Disciplinary Discourses, Michigan Classics Ed.: Social Interactions in Academic Writing

by Ken Hyland

Why do engineers "report" while philosophers "argue" and biologists "describe"? In the Michigan Classics Edition of Disciplinary Social Interactions in Academic Writing , Ken Hyland examines the relationships between the cultures of academic communities and their unique discourses. Drawing on discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, and the voices of professional insiders, Ken Hyland explores how academics use language to organize their professional lives, carry out intellectual tasks, and reach agreement on what will count as knowledge. In addition, Disciplinary Discourses presents a useful framework for understanding the interactions between writers and their readers in published academic writing. From this framework, Hyland provides practical teaching suggestions and points out opportunities for further research within the subject area.

As issues of linguistic and rhetorical expression of disciplinary conventions are becoming more central to teachers, students, and researchers, the careful analysis and straightforward style of Disciplinary Discourses make it a remarkable asset.

The Michigan Classics Edition features a new preface by the author and a new foreword by John M. Swales.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction

232 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2000

About the author

Ken Hyland is Professor of Applied Linguistics in Education at the University of East Anglia. He is a Foundation Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities and an Honorary Professor at Warwick University, Jilin University and Hong Kong University.

Reviews

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awfully useful. Not only does Hyland do some really diligent work exploring different genres of academic writing and how the social hierarchy there expresses itself, but he also writes up some humbingers of post-Marxist thought and even gives some very detailed potential research questions for further scholars. I'm in entirely sure while these, and his methods chapter, end up at the end of his research when they seem to inform it so much, but I guess they might be considered supplementary in some way.

I also admire the way Hyland writes. He clearly and forcibly re-iterates his points, which might be a bit redundant if you read his work, as I did, over the course of a couple of days, but it is very, very clear. It's almost the paragon of American Academic Writing, with its clear conclusions at the end of each paragraph, and strictly on-topic chapters. Useful not just for my own research (esp. those last chapters), but also as a model of how to write my dissertation.

Notes:
academic writing genres "represent careful negotiations with, and considerations of, their colleagues" (1). Writing "helps to create those disciplines by influencing how members relate to one another, and by determining who will be regarded as members, who will fain success and what will count as knowledge" (5). Further "the persuasiveness of academic discourse... does not depend on the demonstration of absolute fact, empirical evidence or impeccable logic, it is the result of effective rhetorical practices, accepted by community members" (8). That community includes people on the edges "competing groups and discourses, marginalized ideas, contested theories, peripheral contributors and occasional members" (9).

"disciplines seek to ensure that accounts of new knowledge conform to the broad generic practices they have established, while writers are often willing to employ these practices because of a desire to get published and achieve recognition" (170)


Ends with expansion that "We need to understand academic knowledge then as a cultural product mediated by a wider social context, and to examine how discursive practices shape beliefs, define identities and sturue relationships in ways that serve particular interests" (155)

[ACRL]

Read by ACRL Member of the Week Amanda Dinscore. Learn more about Amanda on the ACRL Insider blog.