Rhetorical Conventions Research Articles

Promoting Academic Writing Students’ Skills through “Process Writing” Strategy

Writing in a second language is complex, and complicated, mainly because of by the addition of new resources and norms (new structural elements of the new language, new rhetorical conventions, and some other things). Teachers therefore, whether they like it or not, have to select the most appropriate teaching methods and strategies in their writing classes, one strategy that teachers can apply in their Academic Writing class is Process Writing strategy. This study shows information on a teaching strategy named Process Writing which was applied to one group of Academic Writing class in Semester II, 2016-2017. Research took place from January to April 2016. This group was taught using Process writing teaching strategy, with the hope of helping students improve in both their reading and writing skills. There were 20 students altogether in this group. One central question to be answered in this study is: How effective is Process writing strategy when it is used to teach Academic Writing students? Instruments used were pre-tests, post-tests, direct observation, video-recording; and weekly journals that students had to write every time they passed a stage of the Process Writing. From the statistical analysis as well as from students’ perceptions, one main conclusion can be drawn, that is, Process writing is effective to teach Academic Writing. Another conclusion which is not less significant is that Process Writing can be used to teach any level of education, not to mention in tertiary education, provided that lecturers adjust the materials as well as level of difficulty. One last conclusion is that every strategy that teachers will apply in their classroom is very context-dependent. That is, it depends on the class situation, which varies from one class to another. The context, atmosphere, as well as situation of the class became the factors that contribute to the effectiveness and success of a strategy. This piece of research is hoped to benefit both lecturers as well as students of second language writing. Pedagogically, this research can enrich another source of literature in terms of teacher strategy in teaching second language writing.

Rhetorical Conventions in Kannadasan’s Cinema Songs

Interesting teaching methods are very crucial in ensuring students gain the intended knowledge on the subject material in the class room. Teaching and learning of Tamil literature subject is perceived to be more interesting than Tamil Grammar in acquiring knowledge of Tamil language by students. Therefore merging Grammar with literature would give the better outcome during the process of Teaching and Learning. Since Tamil cinema songs have played their role in every aspect on our life with their high persuasive nature and interesting lines and music, question arise if they could be used in assisting in teaching grammar especially on the subject of Rhetorical Conventions in Tamil Language. Thus the objective of this article is to suggest the teaching methods of Grammar (Rhetorical Conventions) in Tamil language using the cinema songs which are the most popular form of Tamil literature, especially those authored by Poet Kannadasan. Key words: Rhetorical Conventions, Grammar, Teaching and Learning, Literature, Cinema songs ஆயவுசசுருககம ‘கணணதாசன திரையிசைப பாடலகளில அணி இலககணம’, எனும தலைபபிலான கடடுரை, கணணதாசனின புகழ பெறற திரையிசைப பாடலகளின துணை கொணடு தமிழ இலககணப பாடததை மாணவரகளுககு நடததக கூடிய ஓர உததியை முனவைபபதாக அமைகிறது. கடடுரையாளரகள போதுமான தரவுகளையும உதாரணஙகளையும கணணதாசனின திரையிசைப பாடலகளில இருநது தொகுததுப பகுபபாயவு செயது இலககணப போதனையில இலககியக கூறுகளையும இணைதது போதிபபது சிறநததொரு பலனை மாணவரகளுககு அளிககும எனும கருததை நிறுவியுளளனர. குறிபபுச சொறகள: காணி இலககணம, இலககணம, கறறல கறபிததல, இலககியம, திரையிசைப பாடலகள.

