Written Discourse Analysis

This thesis reports an exploratory and contrastive corpus study examining two phenomena in postgraduate academic writing: expressing commitment/detachment and signalling authorial presence in dissertations. More specifically, the overall purpose of the study is to investigate how postgraduate academic writers from particular contexts build their academic stance and voice by employing a range of linguistic items that could be identified as hedges, boosters and authorial references. The corpus consists of a total of 90 discussions sections of master’s dissertations, 30 from Turkish L1 writers, 30 from Turkish writers of English and 30 from UK English L1 writers. A range of items, discourse functions and roles were determined during the pilot study via Nvivo 9. Then, the whole corpus was searched and analysed via WordSmith 5.0 based on the linguistic item list signalling certainty/doubt or authorial presence. In order to address two crucial phenomena in dissertation writing of postgrad...

This paper attempts to demonstrate Norman Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework by conducting internal and external level analyses on two online news articles that report on the Moro Islamic Liberation Front's (MILF) submission of its findings on the " Mamasapano Incident " that happened in the Philippines in 2015. In performing analyses using this framework, the social context and background for these texts, as well as the relationship between the internal discourse features and the external social practices and structures in which the texts were produced are thoroughly examined. As a result, it can be noted that from the texts' internal discourse features, the news articles portray ideological and social distinctions among social actors such as the Philippine Senate, the SAF troopers, the MILF, the MILF fighters, and the civilians. Moreover, from the viewpoint of the texts as being external social practices, the texts maintain institutional identities as news reports, but they also reveal some evaluative stance as exemplified by the adjectival phrases that the writers employed. Having both the internal and external features examined, it can be said that the way these texts were written seems to portray power relations that exist between the Philippine government and the MILF.

This paper presents an analysis of the production of multi-word units present in English argumentative texts written by non-native speakers of the language. The aim of this study is to examine the potential influence of the mother tongue on learners’
production of both correct and incorrect multi-word units that are typically used in English for creating textual cohesion: lexical bundles, in particular, linking adverbials. Several corpora will be used: non-native students from the ICLE Corpus, and the CEUNF, an original corpus of Spanish non-native students of English who study English as a subject outside their curriculum. These will be contrasted with two native corpora: the American university students’ corpus (LOCNESS) and the corpus of the professional editorialists writing in English (SPE).

Modality has been a field of deep study by semantictians and pragmatists. This field  has  been  of  interest  for  professors  of  Complutense  University  of  Madrid  as  Marta  Carretero
(1995) and Angela Downing (2015), among others. The present study aims to analyze the use  of the modal verb “can” and its counterparts “could”, “cannot” and “could not” in written texts  by  English  native  students  (NS)  and  Spanish  non-native  students  of  English  (NNS).  More specifically,  the  study  tries  to  answer  the  following  research  questions:  (1)  Are  the  modals  under  analysis  used  more  frequently  by  NS  or  NNS?  and  (2),  Do  NS  or  NNS  use  modality  differently regarding the degree of formality? To this purpose, two subcorpora (academic and  informal  texts)  were  gathered  by  means  of  analyzing  online  journals  and  online  chats,  rendering a total of 243 modals in NS and 282 in NNS texts. The analysis of the data reveals  that a high frequency of modality depends on a high degree of formality

Discourse analysis is the study of language in either spoken or written form. Written discourse is considered an imperative aspect that needs to be analysed. Cohesion, coherence, clause relations and text patterns are all parts of written discourse. This paper, therefore, aims to shed some light on the analysis of several written texts by discussing the possibility of applying written discourse analysis in English language teaching contexts. The paper starts by reviewing related literature about the meaning of cohesion, coherence, cohesive devices and text patterns, followed by reasons for choosing written discourse analysis in particular. Following this, an analysis of several written texts, together with the possibility of applying written discourse analysis in English language teaching, is presented. Before concluding this paper, an evaluation of the proposed application is provided. It is found that applying written discourse analysis in teaching written texts via the use of a problem solution pattern (SPRE) can increase what to expect in reading texts and the ability to write coherently. Although the author did not have the opportunity to apply this task, generally speaking, most text patterns involving SPRE are highly recommended for students when it comes to shaping their writing and this therefore makes students' writing coherent and easily readable. Introduction Discourse analysis in terms of both spoken and written language is believed to be helpful for both linguists and language teachers. It is simply " the study of language in use " (Gee & Handford, 2013:1). Written texts are considered an important aspect that needs to be analysed. Doing so means that writers gain the ability to make their writing more cohesive and easier to read. Cohesion, coherence, clause relations and text patterns are all parts of written texts.

