Occupying Niches: Interculturality, Cross-culturality and Aculturality in Academic Research

232 Pages·2014·2.47 MB·English

by  Andrzej Łyda

Second Language Learning and Teaching
Andrzej Łyda
Krystyna Warchał Editors
Occupying Niches:
Interculturality,
Cross-culturality
and Aculturality
in Academic
Research
Second Language Learning and Teaching
Series editor
Mirosław Pawlak, Kalisz, Poland
For furthervolumes:
http://www.springer.com/series/10129
About the Series
The series brings together volumes dealing with different aspects of learning and
teaching second and foreign languages. The titles included are both monographs
and edited collections focusing on a variety of topics ranging from the processes
underlying second language acquisition, through various aspects of language
learningininstructedandnon-instructedsettings,todifferentfacetsoftheteaching
process, including syllabus choice, materials design, classroom practices and
evaluation. The publications reflect state-of-the-art developments in those areas,
they adopt a wide range of theoretical perspectives and follow diverse research
paradigms. The intended audience are all those who are interested in naturalistic
andclassroomsecondlanguageacquisition,includingresearchers,methodologists,
curriculum and materials designers, teachers and undergraduate and graduate
students undertaking empirical investigations of how second languages are learnt
and taught.
Andrzej Łyda Krystyna Warchał
•
Editors
Occupying Niches:
Interculturality,
Cross-culturality and
Aculturality in Academic
Research
123
Editors
AndrzejŁyda
Krystyna Warchał
Instituteof English
University ofSilesia
Sosnowiec
Poland
ISSN 2193-7648 ISSN 2193-7656 (electronic)
ISBN 978-3-319-02525-4 ISBN 978-3-319-02526-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02526-1
SpringerChamHeidelbergNewYorkDordrechtLondon
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Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Andrzej Łyda and Krystyna Warchał
Part I Expert Writers
Citation Practices of Expert French Writers of English:
Issues of Attribution and Stance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Elizabeth Rowley-Jolivet and Shirley Carter-Thomas
A Comparison of Author Reference in the Spanish Context
of Biomedical RAs Publication. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Oana Maria Carciu
Positive Self-Evaluation and Negative Other-Evaluation
in NSs’ and NNSs’ Scientific Discourse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Grzegorz Kowalski
A Context-Based Approach to the Identification of Hedging
Devices and Features of Writer-Reader Relationship
in Academic Publications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Maizura Mohd Noor, Jean Mulder and Celia Thompson
Prospects of Indonesian Research Articles (RAs) Being
Considered for Publication in ‘Center’ Journals: A Comparative
Study of Rhetorical Patterns of RAs in Selected Humanities
and Hard Science Disciplines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Zifirdaus Adnan
v
vi Contents
Part II Novice Writers and Readers
Approaches to Acculturating Novice Writers into
Academic Literacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Ursula Wingate
Are They Discussing in the Same Way? Interactional
Metadiscourse in Turkish Writers’ Texts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Erdem Akbas
Is the Medical Profession in Spain Living
the Culture of ‘Google it’?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Isabel Herrando-Rodrigo
Part III Conference Participants
Communicating Research at International Conferences:
A Multimodal Analysis of an Intercultural or a Disciplinary
Specific Genre?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Teresa Morell
Native and Non-Native Speaker Interpersonal Skills
at Conferences: Managing Self-Mentions and Humour. . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Francisco Javier Fernández Polo
A Cross-cultural Study of Indirectness and Hedging
in the Conference Proposals of English NS and NNS Scholars . . . . . . 179
Hacer Hande Uysal
Part IV Non-Research Academic Genres
Breaking the Rules and Searching for Standards in E-mail
Exchanges Between Academics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Adam Wojtaszek
Academic Job Postings as Part of Academic Discourse:
A Cross-cultural Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Jolanta Ła˛cka-Badura
Introduction
Andrzej Łyda and Krystyna Warchał
Abstract This volume looks into culture-specific features of academic commu-
nication, with a particular focus on communication conducted in English as an
AdditionalLanguage(henceforthEAL) anddirected atmulticulturalaudiences.It
brings together selected papers which emerged as a result of presentations deliv-
eredatPRISEAL2,thesecondconferenceonPublishingandPresenting Research
Internationally:IssuesforSpeakersofEnglishasanAdditionalLanguage,andthe
manydiscussionsthatfollowed.Themainobjectiveofthisconference,heldatthe
UniversityofSilesiainSosnowiec/Katowice(Poland)inJune2011,wastolookat
theactivitiesoftheinternationalacademicdiscoursecommunityintermsofniches
occupiedbyusersofEAL.Inthisvolumewetakethenicheasaframeofreference
for discussion of what is culture-bound, culture-sensitive, and culture-free in the
academic community and its practices.
