Expert Communication in Academic Discourse: Users, Domain, and Language Application - Prof, Appunti di Lingua Inglese

Scarica Expert Communication in Academic Discourse: Users, Domain, and Language Application - Prof e più Appunti in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity! PERSUASION AND POLITENESS Specialized discourse can be defined as “the specialist use of language in contexts which are typical of a specialized community”. According to this definition expert communication depends on: - The type of users - The domain of use - The special application of the language in a given setting USERS — are members of a specialized community, that is a community of discourse and practise made up of experts and future experts in a given domain. Communities of discourse are groups of individuals: - Sharing a broadly agreed set of purposes, common interests and background knowledge; constructing and extending the group’s knowledge through language- using practices which have become highly conventionalized - Using standard channels of intercommunication Within this broad definition it’s possible to distinguish between - Global communities , dispersed groups of like-minded individuals having a commitment to particular actions and discourses - Local communities , made up of people who work together and whose sense of common roles, purposes, discourses and history is influenced by they situational context. Communication is something that is define by the mediums. The mediums are the oral channel (highly context-based) and the written channel (little context-based). They are based on the context but the oral is much context based than the written. When you use oral language you talk to someone that you’re seeing, so the words are clear. Written texts are those texts that are very little or not at all context based. Therefor, when you write you might not know who is going to read your text, so the best possible way to write is to use conventions. If you read ‘Once upon a time’ you know that you’re reading a fairy. The oral channel can be informal that are unrehearsed (situational context interpersonal — you’re going to use certain words and you’re going to avoid others) or formal that are rehearsed (cultural context — for ex at the exams or if you talk to someone that you don’t know). The written channel can be divided in public (formal — are for people that you don’t know for ex the final exam) or private (informal — it can be written to ourself [private diary] or to others [letters], so for people that you know). The public written channel is divided in fictional (aesthetic-function — based on expected function. Meant to be written in the best possible way. Important because of the way they are written, not because of the context) and non fictional (utilitarian-function — for ex classroom notes). The non fictional texts are divided in referential (made to talk about the extra linguistic reality so they are informative texts), persuasive (it contains information, but you read this texts to read confirmation about an opinion. They convinced people about something) and normative (they are meant to force you to do something). The type of discourse which is used to address audiences with different levels of expertise is crucial for the definition of specialized communication. Experts in a given domain may address to other experts (a research for school that you have to expose to the teacher), future experts (a research for school that you have to expose to your classmates) and non- experts (a research for school that you have to expose to your parents, shorter than the others). Other experts Future experts Non-experts Referential They're informative texts They’re educational texts They’re simplified (ex. Newspaper articles) Persuasive They’re argumentative They’re They’re advertising 1 - A special language, based in symbols and rules which are different from those of general language - A micro-language, characterized by a limited use of linguistic resources. Specialised communication responds to specific requirements reflecting the need to be clear, concise, unambiguous and effective. Distinctive features at: - The pragmatic level - The textual level - The syntactic level - The lexical level. Pragmatic features: referential, persuasive and normative Textual features: one of the main requirements of specialized discourse is conceptual coherence and clarity in the presentation of information. Specialized genres usually to conform to natural sequences common to all kinds of discourse, which are based on theme- rheme patterns. The sequencing of the material generally replicates cause-effects, condition- consequence, problem-solution, where the first item immediately suggests or implies the second. Where there is no cognitive interdependence between the pieces of information, the various conceptual units are typographically distinguishable, so as to allow the reader to clearly identify the sections where the relevant information is to be found. The cognitive organization of specialised genres cal also be emphasized by markers of textual/conceptual coherence. Syntactic features: it differs from general discourse in quantitative terms. The need for conciseness motivates a use of language which is characterized by: - Omission of phrasal elements (articles, auxiliaries, prepositions) 2 - Paratactic constructions - Nominalization, when nouns referring to a state of action are used instead of the corresponding verb forms - A simplified verbal system, often favouring passive over active Lexical features: the effectiveness of specialized communication depends to a great extent on referential precision, transparency and concinese at the level of lexis. The concept of referential precision refers to the correspondence between term and a concept attained by: - Using mono-referential terms, by recovering words from dead languages - Avoiding polysemous expressions, generic