ENGAGING WITH THE LITERATURE, ENGAGING WITH THE READER: EVALUATION IN ACADEMIC WRITING

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NFEAP 2011

Norwegian Forum for English for Academic Purposes (NFEAP), Summer Seminar, June 9-10, 2011

Daniel Lees FryerDepartment of Languages and Literatures, University of Gothenburg

Center for Education Research and Development, Oslo University College

[email protected]

ENGAGING WITH THE LITERATURE, ENGAGING WITH THE READER: EVALUATION IN ACADEMIC WRITING

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NFEAP 2011 [email protected] www.gu.se

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Introduction

• Background– Dialogism, Evaluation, and Academic Discourse

• Summary of Part of Ongoing PhD Project– Engagement in Medical Research Discourse

• The Dialogic Perspective in EAP – A Brief Example

• Concluding Remarks

• References

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Dialogism, Evaluation, and Academic Discourse

• All utterances are dialogic – they occur against a “background of other […] utterances on the same theme, a background made up of contradictory opinions, points of view, and value judgments” (Bakhtin 1981: 281).

• => all utterances are thus stanced, attitudinal, or evaluative in some way (Martin & White 2005: 92; Hunston & Thompson 1999: 2; Hyland 2005: 174).

• Way in which researchers engage with other voices in the discourse, i.e. the literature and the reader, is integral part of social practice of communicating research – important implications for academic literacy programs such as EAP

• How is this dialogism realized in academic discourse?

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PhD Project: “Intersubjective Positioning in Medical Research Discourse”

• Case in point: medical research discourse – ELF in research and education in this field, tradition of EMP, large research output ≈> interdiscursive influence on other domains; medical research articles (RAs) – primary site for construction/negotiation of knowledge in field (MacDonald 2002)

• Previous related studies on medical research discourse focus on specific linguistic resources such as modality, hedging, and attribution (e.g. Salager-Meyer 1994,1999, Thomas & Hawes 1994). Generally little emphasis on potential interrelation of these and other resources and esp. on their dialogic relevance (White 2003; cf. Hyland 2005, interaction in academic discourse)

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PhD Project: “Intersubjective Positioning in Medical Research Discourse”

• Criticisms of some research approaches to resources dealt with under headings of hedging, modality, attribution: – “accounts of epistemic modals and similar resources […] often

assume that the sole function of these wordings is to reveal the speaker/writer’s state of mind or knowledge, to indicate that the speaker/writer is uncertain or tentative and is not committed to the truth value of the proposition” (White 2003: 261)

– These resources “have largely only been considered from a perspective of theories of language which view the individual, psychological, and self-expressive function of language as primary and as fundamental, and which, in many cases, see meaning as ultimately a matter of ‘truth conditions’ and not of social relationships” (Martin & White 2005: 94)

• Could these comments also apply to EAP teaching material?

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Fig 1. System Network for Engagement/Heterogloss; features in bold, glosses in italic

Theoretical framework: SFG, appraisal (Halliday 1978; Halliday & Matthiessen 2004; Martin & White 2005)

Adapted from Martin & White (2005: 134)

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The Dialogic Perspective in EAP: A Brief Example

• Example from a semester-long course in academic writing at OUC – Five full-day sessions, over 10-wk period, plus exam (submission

of revised text + reflection statement + presentation) (6 ECTS)– Nine participants, mixed-discipline group, PhD candidates and

other academic staff– Core material: participants’ work-in-progress RAs and reference

RAs• Session 4: Stance and Engagement• Pre-session preparation: read Hyland (2005) and selected pages in

Swales & Feak (2004) – other supportive material provided and discussed during session: uefap.com, Hyland (2004)

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• Hyland’s (2005: 177, fig. 1) model of “interaction,” inspired by Bakhtin’s dialogism and intertextuality (ibid. 176) – a middle ground between “truth value” approaches and dialogism modeled by appraisal framework?

• Overlap among categories, multifunctionality• Extensive examples of category realizations

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In-session work:• Discussing Hyland (2005): questions, thoughts, summarizing of main

points• Identifying markers of interaction in reference RAs, using lists

compiled from Hyland (2004, 2005)• Describing function of these markers: Why are they used?

Similar/different functions within and across texts? Alternative ways of expressing these interaction markers?

• Same/similar procedure and questions for participant’s own writing• How do ref RAs and participant’s RA compare?• Participants talk about what they found, comparing with each other

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• Participants’ responses: – Usually positive to Hyland (2005) – easy to read, accessible,

particularly after having read relevant sections in Swales & Feak (2004)

– Some participants focus on single resources across RAs/own writing, others focus on identifying as many interaction markers as possible

– Some compare frequencies of features in ref RA with those in their own writing – equate frequency with quality, e.g. “they had 12 mays, and I only had 2” – rather than looking at functionality

– Interesting discussions based on unexpected findings and cross-disciplinary differences/similarities: How do different authors/disciplines use interaction markers?

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Concluding Remarks

• Dialogic perspective:– seems to complement existing approaches to modality, hedging,

attribution– also complements notions of discourse community, social practice,

social construction of knowledge– may be intuitive for learner: accounts for language and

communication as social phenomena– “I find the perspective [of Hyland 2005] interesting, maintaining that

writers use language to position themselves and interact with the reader, not only trying to present an external reality” (comment by course participant in reflection statement).

• Dialogic approach meant to complement other approaches – but different dialogic approaches proposed (e.g. Hyland 2005, Martin & White 2005). Assuming dialogic approach is a valuable one, what would be best-suited model for EAP? Group differences?

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References

• Bakhtin MM. 1981. The dialogic imagination. Emerson C, Holquist M (trans). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

• Halliday MAK. 1978. Language as social semiotic. London: Arnold.• Halliday MAK, Matthiessen CMIM. 2004. Introduction to functional

grammar. London: Arnold.• Hunston S, Thompson G (eds). 1999. Evaluation in text: authorial

stance and the construction of discourse. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

• Hyland K. 2004. Disciplinary discourses: social interactions in academic writing. Ann Arbor, MA: University of Michigan Press.

• Hyland K. 2005. Stance and engagement: a model of interaction in academic discourse. Discourse Studies 7: 173-192.

• MacDonald MN. 2002. Pedagogy, pathology and ideology: the production, transmission and reproduction of medical discourse. Discourse & Society 13: 447-467.

THANKS!

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References

• Martin JR, White PRR. 2005. The language of evaluation: appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

• Salager-Meyer F. 1992. A text-type and move analysis study of verb tense and modality distribution in medical English abstracts. English for Specific Purposes 11: 93-113.

• Salager-Meyer F. 1994. Hedges and textual communicative function in medical English written discourse. English for Specific Purposes 13: 149-170.

• Swales JM, Feak CB. 2004. Academic writing for graduate students: essential tasks and skills. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

• Thomas S, Hawes TP. 1994. Reporting verbs in medical journal articles. English for Specific Purposes 13: 129-148.

• White PRR. 2003. Beyond modality and hedging: a dialogic view of the language of intersubjective stance. Text 23(2): 259-284.

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ENGAGING WITH THE LITERATURE, ENGAGING WITH THE READER: EVALUATION IN ACADEMIC WRITING