Options
A cross-disciplinary and cross-genre study of engagement in research articles and textbooks
Author
Choo, Li Lin
Supervisor
Weninger, Csilla
Abstract
Previous research has discussed how language use varies across different disciplines and genres in academic writing. While much of the existing research on the subject of disciplinarity has focused on how we can deprivilege some traditional notions of knowledge or has commented briefly on the emergence of a transdisciplinary mode of knowledge production, more research can be done to study the theorising, teaching and learning involved in how writers engage their readers within a discipline. With the growing awareness of how academic discourse is a site for interpersonal negotiation of meaning and dialogistic positioning, this study builds on the prior theories of Engagement, Genre, and Disciplinarity to examine how academics in two different disciplines (Physiology and Pragmatics) engage their readers in two different genres (Research articles and Textbooks).
The study adopts Martin and White’s (2005) ENGAGEMENT system, a subsystem of the APPRAISAL framework as an analytical scheme, and employs a mixed-methods design to understand how disciplinarity and genre can influence a writer’s use of ENGAGEMENT resources and their expression of stance. Building on the notion of genre as that of a specific text-type used by a specific community of speakers, for specific purposes, this study explores the significant differences in characteristic language use between the two disciplines (Physiology and Pragmatics) and two genres (Research articles and Textbooks) through a corpus-based investigation. The corpus comprised 80 Textbook chapters and 80 research articles sampled from the two disciplines. Both corpus-based quantitative and qualitative textual analyses were conducted, with the latter serving to explore and discuss the patterns observed from the quantitative analyses. To augment the quantitative and qualitative textual analyses, author guidelines by the publishers of the respective textbooks and research articles were analysed in search of possible considerations for how ENGAGEMENT resources were used and to shed light on possible preferred styles of writing in academic publishing. Interviews with eight expert informants (four from each of the two disciplines) were conducted to better understand academic writers’ perceptions of writing practices in their respective disciplines.
The study found that regardless of discipline, there were significantly more observed instances of ENGAGEMENT resources in textbooks than in research articles. Surprisingly, there were more observed instances of resources to entertain alternative voices and value positions in textbooks than in research articles. In addition, this study found statistically significant differences due to genre and discipline for how writers use justification in their writing. The results of this study have shed light on how textbooks, an under-studied academic genre, employ the use of ENGAGEMENT resources and how this differs from ENGAGEMENT resources observed in the well-established genre of research articles. The findings from this study are potentially useful to novice writers, EAP writers, college students, as they navigate the intricacies of text production, and explore how authorial practices may differ markedly across disciplines.
The study adopts Martin and White’s (2005) ENGAGEMENT system, a subsystem of the APPRAISAL framework as an analytical scheme, and employs a mixed-methods design to understand how disciplinarity and genre can influence a writer’s use of ENGAGEMENT resources and their expression of stance. Building on the notion of genre as that of a specific text-type used by a specific community of speakers, for specific purposes, this study explores the significant differences in characteristic language use between the two disciplines (Physiology and Pragmatics) and two genres (Research articles and Textbooks) through a corpus-based investigation. The corpus comprised 80 Textbook chapters and 80 research articles sampled from the two disciplines. Both corpus-based quantitative and qualitative textual analyses were conducted, with the latter serving to explore and discuss the patterns observed from the quantitative analyses. To augment the quantitative and qualitative textual analyses, author guidelines by the publishers of the respective textbooks and research articles were analysed in search of possible considerations for how ENGAGEMENT resources were used and to shed light on possible preferred styles of writing in academic publishing. Interviews with eight expert informants (four from each of the two disciplines) were conducted to better understand academic writers’ perceptions of writing practices in their respective disciplines.
The study found that regardless of discipline, there were significantly more observed instances of ENGAGEMENT resources in textbooks than in research articles. Surprisingly, there were more observed instances of resources to entertain alternative voices and value positions in textbooks than in research articles. In addition, this study found statistically significant differences due to genre and discipline for how writers use justification in their writing. The results of this study have shed light on how textbooks, an under-studied academic genre, employ the use of ENGAGEMENT resources and how this differs from ENGAGEMENT resources observed in the well-established genre of research articles. The findings from this study are potentially useful to novice writers, EAP writers, college students, as they navigate the intricacies of text production, and explore how authorial practices may differ markedly across disciplines.
Date Issued
2022
Call Number
P301.5.A27 Cho
Date Submitted
2022