This study aims at examining the writing skills of a group of Indonesian graduate students of English. A particular attention has been focused on the coherence of their production of argumentative texts. Employing a discourse analytical case study, three texts written by three Master's degree students of the English language education at a local university in Central Java, Indonesia, were analyzed. Coherence and cohesion is inextricable in which both are crucial in academic writing as to achieve a makes-sense text. Therefore, it is an urgent need to look at the writing competency of students as they are at graduate level, majoring in the English language education. The texts produced by the students were scrutinized through the lens of micro-and macro-level coherence (Thornburry, 2005). From this theory, cohesion is involved in micro level coherence. The findings indicate that the students show a bit weakness on achieving coherent texts due to lack of optimization of cohesive devices especially conjunctions to create interconnectedness of the whole sentences in the texts. Abstract This study aims at examining the writing skills of a group of Indonesian graduate students of English. A particular attention has been focused on the coherence of their production of argumentative texts. Employing a discourse analytical case study, three texts written by three Master's degree students of the English language education at a local university in Central Java, Indonesia, were analyzed. Coherence and cohesion is inextricable in which both are crucial in academic writing as to achieve a makes-sense text. Therefore, it is an urgent need to look at the writing competency of students as they are at graduate level, majoring in the English language education. The texts produced by the students were scrutinized through the lens of micro-and macro-level coherence (Thornburry, 2005). From this theory, cohesion is involved in micro level coherence. The findings indicate that the students show a bit weakness on achieving coherent texts due to lack of optimization of cohesive devices especially conjunctions to create interconnectedness of the whole sentences in the texts.

Este trabajo pretende cubrir el vacío existente en el campo de la fraseología sobre el uso de colocaciones gramaticales por parte de estudiantes españoles en su producción escrita en inglés, tanto por aquellos que estudian Filología Inglesa (el
corpus SPICLE, Spanish International Corpus of Learner English), como por los que estudian inglés como materia optativa a sus propios estudios universitarios (el corpus
de producción propia CEUNF, Corpus de Estudiantes Universitarios No Filólogos). Se analizarán las colocaciones gramaticales utilizadas por los dos grupos de estudiantes
españoles y se contrastarán con dos corpora de escritores nativos: los estudiantes universitarios estadounidenses (LOCNESS, Louvain Corpus of Native Essays) y los editorialistas profesionales (SPE, Signed Professional Editorialists). Tras el análisis cuantitativo y cualitativo de los datos veremos que los estudiantes españoles utilizan más colocaciones gramaticales que los escritores nativos, comentaremos las razones del uso excesivo de estructuras lexicalizadas y presentaremos futuros ámbitos de estudio.

The present study analyzes Pakistani English written discourse through multidimensional analysis. For this purpose, two corpora types, including Pakistani universities' newsletters and Pakistani human rights NGOs' annual reports, have been complied. It has been investigated how the language of newsletters of Pakistani universities differs from that of annual reports of Pakistani human rights NGOs on D1 and D2 of the multidimensional approach. Biber’s (1988) multidimensional analysis provides the theoretical grounding to the present study. MAT software (1.3) has been used to tag and analyze the data. Co-occurrences of linguistic features are quantitatively analyzed and then qualitatively interpreted through D1 and D2 of multidimensional approach. The results reveal that the language of this written discourse of Pakistani English is informational on D1. By comparing it with Biber's work of 1988, it has been revealed that this genre is close to the official documents on D1. The language of Pakistani universities' newsletter is more informational on this dimension than that of the genre of Pakistani NGOs annual reports as the mean scores for both are -26.79 and -25.13, respectively. The analysis of the D2 indicates that the genre of the selected written discourse is non-narrative. However, Pakistani universities' newsletters are close to broadcasts, whereas the annual reports of human rights NGOs are close to the personal letters. Moreover, the newsletters discourse is strongly non-narrative than that of the annual reports.