terms. Linguistic transparency is realized when the surface from an expression makes its meaning immediately accessible. Conciseness refers to the expression of concepts in the shortest possible way and this can be realized through the use of: - Acronyms and abbreviations - Juxtaposition or premodification (avoiding the use of prepositions) The result of this concern for clarity and precision is a discourse lexically poor, with a high rate of repetitions and devoid of emotional emphasis. -------- Academic discourse in one of the textual realizations of specialised discourse. It is used: - To communicate specialized knowledge - For a specialized audience - In a way which is appropriate to the content The academic world includes experts and novices (future experts). Experts are assumed to have a high domain expertise and high linguistic skills; novices are expected to gradually acquire field and discourse competences recognized as adequate. There is a variety of subjects covered by scholarly communication, which may be divided into 2 main groups: - Hard science — focus on empirical truths. Is meant to transmit the truth. - Soft science — deal with negotiable truths, focussing mainly on human behaviour and its influence on events through synthetic methods of inquiry. The function of academic discourse is that of being persuasive depending on the content, the addressee, the type and the context of the communication (informative, pedagogical, promotional..). Clarity depends both on: - Physical/typographical structuring of the text - Rhetorical organization of the material. New information is usually framed, within or in relation to given information. It has two-fold function: - It mitigates the possible threat - It guides and facilitates interpretation What generally distinguishes academic texts from either general of specialized communication is that the transition between the various sections is usually signalled by metadiscursive markers. It is possible outline 3 different principles upon which rhetorical strategies may depend: 1. Text-orientation - Knowledge-oriented, when the truth is presented as self-evident and necessarily resulting from the dynamics between different parts of the texts - Reader-oriented, when the truth is rhetorically negotiated with the reader on the basis of the shared knowledge - Writer-oriented, when the value of a claim emerges from the judgement and attitudinal evaluation 2. Level of informativeness depending on: - The degree of explicitness or implicitness - Linearity of the presentation or digression 3. Level of solidarity and cooperation, depending on: - Inclusive strategies vs exclusive strategies - Defensive strategies vs assertive strategies 3 Genres in academic communication A genre is a class of communicative events sharing sets of communicative purposes and which is recognizable by community members in that the language is employed in relatively predictable ways and appropriate to a particular goal, situation and content. It is possible to identify 2 groups of typical genres: primary and secondary genre, distinguishable on the basis of their complementary purpose and targeted audience. - Primary genres are meant for experts and are intended for either publication or public speech events. They can be subdivided into written genres (research articles, essays) or oral genres (conference presentation) - Secondary genres are targeted to novices and have an educational/pedagogical function. They are represented by written genres (textbooks, lecture notes) or oral genres (lectures, tutorials and seminars). The main role of academic discourse is that of construing and transmitting knowledge, and the perlocutionary effect is to obtain community acceptance. Scholarly communication his/her relationship with the parent institution - Expendability, concerning the practical utility of the research in producing competences exploitable by the market - Performance, indicating academic value in terms of productivity, achievements and other parameters measured according to performance indicators differently employed by administrators - Popularity, relevant to the impact of the research also on the non-academic public - Visibility, referring to the impact of the research on the media. Textual values concern the linguistic quality of a research project, namely its: - Clarity - Cohesion - Coherence - Depth, referred to precision, accuracy and detail of the analysis - Politeness - Style Textual values alone cannot guarantee academic worth but are necessary for the construction of texts which may be easily decodified and accepted. The expression of these values can be realized either: - Explicitly, in the parts of the text where scholars make an overt reference to themselves - Implicitly, when authors represent the subject of their research as being relevant to the knowledge community The more manifest and numerous such values are in a text, the greater the perception of its worth is likely to be. Identity and affiliation Identify is a complex structure combining factors that characterize individuals as members of social communities (ranging from larger communities based on ethnicity, religion, social condition, to more circumscribed groups based on profession, discipline, or single them out as individuals (i.e. on the basis of their appearance, character traits etc). The concept of affiliation refers to the link established by the author with existing and recognizable groups or traditions, the reference to which helps the audience frame both the researcher and the research within a specific epistemological system of reference, thus guiding interpretation. The most relevant identity traits are related to their: 5 - Institutional affiliation, identifying authors as members of a given institution - Disciplinary affiliation, linking authors to a given research domain or disciplinary community - Sub-disciplinary affiliation, framing authors within a