Academic Genres Research Articles

Chinese Research Article Introductions: Move Analysis and Linguistic Features

Research on academic genre has received widespread attention from linguists around the world. In the big data era, the demand of knowledge mining promotes the emergence and development of bibliometrics, and formal description of scientific knowledge is also put on the agenda. The application of RA move analysis to the field of knowledge mining is a new perspective of bibliometrics. At present, there are few studies on move analysis of Chinese RA introductions, and fewer studies are oriented to discourse computing. This study analyzes the move structures of Chinese RA introductions and finds out some linguistic features corresponding to each move. It is found that nearly half of the Chinese RA introductions follow the CARS model, but there are also unconventional structures. The linguistic features, including citation, negation, connectives and sentence subjects, are helpful for the automatic identification of move structures of Chinese RA introductions.

Evaluating Knowledge, Evaluating Character: Book Reviewing by American Historians and Physicists (1900–1940)

How have the evaluative norms and evaluative language of academics developed historically, and how have they varied between disciplines? Meaningful answers to these questions may be obtained from the historical-comparative study of book reviewing, a widely practiced yet historically understudied academic genre. My focus in this article is on book reviews written by American historians and physicists in the American Historical Review, Physical Review, and Science from 1900 until 1940. I show that book reviewers in these journals assessed not only results and methods of authors but also authors themselves. They would praise some authors—especially colleagues—for exhibiting virtues like “carefulness,” “objectivity,” or “thoroughness,” while charging others—especially nonacademics—with vices such as “recklessness,” “dogmatism,” or “exaggeration.” Remarkably, such virtue and vice language was applied not only to the character of authors, but also to their actions and outputs. Indeed, in early twentieth-century book reviews by historians and physicists, epistemic virtues and vices functioned as norms to evaluate both knowledge and character.

Senior Brazilian researchers’ experiences and practices: perceived needs of novice researchers to become part of the community

Academic writing in English challenges graduate students and novice researchers (FLOWERDEW, 2000; NYGAARD, 2015; HYLAND, 2019). Their lack of experience writing academic genres contrasts with the demand to publish research articles in renowned journals in order to complete their degrees and advance in their careers. Research shows that EAP instruction (WINGATE, 2015), understanding publication as a social practice (CURRY & LILLIS, 2019; NYGAARD, 2015), and English language proficiency (FERGUSON, et al., 2011) are areas where novices need support to successfully engage in the activity. In this study, data was collected from 41 Brazilian researchers regarding their experiences and needs.

A comparative analysis of English for academic purposes teachers' interactive metadiscourse across the British and Chinese contexts.

This exploratory research compares the interactive metadiscourse use by native English-speaking English for academic purposes (EAP) writing teachers in the United Kingdom and their non-native counterparts in the Chinese contexts. The analysis is based on a self-compiled corpus, including two sub-corpora, which were composed of instructor contributions to classroom discourse: eight sessions of EAP lessons from the Chinese context and eight sessions of EAP lessons from the British context. Adopting an interpersonal model of metadiscourse, the two sub-corpora were compared to examine the similarities and differences in their use of interactive metadiscourse. Findings of the comparative analysis reveal that EAP teachers from both contexts rely heavily on transition markers and frame markers to organize their teaching but differ in particular linguistic realizations. This may indicate the impact of a range of factors such as logical preferences, development order of acquisition, discourse community, and speech community on teachers’ interactive metadiscourse strategies. The article concludes with a few implications for metadiscourse research in spoken academic genres.