This thesis reports an exploratory and contrastive corpus study examining two phenomena in postgraduate academic writing: expressing commitment/detachment and signalling authorial presence in dissertations. More specifically, the overall purpose of the study is to investigate how postgraduate academic writers from particular contexts build their academic stance and voice by employing a range of linguistic items that could be identified as hedges, boosters and authorial references.

One of the essential features of a written text, if it is to be useful, is coherence. If it is incoherent, the text will be misunderstood, or discarded as vague and confusing. There are several aspects of information structure must be taken into account if a writer to produce a text that will be coherent for its readers. Firstly, the writer has a relationship with his/her readers: he/she wants them to read and understand his text, so he/she must evaluate what information to assume that the addressee already knows. If the writer assumes the readers know more than they actually do, the text will probably be too specialised, and the reader will not be able to provide the necessary information to make the text coherent. Giving the reader too much information, on the other hand, can require a greater effort on the part of the reader to fit this information together with that which is already known, and as a consequence, find the text to be incoherent. Secondly, the writer is concerned with putting across the correct image of his/her ideas and him/herself as addressor. To present his/her thoughts clearly so that they cannot be misinterpreted, the writer must choose one from the numerous ways there are of phrasing the same thing. Thirdly, a writer will take care to guide his addressees through the text so that they do not lose the 'thread' of the text, observing norms and practices shared by the writer and the readers.

We are happy to announce that an open-access special issue on #Metadiscourse, edited by Erdem Akbas and Ciler Hatipoglu, is now relased by Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice!

Please see the editorial and table of contens of the issue entitled ''Metadiscourse Variations across Academic Genres: Rhetorical Preferences in Textual and Interpersonal Markers''.

The issue covers the following articles on Metadiscourse:

Annelie Ädel
''Variation in Metadiscursive “You” Across Genres: From Research Articles to Teacher Feedback''

Claire Louise Rodway
''Metadiscourse Use in a Dialogic Feedback Practice''

Vesna Bogdanovic, Ivana Mirovic
''Young Researchers Writing in ESL and the Use of Metadiscourse: Learning the Ropes''

Erdem Akbas, Jan Hardman
''Strengthening or Weakening Claims in Academic Knowledge Construction: A Comparative Study of Hedges and Boosters in Postgraduate Academic Writing''

Sheena Gardner, Chao Han
''Transitions of Contrast in Chinese and English University Student Writing''

Melanie Andresen, Heike Zinsmeister
''Stylistic Differences between Closely Related Disciplines: Metadiscourse in German Linguistics and Literary Studies''

Hmoud S. Alotaibi
''Metadiscourse in Dissertation Acknowledgments: Exploration of Gender Differences in EFL Texts''

Hanna Martikainen
''Modal Markers as Potential Sources of Distortion in Translated Medical Abstracts''

Alessandra Molino
''What I’m Speaking is almost English…: A Corpus-based Study of Metadiscourse in English-medium
Lectures at an Italian University''

Çiler Hatipoğlu, Sedef Algı
''Catch a Tiger by the Toe: Modal Hedges in EFL Argumentative Paragraphs''

If you are interested in any of the articles in the issue, please visit and download: http://www.estp.com.tr/issues/issue-18-4/

All the best,

Erdem Akbas

The paper shows the role of endophonic prosody and its function in determining the order of written discourse. Linguistic analysis often developed a model of language primarily intended as written language, probably because, as Bakhtin says, in the writing you look at the statement and not at the utterance, and you lose sight that even the statement is the result of an utterance now observed in conditions other than those of its production.  Following this thesis, here we claim that phonic and endophonic prosody is crucial for production and reception of written messages.
The first part of the essay discusses the Saussurian linearity of significance and shows how also Saussure referred to inner speech in explaining the succession of phonemes. The second part addresses the issue of “ambiguity”, from which Chomskian theory moves, and claims that this kind of ambiguities are an intrinsic factor of writing technology, as the semantic relevance of syntax is not original, but it is derived from written use of language.

