Culture and Styles of Academic Discourse 9783110821048, 9783110152494

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Culture and Styles of Academic Discourse

W G DE

Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 104

Editor

Werner Winter

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

Culture and Styles of Academic Discourse

edited by

Anna Duszak

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

1997

Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin.

© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

Library of Congress

Cataloging-in-Publication-Data

Culture and styles of academic discourse / edited by Anna Duszak. p. cm. - (Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs ; 104) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 3-11-015249-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Discourse analysis. 2. Language and culture. 3. Academic writing. I. Duszak, Anna. II. Series. P301.C85 1997 401'-dc21 97-16450 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek —

Cataloging-in-Publication-Data

Culture and styles of academic discourse. - Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, 1997 (Trends in linguistics : Studies and monographs ; 104) ISBN 3-11-015249-5

© Copyright 1997 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-10785 Berlin. All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Typesetting and Printing: Arthur Collignon GmbH, Berlin. Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer, Berlin. Printed in Germany.

Contents

Introduction Anna Duszak Part One Values, attitudes, and doings Cross-cultural academic communication: a discourse-community view Anna Duszak Academic writing and cultural identity: the case of Czech academic writing Svetla Cmejrkovä and Frantisek Danes Doing well ... doing badly: An analysis of the role of conflicting cultural values in judgments of relative "academic achievement" Lesley Farrell Language culture, language awareness, and writing curricula in Polish schools Urszula Zydek-Bednarczuk The signs of a new time: academic writing in ESP curricula of Ukrainian universities Tatyana Yakhontova Developing awareness of the rhetorical and linguistic conventions of writing a thesis in English: addressing the needs of EFL/ESL postgraduate students Linda Cooley and Jo Lewkowicz Mind your metaphors! Historical and theoretical notes toward a constructivist theory of metaphor in scientific communication Heinz L. Kretzenbacher

vi

Contents

Systems of reference in intellectual discourse: a potential source of intercultural stereotypes Vittorina Cecchetto and Magda Stromska

141

Part Two Interpersonal meanings in academic discourse: The case of hedging Modalization: Probability an exploration into its role in academic writing Eija Ventola

157

Some observations on the distribution and function of hedging in German and English academic writing Heinz Kreutz and Annette Harres

181

Hedging in English and Bulgarian academic writing Irena Vassileva

203

The effects of hedges and gender on the attitudes of readers in the United States toward material in a science textbook Avon Crismore and William J. Vande Kopple

223

Part Three Variation in the genre Journal abstracts from three academic fields in the United States and Sweden: national or disciplinary proclivities? Björn Melander, John M. Swales, and Kirstin M. Fredrickson 251 Research article introductions in Malay: Rhetoric in an emerging research community Ummul K. Ahmad

273

If not given, then what? Things that come first in academic discourse Lyubov A. Prozorova

305

Analyzing digressiveness in Polish academic texts Anna Duszak

323

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Inference in science and popular science Merja Koskela

343

Index

359

Introduction Anna Duszak

The intersection of cultural studies and analysis of academic discourses is today drawing more and more attention among linguists, educationists, and professional researchers in many disciplines. Among the reasons for this are: transformations in the philosophical stance regarding language, texts, and communicants; increase in cross-cultural contacts and growing awareness of the role of language in disseminating knowledge and in giving meaning to relations among individuals and groups; changes in educational views and policies, including in particular advancements in genre-based pedagogy for native and nonnative writers in research and academic settings. Intellectual, practical, and social considerations conspire to imbue such issues with profound scientific and social relevance. The current state of the art in the field of contrastive academic rhetoric would not have been possible without a change of perspective on language and the nature of scientific communication. Natural language has long been seen as an enemy of scientific exposition. This has not made it any easier to view academic writing in communicative terms, let alone in a cross-cultural perspective. The main problem was — and is, for that matter — the delicate nature of the field of science and scholarship: the sacrum of knowledge and truth is at the mercy of a medium that is profane, and a user who is fallible. For the sake of scientific purity and veracity, a plain and impersonal language was recommended — a language devoid of emotional and interpersonal meanings, of fuzzy expressions, and of intellectual or attitudinal bias. All this contributed to the image of a dehumanized language of science, and likewise to the image of a dehumanized writer/reader. Since people acting as scholars were expected to separate the scientific from the human, uniformity of academic writing styles was taken for granted, and was accounted for in terms of objectivized research standards. The emergence and subsequent rapid development of modern text linguistics and discourse analysis envisaged the communicative potential of the language of science as well as its variation across fields and cultures. The line and the pace of such renewed interest in academic communication patterns was strongly influenced by the general evolution of processual, strategic, dynamic, and interactive models of discourse organization

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and discourse processing. Focus on language was superseded by focus on text and discourse characteristics that were then correlated with human properties. Within the last ten years or so extensive work has been done on academic discourse patterns in mono- and multicultural contexts. Cross-cultural variation has been noted in at least the following areas of discourse organization: global and local structures in texts; levels of explicitness and metatextual cuing; degrees of redundancy and distribution of salience; and linearity and complexity in form and content development. Parameters of text organization were reinterpreted in interactional terms and correlated with underlying social and cultural values. Contrary to original assumptions, academic discourses were found to accommodate relations of involvement and detachment, power and solidarity, face and politeness. These and related observations undermined the concept of a plain language and a pure, objectivized statement of knowledge. They led to a humanizing trend in discussions of academic communication that found space for a more natural language and a more human academic. By speaking of academic communication rather than the language of science, we come closer to reconciling the sacred and the profane in how people cope with reporting science. The papers in this volume espouse such a discourse- and communication-sensitive outlook on the language of science. They document variation in academic discourse patterns and relate it to social, cultural, and historical factors, as well as to language-typological constraints on textualizations in science. Under an integrated discourse view on academic register, social structure relations as well as general systems of values bear on how knowledge is presented and how academic solidarity and competition are envisaged. Historically entrenched intellectual traditions also have a say in what methodologies are preferred, what research and educational priorities are selected, and what the dominant patterns of scholarly ideation are. In this way the intellectual climate in a given academic community influences the style of doing and reporting research. All this means that there is no universal pattern of communicating scholarship; neither is there a single style of communicating interpersonal relations between academic writers and readers. It is only natural that disparities in intellectual styles and academic writing conventions should produce relative standards regarding what makes an academic text good or valued. As a result, there are varying conceptions of field and discourse expertise that are required of texts and writers competing for access to code. Disparate standards may indeed

