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Ignacio Vazquez-Persuasion and context: The Construction of interpersonality in Academic Discourse
The view that academic discourse is, by definition, impersonal has long been superseded.
It seems unquestionable now that the interpersonal component of texts (i.e. the ways in which writers project themselves and their audience into discourse) is an essential factor determining the success of scholarly communication and has become a fundamental issue in the field of English for Academic Purposes (EAP).
The huge attention devoted to the study of the interpersonal dimension in academic discourse can be related to the impact that social constructionist theories have had on the way we perceive scientific texts. Traditionally, scientific writing has been regarded as the objective report of scientific facts derived from the correct application of research procedures.
However, following social construction theories, there is more to writing an RA than merely using words to represent an external objective piece of data. Reality is considered to be constructed socially, as nature has no language of its own in which it can speak to us (Toulmin 1972: 5), and therefore there is no secure means of distinguishing between objective observation and subjective inference.
These views have significant implications for the context of research writing, because, if research results are open to subjective interpretation, it can be assumed that readers play an active role in accepting or rejecting the claims and conclusions put forward by academic authors, and particularly by authors of an RA (Hyland 1999).
Accordingly, rather than simply transmitting objective information, academic writers have to take into account their readers and try to influence their reactions to the text. More particularly, scholars hoping to publish their research need to enact certain interpersonal rhetorical resources in their texts in order to persuade the readers about the validity of the writers' interpretations and to facilitate its publication.
In this lecture my intention is to provide a wide view of how this persuasive process takes place by presenting the research findings of the InterLAE research group which has explored the way interpersonal rhetorical features are used in research articles and abstracts from different fields of knowledge by adopting different contrastive perspectives of analysis:
interdisciplinary, intercultural and intergeneric.
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Eli Hinkel, - 6-09-2011- 11.30
Modern Efficiency Techniques Applied to Language Teaching
However unique the architecture, no modern structure is ever built completely from scratch. Incorporation of some prefabricated pieces enables builders and other manufacturers to quickly and efficiently create effective structures or products. Much recent research on formulaic expressions and collocations has shown that Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) and academic discourse and text can be successfully built with a broad range of pre-fab sentence chunks and commonly-occurring expressions as well. This presentation suggests a number of practical applications of current research to make the teaching of LSP and academic language more efficient and effective.
An easy technique that language teachers and researchers can rely on with great effect is to have students build up a range of stock expressions to be used in context, as needed. For example, Smith (2001) shows/notes/comments/states that//According to Jones (2002)//Based on Jones (2002)//the study/research shows are equally grammatical and can be used in similar contexts of citing sources. In addition, a stock of common active and passive phrases, sentence chunks, or collocational expressions can be combined with other pre-fab constructions to use both in speaking or writing: e.g. in combinations with modal verbs or infinitives such as can/may be made/used/done, is considered to be/shown to be/known to be.
Numerous teaching activities and suggestions include what phrase and sentence chunks and formulaic expressions are efficient to teach and why, and how to teach them. Additional materials will provide extensive lists of pre-fab sentence chunks and ubiquitous expressions that teachers can use as needed. The presentation also covers several relatively easy techniques that teachers and researchers can use to develop their own lists of formulaic expressions that can be highly fruitful for teaching LSP and academic language efficiently.