LITHUANIAN WRITTEN DISCOURSE: PARTICIPIAL PRONOUNS REFERRING TO ADDRESSEE
The article discusses the variations of spelling of participial pronouns referring to another person in the Lithuanian written discourse. Next to the usual spelling Tu/Jūs based on the traditional stylistic capitalization, the model of spelling where the pronoun referring to the addressee starts with a lower-case letter tu/jūs exists as well. The reference to a dialogue partner and the way it is presented are an essential communication detail; therefore, naturally, the likely reasons, directions and effects of the current tendencies of varying spelling of participial pronouns in direct discourses are linked with the conception of the category of PERSON itself.
The article reviews the models of perception of participial pronouns proposed in linguistic descriptions and discusses the levels of communication of ONE PERSON’S relationship to ANOTHER in which the interlocutors find themselves when using the forms of the same pronoun which are differently coded in writing. It is normal in the Lithuanian written tradition to add prominence to the person by capitalising the participial pronoun referring to the interlocutor. It is a way to show the attitude to ANOTHER PERSON based on mutual understanding.

Aim: Our aim is to offer and illustrates a novel meta-methodology to enhance the rigour of method selection and understanding of results in pluralist qualitative research (PQR).
Method: To do so, we make innovative use of Braun and Clarke’s (2006) articulation of four discrete dimensions characterising different forms of thematic analysis. We provide secondary analyses of an interview from the Social Media, Men who have Sex with Men and Sexual Health project using critical discursive psychology, dialogical analysis, interpretative phenomenological analysis, and psychosocial narrative analysis.
Results: All four methods identified aspects of three central foci: Compartmentalisation, Detachment, and Jouissance.
Conclusion: We discuss how our proposed meta-methodology provides a rationale for the selection of methods in a PQR, offer evidence that it can anticipate the relative similarity in focus of the methods employed, and argue that our meta-methodology reveals the possibility of identifying an ‘axial’ or ‘hub’ method’ of a PQR which might be particularly fruitful in exploring commonalities and differences in results. Finally, we examine the synergies and challenges of combining pairs of the methods we used.

The current study investigates the use and function of the pragmatic moves related to politeness in the written form. It analyses a corpus written by English-speaking American students and native Spanish students who participated in the first task of the writing skills of the University of Antonio Nebrija's Project: Proyecto de Examen Multinivel de Certificación del Español Académico. In order to recognise the key text features of both sources, the communicative strategies used in the heading, body and closing sequence of their emails were identified. Therefore, the formulas used to address the teacher, the illocutionary force of their speech acts and the mitigating and emphasizing elements used in their messages were analysed. Results suggest that those American students examined in the study did not adjust to an appropriate register and manner in academic Spanish.

The present study analyzes Pakistani English written discourse through multidimensional analysis. For this purpose, two corpora types, including Pakistani universities' newsletters and Pakistani human rights NGOs' annual reports, have been complied. It has been investigated how the language of newsletters of Pakistani universities differs from that of annual reports of Pakistani human rights NGOs on D1 and D2 of the multidimensional approach. Biber’s (1988) multidimensional analysis provides the theoretical grounding to the present study. MAT software (1.3) has been used to tag and analyze the data. Co-occurrences of linguistic features are quantitatively analyzed and then qualitatively interpreted through D1 and D2 of multidimensional approach. The results reveal that the language of this written discourse of Pakistani English is informational on D1. By comparing it with Biber's work of 1988, it has been revealed that this genre is close to the official documents on D1....

