- Email: [email protected]
Academic Writing: At the Interface of Corpus and Discourse
Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 2269–2271
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Pragmatics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma
Book review Academic Writing: At the Interface of Corpus and Discourse Maggie Charles, Diane Pecorari and Susan Hunston (Eds.), Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009, xi+303 pp., ISBN 9781847064363 The volume Academic Writing: At the Interface of Corpus and Discourse, edited by Maggie Charles, Diane Pecorari and Susan Hunston, explores the interaction between two traditions of investigating academic writing that might broadly be called ‘discourse analysis’ and ‘corpus linguistics’. All the contributors in this volume acknowledge the common ground of these two traditions and hold that future research will profit from combining both approaches. In the editors’ introduction, the similarities between discourse analysis and corpus linguistics are drawn: neither is a monolithic whole comprising a single theoretical model and a single method of analysis. This volume reflects the view that discourse and corpus approaches should not be considered as opposing ideas, but as constituting a continuum from topdown to bottom-up, along which researchers situate their individual studies. The editors have arranged the fourteen chapters into three parts. Part I (Chapters 1–5) is concerned with genre and disciplinary discourses; Part II (Chapters 6–9) has a common focus on interpersonal discourses; and Part III (Chapters10–14) deals with learner discourses, and with the ways in which research findings in applied linguistics can contribute to the learning process. Part 1 (Focus on Genre and Disciplinary Discourses) concerns the specificity of the discourse examined and its associated phraseology. This part begins with two chapters that analyze genre. Using a corpus of literature reviews derived from PhD theses in applied linguistics, John Flowerdew and Richard W. Forest carry out a manual analysis of the moves and steps of the literature reviews and then use the corpus technique of determining key keywords as a means of linking moves and steps to their typical lexico-grammatical realizations. In particular, they investigate the phraseology and communicative functions associated with the noun research, thus bridging the gap between generic and lexico-grammatical analysis. Dimitra Koutsantoni also performs a move analysis, but uses a more discourse-based, top-down methodology. She presents a genre analysis of a corpus of cases for support from 14 successful funding applications. Her study argues that grant proposals writing does not take place in isolation but is part of a cluster of genres which includes, for example, research articles and the grant proposal guidelines provided by funding bodies. Chapters 3–5 focus on disciplinary discourses. The study by Jasper Holmes and Hilary Nesi deals with novice academic writing. It makes a distinction between student writing in hard, soft, pure and applied disciplines by using keyword analysis of verbal and mental processes. The results are then compared with those from three applied disciplines: engineering, medicine and hospitality, and leisure and tourism management. Marina Bondi focuses on the phraseological tools employed in a corpus of academic journal articles from the fields of history and biology to identify temporal units. This study moves between corpus and discourse approaches, analyzing not only frequent clusters, but also their co-text. Bondi argues that phraseological sequences blend the notions of time and causality, thereby reflecting the epistemology of the discipline. Diane Pecorari takes a more corpus-based approach, using n-gram analysis to identify lexical bundles in a highly specialized corpus of biology research articles dealing with the topic of candida albicans. She finds both considerably more and considerably longer bundles than previously reported in the literature. Pecorari also shows how the lexical bundles indicate conventionalized discoursal moves within this topic area of biology. The papers comprising Part 2 (Focus on Interpersonal Discourses) share a concern with discourse as an interaction between writer and reader. Ken Hyland explores how writers construct their readers, respond to their expectations as members of the discourse community, and attempt to guide their reactions to the work being presented. His work is based on identifying and examining examples in context and on interviews with student writers. The next chapter, by Ann Hewings, Caroline Coffin and Sarah North, interprets interaction somewhat differently in that the texts it investigates comprise an e-conferencing discussion among students studying Health and Social Care. Hewings et al. carry out two disparate but interweaving forms of analysis. One is a move analysis that treats each constituent text as a whole within a sequence. The second is a corpus analysis that disregards the individuality of the text, though it does respect move boundaries. Maggie Charles applies corpus investigative techniques to work written by postgraduate students in
0378-2166/$ – see front matter doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2011.01.011
2270
Book review