What is the publication language in humanities? The case of Translation Studies scholars

English is becoming the default language of knowledge construction and dissemination (Kuteeva & McGrath, 2014; Zheng & Gao, 2016; Fuentes & Gómez Soler, 2018). However, English as a monolingual and mono-rhetorical means of disseminating knowledge may maximize its ‘Tyrannosaurus rex’ side (Tardy, 2004; Espinet et al., 2015; Zheng & Gao, 2016). The use of English as an Academic Lingua Franca (EALF) is depicted as hegemonic, totalitarian, colonial and imperialistic, silencing other academic traditions, imposing Anglophone ideologies of norms and rhetorical conventions, and controlling other academic territories (Phillipson, 1992; Bennett, 2013). It is claimed that an orientation towards the norms and rhetorical conventions of the Anglo-Saxon discourse demotes non-English languages, cultures and rhetorical conventions (Tardy, 2004; Espinet, Izquierdo & Garcia–Pujol, 2015), disadvantages non-native English-speaking scholars and their scholarship (Flowerdew, 2013; Zheng & Gao, 2016), erodes alternative forms of knowledge construction (Martín–Martín, 2005; Bennett, 2011), and reduces intellectual, cultural and epistemological diversity (Tardy, 2004; Bennett, 2011).

Chinese Postgraduates’ Explanation of the Sources of Sentence Initial Bundles in their Thesis Writing

Lexical bundles, recurrent multiword combinations in a register, are extremely common and important discourse building blocks in academic writing. An increasing number of studies have investigated lexical bundles in academic writing in recent years, but few studies have explored L2 learners’ interpretations of their own bundle production, particularly sentence initial bundle production. Investigating the sources that have appeared to influence learners’ choices and knowledge of bundles is important as it complements what we know about the structural and functional features of lexical bundles and provides useful first-hand information for second language writing pedagogy. The present study interviewed five Chinese postgraduate students to probe possible reasons for their use of the typical sentence initial bundles identified in the self-built Chinese Masters and PhD thesis corpora. The interviews revealed diverse explanations including interlingual transfer, classroom learning, noticing in reading, a lack of rhetorical confidence, and misunderstanding of rhetorical conventions. The results suggest the need for raising students’ awareness of the common sentence starters in postgraduate academic writing, increasing their confidence as student writers, familiarizing them with rhetorical conventions, and incorporating effective corpus-based tools into pedagogical practices.

META-LITERARY NARRATIVE IN READING EDUCATION: THE CASE OF CONTEMPORARY GERMAN YOUTH NOVELS

In this investigation, we study the presence of a transgressive poetic practice in German young readers’ narrative from the 21st century that brings forth a myriad of advantages where the reader-literacy competence of the young readers are concerned. The term in question is deemed as metaliterature which is a textual modality that breaks the mould and creates the topic of the current conventions of traditional rhetoric which requires a more active participation on behalf of the reader throughout the process of how the work is to be perceived. 
 With this intention in mind, three meta-literary resources frequently used in twelve contemporary young reader German novels have undergone investigation which reinforce their own nature of literary artefacts: intertextuality, metalepsis and meta-literary observations. These resources trigger the activation of reader-literary strategies during the receptive process of the work, given that it breaks and reveals basic codes in the art of the written word.

Patterns of rhetorical organization in The Jakarta Post opinion articles

Opinion articles are part of a professional discourse genre that can be found in newspapers. These articles are separated from news pages and written for the public, so they contain a variety of cultural backgrounds. This study looked at 151 opinion articles published in The Jakarta Post of the March 2016 editions. Shi and Kubota’s (2007)four pattern of rhetorical organization was adapted as the theoretical framework for the present study. The results of this study showed that the overall rhetorical pattern of The Jakarta Post opinion articles is a three-part structure of introduction, body and conclusion paragraphs. In term of the placing of the thesis statement, 47% of non-native writers and 38% of native writers put the thesis statement in the introduction part with a single sentence paragraph or two short single-sentence paragraphs, and 38% of non-native writers and 40% of native writers wrote the introduction part with two or more multi-sentence paragraphs, and put the thesis statement at the end of them. Only 8% of non-native writers and 5% of native writers put the thesis statement in the body part, while 7% of non-native writers and 17% of native writers put the thesis statement in the conclusion. Generally, there was a slight difference between native and non-native writers in terms of the placement of thesis statement, where the non-native writers tended to use a single sentence paragraph as the thesis statement as well as to begin the essays, while native writers preferred to use two or more multi sentence paragraphs. This study proves that professional writings such as newspaper opinion articles follow the English rhetorical conventions; deductive, logical, and direct style as represented in the three-part structure.

