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Anglo-American academic texts in general tend to be more dialogic and
interactive, thus providing more space for negotiation of meaning between
the author(s) and the prospective reader(s) (Clyne 1987)
and bearing a greater
resemblance to non-academic texts. The fact that these texts are considered more
reader-oriented stems from an overall linear organization of discourse through
explicit signposting which includes text organizers such as DMs – notably
conjuncts, which are at the core of the present chapter. These characteristics are
in contrast to rather monologic, less interactive texts, which sometimes include
numerous digressions and provide readers with knowledge and theory rather than
giving them space for negotiation of meaning. Such writer-
or text-oriented texts
are usually connected with Teutonic intellectual traditions attributed to academic
texts written in some Central European languages such as Czech, Slovak, Polish
and German (cf. Galtung 1985). These academic backgrounds and intellectual
traditions prefer a more impersonal style of writing with fewer reader-friendly
devices such as text organizers and fewer explicit clues concerning content, which
can provide reader guidance and discourse predictability. Instead, a considerable
amount of intellectual effort and an ability to process rather demanding texts
filled with knowledge and theory are required of the reader(s).
Since the overwhelming majority of writers and readers of academic
texts written in English are not native speakers of English, the
question arises
whether it is justified to impose the linguistic standards and style conventions
typical of the Anglo-American discourse community on international academic
communication and whether the qualities such as clarity and effectiveness in
communication should be considered from the perspective of native speakers
of English, i.e. “the native speaking minority” to use Mauranen et al.’s words
(2010), or from those who come from communities that speak other languages.
Discourse communities share certain discourse patterns and expectations and
utilize and hence possess one or more genres in the communicative furtherance
of their aims (Swales 1990: 26). In the case of the international academic
community it is the genre of research articles that mostly serves as a tool for
transmitting scholarly matters. When experts from language backgrounds other
than the Anglo-American want to be recognized internationally in
their respective
research fields within their native speech discourse communities and in particular
within the international academic community, they have to produce their research
articles in English and undergo what is sometimes called “a process of secondary
socialization” (Duszak 1997), i.e. the process of developing academic credentials
within their non-native environment. This concerns both novice writers and
experts from academic traditions other than the Anglo-American (Dontcheva-
Navratilova 2012, Povolná 2012).
Scholarly texts vary in degree of interactivity, understood here in agreement
with Duszak (1997: 19) as a “form of realization of interpersonal meanings
31
in discourse”; this is particularly important
once we agree that academic
communication is dialogic in nature. While academic cultures and intellectual
traditions subscribing to a more impersonal style of academic texts (e.g. some
discourse communities in Central Europe) give preference to less interactive
and thus less dialogic texts, Anglo-American academic traditions favour more
interactive and more dialogic texts with reader-friendly devices such as text
organizers, clear relations between discourse segments, clear division of text
into sections and subsections,
chapter and section headings, and explicit clues
on content. Therefore, the negotiation of preferred degrees of interactivity and
dialogicality in academic texts is one of the main issues to be considered in
international academic communication.
Conceived as explicit signals of semantic relations between segments of
discourse (Fraser 1999) and thus clearly contributing to both cohesion and
coherence, DMs (Schiffrin 1987, Fraser 1999, Biber et al. 1999) – including
what are called conjuncts (Quirk et al. 1985) in this chapter – are expected to be
relatively frequent in academic discourse, since convincing argumentation and
clear presentation to the reader of the author’s standpoints are of great importance.
Consequently, a more specific aim of the present study is to discover which
semantic relations,
such as apposition, result, contrast, and concession, tend to be
expressed overtly by conjuncts, because these are applied intentionally by writers
as guiding signals to help the prospective reader(s) arrive at an interpretation
which is coherent with the author’s communicative intentions, and, moreover,
which of the semantic relations overtly expressed by
conjuncts contribute most
of all to the negotiation of meaning between discourse participants (i.e. the
author and the readers), thus enhancing the higher degree of interactivity and
dialogicality in academic texts.
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