different disciplines. She links adverbs with extended examples of discourse patterning. Although her approach to the data is very much ‘bottom-up’, this does not prevent her from making statements about the ways in which discourse is organized or, indeed, about the preferred discourse strategies in different disciplinary areas. In the final chapter of this section, Ramona Tang takes a ‘discourse’, rather than a ‘corpus’ approach to her texts. She treats each text as a differentiated whole and takes individual text segments as her starting point rather than words or phrases in context. In this way, her approach is a striking contrast to that taken by Charles. Her analysis is based on the model of engagement developed by Peter White (White, 2003; Martin and White, 2005) and deals with the degree of authority demonstrated by various student writers in their essays. She argues persuasively that the combination of particular categories in the engagement model leads to the positive perception of some writers as ‘more authoritative’ than others. Part 3 (Focus on Learner Discourses) has a common interest in the pedagogical applications of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) corpus research. Sylviane Granger and Magali Paquot report the findings of an investigation into the lexical verbs used by students and professional writers. The study shows that these two groups differ strikingly in their use of lexical verbs. The authors demonstrate not only that certain verbs (i.e. lemmas) are overused or underused by the novice writers, but also that distinctive patterns of use exist for specific verb forms. The next chapter, by Philip Shaw, similarly combines quantitative findings on the frequency of a feature with an analysis of its function in context. Shaw’s focus is on linking adverbials which provide metadiscoursal intersentential ties in writing in literary studies. Like Granger and Paquot, Shaw compares the occurrence of these adverbials in a student corpus with similar findings for professional writers. The comparison shows a higher frequency of linking adverbials among the students. Amina Gardezi and Hilary Nesi, on the other hand, examine ‘conjunctive ties’ in the writing of two groups of undergraduates. They find some differences between the two groups in terms of the frequency of conjunctive ties and the position in which they occur. They conclude that these differences are an indication of local preferences in rhetorical style. Sheena Gardner and Jasper Holmes examine the use of section headings in a corpus of assessed writing done by British university students. Their analysis shows that the question of which subject headings are commonly used, or indeed whether they are commonly used, depends on the year of study, discipline and type of assignment. From a pedagogical perspective, these findings provide another useful implement in the writing teacher’s tool kit. In the final chapter of this section, Suganthi John shifts the emphasis from specific textual features to one of their effects, namely the visibility of the academic writer. In this pedagogically motivated study, John first examines how the specific linguistic choices in her corpus (which consists of the methods sections of MA theses) contribute to making the writer more or less visible. She then adopts a case-study approach to show how students and supervisors can work on the issue of identity during the revision process to help novice writers position themselves effectively. The volume closes with a thought-provoking afterword by John Swales. Swales is the acknowledged pioneer of genre approaches to discourse studies in general and to EAP in particular. More recently he has been closely associated with the MICASE academic corpus project at the University of Michigan. He is therefore well placed to see the advantages of exploring the interface between discourse and corpus studies. His paper ends with a challenge in that it concludes controversially that it is ‘‘somewhat easier for discourse analysis to incorporate corpus linguistics than for corpus linguistics to extend their textual horizons to encompass the discoursal plane’’ (p. 294). While there is a growing body of literature discussing the interaction between corpus linguistics and discourse analysis (see e.g. Baker, 2006; Adel and Reppen, 2008; Biber et al., 2007), Academic Writing: at the Interface of Corpus and Discourse is the first volume devoted to a systematic exploration of the marriage between corpus linguistics and discourse analysis. There are several reasons why it will benefit future research: First, most of the contributors in this volume are well known experts in the fields of academic discourse, corpus linguistics and discourse analysis, including Swales, Hunston, Hyland, Mondi, and Charles, to name just a few, who are well placed to explore the interface of discourse and corpus studies. Second, by focusing on the interface between corpus and discourse approaches, this volume has clear and direct pedagogical implications. Many of the studies, especially the studies in Part 3 (Focus on Learner Discourses), are driven not just by the desire to investigate features of academic writing, but, more importantly, by the need to bring the findings to the classroom. This pedagogically oriented concern makes this volume accessible for both academics and practicing teachers. Third, this comprehensive volume covers a wide range of genres, including literature reviews, grant proposals, university assignments, and research articles, and of disciplines, including biology, history, engineering, medicine, and tourism management. In addition, it expands our knowledge of specific features of writing including restrictive adverbs, engagement features, conjunctive ties. Future researchers will profit from the detailed analyses and the various methodologies employed in each chapter. All in all, the volume is a timely and useful contribution for any corpus linguist, discourse analyst, and especially for teachers of English for Academic Purposes. It will not merely serve as a course and reference book for students and researchers interested in the subject, but also set the scene for further studies on academic discourses by combining corpus linguistics with discourse analysis. However, as Swales points out, ‘‘the complementarities between the two approaches are more likely to be hard-won achievements rather than an easily-assumed precondition (p. 294)’’. References Adel, Annelie, Reppen, Randi, 2008. Corpora and Discourse: The Challenges of Different Settings. Benjamins, Amsterdam. Baker, Paul, 2006. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. Continuum, London.