Disciplinary and Move Analyses of Hedging in Abstracts of DIPES II Dissertations of the Higher Teachers’ Training college of Maroua

This paper examines hedging as a rhetorical resource employed by fifth year (DIPES II) students of the Higher Teacher Training College of Maroua in Cameroon to show politeness, respect, humility and tentativeness in presenting their arguments or stating facts and subjective opinions. A specialized corpus of 46.368 tokens was used and hedges were retrieved using AntConc 3.4.4. Data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The analysis shows that there is generally an unsatisfactory representation of hedges in the abstracts. The findings further reveal that markers of intentional vagueness, accuracy hedges and writer-oriented hedges are the most common hedging strategies. Students seemingly rely on relatively simpler types of hedging like some, few, may, could, a number of. Conversely, more complicated constructions such as it appears that, it is possible that seem virtually inexistent. Students in the Department of Bilingual Letters were found to be more tentative than their counterparts of other disciplines. It is equally observed that more hedging strategies are used in stating research findings than in any other communicative purpose of the abstracts. In substance, the innovation in this paper may lie on its artful combination of disciplinary investigation with move analysis of hedging in a seemingly ‘marginalized’ academic genre, and its exclusive focus on novice writing in a non-native professional academic institution. This has led to the conclusion that the use of hedging can now be regarded as not only discipline-specific but also move-specific.

Learning (to teach) English for Academic Purposes in pre-service teacher education

The aim of this study is to examine how inexperienced English teaching degree students deal with the challenge of having simultaneously to learn about and to deliver courses of academic English. Data was generated through participant observation in teacher development sessions of a language center located in a public university in Brazil. The results suggest that student teachers learned both English for Academic Purposes and how to teach it by studying and producing academic genres, by sharing their knowledge with their peers, and by reflecting collectively on their teaching practices.

“The datasets do not agree”: Negation in research abstracts

Few academic genres have received more attention than the research abstract. Its increasing importance, diverse functions and convenient length mean it has been dismembered and dissected by analysts in countless articles. This is a key genre, central to researchers’ reading decisions and therefore to the creation of new knowledge, and as a result writers use a variety of interactive resources to attract readers to the accompanying article. Despite this interest, however, negation has largely escaped EAP scrutiny. This study, therefore, seeks to correct this oversight by examining negation in research abstracts and the extent it contributes to rhetorical persuasion. Drawing on a diachronic corpus of research abstracts, we show how negation contributes to an interpersonal model of academic writing and describe the forms, functions and distribution of negation across time and disciplines. The results not only add to our knowledge of the rhetorical functions of negation but also raise important pedagogical implication for English for Academic Purposes.

Text types of academic writing "Referat/homework" and "abstract/book description" in German and Ukrainian higher education

The article deals with some aspects of academic writing in Ukraine, which is already taught as a special subject in more than a quarter of Ukrainian universities. Differences in the23interpretation of the academic genre "the report" as an oral report at a seminar in the German academic tradition and as a type of written speech of greater volume in the Ukrainian educational tradition (term paper) were considered. It is noted that the term “report” is borrowed from Latin in both languages, but the genre “report” in academic speech shows different characteristics in volume and in the quality “oral / written form”, which in German tradition is a voiced form of writing based paper with the use of nonverbal resources of speaking and modern presentation techniques (visual: pictures, photos, fragments of the movie and audio tools), which demonstrates a hybrid form of the academic genre “report”. The genre of academic writing “abstract” is represented by a number of varieties in both Ukrainian and German traditions of academic speech, but in German it has several designations for these varieties, and in Ukrainian we use one term “annotation (summary)”, which combines all varieties in one generic concept as a philosophical term. An annotation to a scientific conference, an annotation to a scientific article, bachelor's andmaster's thesis, dissertation, monograph, textbook, encyclopedia, reference book, fiction book for sale on the Internet or for sale in a bookstore are considered. However, for all types of genres of academic writing and for types, considered in the proposed article, the characteristic features of scientific style are significant: transparency and brevity of structure (introduction, main part, final part), the high degree of informative speech together with the concise form, the use of the standards of literary language, use of terms and of professional vocabulary, impersonality, logical form of speech, сonsistency of the content expression.

