums with neobatyar songs. This group of songs and its genre and intonation parameters have not yet been at the center of musicological research and open up new perspectives for learning of genetic links between urban music and popular contemporary music in Ukraine.The purpose of the study is to analyze the genre and intonation features of Viktor Morozov’s albums, the principles of their cyclization, to explore the genetic links between batyar and neobatyar songs.Results and conclusions. Each of the three albums “Only in Lviv” (“Tilku vi Lvovi”), “Heart of the batyar” (“Serdtse batiara”) and “Batyarsky blues” (“Batiarskyi bliuz”) reveals itself as a large genre, which structure builds an expanded musical dramaturgy. In many aspects, it is connected with principles of the cyclization of academic genres, in particular, the vocal cycle and the program suite. The basis of the dramaturgy development of the albums was the method of contrast at the level of thematic, genre, tempo-metric organization. In addition, all three albums actually formed the one line of transformation of batiar songs from the authentic sound of songs from the period of the 20–30s of the twentieth century, and to new author’s — neobatyar songs, there were created on the basis of modern genres.New plots and themes of the verbal text of neobatyar songs also directly appeal to the original period of the first Lviv batyars at the beginning of the 20th century. The love adventures of the batyars, the struggle for authority and respect among the representatives of the subculture, the love for the native city, the glorification of fearlessness, life with not burdened by laws and fear became the main topics in neobatyar songs too. A characteristic local dialect is preserved, including a combination of vocabulary of various language systems; the use of lexical distortions, obscene vocabulary takes on a new embodiment through modern neologisms, borrowings. Songs are still performed exclusively by men, and the main genre outline is dance, including polkas, waltzes, tango, staer and others. The phenomenon of the double nature of batiar songs is organically embodied, where folklore and author’s songs are expressed through a combination of anonymous and original songs of the prewar period and neobatyar songs created by the authors of the albums. The nebatyars headed by V. Morozov in the albums “Only in Lviv”, “Heart of the batyar” and “Batyar blues” deliberately appeal to the layer of batyar songs, aiming to give new life to the old batyar song genre in the context of modern musical trends, to save the unique phenomenon from oblivion, rethink them in the context of the realities of our time. Thanks to the conceptual approach to the creation of the aforementioned albums, the authors managed not only to organically continue the musical traditions of batyar songs, but also to give them new life at a fresh, even brighter artistic level.

Escritura académica en tres escuelas de ingeniería chilenas: La familia ‘Informe técnico’ como macrogénero discursivo en el área de Ingeniería Civil Informática

Los géneros producidos por estudiantes han comenzado a recibir mayor atención debido a su diversidad de funciones en el aprendizaje disciplinar. Así, este trabajo se enmarca en el ámbito del estudio de géneros de formación en español. El objetivo de esta investigación es identificar, definir y caracterizar los géneros de la familia ‘informe técnico’ con el objeto de comprender su rol formativo en la enseñanza de la ingeniería civil y en los procesos de alfabetización académica-profesional en esta disciplina. El estudio se aborda desde un enfoque cualitativo, particularmente desde la teoría del género del discurso y explora el macrogénero informe técnico en ingeniería civil informática (MGITEC) en el corpus de aprendientes HÉLICE-2017. Esta familia genérica presenta una alta relevancia en el discurso académico de la ingeniería civil y en la subdisciplina informática. Los resultados del análisis de los corpus textuales evidencian la gran diversidad de recursos genéricos utilizados en la comunidad de práctica concernida. A partir de los datos obtenidos se identificó un continuum de los géneros discursivos que van desde informes orientados a la inserción académica hasta la producción escrita de informes orientados a contextos profesionales. En él se despliega una amplia variedad de tipos de informes que cumplen propósitos formativos de relevancia en la aplicación de pensamiento analítico, crítico y creativo para la resolución de problemas: la raison d’être de la ingeniería. Finalmente, la investigación permite configurar relaciones intergenéricas en la escritura académica de informes y proyectar estrategias didácticas de alfabetización disciplinar en el ámbito de la ingeniería. Genres written by students have received significant attention due to its diversity of functions in subject learning. Thus, the present article is framed within the study field of academic genres in Spanish. The aim of this research is to identify, define and characterize genres of the ‘technical report’ family to understand its educational role in civil engineering and in the processes of professional-academic literacy in this field. The study adopts a qualitative approach, specifically from the discourse genre theory and explores the technical report macrogenre in computer science civil engineering (MGITEC, for its acronym in Spanish) in the student corpus HÉLICE-2017. This genre family is highly relevant in the academic discourse of civil engineering and in the subdiscipline computer science. Results of the text corpus analysis reveal a great diversity of genre resources used in this community of practice. In consequence, a continuum of discourse genres was identified based on the collected data, from reports of academic insertion to reports of professional context. Different types of reports are displayed in this continuum. These reports meet relevant educational purposes when it comes to using analytical, critical and creative thinking for problem solving: the raison d’être of engineering. Finally, this piece of research makes it possible to define relations between genres in the academic writing of reports and to provide didactic strategies for subject literacy in engineering.