Book review
2271
Biber, Douglas, Connor, Ulla, Upton, Thomas, 2007. Discourse on the Move. Benjamins, Amsterdam. Martin, James, White, Peter, 2005. The Language of Evaluation. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. White, Peter, 2003. Beyond modality and hedging: a dialogic view of language of intersubjective stance. Text 23, 259–284. Linxiu Yang is currently an associate professor at the Foreign Languages School of Shanxi University, China. She obtained her PhD in July 2009 from Xiamen University. Her current research interests include functional linguistics and discourse analysis. She has published in the areas of discourse studies, functional linguistics and foreign language teaching and learning in the Journal of Pragmatics and Discourse Studies.
Linxiu Yang Foreign Languages School, Shanxi University, Wucheng Road, Taiyuan, Shanxi Province 030006, PR China E-mail address: [email protected] Available online 26 February 2011
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Pragmatics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma
Book review Academic Writing: At the Interface of Corpus and Discourse Maggie Charles, Diane Pecorari and Susan Hunston (Eds.), Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009, xi+303 pp., ISBN 9781847064363 The volume Academic Writing: At the Interface of Corpus and Discourse, edited by Maggie Charles, Diane Pecorari and Susan Hunston, explores the interaction between two traditions of investigating academic writing that might broadly be called ‘discourse analysis’ and ‘corpus linguistics’. All the contributors in this volume acknowledge the common ground of these two traditions and hold that future research will profit from combining both approaches. In the editors’ introduction, the similarities between discourse analysis and corpus linguistics are drawn: neither is a monolithic whole comprising a single theoretical model and a single method of analysis. This volume reflects the view that discourse and corpus approaches should not be considered as opposing ideas, but as constituting a continuum from topdown to bottom-up, along which researchers situate their individual studies. The editors have arranged the fourteen chapters into three parts. Part I (Chapters 1–5) is concerned with genre and disciplinary discourses; Part II (Chapters 6–9) has a common focus on interpersonal discourses; and Part III (Chapters10–14) deals with learner discourses, and with the ways in which research findings in applied linguistics can contribute to the learning process. Part 1 (Focus on Genre and Disciplinary Discourses) concerns the specificity of the discourse examined and its associated phraseology. This part begins with two chapters that analyze genre. Using a corpus of literature reviews derived from PhD theses in applied linguistics, John Flowerdew and Richard W. Forest carry out a manual analysis of the moves and steps of the literature reviews and then use the corpus technique of determining key keywords as a means of linking moves and steps to their typical lexico-grammatical realizations. In particular, they investigate the phraseology and communicative functions associated with the noun research, thus bridging the gap between generic and lexico-grammatical analysis. Dimitra Koutsantoni also performs a move analysis, but uses a more discourse-based, top-down methodology. She presents a genre analysis of a corpus of cases for support from 14 successful funding applications. Her study argues that grant proposals writing does not take place in isolation but is part of a cluster of genres which includes, for example, research articles and the grant proposal guidelines provided by funding bodies. Chapters 3–5 focus on disciplinary discourses. The study by Jasper Holmes and Hilary Nesi deals with novice academic writing. It makes a distinction between student writing in hard, soft, pure and applied disciplines by using keyword analysis of verbal and mental processes. The results are then compared with those from three applied disciplines: engineering, medicine and hospitality, and leisure and tourism management. Marina Bondi focuses on the phraseological tools employed in a corpus of academic journal articles from the fields of history and biology to identify temporal units. This study moves between corpus and discourse approaches, analyzing not only frequent clusters, but also their co-text. Bondi argues that phraseological sequences blend the notions of time and causality, thereby reflecting the epistemology of the discipline. Diane Pecorari takes a more corpus-based approach, using