ENGAGING WITH THE LITERATURE, ENGAGING WITH THE READER: EVALUATION IN ACADEMIC WRITING

1. ENGAGING WITH THE LITERATURE, ENGAGING WITH THE READER: EVALUATION IN ACADEMIC WRITING Norwegian Forum for English for Academic Purposes (NFEAP), Summer Seminar, June 9-10, 2011 Daniel Lees Fryer Department of Languages and Literatures, University of Gothenburg Center for Education Research and Development, Oslo University College daniel.lees.fryer@sprak.gu.se

2. Introduction • Background • Dialogism, Evaluation, and Academic Discourse • Summary of Part of Ongoing PhD Project • Engagement in Medical Research Discourse • The Dialogic Perspective in EAP • A Brief Example • Concluding Remarks • References

3. Dialogism, Evaluation, and Academic Discourse • All utterances are dialogic – they occur against a “background of other […] utterances on the same theme, a background made up of contradictory opinions, points of view, and value judgments” (Bakhtin 1981: 281). • => all utterances are thus stanced, attitudinal, or evaluative in some way (Martin & White 2005: 92; Hunston & Thompson 1999: 2; Hyland 2005: 174). • Way in which researchers engage with other voices in the discourse, i.e. the literature and the reader, is integral part of social practice of communicating research – important implications for academic literacy programs such as EAP • How is this dialogism realized in academic discourse?

4. PhD Project: “Intersubjective Positioning in Medical Research Discourse” • Case in point: medical research discourse – ELF in research and education in this field, tradition of EMP, large research output ≈> interdiscursive influence on other domains; medical research articles (RAs) – primary site for construction/negotiation of knowledge in field (MacDonald 2002) • Previous related studies on medical research discourse focus on specific linguistic resources such as modality, hedging, and attribution (e.g. Salager-Meyer 1994,1999, Thomas & Hawes 1994). Generally little emphasis on potential interrelation of these and other resources and esp. on their dialogic relevance (White 2003; cf. Hyland 2005, interaction in academic discourse)

5. PhD Project: “Intersubjective Positioning in Medical Research Discourse” • Criticisms of some research approaches to resources dealt with under headings of hedging, modality, attribution: • “accounts of epistemic modals and similar resources […] often assume that the sole function of these wordings is to reveal the speaker/writer’s state of mind or knowledge, to indicate that the speaker/writer is uncertain or tentative and is not committed to the truth value of the proposition” (White 2003: 261) • These resources “have largely only been considered from a perspective of theories of language which view the individual, psychological, and self-expressive function of language as primary and as fundamental, and which, in many cases, see meaning as ultimately a matter of ‘truth conditions’ and not of social relationships” (Martin & White 2005: 94) • Could these comments also apply to EAP teaching material?

6. Fig 1. System Network for Engagement/Heterogloss; features in bold, glosses in italic Theoretical framework: SFG, appraisal (Halliday 1978; Halliday & Matthiessen 2004; Martin & White 2005) Adapted from Martin & White (2005: 134)

7. The Dialogic Perspective in EAP: A Brief Example • Example from a semester-long course in academic writing at OUC • Five full-day sessions, over 10-wk period, plus exam (submission of revised text + reflection statement + presentation) (6 ECTS) • Nine participants, mixed-discipline group, PhD candidates and other academic staff • Core material: participants’ work-in-progress RAs and reference RAs • Session 4: Stance and Engagement • Pre-session preparation: read Hyland (2005) and selected pages in Swales & Feak (2004) – other supportive material provided and discussed during session: uefap.com, Hyland (2004)

8. The Dialogic Perspective in EAP: A Brief Example • Hyland’s (2005: 177, fig. 1) model of “interaction,” inspired by Bakhtin’s dialogism and intertextuality (ibid. 176) – a middle ground between “truth value” approaches and dialogism modeled by appraisal framework? • Overlap among categories, multifunctionality • Extensive examples of category realizations

9. The Dialogic Perspective in EAP: A Brief Example In-session work: • Discussing Hyland (2005): questions, thoughts, summarizing of main points • Identifying markers of interaction in reference RAs, using lists compiled from Hyland (2004, 2005) • Describing function of these markers: Why are they used? Similar/different functions within and across texts? Alternative ways of expressing these interaction markers? • Same/similar procedure and questions for participant’s own writing • How do ref RAs and participant’s RA compare? • Participants talk about what they found, comparing with each other

10. The Dialogic Perspective in EAP: A Brief Example • Participants’ responses: • Usually positive to Hyland (2005) – easy to read, accessible, particularly after having read relevant sections in Swales & Feak (2004) • Some participants focus on single resources across RAs/own writing, others focus on identifying as many interaction markers as possible • Some compare frequencies of features in ref RA with those in their own writing – equate frequency with quality, e.g. “they had 12 mays, and I only had 2” – rather than looking at functionality • Interesting discussions based on unexpected findings and cross-disciplinary differences/similarities: How do different authors/disciplines use interaction markers?

11. Concluding Remarks • Dialogic perspective: • seems to complement existing approaches to modality, hedging, attribution • also complements notions of discourse community, social practice, social construction of knowledge • may be intuitive for learner: accounts for language and communication as social phenomena • “I find the perspective [of Hyland 2005] interesting, maintaining that writers use language to position themselves and interact with the reader, not only trying to present an external reality” (comment by course participant in reflection statement). • Dialogic approach meant to complement other approaches – but different dialogic approaches proposed (e.g. Hyland 2005, Martin & White 2005). Assuming dialogic approach is a valuable one, what would be best-suited model for EAP? Group differences?

12. THANKS! References • Bakhtin MM. 1981. The dialogic imagination. Emerson C, Holquist M (trans). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. • Halliday MAK. 1978. Language as social semiotic. London: Arnold. • Halliday MAK, Matthiessen CMIM. 2004. Introduction to functional grammar. London: Arnold. • Hunston S, Thompson G (eds). 1999. Evaluation in text: authorial stance and the construction of discourse. Oxford, Oxford University Press. • Hyland K. 2004. Disciplinary discourses: social interactions in academic writing. Ann Arbor, MA: University of Michigan Press. • Hyland K. 2005. Stance and engagement: a model of interaction in academic discourse. Discourse Studies 7: 173-192. • MacDonald MN. 2002. Pedagogy, pathology and ideology: the production, transmission and reproduction of medical discourse. Discourse & Society 13: 447-467.

13. References • Martin JR, White PRR. 2005. The language of evaluation: appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. • Salager-Meyer F. 1992. A text-type and move analysis study of verb tense and modality distribution in medical English abstracts. English for Specific Purposes 11: 93-113. • Salager-Meyer F. 1994. Hedges and textual communicative function in medical English written discourse. English for Specific Purposes 13: 149-170. • Swales JM, Feak CB. 2004. Academic writing for graduate students: essential tasks and skills. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. • Thomas S, Hawes TP. 1994. Reporting verbs in medical journal articles. English for Specific Purposes 13: 129-148. • White PRR. 2003. Beyond modality and hedging: a dialogic view of the language of intersubjective stance. Text 23(2): 259-284.