Introduction

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lead to biased views, misattributions of intention, or communication failures. In discussing differences among writing styles, attribution of value may not be excluded, even despite the author's intentions. Thus, Clyne's description of academic German (or Polish, Czech, and Russian for that matter) as "digressive" may appear judgmental. The same could apply to such qualifying terms as "circular", for circularity (at least according to European standards) can hardly produce positive connotations. Rather, it will be interpreted as a sign of inefficient or ineffective communicative practice. Whether a similar inferiority could follow from Clyne's comparison of the digressive style to cooked spaghetti depends also on one's culinary taste. Whether, in turn, "teutonic" is a term that could be popular among, say, Polish academics is still more debatable, for reasons other than mundane preference. In a world of rapid internationalization of science, further insight into academic communication styles is both pressing and worthwhile. Ignorance of, or misconceptions about, the communication styles of others can hinder understanding among academics and ultimately obstruct cooperation and advancement of scholarship. Clearly, therefore, cross-cultural education in matters of academic style plays an important role in making people aware of their own discourse patterns, as well as in enriching their knowledge of other academic cultures. Studies in cross-cultural academic rhetoric have great potential for application. Applications of such studies become still more apparent given the increasing tendency to establish an English monoculture in scholarly communication. Natural as it may seem due to the uncontested position of English as an academic lingua franca, the trend seems to meet some reluctance on the part of writers and readers from other academic cultures, who choose to adhere to their own rhetorical standards. Admittedly, however, attitudes may differ. For speakers of some minority languages English offers a way out of isolation and into the world of international scholarship. Proficiency in academic English becomes a value in itself, a commodity to be acquired through instinctive imitation or guided instruction. No matter what attitude we take toward form in communicating scholarly matters, writing academic texts is a skill to be taught to native as well as nonnative speakers. Nonnative speakers in particular are likely to have problems with research writing. All this makes assistance in writing academic texts an issue of pedagogical concern for applied linguists, teachers, and supervisors of writing classes as well as students working on their dissertations.

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This volume is divided into three parts. This marks differences in focus, but does not change the general orientation. The contributions in Part 1 touch upon general issues connected with the role of underlying value systems in addressing and transmitting knowledge. Social, cultural, national, historical, philosophical, and practical factors are discussed, including attitudes to texts and users, as well as a host of applied concerns related to the teaching of academic writing in general and to nonnative speakers of English in particular. Duszak provides an introductory chapter that reviews and evaluates numerous general problems raised by other contributors, and poses questions for further inquiry. The author's main objective is to defend an interpersonal and interactive approach to academic communication. Variation in academic text and discourse characteristics is interpreted in terms of human properties and with reference to the concept of an "academic discourse community", originally proposed by Swales. Duszak examines the concept in light of a variety of cross-cultural data. In particular she explores the various facets of an internationalized academic community, paying special attention to the interaction between field and rhetoric expertise, genre fuzziness, gradience of membership, and the interrhetoric of science. Cmejrkovä and Danes give a profound analysis of the relations between academic writing patterns and cultural values. Even though their point of reference and emphasis is Czech academic writing, they document and analyze the numerous coincidences of Czech with German, Russian, Finnish, and Polish on the one hand, and its global disparities with English (Anglo-American) norms on the other. Their scope of interest is very broad and covers textual as well as interactive properties of Czech academic discourse. Considerable space is given to problems of modality and hedging, which makes their contribution relevant to Part 2 of this volume as well. The paper by Zydek-Bednarczuk offers an indirect assessment of the state of research in Polish academic discourse and of the teaching of writing skills in Polish schools. It implicates a lack of the discourse-analytical studies and educational practices suggested as appropriate by this volume. To drive her point home Zydek-Bednarczuk adopts a much broader perspective, and concentrates on longstanding priorities in Polish linguistics and educational policies: language culture, language norm and its literary grounding, and the role of the authority in norm creation and evaluation. In this way Zydek-Bednarczuk appears to gloss some of the general points made by Cmejrkovä and Danes on the affinities between

