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
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe an interdisciplinary comparison of the extent, form, and function of boosters in research articles (RAs) across six academic disciplines: Business, Language and Linguistics, Public and Social Administration, Law, Physics, and Environmental Science.
Abstract: Boosting, using terms such as obviously and of course, is a communicative strategy for expressing firm commitment to statements. This article describes an interdisciplinary comparison of the extent, form, and function of boosters in research articles (RAs) across six academic disciplines: Business, Language and Linguistics, Public and Social Administration, Law, Physics, and Environmental Science. The investigation involved quantitative and qualitative analysis of a 1,250,000 words corpus gathered from 216 articles published in leading journals (six journals from each discipline and six articles from each journal). It was found that the boosters in the corpus played a significant role in the efforts of authors to persuade readers of the validity of their claims. The highest proportion of boosters was found in Language and Linguistics and the lowest in Environmental Science. Considerable interdisciplinary variation was also found in the form of boosters: for example, a different type and narrower range of ...
33 citations
TL;DR: The authors defined pragmatic competence as the ability to correctly identify pragmatic inferred effects in the form of implicated conclusions, eg irony, humour, contempt, respect, favouring, or incriminating attitudes conveyed by different text types.
33 citations
01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: In this article, Negretti et al. introduce metacognitief genrebewustzijn, a concept that is used by academisch lezers and schrijvers in a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) program.
Abstract: Metacognitief genrebewustzijn verhogen bij academische L2 lezers en schrijvers Deze dissertatie richt zich op de ontwikkeling van metacognitief genrebewustzijn, een concept geintroduceerd door Negretti en Kuteeva (2011) dat genrebewustzijn koppelt aan metacognitie (zie ook Johns, 2008 en Devitt, 2004). Het is aangetoond dat metacognitief genrebewustzijn van belang is bij het ontwikkelen van het vermogen van leerders om academische teksten te lezen en te produceren (zie Negretti & Kuteeva, 2011). Door gebruik van een multi-method benadering – een combinatie van kwantitatieve en kwalitatieve methoden – onderzochten wij de ontwikkeling van metacognitief genrebewustzijn en de mate waarin dit bijdraagt aan academisch lezen en schrijven bij Engelsetaalleerders in een TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) programma in Honduras. De onderzoeksresultaten laten zien dat L2 leerders voor het grootste deel declaratief en procedureel genrebewustzijn ontwikkelen, in ruime mate en op verschillende manieren. L2 leerders hebben echter moeite met het ontwikkelen van conditioneel genrebewustzijn, dat wil zeggen het flexibel toepassen van kennis van genre-gebaseerde kenmerken en retorische aspecten bij andere academische taken en situaties. L2 leerders demonstreren de transfer van metacognitief genrebewustzijn bij de interpretatie van academische teksten. Eveneens vertonen ze een hogere mate van declaratieve en procedurele kennis in vergelijking met conditionele kennis van genre-baseerde kenmerken. Met betrekking tot de productie van academische genres, laten de L2 leerders transfer zien van metacognitief genrebewustzijn, in verschillende mate en op verschillende manieren, en ook nu wordt minimale conditionele kennis gedemonstreerd in de overdracht van genre-gebaseerde kennis naar complexe taken. De studie benadrukt de noodzaak voor verder onderzoek naar genrebewustzijn en wat de invloed ervan is op academische lees- en schrijfvaardigheid van L2 leerders.
33 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a study on contrastive rhetoric reports on metadiscourse functions in sociology articles in Persian and English has been conducted and the results reveal that the Persian writers of sociology texts are less interested in explicitly orienting the readers and some of the main points in an article, especially in the concluding section, are left for the readers to infer.
Abstract: This study on contrastive rhetoric reports on metadiscourse functions in sociology articles in Persian and English. The results have revealed a higher number of metadiscourse elements in the English texts. Among the different metadiscourse elements used, text connectors are the most frequently employed in both languages. Modality markers are the second most frequent in both languages although the English writers used nearly twice the number of these markers. Overall, it is found that the frequency of textual metadiscourse markers is greater than the interpersonal markers in both language samples. It was further revealed that the Persian writers of sociology texts are less interested in explicitly orienting the readers and some of the main points in an article, especially in the concluding section, are left for the readers to infer. This, we believe, is the result of less reliance on academic writing in the educational system of the country. Instead, the Iranians are largely encouraged to employ a flowery language and rhetoric to decorate their writing in their school years which makes them less attentive of their readers.
33 citations
TL;DR: This article examined the number of relative clauses and the percentages of subordinate clauses in two sets of research reports from the Physical Review, one from the earliest years (1893-1901) and one from 1980.
Abstract: This study examines the numbers of relative clauses and the percentages of subordinate clauses they comprise in two sets of research reports from the Physical Review, one from the earliest years (1893-1901) and one from 1980. It finds only a slight decrease in percentages of relative clauses from the first set of articles to the second, but it also finds some striking differences in patterns of what the relative clauses modify, particularly in references to experimental instruments and materials, experimental results or products, and equations. This study also shows evidence of a stylistic shift between the two sets of articles, from what Halliday (1987a) calls the dynamic style (that reflects processes, happenings, and actions) to the synoptic style (that reflects structures, categories, and hierarchies). It speculates that this shift would have been motivated by later physicists' wish to use tenseless expressions and to communicate effectively in an increasingly built-up web of information.
33 citations