Cambridge Grammar of English Hardback with cd-rom a comprehensive Guide

INTRODUCTION

140

Academic writing and speaking take place in a variety of contexts. Student essays,

assignments, presentations, dissertations and theses, lectures, tutorials,

conference papers, books and articles by professional academics, all have

different formal conventions, but all have a great deal in common in terms of

grammar. 

Academic writers and speakers mainly communicate with other academics and

therefore can refer to things in complex and condensed ways, taking for granted

that their readers and listeners share the grammatical conventions and contextual

frames of reference to interpret them.

In general, academic language, especially writing, has quite complex structures

and is more formal and impersonal in style than everyday language. The

structuring and signposting of academic texts is important, and in spoken

academic language, such as lectures and demonstrations, the spoken words are

often accompanied by handouts, projected images, the whiteboard, etc., all of

which have an effect on the grammar used (e.g. deictic words referring to

diagrams and visuals: here, above, see Table Two, in this chart, etc.).

Much of the grammar of academic English is shared with that of English as a

whole, and there are no special structures which are unique to academic English

and never found elsewhere. On the whole, the grammar of academic English is

closer (in both its spoken and written forms) to the grammar of general written

English than to the grammar of general spoken English. 

Where grammatical structures and items have been indicated as associated with

written language in this book, then by and large such features are appropriate to

academic English, with the exception of places where we have mentioned specialist

registers such as journalism, advertising and specific literary conventions.

This chapter (140–154) focuses on items and structures which are common in

academic language and which characterise it. We distinguish where appropriate

between written and spoken academic styles. The chapter examines how

information is packaged (typically in rather dense noun phrases), how tense,

aspect, voice and modality are used to structure and signpost texts and to create

an appropriate relationship with the listener/reader, how pronouns create such

relationships, how sentences are typically linked, and how specific conventions

are used (e.g. citing, abbreviations).