This paper attempts to demonstrate Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework by conducting internal and external level analyses on two online news articles that report on the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s (MILF) submission of its findings on the “Mamasapano Incident” that happened in the Philippines in 2015. In performing analyses using this framework, the social context and background for these texts, as well as the relationship between the internal discourse features and the external social practices and structures in which the texts were produced are thoroughly examined. As a result, it can be noted that from the texts’ internal discourse features, the news articles portray ideological and social distinctions among social actors such as the Philippine Senate, the SAF troopers, the MILF, the MILF fighters, and the civilians. Moreover, from the viewpoint of the texts as being external social practices, the texts maintain institutional identities as news repo...

Taking metadiscourse as their starting point, the contributions to this edited volume focus both on the interactive and cross-cultural aspects of written texts from varying genres. Using rich and innovative data collection and analysis methods, comparing and contrasting patterns in frequently studied (English, Japanese) with understudied (Turkish, Russian/Ukrainian) languages, and relating empirical data to a web of theoretical frameworks, the articles in this book clearly display the variety, complexity and multiplicity of metadiscoursal analysis of written texts. The volume aims to substantially advance our understanding of the communicative nature of written texts and contributes to the advancement and expansion of researchers’ interests in this field.

As the most prestigious and popular standardized achievement test to certify examinees’ proficiency of the English language at the national level, Foreign Language Examination (YDS) has been mostly taken by academic staff, undergraduate and graduate students, state employees, and military personnel for years in Turkey. The current study set out to address multiple-choice written discourse completion tasks (WDCTs) in YDS from 2015 to 2019 in the light of pragmatic knowledge, seemingly presumed to be the elephant in the room by test-developers in written language placement tests and its components, such as sociolinguistics, sociocultural, psychological, contextual, and rhetorical meanings to disclose whether they can represent functional language use in high context communications. Findings reveal that a huge gap subsists between real-life situations and given tasks in the test. At the end of the fine-grained inspection, implications and future research suggestions are
stated to ensure validity and involve speaking skill more directly in YDS by emphasizing what to touch and expressly centre on the speech rather than solely assessing examinees’ knowledge for recognition and appealing to multiple-choice items with the analysis of international, large-scale language tests, such as TOEFL and IELTS.

This corpus study presents the results of a three-way analysis of the reporting verbs used by expert writers in the Humanities, by American university students and by Spanish EFL university students of English Studies. The study shows that novice writers, both native and non-native, share a characteristic lack of pragmatic knowledge in presenting their points of argument to the reader. The study will be of interest to EAP teachers to both native and non-native novice writers, since the findings presented here could be incorporated into materials for undergraduate teaching in various disciplines.

The study of discourse markers has attracted the attention of researchers as a facet of linguistics since the 19 th century. The focus of research has been based on the theoretical status of discourse markers in relation to how they are used and for what reasons, explored in different contexts and settings; however, few studies have been conducted in the context of Saudi Arabia. This study, therefore, attempted to look at the use of discourse markers by senior university students majoring in English in Saudi Arabia and its functions. Fraser's (2004) semantic perspective, classifying discourse markers into four categories, was adopted, together with Hiilker's (1991) features of discourse markers, consistent with the view that the meaning of discourse markers is related to their function of clarifying the intrinsic value of an utterance. The results revealed that students in their essays employed discourse markers in all four of Fraser's (2004) categories. However, it was evident that the participating students struggled with the appropriate use of discourse markers. This issue should be examined in greater depth and the reasons for this difficulty assessed. One reason lies in students' low exposure to discourse markers in class. It is thus highly recommended that teachers raise EFL students' awareness of discourse markers by providing them with more related tasks and exercises.