Challenges in Teaching Japanese EFL Students to Express Themselves Logically

This paper describes a study conducted with twenty-five Japanese lower-level EFL students to develop their ability to write logically in English. In school, Japanese students rarely express their opinions in writing supported by facts or reasons, a result of an important characteristic of Japanese culture: people focus more on emotion than on critical reasoning. Teachers of English often instruct students to add reasons, examples, or conclusions to their written expressions of opinion, but students often fail to do so because they do not grasp their purpose. In this study, students were explicitly instructed in 1) the different values in Western and Japanese culture, 2) alternate ways of thinking and expression, 3) the importance of logic in English rhetoric, and 4) paragraph structure in written English. Students practice writing using English paragraph structure, first in Japanese and then in English. The results indicated that initially only about one third of the students acquired an understanding of how to organize a paragraph logically when writing in Japanese, indicating the difficulty Japanese students have in adopting the principles of English rhetoric even in their native language. After explicit instructions were given repeatedly, another one third of the students were able to structure their paragraphs logically when writing in English. Throughout the six sessions of the study, however, the rest of the students (32%) continued to write their paragraphs in both Japanese and English according to the conventions of Japanese rhetoric, or without logical reasoning.

Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court. By Kathryn M. Stanchi, Linda L. Berger, and Bridget J. Crawford (Eds.). New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of United States Supreme Court. By Kathryn M. Stanchi, Linda L. Berger, and Bridget J. Crawford (Eds.). New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016.This collection of feminist rewritings of U.S. Supreme Court decisions is most recent contribution to burgeoning field of feminist judgments projects that have already emerged in number of common law jurisdictions, including Canada, England/Wales, Northern/Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. While feminist jurisprudence and feminist activism has led to demonstrable changes in legislative law reform, there is less evidence of impact of feminism in legal decisionmaking. These projects are motivated by belief that bringing feminist perspectives to legal decision-making can make difference to outcome, as well as reasoning, treatment of evidence and experience of witnesses. They aim to show that systemic inequalities are not intrinsic to law, but rather may be rooted in subjective (and often unconscious) beliefs and assumptions of decision makers (5).In this collection, 25 U.S. Supreme Court decisions have been rewritten to incorporate feminist methods and perspectives. From an initial list of 60 cases, Kathryn Stanchi, Linda Berger, and Bridget Crawford settled on 25 that they describe as the most significant gender justice cases decided by court from passage of final Civil Rights Amendment in 1870 to summer of 2015 (3). They called for authors to rewrite each of decisions from feminist perspective. A further group of authors have provided short commentaries to contextualize cases and comment on approaches taken.The introduction provides very useful account of project's methodology and identifies common feminist themes that emerged in rewritten decisions. Some authors have rewritten decision so that they arrive at different outcome; however, others have used feminist methods to change rhetorical conventions or relied upon alternative legal rules, framed issues differently or presented other rationales for decision. The authors were not required to write decisions that persuaded other justices. The editors point out that volume contains 15 re-imagined majority decisions, four concurring opinions, five dissenting opinions, and one partial concurrence/dissent. The majority opinions are almost equally divided between those that change ruling and those that changed to reasoning but not ruling.As with other feminist judgments projects, editors left it to authors of rewritten decisions to bring their own vision of what they meant by feminism. However, they identified their own approach to feminism as a movement and perspective historically grounded in politics, and one that motivates social, legal, and other battles for women's equality ... We believe that 'feminism' is not province of women only, and we acknowledge and celebrate multiple, fluid identities contained in category 'woman'. (3). Feminist methods employed by contributing authors include use of feminist practical reasoning, narrative feminist method, breaking rhetorical conventions and widening lens. The editors identify use of feminist theories: formal equality, anti-subordination/dominance feminism, anti-stereotyping, multi-dimensional theories, such as anti-essentialism and intersectionality, autonomy and agency, all of which they elaborate upon with reference to rewritten cases.In second chapter, Talking back: From feminist history and theory to feminist legal methods and judgments, Berta Esperanza Hernandez-Truyol provides valuable framework for collection by outlining historical, theoretical, and methodological context of feminist history and theory. She identifies and explains key waves and branches of U.S. feminism and elaborates on feminist legal methods. There is also brief history of women in U. …