recognizable school of thought and identifying them as experts of methodologies or ideologies. The contextual purpose of a text may influence the organization and expression of these identities. Affiliation in academic texts can be lexicalized in 2 ways: 1. Pre-textually or text-externally in the author’s profile and acknowledgements 2. Text-internally, by indicating links with existing research through citations and bibliographical references. Pre-textual resources: framing self The most noticeable and explicit expression of authorial identity is represented by the indication of the contributor’s name, which is generally linked to a short profile either in a footnote. These parts perform different communicative functions and convey specific idea as the author’s identity. Institutional information (introducing self) -- the main function is to provide about the author’s professional status. This type of material has a primarily informative function, revealing the author’s professional self. Additional bio-bibliographical information (promoting self) -- a tendency toward self- promotion can be found in those pieces of information concerning the author’s academic career, research and bibliography. Contact information (interacting with the audience) -- in pre-textual sections it is possible to notice a reader-oriented and cooperative attitude in the indication of the surface mail address of the author’s academic institution or of the author’s email address. This information as social and interactional function: by implying an open and interactive attitude towards the readers. Acknowledgements In academic texts, information can be found together within acknowledgements. This is a private genre that can be targeted both to members of the author’s private world, manifesting his/her human qualities, and to members of the academic world. Acknowledgements perform a consensus-eliciting function: by showing the author’s indebtedness and revealing his/her relationship with specific community members. The purpose of expressing personal emotions and relationship is two-fold. It is meant to create the impression of a human, concrete, intimate and to mitigate the face-threatening potential. The acknowledgement template have a standard format with a restricted number of options. There are 3 moves, each further subdivided into 2 steps: - Move 1: establishing ancestry - Move 2: giving credit - Move 3: anticipating future interest Acknowledgements may be phrased in various ways according to different degrees of personalization, which may be: - Markedly personal: through the use of the first person singular (I, me, mine..) - Unmarkedly personal: when the single author uses the plural (we, us, our..) - Unmarkedly impersonal: when the author resorts to the third person or his/her proper name to refer to him/herself - Markedly impersonal: this tone can be realized either: - through the use of passives: transforming the people/objects into the subject omitting any mention of the acknowledger - through the use of nominalization: using nouns rather than their corresponding verb forms to express gratitude When the author decides on a level of personalization he/she may choose whether to adhere to this for the entire text or to vary it. The combination of the various strategies of explicitness and personalization is symptomatic of the kind of relationship the author feels with the acknowledgees, which will be perceived as being quite formal and detached through the use of the impersonal tone and implicit gratitude. Citations and bibliographical references 6 Typical text internal resources used to trace and identify the affiliation of the author within a given tradition are citations and bibliographical references. Citations can be grouped both according to their: excluding the audience and implying their passive role. Second person strategies -- second person pronouns and possessives and a direct appeal to the reader. The use of the second person plural can be found either in conventional expressions or in more creative uses often with the purpose of exemplification. The use of the second person requires the reader to project him/herself into different contexts so as to be able to measure implications through his/her personal perspective or experience. Imperatives are emphatic attention-seeking devices which can have different rhetorical uses and pragmatic functions. More specifically they may have: - a conventional use, when they are aimed at furthering the discussion of a given point - a creative use and a more interactive function, when they are used to introduce a new line of argumentation or a different perspective Interrogative forms are also direct appeals to the reader and are meant to engage the audience in active reasoning. They may have two broad functions, either: - a textual function, signalling the overall cognitive organization or the core points of the argument, thus facilitating the reading process; - an evaluative-rhetorical function, anticipating and responding to possible objections or emphasizing paradoxes. First and second person strategies are persuasive resources meant to respond to different face: - First person strategies frame the claim into a personal perspective, thus mitigating the possible threat to the reader’s negative face - Second person strategies have the function of establishing common grounds with the readership, including the audience in the negotiation of meaning by implying and responding to the reader’s positive face. Modalization and markers of evidentiality The purpose of academic discourse is to be persuasive so as to gain community acceptance. This goal is achieved by resorting to interpersonal resources though which the author expresses both confidence and caution. The balance between objective information and subjective evaluation so as to redress possible threats can be attained by emphasizing the degree of evidentiality and significance of the