This research is associated with the field of relations between language and power (and ideology in a wider context), one of the most important and timeless issues in the history of philosophy and linguistics, especially sociolinguistics (Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, among others). Focusing on the textual sub-genre of Greek public documents for the period 2010-2019, we will discriminate the real need for specialized language and terminology, from the tendency to exercise social power through language. This will be firstly accomplished by identifying cases where the [+ learned] variety is preferred instead of the "norm" of the official Modern Greek, when composing the public documents, in order to give them an authoritative style. Through analyzing, in a quantitative and qualitative manner, a broad and representative sample of public documents, we will prove that the types and structures of the learned elements per linguistic level, (phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic and lexical) which do not serve a specific text-communicative function, aim to increase the prestige through the use of a "superior" linguistic style, which supports the imperative character of the language of public administration. The proof of our research hypothesis will be based on (i) Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, van Dijk, Weiss & Wodak) in order to highlight the recurrent (explicit and implicit) power relations which, through the learned variety, create specific patterns in the language of public documents, making it authoritative and (ii) textlinguistic principles in order to demonstrate that the [+learned] variety is often preferred in public documents, although not only is it not justified by the conditions of communication, but it also hinders their reception by citizens, undermining the conversational maxims (Grice). For the purposes of our research, we will collect a sample of one thousand (1000) public documents, through stratified sampling. Those documents will be further grouped on the basis of a multilevel analysis of textual categorization. The research material will be gathered through on-site visits to public bodies and through the use of the governmental, web-based platform "Diavgeia". Finally, the conclusions of our research will be exploited at the level of school education, through a topical proposal, in order to promote the teaching of the use of the continuum [±learned] in the school environment, as a distinctive stylistic level of the Modern Greek Language, with explicit and implicit sociolinguistic parameters.

Η παρούσα έρευνα εντάσσεται στο πεδίο των σχέσεων γλώσσας και εξουσίας (και ιδεολογίας σε ευρύτερο πλαίσιο), ενός από τα πιο σημαντικά και διαχρονικά θέματα στην ιστορία της φιλοσοφίας και της γλωσσολογίας, ιδιαίτερα της κοινωνιογλωσσολογίας (Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard κ.ά.). Εστιάζοντας στο κειμενικό υποείδος των ελληνικών δημοσίων εγγράφων της περιόδου 2010-2019, θα διαχωρίσουμε την πραγματική ανάγκη για εξειδικευμένη γλώσσα και ορολογία, από την τάση για άσκηση κοινωνικής εξουσίας μέσω της γλώσσας. Αυτό θα υλοποιηθεί κατ’ αρχάς, μέσω του εντοπισμού των περιπτώσεων όπου η ποικιλία [+λόγιο] προτιμάται αντί της «νόρμας» της Νέας Ελληνικής, κατά τη σύνταξη των ανωτέρω εγγράφων, με μόνο σκοπό να τους προσδώσει εξουσιαστικό ύφος. Αναλύοντας, ποσοτικά και ποιοτικά, ένα ευρύ και αντιπροσωπευτικό δείγμα δημοσίων εγγράφων, θα αποδείξουμε ότι οι λόγιοι τύποι και δομές ανά γλωσσικό επίπεδο (φωνολογικό, μορφολογικό, συντακτικό, σημασιολογικό και λεξιλογικό), οι οποίοι δεν εξυπηρετούν κάποια ειδική κειμενική-επικοινωνιακή λειτουργία, αποσκοπούν σε ένα αυξημένο κύρος, μέσα από τη χρήση ενός «ανώτερου» γλωσσικού ύφους το οποίο υποστηρίζει τον διατακτικό χαρακτήρα της γλώσσας της δημόσιας διοίκησης. Η απόδειξη της ερευνητικής μας υπόθεσης θα στηριχθεί i) στην Κριτική Ανάλυση Λόγου (Fairclough, Van Dijk, Weiss & Wodak) ώστε να αναδειχθούν οι επαναλαμβανόμενες (ρητές και υπόρρητες) σχέσεις εξουσίας οι οποίες -μέσω της λόγιας ποικιλίας- δημιουργούν συγκεκριμένα μοτίβα στη γλώσσα των δημοσίων εγγράφων, καθιστώντας την εξουσιαστική και ii) σε κειμενογλωσσολογικές αρχές, προκειμένου να αποδειχθεί ότι η ποικιλία [+λόγιο] προτιμάται συχνά στα δημόσια έγγραφα, παρόλο που όχι μόνο δε δικαιολογείται από τις συνθήκες επικοινωνίας, αλλά και δημιουργεί προσκόμματα ως προς την πρόσληψή τους από τους πολίτες, υπονομεύοντας τα επικοινωνιακά αξιώματα (Grice). Για τις ανάγκες της έρευνάς μας, θα συγκεντρωθεί δείγμα χιλίων (1000) δημοσίων εγγράφων, μέσω στρωματοποιημένης δειγματοληψίας, τα οποία θα ομαδοποιηθούν περαιτέρω, βάσει μιας πολυεπίπεδης ανάλυσης κειμενικής κατηγοριοποίησης. Το ερευνητικό υλικό θα συλλεχθεί τόσο από επιτόπιες επισκέψεις σε δημόσιους φορείς, όσο και μέσω της χρήσης της κρατικής διαδικτυακής πλατφόρμας «Διαύγεια». Τέλος, τα συμπεράσματα της έρευνάς μας θα αξιοποιηθούν στο επίπεδο της σχολικής εκπαίδευσης, μέσω μίας επίκαιρης πρότασης για την προώθηση της διδασκαλίας του συνεχούς [± λόγιο] στο σχολικό περιβάλλον, ως ξεχωριστού υφολογικού επιπέδου της Νέας Ελληνικής, με ρητές και υπόρρητες κοινωνιογλωσσολογικές παραμέτρους.

