Abstract
A key element of academic writing involves incorporation of external voices, which is a complex rhetorical and linguistic task. Student writers must face this challenge of using sources to strengthen their own arguments. Appraisal, specifically Engagement, provides a useful framework for analyzing source use in texts, as it considers evaluation and dialogic voicing. This article describes a semi-ethnographic case study that contrasts two undergraduate writers and their writing drafts. Results show similarities and differences based on the linguistic abilities of the students and their experience in writing, but overall improvement in terms of dialogic voicing in the final drafts. Applications to research and instruction for ESL and mainstream writing are discussed.
Highlights
A key element of academic writing involves incorporation of external voices, which is a complex rhetorical and linguistic task
In that particular paragraph that lacks my own opinion, I was not sure how I was going to remove some of the in-text citations." -Wes The above quotes come from two undergraduate students discussing their incorporation of outside texts such as research articles, books and websites in a research project
Dialogism finds itself as one of the pillars of the theories used in the Appraisal framework (Martin & White, 2005; White, 2003), as seen with the notion that “no utterance is an island” (“Engagement- a Bakhtinian perspective,” 2015, para. 4), which itself refers to the English poet John Donne’s words that “no man is an island.”
Summary
A key element of academic writing involves incorporation of external voices, which is a complex rhetorical and linguistic task. Mara had trouble blending literature and research with her own experiences, whereas Wes had little experience with his research topic and struggled to include his voice in a conversation with the literature Both grappled with how to write a research-based text that weaved in the voices of outside sources with their own voices. Those who have passed through academia or who teach academic writing may find this struggle familiar, as source incorporation proves itself challenging not just for formatting and citation, and because of the difficulties in creating a dialogue. A non-native English speaker, used outside sources less effectively and seemed unsure of how to write a strong research-based paper. The goals of this paper are twofold: to demonstrate, through an Appraisal lens, how two different writing students engaged outside sources in a writing text; and to discuss how Appraisal and Engagement can be used by those who teach writing to help students effectively incorporate outside sources, termed external voices in the framework
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