Introduction

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the Czech and the Polish intellectual traditions. She discusses language curricula in Polish schools and demonstrates their failure to meet a growing awareness in the society of the disparities between the norm and the practical communication needs in various communicative settings. Yakhontova discusses the situation of Ukrainian scholars struggling to overcome the Soviet education heritage, and to meet the new challenges of the pan-Western academic culture. Yakhontova argues that the Soviet focus on nonwritten forms of knowledge acquisition, control, and evaluation led to neglect of academic writing instruction. She focuses on the opportunities an English academic monoculture offers a speaker of a minority language in a new democratic society: good and appropriate performance in academic English becomes a tool to break out of isolation and establish a presence in world scholarship. Yakhontova discusses an approach to teaching English academic writing to Ukrainian scholars that is a practical two-level realization of Bakhtin's genre dichotomy. The first level is devoted to the mastery of academic genres as "mandatory" or normative schemata, and the second deals with the development of skills for creative writing. The teaching of English academic writing to nonnative speakers is also addressed by Cooley and Lewkowicz, as well as by Farrell. However, the authors are faced with different problems, choose different perspectives on the sources of writing difficulties, and propose various solutions. Cooley and Lewkowicz concentrate on writing needs and difficulties of postgraduate Cantonese Chinese students in Hong Kong. The authors take into account both students' and supervisors' perceptions of how problems arise. More often than not the two evaluations overlap. Cooley and Lewkowicz argue that the most serious problems arise at the macrolevel of discourse. These are the deficiencies that relate to the overall communicative success of a piece of writing, that involve the clarity of the text, its global organization, and the consistency and balance of argument, as well as the expression of thoughts in English. The authors discuss the development of a Diagnostic Assessment Profile, which they then adopt as an organizational basis for a series of workshops on thesis writing. Farrell examines the social effects of conflicting cultural values in an educational setting taking the example of Vietnamese-Australian students' performance during tertiary entrance examinations in Australia. Farrell argues that aspects of the students' Vietnamese culture influence their responses to examination tasks, and that their Anglo-Australian examiners call upon their own cultural values in interpreting those re-

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sponses. Candidates are rewarded for texts that organize information in linear, coordinated, and symmetrical ways, which is understood as conclusive evidence of the quality of thinking. Candidates subscribing to alternative cultural orientations in intellectual inquiries are disadvantaged. The last two papers in this section raise more general issues of value and attitude transmission in academic texts. Kretzenbacher addresses the cultural values of subjectivity and objectivity in the sciences. He points to the deep mistrust of language in the sciences, and explores the metaphor taboo in academic style as an ideological legacy from the early times of modern science. Cecchetto and Stromska discuss how the requirement of impersonal style, imposed by the rhetoric of science, competes with the natural desire to assign roles in intellectual discourse. They explore strategies employed by authors of scientific texts to make reference to themselves and to address the audience. In relating the system of academic reference to relations of power and solidarity, their contribution bridges the two parts of the volume. Part 2 focuses on interpersonal meanings in academic discourse, using the example of hedging. Yentola explores the role of modalizations of probability (possibly/probably I certainly) in academic texts by native English speakers and by Finnish speakers of English. She uses the Hallidayan approach to modality as modalization to document problems Finnish writers have with English modalization:probability choices. In contrast to the English speakers, Ventola argues, the Finns do not like to hedge in expressing their attitudes toward, or opinions on, the message. Such cross-cultural disparities in hedging strategies have their implications for foreign language teaching: what is it nonnative academic writers need to know about the appropriate ways of realizing interpersonal meanings in texts? Kreutz and Harres discuss hedges as important modality markers and indicators of text orientation taking the example of English and German academic discourse. They argue that while hedging serves to downtone and mitigate arguments and assertions in English texts, their main function in German writing may be one of assertion and authority. They relate this to the opposite orientation of English and of German texts, namely, that towards the reader and the writer respectively. In English, they argue, the mechanism of hedging can be shown to be text-constructive and to incorporate dialogue, whereas in German it is dominated by the primary function of Wissensdarstellung (presentation of knowledge) and of establishing authority in the discipline.

Introduction

1

Vassileva exercises an interpersonal approach to hedging, taking the example of English and Bulgarian academic texts. Vassileva explores the problem from the point of view of speech act theory as part of a more general theory of commitment and detachment. Hedging is discussed in terms of quantity and of its linguistic realization. Vassileva examines English and Bulgarian texts as well as English texts written by Bulgarians. She shows that the three types of texts exhibit varying clines of commitment and detachability. She establishes a lower degree of hedging for Bulgarian and Bulgarian English texts, which places them high on the scale of commitment. From the English perspective, such texts may sound inappropriately self-confident and imposing. The author relates her observations to the Bulgarian tradition of knowledge presentation. In the last paper in this part, Crismore and Vande Kopple address a very specific cross-cultural issue: gender-related differences in evaluating academic texts in educational contexts and for teaching purposes. Crismore and Vande Kopple report on a study of how the presence of hedges in English affects the attitudes of ninth-grade students from the midwestern United States toward controversial material from a science textbook. They argue that hedging in general, and with female readers in particular, stipulates positive attitudes toward the content of the passage. In working toward an explanation of their findings, the authors suggest that their test material without hedges led to dismissive reading, whereas its version with hedges encouraged more analytical and evaluative processing. With this assumption they relate to a broader problem of knowledge presentation that underlies much of the discussion in this volume: are the factual format and the impersonal style real alternatives to the human and the interpersonal in communicating knowledge? Part 3 focuses on variation in the academic genre. Text characteristics are interpreted in terms of linguistic features and their interpersonal and cultural correlates. Melander, Swales, and Fredrickson examine abstracts in biology, medicine, and linguistics written by Swedes in Swedish, by Swedes in English, and by Americans in English. They concentrate on rhetorical aspects of those texts in an attempt to establish how much of their variability can be ascribed to differences in field and how much to authors' national origin. They argue that both national and disciplinary proclivities seem to influence the rhetorical and linguistic structures of abstracts, but they do so to varying degrees in each field. It is the linguistic abstracts that show a clear tendency toward national proclivities. Ahmad analyzes rhetorical features in scientific and technical research articles written in Malay by Malaysian academics. Applying Swales's