truth of a claim through the use of: - markers of epistemic modality - negative, adversative and concessive modes of argumentation - relevance markers. These strategies are intended to increase or reduce the force of a claim. Markers of epistemic modality Epistemic modality is expressed either by certainty and uncertainty markers, respectively referred to as boosters and hedges. Hedges hinge on the presupposition of the addressee’s negative face. By these expressions the author implicitly acknowledge the possible threat posed by the new information and shows consideration for possible objections by presenting the content as negotiable on the basis of shared knowledge. Hedges are represented by: - modal verbs: may, might, could - lexical verbs: assume, suggest, appear, seem - verbal expressions: be likely, be unlikely - adverbs: possibly, probably, perhaps 8 - adjectives: possible, probable - phrasal forms: if clauses, as far as, according to, in my opinion Boosters hinge on the addressee’s positive face, These devices imply shared assumptions and necessary community agreement. By rhetorically excluding the possibility of objections and criticisms, they minimize the addressee’s role and responsibility. It is possible to sketch an outline of their possible lexicalization, through: - verbs: modals such as must, will, cannot - certainty/necessity adverbs: of course, necessarily, obviously - adjectives: clear, obvious, necessary. Relevance markers Another set of strategies meant to stress evidentiality is represented by markers of relevance and endophoric evaluation used by writers to signal the significance of previous or following sections of text and to emphasize the importance of a given piece of information for the proper processing of the conceptual material. Metadiscursive relevance markers are lexicalized through expressions like “It is important to see that”. Markers of endophoric evaluation perform a relvance emphasizing fiction without having a metatextual character. Within this class it is possible to list factive verbs like confirm, prove, demonstrate, show and adjectives like meaningful, useful, and their corresponding adverbial forms. Polemically comparative strategies Negative constructions are lexicalized through the use of the negation not in combination with verbs, adverbs and adjectives, used to falsify a state of affairs, to mitigate necessity and expectedness or to refute a concurrent point of view. Evaluation Evaluation is represented by those linguistic resources which reflect the writer’s viewpoint and assessment of information. Like modalization, this set of strategies signals both the truth-value of a claim and the writer’s commitment towards it. By relating the writer’s claims to current knowledge, evaluative acts inevitably assess its significance either: - by explicitly sanctioning and prizing it: when the writer presents his/her work as an expansion of the existing knowledge - by explicitly proscribing it: when the author questions the validity of current knowledge, presenting his/her work as a revision of accepted claims Explicit evaluation Evaluation is generally expressed in positive terms that is though positive lexical items and positively connoted reporting verbs. Positive evaluation performs a modesty function, much appreciated in academic rhetoric by which writers minimize praise for themselves and maximize praise, sympathy and agreement directed towards other scholars. Positive evaluation also serves the purpose of strengthening the power of and within a disciplinary community and, at the same time, it directly connects the value of the writer’s research to it. The expression of disagreement also has a crucial function in academic discourse. The very concept of knowledge advancement embodies a form of criticism of the existing knowledge in that it presupposes a cognitive gap which the new research is meant to fill, either by revising and ruling out inconsistencies, or by completing what is inadequate by means of new insights, methodologies or theoretical frameworks. Implicit evaluation Evaluation is a pervasive and integral dimension of discourse as confirmed by the connotational meanings associated with most terms, where judgement is not explicitly lexicalized, may imply some form of evaluation, which is retrievable: - from semantic elements in the co-text -- on the presupposition that each sentence comments on its predecessor, either supporting or undermining it aspects relevant to the rhetorical, argumentative, organizational and stylistic, strategies exploited by original authors in presenting their claims. Strategies in this class are not assertive of the worth or truth value of previous claims, nonetheless they express the reporting writer’s assessment of the propositions in terms of clarity or intelligibility. Distinctive resources of this group are represented by: - verbs (cite, analyse) - adverbs (orderly, in detail) 10 - adjectives (linear, clear, organized) TENTATIVE. This class is represented by resources through which the reporting writer interprets or presupposes the intentions of the original authors or the possible truth- conditional value of a claim, expressing his/her attitude in terms of possibility. Tentativeness is conveyed by: - verbs (assume, suggest, believe) - adverbs (possibly, probably, likely) - adjectives (possible, probable, tentative) - modal verbs and verbal forms with a modalizing function (may, might, could, would) Negative evaluation CRITICAL. This class includes strategies which reflect the reporting writer’s non-alignment towards a reported claim. This distance is represented in terms of unreliability of the original proposition which make it primarily not compelling rather than false or wrong. Such resources include: - verbs (condemn, deny, object) - adverbs (hardly, questionably) - adjectives (debatable, improbable) - hypothetical and conditional constructions (if this was