The Effect of Genre Awareness on English Translation Quality and Pedagogy: A Case of News Reports Translation as an Academic Curriculum

To produce an adequate translation, language students are required to learn varieties of language features including syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Considering the curriculum language learners are face with, one can claim that almost all language students in Iran are taught these features in their academic settings including linguistic courses. Yet, there are some aspects of language which are disregarded in course books and syllabi and ignored by language teachers. Thus, language learners find it a formidable task to deal with these shrugged off aspects of their curricula. Genre of language is among these invisible features which have challenged translation students in translating specific texts. News reports is one of these genres that Iranian media translators, in spite of enjoying technical competence in language, are not familiar with knowledge and rhetorical conventions of it. So, the current is conducted to investigate the familiarity of these translators with genre features of news discourse and examine the effect of raising genre awareness on developing the quality of translation. To this aim, fourteen translation students studying translation for media purpose were selected through convenient sampling who were given some news reports to translate. Using Baker’s taxonomy (1992) and House’s quality assessment model (1997), the quality of their translations were assessed before genre awareness raising session and after it. The findings showed that the quality of translation ameliorated meaningfully after the instruction, indicating the importance of genre knowledge in linguistic competence. These findings have implications for syllabus designers and EAP and ESP teachers and students.

Негативная гносеология в греческом аристотелизме XVII века

The article studies the project of critical epistemology on the periphery of Europe, which is considered as an alternative to the project of critical ontology in the center of Europe. It is proved that this critical, or negative epistemology was based on two presumptions: on the concept of power as not decision-making, but as making control over the variety of decisions, and on the representation of speech not as a statement but as an establishment of the boundaries of consciousness. These presumptions date back to the unique social and political situation in the Orthodox world, which transformed the conventions of classical rhetoric into epistemological tools. In the struggle of various political forces to master this instrumentation, the concept of power as internal speech or intellectual attitude in relation to the diversity of events was developed, and the realization of power was understood as negative epistemology, allowing facts to be established not as simple events but as true and right events. The classical concepts of Aristotle were turned into topoi, describing reality not as an aggregate of ontological statuses, but as a set of epistemological problems. The study of this phenomenon based on the works by Theophilos Corydalleus and Gerasimos Vlakhos allows to explain common origins of the key problems of Eastern European religious philosophy (such as iconicity, personalism, and philosophy of the Divine name), which are otherwise perceived as fragmented and anomalous.

A Study of Interactional Metadiscourse in English Abstracts of Chinese Economics Research Articles

This study adopts the revised interpersonal model of metadiscourse to discover whether and to what extent Chinese authors employ a varying amount of Interactional Metadiscourse (IM) in the past decade in English abstracts of economics Research Articles (RAs). The data was drawn from a prestigious economics journal in China to compose a corpus of 289 abstracts. The analysis indicates that Chinese authors harmonize with English counterparts by capitalizing on more hedges, while the amount of boosters unexpectedly maintains at a high level over time, both of which can be attributed to the interaction of Chinese deep-seated cultural leanings and Anglo-American cultural preferences. Consistent with our prediction, attitude markers exhibit no significant difference along the years given the initial parallel with English counterparts. However, there are significant differences of self-mentions in the past decade regardless of English rhetorical conventions, which may be attributed to economical influences in China. With regards to engagement features, they remain relatively underused with no marked difference within the period resulting from the genre-specific factor which confines their use.