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move analysis, Ahmad examines discourse strategies used by Malay writers in their introductory sections and compares them to those proposed for English and other languages. She relates the differences to the nature of the Malayan discourse community and to the developmental stage of the Malayan language as a medium for expressing scientific arguments. Prozorova addresses global structures in academic texts in English and in Russian. Using a revised version of Prince's Given-New taxonomy, Prozorova argues that various compositional parts of academic texts are structured differently when evaluated in terms of information distribution across the leftmost parts of their sentences. Her observations point to similarities in the semantic structure of English and Russian academic discourse, yet they also reveal some differences stemming from languagetypological and stylistic motivations. Duszak addresses variation in the organization of academic texts from the point of view of linearity and digressiveness. She explores digressiveness as a style marker in Polish scientific discourse, and argues that the concept of digression in academic argumentation is a fuzzy phenomenon. She establishes two polar categories in the apparent "nonlinearity" of Polish academic style: digressions proper and elaborations. Digressions and elaborations are discussed in the context of their thematic and formal characteristics. On the content level they are interpreted in terms of background and redundancy. On the level of form they are evaluated in terms of metatextual cuing. In contrast to English, Polish academic texts are envisaged as heavy on background, for which a number of linguistic and cultural factors are discussed as possible explanations. In the final paper Koskela wanders into the borderland of the academic genre, and explores its fuzz in terms of text and human characteristics. She analyzes the type and the extent of inference activities in Swedish scientific and popular texts. The difference between professional and popular scientific genres is examined in terms of readers' expected knowledge of the subject and of scientific practice. Koskela argues that levels of human expertise have correlates in levels of explicitness in the marking of coherence relations in texts.

Part 1 Values, attitudes, and doings

Cross-cultural academic communication: a discourse-community view Anna Duszak 1. Variation in academic discourse Recent insights into academic writing have shown considerable variation in text characteristics across fields, languages, and cultures. Major as well as subtle differences were noted in style preferences, and on various levels of form and content organization. A number of such discoursal phenomena are discussed in this volume, and ample evidence can be found in other sources in the area of research into academic communication patterns. Among the most notable differences are field- and culture-bound disparities in global organization schemata of texts. These include divisions within text space, their labeling and sequencing. Texts have been found to vary in the degree of explicitness and metadiscoursal guidance as to what meanings have been, are, or will be communicated. They have been shown to differ in redundancy levels and in the amount of background that is sanctioned in establishing relevance relations between ideas. Differences in the use of structural resources and rhetorical devices have also been pointed out. If experimental sciences are prone to show more similarities in textualization patterns, writings in the humanities and social sciences evidence more prominent variation. In these research fields, communication styles respond most strongly to language- and culture-bound discoursal preferences and constraints. It is this kind of academic discourse we will focus on in the following discussion of the human properties behind variable text characteristics.

2. Interpersonal meanings in academic discourse It is assumed here that variation in academic texts, as in any other type of text, is ultimately interpretable in terms of underlying human decisions. It is not that texts have, or do not have, some parts, that meanings flow under some text-inherent principles of development, or that particular

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devices simply belong or do not belong to a given discourse repertoire. Text parameters are significant only as formal realizations of human choices. In reporting research, writers have options that are competing for access to code. By choosing some and rejecting others, they perform strategic acts of commitment: their decisions become explicable in terms of textual as well as interpersonal meanings in discourse. The shift of focus from text characteristics to user characteristics is not uncommon on the plane of modern text and discourse studies (de Beaugrande- Dressier 1981; van Dijk—Kintsch 1983). Discussions of texts have been replaced by discussions of discourses understood as global communicative events, making it possible to cover a wide spectrum of human and contextual parameters of language use. The product view of texts has been replaced by a process view of communicative occurrences. As a result, a dynamic perspective was adopted and observations were made in terms of fuzzy sets (text and behavior prototypes) and preferential choices. The bottom line of such a cognitive, functional, and processual approach is that communicative events are appraised in terms of participants' attitudes, which range along a cline from most to least interpretable and appropriate. It also follows that behavior patterns depend heavily on expectations of discoursal reciprocity that accommodates the social bonds of solidarity and culture sharing. The reinterpretation of text realities in terms of user properties may, however, appear vulnerable when it comes to academic discourse. The reason is that academic writing is, seemingly by definition, devoid of human characteristics. The organization of a research text is supposed to take place "above" or "beyond" the writing ego. It is believed to be governed by the internal requirements of scientific exposition and by the nature of the matter under analysis. Apparently it is only by being depersonalized that an academic text can attain an excellence of objectivity and thus come closer to its primary goal, the truth. The imperative of scientificity calls for a ban on emotive language, and on the import of subjective and speculative meanings. Escape from subjectivity underlines the qualification "impersonal" in the descriptions of the language of science (Mikolajczak 1990; Mauranen 1993; Ventola 1994). As "a gnomic statement of available knowledge" (Nichols 1988: 400, on Russian), an academic text assumes a special ontological status and a special transactional value. Low on interpersonal meanings, it limits its interactive abilities and narrows its scope of circulation. The desire to seek the truth alienates the writer not only from the act of creation, but also from the potential readership.