British and Montenegrin university lecture introductions: A corpus-based study of their rhetorical structure

This study explores the rhetorical structure of university lecture introductions and its linguistic specificities. Applying genre, corpus and contrastive analyses, it aims to identify which moves and steps are used in lecture introductions in English and Montenegrin, as well as to reveal differences and similarities in their structure between the two languages. Drawing upon the Swalesean move approach (1981, 1990) and referring to the models already established in the literature, the study examines academic lectures in the linguistics discipline taken from the electronically available British corpora, and a specially compiled corpus of Montenegrin linguistic lectures. The results show the major difference lying in a more elaborate British lecture introductions framework. It consists of three moves – Move 1: Orienting the students, Move 2: Setting-up lecture framework and Move 3: Putting topic in context, compared to a two-move structure of Montenegrin lecture introductions composed of Move 2 and Move 3. Some specific differences are also noticed in the composition of these two moves. The main similarity exists in the presence of two obligatory moves in both corpora, Move 2 and Move 3 respectively, reflecting the influence of the lecture as an established academic genre in university settings regardless of the language lectures were delivered in. In addition, compared to the established models in the literature, the findings have yielded three steps original to this study.

Constructing arguments in engineering student case studies

Student case studies in engineering have received little attention from English from Specific purposes researchers, in contrast to case studies in business, law and medicine. This article addresses this gap in an analysis of the rhetorical moves of student case studies in engineering. Drawing on Swales’s (1990) move analysis framework, the study found three obligatory sections: Introduction, Analysis and Recommendations. A total of eight moves within these sections are proposed, which writers use in building arguments concerning the recommendations they make. Drawing on background information, identifying problems and questions regarding the case, and employing conceptual frameworks, students analyse the cases from a variety of perspectives in order to make recommendations about the problems in the case. All eight of the proposed moves are found in multiple sections rather than being confined to a single section, a finding unusual in academic genres. A key contribution of this study is the fine-grained analysis of rhetorical moves and strategies within all case study sections. We anticipate that this analysis will benefit writing instructors teaching engineering students, as well as engineering instructors.

Review of the statement of purpose (SP) genre: A shared-understanding of rhetorical appeals in technical communication SPs

This study examines twenty-four statements of purpose (SPs) submitted to a master's program in technical communication at a US university. Primarily, this paper analyzes how the SPs performed rhetorical social action by using the rhetorical appeals (pisteis). To understand the SP writers' arguments, a textual analysis of their SPs was conducted by using the Aristotelian framework of pisteis: logos, pathos, and ethos. Subcodes—or special topics of invention— were further developed under each pistis. The results show that ethos was predominant in the SP corpus, and that each SP included arguments from at least four special topics. The heavy reliance on ethos suggests the writers' tacit assumption about the SP genre: if credibility is not established prominently, then rational and emotional appeals will not be effective. The qualitative nature of this study prevented generalization to the overall SP genre, but the twenty-six special topics that the writers used to construct their arguments can serve as an invention heuristic. The findings will help prospective master's students to use the rhetorical appeals effectively in their SPs, and educators in composition, technical communication, EAP, and ESP programs to discuss this academic genre with their undergraduate students.

Investigating the Strategies and Problems of Iranian EFL Learners While Writing Summaries in Academic Contexts

The present study intended to investigate the summary writing strategy use and writing quality of 57 Iranian EFL learners in an academic setting. As for collecting the required data, the students (1) completed an expository essay (as a measure of their writing competence), (2) summarized the literature review section of a research paper (as a measure of summary writing quality), and (3) responded to the items of a summary writing strategy questionnaire (exploring the extent of planning, discourse synthesis, source use, and evaluation strategy use). The results of this study indicated that the participants produced better texts in terms of content compared to the form (cohesion and coherence) and language use. In producing their texts, they made the most use of evaluation strategies in comparison to the other summary writing strategies. There was also a moderate relationship between writing competence, summary writing quality, and strategy use. Moreover, MANOVA results revealed significant differences among high-skilled, moderately-skilled, and low-skilled student writers in summary writing quality and strategy use. Subsequently, the main problems encountered by these students while summarizing the passages were identified by soliciting their own views and analyzing the content of the texts they produced. Finally, it was suggested that in order to improve the quality of students' summary writing, writing courses must be complemented with explicit instruction of the conventions governing this academic genre, teach the summarization strategies through adequate modeling and scaffolding and give the students opportunities to practice and use the strategies while working on real pedagogical tasks.

