scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question

Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings / John M. Swales

01 Jan 1991-Vol. 1991, Iss: 1991, pp 1-99
About: The article was published on 1991-01-01 and is currently open access. It has received 5640 citations till now.
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The report for decision making as discussed by the authors is one of the most popular decision-making genres in the literature. But it shares some common ground with the proposal, the report of scientific experiment, and even the persuasive essay, yet these genres differ.
Abstract: The report for decision making shares some common ground with the proposal, the report of scientific experiment, and even the persuasive essay, yet these genres differ. Recognizing these differences is necessary for effective inquiry, pedagogy, and decision making. The genres are means of solving different types of problems: practical, empirical, and theoretical. They serve different aims: action, demonstration, and conviction. The proposal, like the report, may solve practical problems, but the proposal advocates, whereas the report inquires. These genres all embody assumptions about problem solving and inquiry in their forms. Applying the problem-solving goals and methods of the proposal, experimental report, or essay to the report for decision making compromises the quality of the inquiry and of the resulting decision. Complex problems for decision making require a rhetorical method of inquiry based on Aristotle's special topics. The report genre reflects the invention heuristics and analysis in its form.

40 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper used qualitative interviews in an attempt to account for academic writers' motivations for using the pronouns "I" and "We" and to describe the textual effects that each case of pronouns helps to create, such as making the readership feel included and involved in the writers' argument; making the text more accessible; hedge writers' claims; explaining writers' logic or method regarding their arguments or procedures; signal writers' intentions and arguments; indicating the contribution and newsworthiness of the research; and allowing the writer to inject a personal tenor into the text.
Abstract: In contrast to the numerous corpus-based studies of pronouns in academic writing, this paper uses qualitative interviews in an attempt to account for academic writers' motivations for using the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘we’ and to describe the textual effects that each case of ‘I’ and ‘we’ helps to create. Five political scientists took part in the research, commenting upon their pronoun use in one of their own journal articles and also in the other informants' texts. Seven textual effects that ‘I’ and ‘we’ help to construct are identified and described. ‘I’ and ‘we’ are said to help (i) make the readership feel included and involved in the writers' argument; (ii) make the text more accessible; (iii) convey a tentative tone and hedge writers' claims; (iv) explicate the writers' logic or method regarding their arguments or procedures; (v) signal writers' intentions and arguments; (vi) indicate the contribution and newsworthiness of the research; and (vii) allow the writer to inject a personal tenor into the text. The insights and implications of the study are discussed and the paper closes by proposing that similar interview-based studies could be used for pedagogical purposes in English for academic purposes (EAP) contexts.

40 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Through the microanalysis of a pediatric resident’s note, it is demonstrated how physicians use evidential markers, including the passive voice and agentless constructions, to construct frameworks of credibility and responsibility that both underlie and enable medical work.
Abstract: The practice of medicine involves obtaining, evaluating and analyzing information drawn from a variety of sources; thus physicians assess and act upon information that varies in terms of both reliability and the extent to which it may be directly perceived. In the hospital setting, physicians’ progress notes provide a record of this process that serves as a primary means of communication between treaters who are not co-present with one another; accordingly, in order to permit independent evaluation of the information they contain, physicians have developed a repertoire of linguistic devices to express differing attitudes towards the information that their notes convey. In this article, through the microanalysis of a pediatric resident’s note, I demonstrate how physicians use evidential markers, including the passive voice and agentless constructions, to construct frameworks of credibility and responsibility that both underlie and enable medical work. These grammatical devices permit the physician-reader t...

40 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
03 Jan 2001
TL;DR: The authors identify from longitudinal interviews with members of a distributed, computer-supported learning environment, three dimensions of interactivity that revolve around speaker-audience relations: visibility (the means, methods and opportunities for presentation), relation (the tie between speaker and audience, and among audience co-participants), and co-presence (the temporal, virtual and/or physical copresence of speaking and listening participants).
Abstract: Going forward from N. Frye's (1969) "Anatomy of Criticism", we derive from genre literature the idea that radicals, i.e. root characteristics, of persistent conversation exist and can help define important aspects of such conversations. We identify from longitudinal interviews with members of a distributed, computer-supported learning environment, three dimensions of interactivity that revolve around speaker-audience relations. We propose three "radicals of presentation" in persistent conversation: (1) visibility (the means, methods and opportunities for presentation, addressing primarily speakers' concerns with the presentation of self); (2) relation (the tie between speaker and audience, and among audience co-participants, addressing the speaker's concerns with the range and identity of the audience, and audience members' concerns about relations with each other); and (3) co-presence (the temporal, virtual and/or physical co-presence of speaking and listening participants, addressing concerns about being with others at the same time and place, and giving and receiving immediate feedback). We conclude with implications for social and technical design.

40 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Aug 2014-System
TL;DR: It is found that explicit genre instruction on rhetorical moves and linguistic features helped the student gain formal knowledge, process knowledge, and rhetorical knowledge, albeit to different degrees, in a genre-based research writing course.

40 citations