“Please Open Our Church… in the Name of Historical and Human Value of Socialism”. Orthodox Believers’ Letters to Power, 1960s–Early 1970s

The article is intended as an introduction into the study of a particular source on the Soviet-period history of the Church. It demonstrates potential for the interdisciplinary survey of “letters to power” as an action and a source within broader contexts of the Orthodox Church’s integration into a Soviet society and its defensive strategies. Soviet believers’ letters, written in defense of their Church and their religious rights, became the most widespread form of their protest against discriminatory policy pursued by the state. In the first part the author provides a general overview of believers’ petitioning (as the text and the action) focusing on their reasons for writing letters, their self-representation and the view of the authorities. The author also examines discursive techniques and rhetorical conventions used it the letter. In the second part of the article the author examines a revealing case: the petitioning campaign of Orthodox believers from Chernihiv in defense of St. Trinity Church as it is presented in their letters written between 1962 and 1972.

Modal hedging verbs in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) Business Management research articles

When publishing the results of their research, scholars need to convince their readers of the validity of their claims, adjusting their writing to the prevailing discursive and rhetorical conventions. Hedges play a crucial role in persuading readers of such validity. Previous cross-cultural research in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) has revealed significant differences in the use of these interpersonal features in research articles (RAs) in different languages and publication contexts. In this paper, hedging modal verbs will be contrastively analysed in a corpus of RAs written by English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) users and by native English scholars affiliated to Anglophone institutions in the field of Business Management. The frequency of use of hedging modal verbs, their main functional uses, and their particular phraseological realizations will be examined. The results will help us gain an insight into how new knowledge claims are negotiated in international English-medium publications in this discipline as well as into the particular shaping of ELF written academic communication.

A Humble Guise: The Role of Prologues in the WycliffiteGlossed Gospels

Considerable ambiguity surrounds the production of the Wycliffite Glossed Gospels, a collection of nine manuscripts that present Scripture and exegesis in Middle English. While some readers turn to accompanying prologues for evidence of the writers’ identities and aims, in doing so, they approach crafted, literary forms as transparent, technical discourse. This article demonstrates how the Glossed Gospels prologues employ rhetorical conventions and strategic fictions to position the commentaries in debates about vernacular Scripture. More specifically, the analysis reveals how writers infused anonymous works with textual authority, imagined idealized reading communities, and attempted to translate Scripture into personal and societal reform.

Is academic writing becoming more informal?

Informality has become something of a contemporary mantra as, from the denim-clad offices of internet startups to the pages of business reports, we are encouraged to shed old constraints and relax conventions. This paper explores the perception that since informality has now invaded a large range of written and spoken domains of discourse, academic writing has also followed this trend. It asks the question whether academics are now freer to construct less rigidly objective texts and craft a more inclusive relationship with their readers. Taking a corpus of 2.2 million words from the same leading journals in four disciplines at three periods over the past years, we explore changes in the use of ten key features regarded by applied linguists and style guide authors as representing informality. Our results show only a small increase in the use of these features, and that this is mainly accounted for by increases in the hard sciences rather than the social sciences. It is also largely restricted to increases in first person pronouns, unattended reference and sentences beginning with conjunctions. We discuss these results and argue they represent changes in rhetorical conventions which accommodate more obvious interpersonal interactions in the sciences.

Translanguaging in an academic writing class: Implications for a dialogic pedagogy

Academic writing for second language speakers remains a huge challenge for instructors and students worldwide. However, the rhetorical interface between English and African languages has hardly been explored to develop better translingual pedagogies for programmatic scaling. In this study we sought to explore the use of dialogic pedagogy, where Sesotho and English rhetorical conventions are code-meshed among first-year university students at a large urban university in South Africa. Drawing on the theoretical ideas of Bakhtin and Vygotsky’s sociocultural framework, this study is premised on dialogic instruction that is characterised by the teacher’s uptake of student ideas, authentic questions and the opportunity for students to modify the topics while using more than one language. Data were collected through metacognitive reflective interview of eight first-year students registered for a Bachelor of Education degree programme. The study found that dialogic instruction facilitates awareness in the students as they construct their desired voices in writing through the use of compensation and social strategies when they translanguage between L1 writing (Sesotho) and L2 writing (English). We argue that translanguaging is a relevant framework for academic literacy and that it provides optimal conditions for dialogic pedagogy in multilingual contexts. Recommendations for further research are considered at the end of the paper.

