Cross-cultural Aspects of Academic Discourse

Abstract

This paper investigates cross-cultural aspects of academic discourse, explo ring the complex nature of its realisations. Indeed, academic discourse is not at all uni form but varies according to a host of factors, such as language com pe tence, local culture, disciplinary field, community membership, pro fes sional expertise and generic conventions. The data presented in this paper originate from a research project on Identity and Culture in Academic Discourse carried out by CERLIS, the research centre on specialised discourse based at the University of Bergamo. In this project special attention has been given to the relationship between socioculturally-oriented identity factors and textual variation in English academic discourse, focusing in particular on the identification of identity traits typical of different branches of learning. The data presented here show that the (native or non-native) Anglophone textual realisations taken into consideration are clearly influenced by their authors’ cultural allegiance to their linguistic, professional, social, or national reference groups.