n-gram analysis to identify lexical bundles in a highly specialized corpus of biology research articles dealing with the topic of candida albicans. She finds both considerably more and considerably longer bundles than previously reported in the literature. Pecorari also shows how the lexical bundles indicate conventionalized discoursal moves within this topic area of biology. The papers comprising Part 2 (Focus on Interpersonal Discourses) share a concern with discourse as an interaction between writer and reader. Ken Hyland explores how writers construct their readers, respond to their expectations as members of the discourse community, and attempt to guide their reactions to the work being presented. His work is based on identifying and examining examples in context and on interviews with student writers. The next chapter, by Ann Hewings, Caroline Coffin and Sarah North, interprets interaction somewhat differently in that the texts it investigates comprise an e-conferencing discussion among students studying Health and Social Care. Hewings et al. carry out two disparate but interweaving forms of analysis. One is a move analysis that treats each constituent text as a whole within a sequence. The second is a corpus analysis that disregards the individuality of the text, though it does respect move boundaries. Maggie Charles applies corpus investigative techniques to work written by postgraduate students in
0378-2166/$ – see front matter doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2011.01.011
2270
Book review
different disciplines. She links adverbs with extended examples of discourse patterning. Although her approach to the data is very much ‘bottom-up’, this does not prevent her from making statements about the ways in which discourse is organized or, indeed, about the preferred discourse strategies in different disciplinary areas. In the final chapter of this section, Ramona Tang takes a ‘discourse’, rather than a ‘corpus’ approach to her texts. She treats each text as a differentiated whole and takes individual text segments as her starting point rather than words or phrases in context. In this way, her approach is a striking contrast to that taken by Charles. Her analysis is based on the model of engagement developed by Peter White (White, 2003; Martin and White, 2005) and deals with the degree of authority demonstrated by various student writers in their essays. She argues persuasively that the combination of particular categories in the engagement model leads to the positive perception of some writers as ‘more authoritative’ than others. Part 3 (Focus on Learner Discourses) has a common interest in the pedagogical applications of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) corpus research. Sylviane Granger and Magali Paquot report the findings of an investigation into the lexical verbs used by students and professional writers. The study shows that these two groups differ strikingly in their use of lexical verbs. The authors demonstrate not only that certain verbs (i.e. lemmas) are overused or underused by the novice writers, but also that distinctive patterns of use exist for specific verb forms. The next chapter, by Philip Shaw, similarly combines quantitative findings on the frequency of a feature with an analysis of its function in context. Shaw’s focus is on linking adverbials which provide metadiscoursal intersentential ties in writing in literary studies. Like Granger and Paquot, Shaw compares the occurrence of these adverbials in a student corpus with similar findings for professional writers. The comparison shows a higher frequency of linking adverbials among the students. Amina Gardezi and Hilary Nesi, on the other hand, examine ‘conjunctive ties’ in the writing of two groups of undergraduates. They find some differences between the two groups in terms of the frequency of conjunctive ties and the position in which they occur. They conclude that these differences are an indication of local preferences in rhetorical style. Sheena Gardner and Jasper Holmes examine the use of section headings in a corpus of assessed writing done by British university students. Their analysis shows that the question of which subject headings are commonly used, or indeed whether they are commonly used, depends on the year of study, discipline and type of assignment. From a pedagogical perspective, these findings provide another useful implement in the writing teacher’s tool kit. In the final chapter of this section, Suganthi John shifts the emphasis from specific textual features to one of their effects, namely