1 Academic Niches: Introductory Remarks
Thisvolumelooksintoculture-specificfeaturesofacademiccommunication,with
a particular focus on communication conducted in English as an Additional
Language (henceforth EAL) and directed at multicultural audiences. It brings
together selected papers which emerged as a result of presentations delivered at
PRISEAL2, the second conference on Publishing and Presenting Research Inter-
nationally: Issues for Speakers of English as an Additional Language, and the
manydiscussionsthatfollowed.Themainobjectiveofthisconference,heldatthe
A.Łyda(&)(cid:2)K.Warchał
UniversityofSilesia,Katowice,Poland
e-mail:[email protected]
K.Warchał
e-mail:[email protected]
A.ŁydaandK.Warchał(eds.),OccupyingNiches:Interculturality,Cross-culturality 1
andAculturalityinAcademicResearch,SecondLanguageLearningandTeaching,
DOI:10.1007/978-3-319-02526-1_1,(cid:2)SpringerInternationalPublishingSwitzerland2014
2 A.ŁydaandK.Warchał
UniversityofSilesiainSosnowiec/Katowice(Poland)inJune2011,wastolookat
theactivitiesoftheinternationalacademicdiscoursecommunityintermsofniches
occupiedbyusersofEAL.Inthisvolumewetakethenicheasaframeofreference
for discussion of what is culture-bound, culture-sensitive, and culture-free in the
academic community and its practices.
In his revised and highly influential create-a-research-space model of article
introductions,Swales(1990)developedanecologicalmetaphorforsituatingone’s
own work in relation tothe body of prior research done in the field. In particular,
he recast his former preparing-for-present-research and Introducing-present-
research moves (Swales 1981) as establishing a niche and occupying the niche—
rhetorical movements which serve to demonstrate the significance of the research
problem for a given field of knowledge, to indicate the place the present research
claims in this field, and to show ‘‘how this niche in the wider ecosystem will be
occupied and defended’’ (Swales 1990: 142). Publishable scholarly attempts
becameconstruedintermsofsuccessfulcompetitionforspace,whereanichemust
be found and populated by indicating a gap in or adding significantly to the
existing knowledge (Hyland 2000; Swales 2004).