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Recently voices have been raised in favor of a "more human" attitude to academic texts (see Ventola, this volume). Recent developments in cross-cultural academic discourse are making it clear that academic discourse may not be insightfully studied with a disregard for a whole array of interpersonal meanings. This is also the position adopted here: ideation in academic texts should be approached through attribution to writers of intentions that are interpreted in terms of attitudes writers display toward their task, their readers, and themselves. In reporting research, writers may adopt a style that is more or less reader-oriented (Hinds 1987). Sensitivity to readers' needs is sometimes discussed under dialogic versus monologic, or expository versus contemplative tendencies in academic narration (Cmejrkova-Danes, this volume). The dialogic formula, apparently typical of Anglo-American academic texts, is believed to be more interactive and hence more readerfriendly. Such an effect stems from, among other things, reader guidance and discourse predictability through staging and signposting. As a result, a piece of academic writing turns into a reciprocally negotiable contract, in which the reader participates in setting the pace and the line of exposition rather than dutifully following the writer's road to delivery. This, in turn, contrasts with a kind of contemplative rhetoric that is traditionally combined with Teutonic intellectual traditions (Galtung 1985) and attributed to science narrating in languages such as German, Polish, or Czech. Here writers are believed to indulge more in acts of creative thinking, and to endeavor more to reproduce them in the name of science and for the sake of truth, than to report them for the reader's joy and benefit. Structural options make writers oscillate between various levels of commitment to and accountability for what they are saying. Assertive ("this is the case") and tentative ("this may be the case") declarations will variously sever the writer's credibility should (s)he fail to defend his/ her claims or criticisms of others. Linguistic or textual accountability contributes to judgments of the writer's expertise in field and method. This is so even though different academic communities may exhibit different thresholds of tolerance for highs and lows in assertiveness in academic rhetoric. This only means that reader evaluations of texts are evaluations of writers. As such they are of consequence for the status of the writer and have a say in whether (s)he remains a partner for further contacts or drops out of the dialogue. An academic text reflects the social self-image of the writer and his/ her perception of the readership. Related interpersonal meanings are normally discussed under the heading of face and politeness phenomena,

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and reference is made to attitudes such as assertive, defensive, imposing, or deferential. Attributions of this kind are arrived at from the writer's assessment of his/her own position and the position of others. Insights in this area are supported by work on disparities in cross-cultural communication patterns (e. g. Saville-Troike 1982; Gudykunst-Ting-Toomey 1988). According to such observations, Western cultures are individualistic and hence supportive of direct, assertive, and explicit verbal styles. Oriental societies, on the other hand, emphasize collective values and group harmony, and hence subscribe to an affective style of interaction dominated by vague and defensive formulations. Communication realities, however, defy any broad generalizations. Wierzbicka (1991), for instance, demonstrates disparities in Western verbal styles using the example of Polish and Anglo-Australian communication patterns. Variation in introducing one's own claims and in taking account of previous research are discussed by Duszak (1994 a) in reference to Polish and Anglo-American introductions to linguistic papers. Two radically different strategies of claiming (1 a—b) and criticizing (2 a—b) are outlined: (1)

a. Nie zajmujq si% tu Nie zajmujq si% tu takze .... Proba ta nie ma pretensji do .... jest raczej naszkicowaniem problematyki. Sq to w duzej mierze luzne uwagi, chodzi jednakze ο nakreslenie pewnych tendencji we .... (Bralczyk, in Duszak 1994a: 307) [I am not dealing here with .... Neither am I dealing here with This attempt does not aspire to ... but only outlines a problem. These are largely loose remarks, yet it is also my purpose to draw out certain tendencies in. ...] b. In this chapter we will be concerned with (...), and we shall show how (...). We will then show how (...). Finally, we will demonstrate how .... (Clark and Haviland in Duszak 1994 a: 308)

(2)

a. Nie negujqc przydatnosci, a nawet owocnosci takiego stanowiska dla okreslonych celow w jgzykoznawstwie, czujemy si% w obowiqzku zauwazyc, ze jest to jeden ζ punktow nie zawsze dodatnio wplywajqcych na (Furdal, in Duszak 1994 a: 308) [Without negating the usefulness, or even the fruitfulness of such a position for definite purposes in linguistics, we feel obliged to notice that it is one of the elements that does not always have a positive influence on ] b. I will show here that Hawkins' account o f . . . involves misconceptions, and that the type of universale which he wants to

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attribute to UG does not contribute to ... despite his claim to that effect. ... I will argue here that his suggestion is implausible and that it is based on an incorrect view of the theories proposed in generative grammar. (Coopmans, in Duszak 1994 a: 309) Pronouncements of this kind are interesting insofar as they are exponents of deeper culture-bound preferences in presenting academic selfimage and the image of others. Addressing scholarly issues in public is a way of socialization into the role of an academic. In order to perform that role well, one's growth in content expertise must go hand in hand with development of a code of verbal conduct. Such a system incorporates discoursal patterns and expectations that are marked by national, ethnic, and cultural allegiances. Ultimately, therefore, the human factor brings into focus the element of communal sharing, group affinities, and divisions. Recognition of the interpersonal element in reporting science opens up a number of questions: how do people behave in transmitting scholarly matters, and why? What are the sources and areas of variation in academic behavior patterns? What creates bonds, and what sets barriers to communication among academics? The natural way to address such issues is to relate them to human characteristics and discuss them in terms of content and discourse properties of entire communities.

3. Academic community as a discourse community Discussing English in academic and research settings, Swales (1990) espouses the concept of a discourse community. According to him, discourse communities are founded on shared discoursal patterns and expectations to the extent that they are said to "have and utilize one or more genres" (1990: 26). Such genres, defined as communicative events, are instrumental in the communicative furtherance of a community's goals. In the case of an academic community, the research article can serve as one tool for transmitting mutually shared content and discourse expertise. Apart from genre, there is another aspect to discourse community: people enter such groupings by persuasion and training. Swales (1990: 27) argues that a discourse community has a threshold level for members with a suitable level of relevant content and discourse expertise, and talks