the visibility of the academic writer. In this pedagogically motivated study, John first examines how the specific linguistic choices in her corpus (which consists of the methods sections of MA theses) contribute to making the writer more or less visible. She then adopts a case-study approach to show how students and supervisors can work on the issue of identity during the revision process to help novice writers position themselves effectively. The volume closes with a thought-provoking afterword by John Swales. Swales is the acknowledged pioneer of genre approaches to discourse studies in general and to EAP in particular. More recently he has been closely associated with the MICASE academic corpus project at the University of Michigan. He is therefore well placed to see the advantages of exploring the interface between discourse and corpus studies. His paper ends with a challenge in that it concludes controversially that it is ‘‘somewhat easier for discourse analysis to incorporate corpus linguistics than for corpus linguistics to extend their textual horizons to encompass the discoursal plane’’ (p. 294). While there is a growing body of literature discussing the interaction between corpus linguistics and discourse analysis (see e.g. Baker, 2006; Adel and Reppen, 2008; Biber et al., 2007), Academic Writing: at the Interface of Corpus and Discourse is the first volume devoted to a systematic exploration of the marriage between corpus linguistics and discourse analysis. There are several reasons why it will benefit future research: First, most of the contributors in this volume are well known experts in the fields of academic discourse, corpus linguistics and discourse analysis, including Swales, Hunston, Hyland, Mondi, and Charles, to name just a few, who are well placed to explore the interface of discourse and corpus studies. Second, by focusing on the interface between corpus and discourse approaches, this volume has clear and direct pedagogical implications. Many of the studies, especially the studies in Part 3 (Focus on Learner Discourses), are driven not just by the desire to investigate features of academic writing, but, more importantly, by the need to bring the findings to the classroom. This pedagogically oriented concern makes this volume accessible for both academics and practicing teachers. Third, this comprehensive volume covers a wide range of genres, including literature reviews, grant proposals, university assignments, and research articles, and of disciplines, including biology, history, engineering, medicine, and tourism management. In addition, it expands our knowledge of specific features of writing including restrictive adverbs, engagement features, conjunctive ties. Future researchers will profit from the detailed analyses and the various methodologies employed in each chapter. All in all, the volume is a timely and useful contribution for any corpus linguist, discourse analyst, and especially for teachers of English for Academic Purposes. It will not merely serve as a course and reference book for students and researchers interested in the subject, but also set the scene for further studies on academic discourses by combining corpus linguistics with discourse analysis. However, as Swales points out, ‘‘the complementarities between the two approaches are more likely to be hard-won achievements rather than an easily-assumed precondition (p. 294)’’. References Adel, Annelie, Reppen, Randi, 2008. Corpora and Discourse: The Challenges of Different Settings. Benjamins, Amsterdam. Baker, Paul, 2006. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. Continuum, London.
Book review
2271
Biber, Douglas, Connor, Ulla, Upton, Thomas, 2007. Discourse on the Move. Benjamins, Amsterdam. Martin, James, White, Peter, 2005. The Language of Evaluation. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. White, Peter, 2003. Beyond modality and hedging: a dialogic view of language of intersubjective stance. Text 23, 259–284. Linxiu Yang is currently an associate professor at the Foreign Languages School of Shanxi University, China. She obtained her PhD in July 2009 from Xiamen University. Her current research interests include functional linguistics and discourse analysis. She has published in the areas of discourse studies, functional linguistics and foreign language teaching and learning in the Journal of Pragmatics and Discourse Studies.
Linxiu Yang Foreign Languages School, Shanxi University, Wucheng Road, Taiyuan, Shanxi Province 030006, PR China E-mail address: [email protected] Available online 26 February 2011