Since Genre Analysis, niche has become a prominent concept in academic
discourse studies, including those aiming at a better understanding of (Anglo-
phone)academicrhetoric(Bhatia1993,2001;Samraj2002;Lorés2004;Yangand
Allison 2004; Thompson 2009), those striving for increased awareness of cross-
culturaldifferencesintheperceptionoftheauthor’sandreader’srolesinacademic
contexts (Duszak 1994; Cˇmejrková 1996; Ahmad 1997; Martín-Martín 2003;
Adnan 2008), those preoccupied with problems that arise from these differences
for international scholarly communication (Dudley-Evans 1995; Golebiowski
1999; Shaw 2003; ElMalik and Nesi 2008; Belcher 2009; Pérez-Llantada 2010),
and those concerned with second language pedagogy (Swales and Feak 1994;
Aranha2009;CargillandO’Connor2009).Fromthesevariousstrandsofresearch
there emerges another sense of niche as a confined space or periphery, where
scholarly activities continue but do not always manage to step outside, or if they
do, they often appear attenuated, muffled or distorted, meaning either not what
theydidinsidetheniche,orreceivednotinthewaynicheaudienceswouldreceive
them. Paradoxically, if research in today’s world has grown into an increasingly
collaborativeactivity,andmultinationalresearchteamsandprojectsarebecoming
the norm rather than exception, writing still remains a solitary process, practiced
by individual scholars in their own linguistic, cultural and institutional research
spaces.Writingisthusanattempttocommunicatesomethingtothoseoutsidethis
niche, to make oneself heard and understood beyond the limits of one’s own
immediate environment. From this perspective successful academic communica-
tionisanactofcapturingaresearchspaceandleavinganichedelimitedbyone’s
language, status, cultural background, educational tradition, and geopolitical
situation.Theaimofthisbookistooffersomeinsightintothesemutuallyrelated,
interacting academic spaces.
Introduction 3
This book continues the long-standing tradition of inquiry into cross-linguistic
and cross-cultural issues in academic and other professional discourses, well
documented by such volumes as Ventola and Mauranen (1996), Aijmer and
Stenström (2004), Zhu (2005), Fløttum et al. (2006), Crawford Camiciottoli
(2007),Connoretal.(2008),andSuomela-SalmiandDervin(2009).Itisdifferent
from its predecessors in explicitly addressing and being centred upon the concept
of research niche understood as a space to be captured and populated, as a tem-
porary location to move or grow out of in the course of individual professional
development from a novice to an expert, and as a space to consciously reach
beyond, delimited by one’s linguistic, cultural, educational, and geopolitical
background. It is this broader understanding of niche and a perspective on
academicdiscourse asan act of moving, orcommunicating, across niches that,in
our view, gives the collection a sense of unity and makes it different from other
volumes addressing similar problems.
Another important point of difference is that the present volume contributes
data from a wide range of academic genres, including written and spoken public
professional genres, student writing, occluded genres, and non-research institu-
tional text types. By bringing together the results of investigations into research
articles,conferenceproposals,conferencepresentations,studentgenres,electronic
letters and academic job announcements, it may be informative of the ways in
whichthesevariousgenresinteractinbroaderacademiccontextsandofthevariety
ofrolesmembersoftheacademicdiscoursecommunityassumeatdifferentstages
or in different moments of their professional life. In this sense it can provide data
ongenresystemsornetworks(Bazerman2004;Swales2004)whichoperateinthe
community and which reflect its internal hierarchy, patterns of interaction, and
preferred ways of recycling and restructuring information. Moreover, the findings
presented in this volume will offer additional insights into the linguistic variation
in academic discourse related to the mode (written or spoken), the status of the
participants(noviceorexpert),thetypeofinteraction(publicoroccluded),andits
general purpose (research-related or research unrelated).
It is also an important characteristic of this collection that while maintaining a
focus on EAL, it provides data from a variety of cultural and linguistic contexts.
The contributions explore international scholarly communication against the
background of a number of first languages, including French, Spanish, Polish,
Turkish, and Indonesian, with some additional insights from Indian and Japanese
users of EAL. The disciplines covered include: technical sciences, linguistics,
biomedical sciences, and social sciences, to name but a few. Finally, the studies
included in this volume represent different approaches (such as mixed methods
approach, ethnographic approach, intervention, and multimodal analysis), adopt
different methodologies (among others, corpus linguistics, genre analysis, and
discourse analysis) and employ different research tools (e.g., audio-video record-
ings, questionnaires, and text-analysing software). They demonstrate the effec-
tiveness of these methods and instruments in academic discourse studies, their
strengths and limitations, and the ways the results they bring can mutually give
support to, limit or challenge the findings.