British Women’s Travel Writing, 1780–1840: Bibliographical Reflections

ABSTRACTLaunched online in 2014, the Women’s Travel Writing database provides full and accurate bibliographical records for all the known books of travel published in Britain and Ireland by women between 1780 and 1840. This article critically and statistically reflects on these 204 titles, the authors who wrote them, and the patterns and trends that they suggest when considered together during the period in which women first gained a firm foothold in a genre traditionally considered men’s territory. The database reveals patterns of women writing on the generic borders between scribal and print culture, conforming to and manipulating rhetorical conventions in prefaces and advertisements (the “modesty topos”), while striking a balance between assertions of authorial independence and expressions of gendered reticence. Overall, the database reveals a sharp upward trend in the rate at which women published travel writings during the census dates, with 74 titles appearing in the 1830s compared to 5 in the 1780s. In considering the bibliographical nuances of women’s increasing presence in the travel writing marketplace, this article also poses questions about the insights and limitations of statistical approaches to cultural analysis.

Disputatious Rhetoric and Political Change: The Case of the Greek Anti-Mining Movement

Rhetorical scholarship has significantly contributed to our understanding of the role of confrontation in engendering social and political change, but it traditionally over-emphasises its moral aspect, which results in the simplification of public issues and the radicalisation of identities. This article introduces a distinct form of political rhetoric and analyses the rhetorical conventions that constitute it. Drawing material from the anti-mining movement formed in the region of Halkidiki, Greece, the article proposes that disputatious rhetoric, through employing the techniques of parrēsia, melodrama and antithesis, proves pertinent to the articulation of dissent, the formation of collective subjects, and the projection of a counter-hegemonic discourse which challenges dominant neoliberal practices and discourses. Disputatious rhetoric, the article concludes, encodes the possibility of social and political change, not least because it impacts on the meaning attributed to actions and prevents the solidification of a single narrative or discourse as commonsensical.

Studying disciplinary corpora to teach the craft of Discussion

Producing publishable quality research articles is a difficult task for novice scholarly writers. Particularly challenging is writing the Discussion/Conclusion section, which requires taking evaluative and interpretive stances on obtained results and substantiating claims regarding the worth of the scholarly contribution of the article to scientific knowledge. Conforming to the expectations of the target disciplinary community adds another dimension to the challenge. Corpus-based genre analysis can foster postgraduate writing instruction by providing insightful descriptions of rhetorical patterns and variation in disciplinary discourse. This paper introduces a pedagogically-oriented cross-disciplinary model of moves and steps devised through top-down corpus analysis. The model was applied to pedagogical materials and tasks designed to enhance genre and corpus-based teaching of Discussion/ Conclusions with an explicit focus on rhetorical conventions.

Galatians 3:1 as an Allusion to Textual Prophecy

As he admonishes the Galatians for their alleged sympathy to a different gospel, Paul makes a curious statement in 3:1b about having visually portrayed Jesus Christ crucified while among them. The meaning of the clause hinges on the sense of the verb προeγράφη. Despite an exact parallel in Rom 15:4 in reference to prophecies “forewritten” in the Judean writings, an overwhelming scholarly consensus construes this clause as “to proclaim or exhibit publicly” and, in turn, views it as an illustration of Paul's vivid rhetorical style. This interpretation has a long history but has gained further support in recent decades, as numerous Pauline scholars have argued for the apostle's familiarity with conventions of classical rhetoric. I argue, however, that the verse's immediate and wider context supports a predictive rendering of the key verb and also that this sense has in the past been excluded on questionable grounds that anticipate its rhetorical framework. Rather, I consider 3:1b an important piece of evidence for the role of textual practices within Paul's religious program, one that aids in situating him amid a broader phenomenon of divination from ostensibly prophetic literary corpora as well as a particular class of religious activity.