Stance And Voice In Written Academic Genres

Stance and Voice in Written Academic Genres brings together a range of perspectives on two of the most important and contested concepts in applied linguistics: stance and voice. International experts provide an accessible, yet authoritative introduction to key issues and debates surrounding these terms.

Stance and Voice in Written Academic Genres brings together a range of perspectives on two of the most important and contested concepts in applied linguistics: stance and voice. International experts provide an accessible, yet authoritative introduction to key issues and debates surrounding these terms.

With millions of people becoming multilingual writers in the globalized digital world, this book helps to empower writers to connect with their readers and project their identities effectively across languages, social contexts, and genres. In a series of closely-related studies that build on each other, we look comprehensively at how writers develop their ability to construct meaning for different audiences in multiple languages. This book, which draws on various approaches (including a social view of writing, multicompetence, adaptive transfer, complex systems theory, motivation, and translanguaging), contributes to on-going efforts to integrate differing approaches to multilingual writing research. This book focusses on how writer agency (control over text construction), audience awareness (ability to meet expectations of prospective readers), and writer identity (projection of image of the writer in the text) progress as multilingual writers gain more experience across languages. The within-writer, cross-sectional text analysis (Chapters 2-5) examines 185 essays written in Japanese and English by eight groups of writers from novice to advanced (N=103), supplemented by insights from these writers’ reflections. We explore how they employ three kinds of text features (discourse types, metadiscourse, and self-representation), which relate to their developing agency, audience, and writer identity in their text construction, and propose a new model for writer voice construction based on those features. The four case studies (Chapters 6-9) focus on five university students and six professionals to examine closely how individual writers’ agency, audience, and identity are interrelated in their text construction in two or three languages and diverse genres, including academic and creative writing. The combined studies provide new insights into multilingual writing development by revealing the close interrelationship among these three principal aspects of writing across languages. They also demonstrate the writers’ multi-directional use of dynamic transfer (reuse and reshaping) for L1, L2, and L3 text construction, and the use of mixed languages L1/L2 or L1/L3 (translanguaging) for composing processes, in addition to the creative power of multilingual writers. One significant contribution of this book is to provide models of innovative ways to analyze text and new directions for writing research that go beyond complexity, accuracy, and fluency. Categories and detailed examples of text features used for writer voice construction (e.g., specific characteristics of Personal, Emergent, and Mature Voice) are helpful for writing teachers and for developing writers to improve ways of conveying their own intended writer identity to the reader. The studies break new ground by extending our analysis of L2 writing to the same writers’ L1 and L3 writing and multiple genres.

The view that academic discourse is, by definition, impersonal has long been superseded. It seems unquestionable now that the interpersonal component of texts, that is, the ways in which the writers project themselves and their audience in the 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). Interpersonality is the key issue around which the articles in this edited book focus on. The eighteen contributions included in this volume provide a wide exploratory view of the many academic genres in which interpersonality is manifested and the various analytical approaches from which the textual manifestation of that interpersonality can be studied. The varied origin of the contributors is also representative of the global interest that the issue of interpersonality arouses in the field of academic discourse analysis at an international level. The present volume constitutes a highly valuable tool for applied linguists and discourse analysts with an interest in EAP as well as for students, instructors and language teachers interested in academic discourse. The book may also be of interest to other agents intervening in the research publication process, such as translators, proofreaders, reviewers and editors.

For undergraduates following any course of study, it is essential to develop the ability to write effectively. Yet the processes by which students become more capable and ready to meet the challenges of writing for employers, the wider public, and their own purposes remain largely invisible. Developing Writers in Higher Education shows how learning to write for various purposes in multiple disciplines leads college students to new levels of competence. This volume draws on an in-depth study of the writing and experiences of 169 University of Michigan undergraduates, using statistical analysis of 322 surveys, qualitative analysis of 131 interviews, use of corpus linguistics on 94 electronic portfolios and 2,406 pieces of student writing, and case studies of individual students to trace the multiple paths taken by student writers. Topics include student writers’ interaction with feedback; perceptions of genre; the role of disciplinary writing; generality and certainty in student writing; students’ concepts of voice and style; students’ understanding of multimodal and digital writing; high school’s influence on college writers; and writing development after college. The digital edition offers samples of student writing, electronic portfolios produced by student writers, transcripts of interviews with students, and explanations of some of the analysis conducted by the contributors. This is an important book for researchers and graduate students in multiple fields. Those in writing studies get an overview of other longitudinal studies as well as key questions currently circulating. For linguists, it demonstrates how corpus linguistics can inform writing studies. Scholars in higher education will gain a new perspective on college student development. The book also adds to current understandings of sociocultural theories of literacy and offers prospective teachers insights into how students learn to write. Finally, for high school teachers, this volume will answer questions about college writing.

Dialogicity in Written Specialised Genres analyses how human beings intentionally establish a network of relations that contribute to the construction of discourse in different genres in academic, promotional and professional domains in English, Spanish and Italian. The chapters in the present volume investigate individual voices, both those assumed by the writer and those attributed to others, and how they act interpersonally and become explicit in the discourse. From a number of different research approaches, contributing authors focus on various textual components: self-mention, impersonation, attribution markers, engagement markers, attitude markers, boosters, hedges, reporting verbs, politeness strategies and citations. The collection is unusual in that it addresses these issues not only from the perspective of English, but also from that of Spanish and Italian. It thus represents a refreshing reassessment of the contrastive dimension in the study of voice and dialogic relations, taking into consideration language, specialised fields and genre. The volume will appeal to researchers interested in language as multidimensional dialogue, particularly with regard to different written specialised texts from different linguistic backgrounds. Novice writers may also find it of help in order to attain a greater understanding of the dialogic nature of writing.

This book bridges the gap between theory and practice in the teaching of academic writing within English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Reviewing existing research on the language of academic writing and drawing respective pedagogical implications, the book focuses on the key issues of theoretical frameworks relevant to teaching academic writing, core written academic genres, the integration of language and content, textual organization and interaction, and formative feedback on writing. The author richly illustrates its key themes with authentic examples from student and expert writing, points out common myths and controversies in the teaching of academic writing, and identifies gaps in current research. To demonstrate how theoretical knowledge on academic writing can be applied in teaching practice, Milada Walková provides examples of suggested teaching activities for a variety of learner levels and contexts. The book serves as a comprehensive yet accessible resource for both novice and experienced EAP practitioners involved in the teaching and scholarship of academic writing.

First-Year Writing describes significant language patterns in college writing today, how they are different from expert academic writing, and how to inform teaching and assessment with corpus-based linguistic and rhetorical genre analysis.