This volume explores the relationship between shared disciplinary norms and individual traits in academic speech and writing. Despite the standardising pressure of cultural and language-related factors, academic communication remains in many ways a highly personal affair, with active participation in a disciplinary community requiring a multidimensional discourse that combines the professional, institutional, social and individual identities of its members. The first section of the volume deals with tensions involving individual/collective values and the analysis of collective vs. individual discoursal features in academic discourse. The second section comprises longitudinal investigations of the academic output of single scholars, so as to highlight the individuality in their choices and the reasons for not conforming with the commonality of conventions shared by their professional community. The third part deals with genres that are meant to impose commonality on the members of an academic community, not only in the drafting of specialized texts but also when these are reviewed or evaluated for possible publication.

Autorentext

The Editor: Maurizio Gotti is Professor of English Linguistics and Director of the Research Centre on Specialized Languages (CERLIS) at the University of Bergamo. His main research areas are the features and origins of specialized discourse. He is a member of the editorial board of national and international journals, and edits the Linguistic Insights series for Peter Lang.

Inhalt

Contents: Maurizio Gotti: Introduction - Ken Hyland: Constraint vs Creativity: Identity and Disciplinarity in Academic Writing - Paul Thompson: Shared Disciplinary Norms and Individual Traits in the Writing of British Undergraduates - Keith Richards: A Hard Act to Follow: Conference Debate and Student Argument - Laurie Anderson/Nicki Hargreaves/Nicky Owtram: Manifesting Identity in Situated Academic Writing: Institutional Factors and Individual Orientations in Writing by Post-graduate Students in an English as a Lingua Franca Context - Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli: Collective and Individual Identities in Business Studies Lectures - Marina Bondi: Writing Economic History: The Narrator and the Arguer - Carmen Pérez-Llantada: Shifting Identities, Textual Responses and Conflicting Demands in Knowledge Construction Processes - Franca Poppi: How Stable is the Construction of an Author's Professional Identity? Variations in Five Editions of P.A. Samuelson's Economics - Susan Kermas: Disentangling the Gardening Metaphor in Kate Burridge's Language Studies - Thomas Christiansen: The Creation of Evolution: Religion and Science in the Lexis and Conceptual Frames of the Works of Charles Darwin - Maurizio Gotti: Aspects of Individuality in J.M. Keynes' General Theory - Martin Solly: Using Language to Shape Identity in Academic Discourse: The Case of Disclaimers and Provisos - Sara Gesuato: Evaluation Guidelines: A Regulatory Genre Informing Reviewing Practices - William Bromwich: Identity, Anonymity and Appraisal: Discourse Processes in Double-Blind Peer Review - Sandra Campagna: Projecting Visual Reasoning in Research Conference Presentations.