Using local style when writing in English: the citing behaviour of Indonesian authors in English research article introductions

Abstract

When writing journal articles in English, authors are expected to comply with the conventionally appropriate rhetorical style. This may be problematic for non-native speakers of English, such as Indonesian authors who write in English. The purpose of this study is to investigate the rhetorical style of reviewing prior knowledge in English research articles (RAs) written by Indonesian academics published in English journals. Forty English RA introductions by Indonesian authors were analysed on the authors’ communicative functions and type and tense of citations when citing other authors’ work in their English RA introductions. The results show that when writing RAs in English, Indonesian authors use citation mostly to support the importance of their research topic and prefer presenting positive justification rather than critiquing or negatively evaluating other authors’ work in order to identify a research gap. They also prefer using a non-integral type of citation and present tense in citing the relevant literature. These are different from those found in RA introductions in international journals published in English. This implies that although writing RAs in English, the Indonesian authors still use the rhetorical style acceptable in Indonesian academic practices and this might be problematic for English readers.