Academic writing for Spanish scholars: exploring the challenges with argumentation analysis

Abstract

The present study focuses on the academic discourse shaped by Spanish scholars publishing in English. Writing and publishing in the academia are regarded as central not only to the construction of knowledge in individual disciplines but also to the construction of the identities of scholars and the negotiation of their positions and voices within academic communities (Hyland 2013). Drawing upon the theoretical stances of argumentation theory and more particularly on Pragma-dialectics (van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 2004), the aim of this study is to explore the discursive practices of the Spanish scholars who engage in the academic “debates” of their respective communities using English as a second language. While the need for participation in English is increasing around the world, the experience of publishing in a second language has been widely identified as challenging (Hanauer & Englander, 2010; Moreno et al., 2012). The study uses the systematic method of Pragma-dialectics to examine sixty research articles from scientific and engineering disciplines and to determine how their authors discursively construct their work and how they make a case for their contributions. The analysis focuses on the authors ́ strategic maneuvering, which is the efforts arguers make in argumentative discourse to reconcile aiming for rhetorical effectiveness with maintaining dialectical standards of reasonableness (van Eemeren, 2010). Argumentative strategies highly underlie the reasoning patterns of individuals (Mercier & Sperber, 2011) and the way they position themselves and their claims within a given communicative situation. The systematic analysis of argumentative strategies attempts to shed some light on the writing practices of Spanish scholars and the stances they maintain within more and more demanding academic environments.