In Carretero, M., Hidalgo, L., Lavid, J., Martínez-Caro, E., Neff, J., Pérez de Ayala, S. y Sánchez-Pardo, E. (eds), A Pleasure of Life in Words: A Festschrift for Angela Downing, Vol. I y II. Homenaje a Angela Downing Rothwell. Madrid: Cersa. Págs. 199-218. (2006).

Online at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26923748


This contribution focuses on the relationship that was built in 16th century Milan between the press and texts of a normative nature. After having briefly considered the existing contributions on the subject, we move on to examine a specific aspect of the relationship, that is, considering the transition of a precise measure through three different textuality: in its handwritten form, as a typographic manifesto and finally as it appeared I a collection of laws. The analysis of the documents clearly illustrates the evolution of the standard, which undergoes changes both at the linguistic level and from the point of view of the organization of the text. The comparison therefore leads us to consider the importance of the strategy for disseminating standards when they are produced. More generally, it is clear that the producer bodies are willing to maintain control over the measure, demonstrating that the power was not willing to leave the narration of the political discourse to the case or to the will of the printers.

Research Article (RA) genre has been a significant area of research in academic writing over past decades. However, authors’ identity in RAs has not received much attention, especially in soft sciences like applied linguistics. This paper reports a corpus analysis of Iranian writers’ authorial presence markers in RAs in the field of applied linguistics. The corpus comprised 30 RAs (200,000 words) from three peer-reviewed journals published in Iran. This study was carried out in two phases. Initially, the corpus was content-analysed for exclusive instances of authorial presence markers and then, frequency of each authorial indicator was calculated. Content analysis revealed various authorial markers used by Iranian scholars to manifest themselves in their writings, for instance, personal pronouns, self-citations, and other self-mention terms. Authorial markers varied in terms of frequency in single-authored and multiple-authored articles. Personal pronouns were found to be the most salient authorial markers. Furthermore, authors in the corpus employed authorial markers for different promotional purposes such as pursuing uniqueness in their studies and regarding themselves as prominent figures in the field. The results of this study underline the need for further research into the identities adopted by writers in their works and the whys and wherefores behind using particular identity markers rather than others. This study would be of benefit to academic writers and teachers of writing courses since it helps them discern the linguistic choices available to non-native speakers of English to manifest themselves in their writings and to gain acceptance in the discipline community.

Taking metadiscourse as their starting point, the contributions to this edited volume focus both on the interactive and cross-cultural aspects of written texts from varying genres. Using rich and innovative data collection and analysis methods, comparing and contrasting patterns in frequently studied (English, Japanese) with understudied (Turkish, Russian/Ukrainian) languages, and relating empirical data to a web of theoretical frameworks, the articles in this book clearly display the variety, complexity and multiplicity of metadiscoursal analysis of written texts. The volume aims to substantially advance our understanding of the communicative nature of written texts and contributes to the advancement and expansion of researchers’ interests in this field.