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about expert and novice members. It would seem to me that approximations to excellence in terms of field and language skills allow for gradation of membership. Swales's experts and novices could then be interpreted as polar categories along a cline. Though Swales recognizes the role of field knowledge in the constitution of discourse communities, he concentrates on the sense of unity that stems from shared communication values. He highlights the socio-rhetorical nature of discourse communities, and stresses the role of verbal skills in the reception and production of texts. As will be argued below, this distribution of emphasis begs reconsideration, partly due to the increasing internationalization of scholarship. It is assumed here that field requirements act as prerequisites for community access, and as a rationale for tapping into its discoursal properties. Striving for discourse competence means struggling above all for recognition of one's field expertise. It is arguable that focus on the socio-rhetorical character of a discourse community should imply primary attention to text-event characteristics, and downplay the sociocultural characteristics of the participants. I, however, would speak in favor of a sociocultural approach to academic rhetoric that could accommodate the strategic and dialogical character of academic behavior patterns in speech and in writing. Swales (1990: 24) argues that a discourse community consists of a group of people who link up in order to pursue objectives that "are prior to those of socialization and solidarity". It would seem though that the process of developing academic credentials is a form of socializing into a new public role. As a result exchanges of academic knowledge can be envisaged in terms of face phenomena and power and solidarity relations. Accordingly, they will fall within the scope of interpersonal meanings in communication (Halliday 1985). It follows that academics cannot help transporting into their professional exchanges knowledge of genuine interaction principles within their native speech communities. It also means that their texts will exhibit rhetorical patterns that are compatible with general discoursal preferences in a given language. At the same time an academic community may develop its own sense of intragroup solidarity vis-a-vis its nonmembers. That is, within a single speech community, an academic community may build up more or less solid frontiers that will separate it from the rest of the speakers of the language. Such barriers are not only cognitive in nature (content expertise); high or specific discoursal standards may be a sufficient deterrent for people unaccustomed to a particular rhetoric. In a way, then, academic communities can be discussed in terms of low- and high-context

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cultures in the ethnomethodological tradition (Gudykunst-Ting-Toomey 1988). Whether a given academic community has a high or a low value along this parameter depends on the general value orientation of a given speech community. Differences in underlying social and cultural values account at least in part for the discrepancy in academic communication styles across languages and cultures. The elitist attitude to academic jargon in Polish or German and the more egalitarian approach to academic rhetoric in English-speaking countries can serve as examples. It is also arguable that alienation of academic from general language supports alienation of theoretical from practical knowledge. In Polish, scientificity implies a closed-circuit transmission of knowledge among the knowledgeable. The term "scientific style" can only be applied to exchanges of information among "equals", and only on matters concerning "real" science. It is not used in contexts where knowledge is transmitted for other academic purposes (e.g., education); in such cases its qualification as "popular" scientific style becomes mandatory. As a result, Polish has no single equivalent of the English term "academic" for describing communication styles in both research and educational settings. To what extent an academic discourse community can be said to have, and utilize, a single dominant style of communication that distinguishes it from other discourse communities is a separate issue. The difficulty resides not only in multiple community membership: people can function as members of a number of discourse communities, and so may develop stylistic habits that are only partly sensitive to genre requirements. Another problem is the variety of field-related interactions academics engage in. Those interactions take place in various settings, have varying specific purposes, and involve various interpersonal relations among the parties concerned. As a result, for some communicative events it may not be easy to distinguish their "academic" from their "nonacademic" characteristics. Often subtle distinctions will have to be made in terms of text and user properties. For the same reason, an academic discourse repertory could include mutations of genres that are the property of other communities. Is "talk" a genre property of the academic community, or is it an academic variant of a verbal behavior that belongs to the more general repertoire of text types? Like "regular" communications, spoken interactions on academic matters depend on context characteristics to determine their level of interactivity. Thus, the office and the dinner table create different platforms for an exchange of opinions. The presence of nonexperts or nonacademics is a regulating factor too.

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More attention should be paid to medium-bound variation in style within a given academic community. Do academics perform differently when changing from written to spoken discourse? Does the medium bear on the type of interpersonal rhetoric used? It is an open question to what extent spoken academic interactions diverge from preferential strategies in written communication. Some observations, however, support some tendency toward style consistency. The dominant stereotype of a lecture/ talk in the Anglo-American style is indeed compatible with the general reader-friendliness of academic writing in this culture: the audience is addressed directly, there is a lot of pausing and occasional attention stimulation in the form of jokes and side remarks. This contrasts with a paper-style lecture that has historical traditions in Europe and that meets the requirements of a difficult intellectual product. As a rule, the speaker reads or reproduces the text word by word from a manuscript. The listener is responsible for controlling his/her concentration, and no place is left for interruptions. These presentation styles differ not only in the level of inherent interactivity, but also in their potential for initiating dialogue with the audience. Interesting evidence could come from insights into how academics talk about science, and not only from how they report research. Ventola (in this volume) quotes the observations of Gilbert and Mulkay, who note that spoken interviews with scientists feature elements that are prohibited or strongly dispreferred in written communication: they display speculative insights, prior intellectual commitments, and personal characteristics, as well as social and group allegiances. In this way, as Ventola concludes, they undermine the "empiricist repertoire" attributable to "impersonal" scientific writing. Scholarly texts vary in their level of interactivity both within and across academic communities. In the context of this chapter it is the cross-cultural variation that matters most. Academic cultures and intellectual traditions subscribing to a more impersonal style of academic exposition favor less interactive (that is, more complex and more difficult) texts. There are few reader-friendly devices such as advance organizers, segment divisions and labelings, or explicit metacues on content. Instead, intellectual effort is required, and readiness for deep processing is taken as an obvious prerequisite for engagement in academic discourse. As noted by Clyne, Hoeks, and Kreutz (1988), change in academic rhetoric may open processing barriers that can ultimately block the process of integration of otherwise accessible contents. English-speaking academics stumble over many German texts even though they are technically able