Women’s Bandura Ensembles. Aspects of Working with Small Vocal Ensembles

The paper describes the specific features in the functioning of women’s bandura ensembles. In particular, it gives a historiographical picture of vocal-instrumental bandura performance, describes the stages of academisation of women’ssinging in bandura ensembles, and overviews the main methodological approaches of work with women’s vocal-instrumental bandura ensembles. Women’s bandura ensembles as an academic genre trend of Ukrainian musical culture have three fields of study: vocal and instrumental (performers), genre and stylistic (composers), and social and educational (cultural). Also, it is important to pay due attention to the widening of theoretical knowledge and practical skills, and to serious work on the methods of improving the performing and expressing components of singing and playing bandura in the ensemble.

A phraseological exploration of university lectures through phrase frames

While a recent trend in corpus-based analysis on phraseology has increasingly emphasized the role of phrase frames (p-frames) in developing learner awareness and literacy of academic genres, especially academic writing, p-frames in academic speech still remain understudied. To explore the phraseological profile of academic speech and extend the current efforts in creating lists of academic expressions for pedagogical use, this study aims to derive a list of cross-disciplinary p-frames for university lectures. A combination of corpus statistics along with manual filtering and instructor evaluation results in 117 five-word p-frames and 29 6-word p-frames, with a great majority of them (93.2%) being considered potentially pedagogically useful. Structural and functional analyses of the resulting p-frames further reveal genre-specific features, highlighting phraseological differences between academic speech and writing. The findings of this study can provide implications for research on academic formulaic language and the teaching and learning of English for academic purposes (EAP).

Demystifying the Privacy Myth: Navigating around Gate Keepers in Male Reproductive Health Clinic

Successful doctor-patient interaction in a medical setting heavily relies on negotiating communication practices in terms of language use. To the outsider, the medical setting is shrouded in the mystery of what happens inside and how near impossible it is for a non-medical practitioner to get access to a health facility for research purposes abound. Emanating from a recent successfully concluded linguistic study, aiming to determine the features of the language and strategies employed by doctors and patients in a male reproductive health clinic, this paper explores the procedures of gaining access from an outsider’s perspective. Thus responding to the existing myths about privacy and confidentiality of the medical profession vis a vis social science researchers. The paper provides an overview of how the researcher navigated around the gatekeepers and how patients’ consent, privacy, and confidentiality were taken care of during the study. Critiques and questions of methodology that arose in the academic genre are adequately addressed in this paper. The paper answers questions such as if reproductive health is sensitive and data in the medical setting problematic, how will the data for this particular study be collected? Will participant observation be convenient? Will patients allow the researcher to record the doctor-patient interaction despite the anonymity and privacy of the data?

Bringing light to a hidden genre: the peer review report

ABSTRACT While early career researchers (ECRs) often read and produce articles for peer reviewed journals, they are of ten less familiar with peer review reports (PRRs). Most ECRs learn about the genre of PRRs by reading reports written about their authored manuscripts, and through hands-on experience crafting their own PRRs, albeit often with little guidance or exposure to exemplars. To demystify this ‘hidden’ academic genre, this article reports on a genre analysis of 62 ‘quality’ PRRs, focusing on their communicative purposes, and the structural, content, and linguistic elements that serve to support those purposes. Findings show that the central role of the PRR is to elicit various actions on the part of manuscript authors. Other functions serve to circumvent manuscript authors' potential negative emotional response to PRRs, and this is also seen in limited use of high modality verbs and emotional language. PRRs follow a fairly uniform structure, and focus on all elements of the manuscript, with most attention given to the methods section. The article provides numerous examples that provide a practical guide to support writing pedagogies related to this important academic practice.