true, then…) COUNTER-FACTIVE. This group accounts for rhetorical strategies which are directly assertive of the worth of previous knowledge. Through the use of these formulations the reporting writer encodes rejection of or disagreement with existing claims, represented as bad, wrong or unexpected. Counter-factive evaluation is realized through: - verbs (fail to, ignore) - adverbs (wrongly, amazingly) - adjectives (wrong, irrelevant) - positive formulations preceded by negative forms (not clear, not relevant) Some remarks on evaluation The different evaluative resources serve the purpose of making the argumentation more persuasive by aligning the reader to the writer’s view. For this reason different evaluation strategies can be found together in the same text. Concluding remarks Some of these factors constitute generalizable variables, like culture, discipline and linguistic identity, other such as personal style, status and editorial instructions are idiosyncratic. Culture Each culture develops its own preferred communicative practices for specific perlocutionary effects in given contexts, practices which are biased by historically transmitted and conventionally shared views on reality, values and roles. To explain such differences anthropologists resort to the distinction between high and low-context cultures to identify those systems where communication is highly context-dependent, inferential and based on shared knowledge. In the specific case of scholarly communications other factors are influential, like language-typological constraints, dominant patterns of ideation and also conventional attitudes to text and users. Language Directly related to national cultures and intellectual tradition, the native language of the writer is a relevant factor for rhetorical variation. Over time English has acquired the status for dominant language in research and higher education and, consequently, the “uncontested position” of lingua franca, a vehicular language allowing the users of different languages to communicate effectively. However, competence in academic English doesn’t coincide with the imposition of Anglophone academic prose as a preferred and homogeneous model for scholarly argumentation, since non-native speakers may find it hard to conform to such linguistic standards, so they may “choose to adhere to their own rhetorical standards” adopting a resistance perspective. Disciplinary domain The general distinction between hard and soft-knowledge sciences is meant to account for the major epistemological and rhetorical differentiations. For instance, hard fields, aimed at 11 an objective and detached presentation of information, tend to minimize the authorial presence in the text by resorting to highly conventionalized reporting system to organize arguments and present data. Soft disciplines, instead, hinge on personal projection to construct a credible persona, to invoke an intelligent and interactive reader, and to discuss conceptual material in a non-threatening and persuasive way. Personal style, professional status and editorial instructions Less easy to examine is the case of discoursal differentiation due to personal style or to the adherence to linguistic and argumentative conventions typical of restricted communities. Personal style may depend on a variety of factors ranging from culture, to education, to character traits, which can hardly be traced and properly accounted for, whereas some consideration can be made about the idiosyncratic style used by leading community members, especially in Western cultures. By favoring the expression of individuality over commonality, leading scholars may use their position and acquired status within the discipline and personal charisma as a driving persuasive force to obtain community recognition. 12 PERSUASION AND POLITENESS Specialized discourse can be defined as “the specialist use of language in contexts which are typical of a specialized community”. According to this definition expert communication depends on: - The type of users - The domain of use - The special application of the language in a given setting USERS — are members of a specialized community, that is a community of discourse and practise made up of experts and future experts in a given domain. Communities of discourse are groups of individuals: - Sharing a broadly agreed set of purposes, common interests and background knowledge; constructing and extending the group’s knowledge through languageusing practices which have become highly conventionalized - Using standard channels of intercommunication Within this broad definition it’s possible to distinguish between - Global communities, dispersed groups of like-minded individuals having a commitment to particular actions and discourses - Local communities, made up of people who work together and whose sense of common roles, purposes, discourses and history is influenced by they situational context. Communication is something that is define by the mediums. The mediums are the oral channel (highly context-based) and the written channel (little context-based). They are based on the context but the oral is much context based than the written. When you use oral language you talk to someone that you’re seeing, so the words are clear. Written texts are those texts that are very little or not at all context based. Therefor, when you write you might not know who is going to read your text, so the best possible way to write is to use conventions. If you read ‘Once upon a time’ you know that you’re reading a fairy. The oral channel can be informal that are unrehearsed (situational context interpersonal — you’re going to use certain words and you’re going to avoid others) or formal that are rehearsed (cultural context — for ex at the exams or if you talk to someone that you don’t know). The written channel can be divided in public (formal — are for people that you don’t know for ex the final exam) or private (informal —