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to read or speak German. Incompatible values in the interpersonal rhetoric of academic ideation could well be a barrier to promoting academic cooperation and exchange of scholarship. Therefore, negotiation of preferred levels of interactivity in academic texts is one of the most pressing needs facing the process of internationalization of scholarship. Interactivity is a form of realization of interpersonal meanings in discourse. This is particularly important once we agree that academic communication, like any other form of verbal interaction, is dialogic in nature. Its basic idiosyncrasy consists in its limitation to particular field characteristics: only people with the same or similar cognitive models can communicate on matters relating to those models. Otherwise, decisions on discourse level are explicable in terms of interpersonal meanings of rapport, solidarity, challenge, and power. They are interpretable in terms of consensus-seeking or distance-establishing strategies typical for "regular" interactional behavior. Extending Swales's (1990) ecological metaphor to the description of the interactive character of academic communication, we may envisage the following recommendations for an aspiring community member: enter the territory of the community, mark your presence by occupying a space in that territory, defend the territory (and/ or expand it), gain supporters, and dissuade opponents. Expertise comes through active performance, so discourse skills are instrumental for gaining territorial rights. It is expert members in particular who have the right to exercise moves of turn-initiating, topic raising, topic defining, and topic closing. For Swales (1990: 24), discourse communities are socio-rhetorical communities in contrast to sociolinguistic speech communities. Primary determinants of behavior in speech communities are social and relate to the needs of socialization and solidarity. In contrast, Swales argues, socio-rhetorical communities are established through shared goals; thus their behavior is determined by functional considerations. This is probably right in terms of dominancies. What complicates the picture is that the pursuit of academic credentials is a social act, and — as it follows from cross-cultural data analysis - its realizations may well accommodate varying sociocultural values, similar to what happens in other types of interaction. Internationalization of scholarship opens up new challenges for our understanding of academic communication phenomena.

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4. Internationalization of academic communities 4.1. Field and rhetoric Given the rapidly growing access to information and increase in multinational contacts, it makes sense to talk about the emergence of international groupings of people united by similar academic goals. The question is to what extent the constitution of such communities could depend more on specific field interests and less on concurrent language and discourse abilities. Does the concept of an academic discourse community hold water in the face of the growing internationalization of scholarship? This poses a number of derivative questions: can an international discourse community be founded within fields, yet across languages? If so, what would happen to its socio-rhetorical foundation? What effect could internationalization of scholarship have on academic rhetoric in regional academic styles? In exploring the feasibility of an international discourse community we have to consider the consequences of the original juxtaposition of speech and discourse communities. It is indeed easier to establish discoursal standards on membership in a regional academic community (that is, one located within a single speech community). Such standards derive from communication conventions that are valued by academics in their capacity as "regular" speakers of the language. In a way they are extensions of, and elaborations on, their skills in their native language, crisscrossing the areas of social, pragmatic, cultural, interactive, and textual competence. The situation becomes much more complex for people from different linguistic and ethnic backgrounds. For purposes of style evaluation, it is doubtful whether we should accept an international academic community that shares field interests, yet falls short of common language and discourse properties. In theory we could of course imagine groupings of professionals engaged in similar research, but performing it in different languages. We might even be able to isolate some rhetorical core in how such research presentations are delivered. In this case, however, we would return to the fallacy of an objectivized rhetoric of academic exposition following from the nature of a scientific fact rather than mediating between the various needs of the academics, their self- and other-perceptions, and their academic face-saving and face-preserving strategies. Such an apparent rhetorical sameness has to do with cognitive constraints on valued argumentation strategies in science, yet it fails when discoursal appraisals are made in terms of writers and readers, their intentions, and

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their attributions of intentions to other writers. Today, studies in crosscultural academic discourse have provided sufficient evidence of style variation in scholarly discourse, including disparities in form and meaning organization of academic texts. All this validates the role of the interpersonal function in controlling vast areas of academic communication. It also makes highly questionable the presumption that there exists one style tailored to field and method requirements in doing research. A different situation is found when the idea of an international academic community is considered with respect to people of different linguistic and ethnic backgrounds who pursue similar academic goals by means of one language. It would be better, perhaps, to talk about a dominant language, since various noninstitutionalized or social interactions in other languages are not to be excluded. Neither can they be belittled for their role in scholarship promotion and development of communal sense among people engaged in related areas of study. Specialization of a small number of languages for purposes of international communication is a natural practical solution in a world of growing international contacts and social interdependence. The way things are today, English comes closest to being an academic lingua franca. In an international discourse community founded on English, a nonnative speaker of that language is disadvantaged from the very beginning. Inequalities in discoursal expertise are to be expected among writers, and a tug-of-war between content and language skills could be foreseen in expertise evaluations. On the other hand, English is spoken today in many different ways, and its native speakers are noted for their relatively high tolerance for the various Englishes that can be heard or read. The question is, however, to what extent marked uses of English are sanctioned in more institutionalized contexts where the desire for optimization is understandable from the point of view of some language purity: a text in English should abide by preferred English choices in terms of structure and style. An academic text, perhaps more than many other writings, is also submitted to structural and rhetorical scrutiny by institutionalized gatekeepers. The outcome of this scrutiny decides whether a given text enters the territory of the English-speaking community, and thus also whether it has the chance to implant its seed of thought. Texts with traces of alien patterns are dispreferred - sometimes returned for repair, or edited with a possible loss of the original author's intentions. But even texts that ultimately make it through to the market show varying levels in the writer's discoursal expertise. However, since publishing in English is the key to the Eng-