Writing across contexts: Relationships between doctoral writing and workplace writing beyond the academy

ABSTRACT PhD researchers are increasingly working in non-academic sectors, garnering interest in the extent to which doctoral education is relevant for careers beyond academia. Writing, arguably the most important and challenging activity PhDs must master, is a skill also coveted in the knowledge economy, required of employees across labour sectors. Using the concept of genre knowledge to frame how genres are performed in various situations, this exploratory qualitative study examines the perceptions of UK PhD holders in non-academic posts regarding the similarities and differences between academic and non-academic genres and the relevance of their PhD writing skills to their workplace writing. Findings suggest that PhD researchers’ time and investment in academic writing during the degree leads to an understanding of how genres work – knowledge that allows PhDs to adjust to writing in new situations.

A Comparative Analysis of Impressed by and Impressed With in Two Corpora

The main purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that impressed by and impressed with are low similarity synonyms. A major point to note is that impressed by and impressed with show different patterns in all genres of the COCA (10, December 2021. Online https://corpus.byu.edu/coca). It is interesting to note that impressed by and impressed with show the same pattern in the misc. genre of the BNC (10, December 2021. Online https://corpus.byu.edu/bnc), but they show a different pattern in six genres. It is significant that impressed by and impressed with show a high degree of similarity in the misc. genre, but do not show it in the academic genre. The COCA (10, December 2021. Online https://corpus.byu.edu/coca) shows that only 13.63% of forty-four nouns are collocations of both impressed by and impressed with. Similarly, the BNC (10, December 2021. Online https://corpus.byu.edu/bnc) indicates that impressed by Mr. and impressed by arguments are the most frequently used types in the UK. The BNC (10, December 2021. Online https://corpus.byu.edu/bnc) further shows that impressed with home and impressed with Mr. are the most preferred collocations in the UK. Finally, the BNC (10, December 2021. Online https://corpus.byu.edu/bnc) shows that only 2.5% of forty nouns are the collocation of both impressed by and impressed with.

An ‘academic war’ – A case study of confrontation in academia

The aim of the case study is to look at the argumentation strategies (or schemes) used by writers belonging to two different schools of linguistics in their attempt to refute the theoretical, methodological, ideological, etc. approaches of the opponents’ group in order to promote their own viewpoints instead. The corpus consists of 12 texts, containing altogether 70,771 words - reviews and review articles of specific publications - and constitutes a chain of opinion exchanges. The research methodology is based on the modern theory of argumentation schemes with special focus on refutations as main carriers of critical argumentation and confrontation. The expression of criticism is analysed in terms of the premises it is based on and the topoi employed by the writers. The discussion of the critical argumentation schemes considers the language means employed for their realization and is supported by examples. The results demonstrate domination of epistemic argumentation, but also a high degree of usage of deontic argumentation, of personalization and thus of ethical argumentation more than in any other academic genre. A distinctive feature of the means of argumentation observed in the corpus is the employment of numerous metaphors and irony/sarcasm that often go beyond the generally accepted ethics in academia in their interpersonal pragmatic effect.

Style-Shifting in EFL Students’ Written Assignments: Beyond the Textual Representations

Investigating English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ writing performance is a continuing concern within the field of research on writing. The present contribution scrutinizes style-shifting in EFL students’ assignments through an examination of the nature of their image-schemas of different types of academic genres, the most prominent factors that may affect the structure of these image-schemas, and the effect of the insufficient structure of these image-schemas, if any, on students’ written assignments. A number of semi-structured interviews were conducted and sample texts were analyzed, following a content analysis approach integrated with a grounded theory approach. The study shows that EFL students’ image-schemas seem to be interactive, interpretive, and dynamic in nature. It also shows that the structure of these image-schemas can be influenced by several cognitive, affective, social, and contextual factors. Significantly, the insufficient structure of these image-schemas may lead EFL students to shift their style locally and globally.