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.
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TL;DR: Not surprisingly, Spanish researchers across all domains expressed a similar degree of motivation when they write research articles in English, and it is shown that the target scientific audience is a key factor in understanding the choice of publication language.
Abstract: Previous studies have reported the increased use of English as the "lingua franca" for academic purposes among non-Anglophone researchers. But despite data that confirm this trend, little is known about the reasons why researchers decide to publish their results in English rather than in their first language. The aim of this study is to determine the influence of researchers' scientific domain on their motivation to publish in English. The results are based on a large-scale survey of Spanish postdoctoral researchers at four different universities and one research centre, and reflect responses from 1717 researchers about their difficulties, motivations, attitudes and publication strategies. Researchers' publication experiences as corresponding authors of articles in English and in their first language are strongly related to their scientific domain. But surprisingly, Spanish researchers across all domains expressed a similar degree of motivation when they write research articles in English. They perceive a strong association between this language and the desire for their research to be recognized and rewarded. Our study also shows that the target scientific audience is a key factor in understanding the choice of publication language. The implications of our findings go beyond the field of linguistics and are relevant to studies of scientific productivity and visibility, the quality and impact of research, and research assessment policies.
67 citations
TL;DR: This survey shows how incorporating linguistic insights, discourse information, and other contextual phenomena, in combination with the statistical exploitation of data, can result in an improvement over approaches that take advantage of only one of these perspectives.
Abstract: The study of evaluation, affect, and subjectivity is a multidisciplinary enterprise, including sociology, psychology, economics, linguistics, and computer science. A number of excellent computational linguistics and linguistic surveys of the field exist. Most surveys, however, do not bring the two disciplines together to show how methods from linguistics can benefit computational sentiment analysis systems. In this survey, we show how incorporating linguistic insights, discourse information, and other contextual phenomena, in combination with the statistical exploitation of data, can result in an improvement over approaches that take advantage of only one of these perspectives. We first provide a comprehensive introduction to evaluative language from both a linguistic and computational perspective. We then argue that the standard computational definition of the concept of evaluative language neglects the dynamic nature of evaluation, in which the interpretation of a given evaluation depends on linguistic and extra-linguistic contextual factors. We thus propose a dynamic definition that incorporates update functions. The update functions allow for different contextual aspects to be incorporated into the calculation of sentiment for evaluative words or expressions, and can be applied at all levels of discourse. We explore each level and highlight which linguistic aspects contribute to accurate extraction of sentiment. We end the review by outlining what we believe the future directions of sentiment analysis are, and the role that discourse and contextual information need to play.
67 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyzed the rhetorical structure of 67 engineering research articles from five subdisciplines: structural engineering, environmental engineering, electrical engineering, chemical engineering, and computer science.
67 citations
01 Jan 2001
TL;DR: The empirical studies reviewed in this article show that over the past two decades research on learning to write in second languages has expanded and refined conceptualizations of the qualities of texts that learners produce, the processes of students' composing, and, increasingly, the specific sociocultural contexts in which this learning occurs.
Abstract: The empirical studies reviewed in this article show that over the past two decades research on learning to write in second languages has expanded and refined conceptualizations of (a) the qualities of texts that learners produce, (b) the processes of students' composing, and, increasingly, (c) the specific sociocultural contexts in which this learning occurs. Research has tended to treat each of these dimensions separately, though they are integrally interrelated. Certain recommendations for instruction follow from this inquiry, but the conclusiveness and comprehensiveness of such recommendations are constrained by the multi -faceted nature of second-language writing and the extensive variability associated both with literacy and with languages internationally.
67 citations
TL;DR: This paper investigated extended effects of an EAP genre-based reading course on eight adult non-native speakers, using student interviews collected 1 year after instruction, examined whether the class genres (hard news story, feature article, textbook, and research article) were connected to students' subsequent reading requirements and interests; what students remembered about genres taught in the course; and how they perceived the instruction had influenced their L2 reading.
66 citations