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lish-dominated international academic community, an aspiring nonnative expert normally does his/her best to improve proficiency in academic English. Variability in English discoursal skills of academics from various ethnic and linguistic backgrounds is not the only obstacle to the coherence of an international academic community. The distinction between language competence and discourse competence is more complex here than in the case of a homogeneous language environment: a nonnative speaker of English can have a relatively low competence in general English, especially in speech, yet perform quite satisfactorily in writing professional texts. This happens more often in the sciences, where the academic code operates on more restricted and more schematized communicative behaviors than a spontaneous social occasion. In addition, speakers of minority languages, such as Czech or Polish, often find it necessary to acquire some command of a foreign language in order to get acquainted with developments in their field. This underlies the presumption of limited bilingualism or multilingualism. In Polish academic texts citations from English, German, and French are normally left in the original; a field-sophisticated reader is expected to have a sufficient passive knowledge of major foreign languages. Clearly this does not hold for English texts addressing an English readership. Here quotations or illustrations in languages other than English are followed by translations. This is the case even with texts that are in principle targeted at speakers having some (though not necessarily equal) competence in the languages concerned (see for instance Clyne's translations of German examples illustrating discoursal phenomena in German). Another illustration is the strong tendency in Polish sources (especially journals and paper collections) to include English translations of tables of contents and to append texts with abstracts in English. The purpose of these tactics becomes even more evident once we realize that the abstract is not normally included with Polish academic texts, and, if present, is more a text by itself than an integral part of the main text (see also Melander et al. in this volume on the role of the abstract in Swedish academic writing). This would mean that selecting parts of texts for translation is a way of building up interpersonal relations in science: Polish texts are signposted in English in order to attract the attention of academics from other discourse communities who share an interest in field and method. In discussing the relation between speech community and discourse community in English, Swales (1990: 24) argues that speech communities

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are centrifugal in that they join people, whereas discourse communities are centripetal in that they divide people. Following up on that, we could say that international academic communities would rather exhibit centrifugal tendencies of uniting people despite some variation in discourse competence. Such communities develop primarily in response to allegiances in perceived topic relevance and topic coherence. Therefore, an international academic community could be above all a content community, where shared field and method interests act as prerequisites for removing communication barriers and striving toward an interrhetoric of academic exposition. This means selection of preferred languages as tools for exchange of scholarship, and then negotiation of acceptability thresholds for texts. Mastery of an interlanguage of science entails the capacity to produce valued scholarly ideations in more than one linguistic code. As in a regional community, expertise in an international community is a matter of delivering recognized products, putting them in circulation, and receiving feedback. On the other hand, a multilanguage academic community may attract field experts who are not members proper. Such peripheral or satellite members can read, say, written English texts, yet they do not produce for an English readership. As a result, they do not participate in the dialogue within that community. They may, however, transmit its knowledge secondhand to their regional academic audiences. 4.2. Genre According to Swales (1990: 26), genre constitutes the essence of a discourse community: for a community to come into existence, people must develop and use at least one genre. This is possible only when people entertain congruent expectations as to what is valued and appropriate behavior in particular situations. Classes of communicative events are established on the basis of perceived commonalities of goals, and - as Swales (1990: 58) has it - communicative purpose not only "constitutes the rationale of the genre" but ultimately also "shapes" the structure of the discourse as well as its style and rhetoric. Can an academic community that shows tendencies toward expansion across linguistic and ethnic frontiers preserve its genre-sharing characteristics? There are many aspects to this question. The major difficulty is the underspecification of the concept of genre, and above all of purpose as its constituting element. The fuzziness of the category "text type" is a well-known problem in modern text and discourse studies (de Beau-

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grande 1990). First, it is not easy to establish text types as discernible classes of communicative events with clear parameters of contrast. If basic categories of communicative involvement can be isolated in terms of dominant goal characteristics (e. g., narration, description), then a more specific partition of the universe of speech is hard to implement. It seems therefore that texts can be most insightfully studied in terms of goal dominances rather than single goal characteristics (de Beaugrande—Dressier 1981). As a result, a prototype approach is usually adopted in discussions of variation among classes of discourses (Snell-Hornby 1988; H a t i m - M a s o n 1990). Second, repertories of genres do not coincide across languages and cultures. Neither can they be studied in dissociation from a comprehensive view of the past and present ecology of a given speech community. Academic communication does not escape these and related problems with text typologies. We still need a specification of those text and event categories that are privileged communication patterns in an academic community. Swales (1990) does not elucidate sufficiently on the potential number or the characteristic features of such classes of academic events in English. His main focus is on the research article, and it would seem indeed that a research paper could be a good example of a prototypical form of academic communication. As a rule, it is relatively brief and has a sharp topical focus. It shows partly schematized strategies of standpoint selection and defense. Globally speaking, it can be taken as a turn within a broader (open-ended) academic dialogue whose purpose is to make a (single) academic "point". However, on a more subtle level of analysis, specifications are still needed in terms of global purpose characteristics and intermediate goals on the level of ideational, interpersonal, and textual meanings. On the other hand, the research article is not the only form of intragroup professional exchange, and its conceptions and textual realizations may vary across fields and languages. In addition, its intertextual status may vary depending on its position among other genres in a given community. Polish, for example, has no cultural equivalent for the English concept of an academic "talk" (Wierzbicka 1983). As a result, oral research presentations are more naturally relatable to research paper characteristics. In a more global look at the research paper, variation in the prototype would have to account for internal and external influences, where internal has to do with the writer's choice of paper size and format, topic, method, and line of argumentation. External factors, on the other hand,

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import interferences from the writer's perceptions of style and format preferences in his/her native culture. In addition, deviations from the prototype would have to accommodate departures from privileged goal characteristics of the research paper. Among the relevant parameters are: gradient of creativity ("original" vs. review papers), gradient of representativeness of the genre (more or less popularized schemata while addressing interdisciplinary or field-unsophisticated audiences), or gradient in text formating (adjustments to idiosyncratic editorial policies). In the context of internationalization of scholarship, approximations to a research paper prototype are likely to be biased toward the solutions preferred within the ecology of a dominant language of scientific exposition. For all practical purposes, today this means English. Some uniformity in text production is therefore a natural drive. It includes expectations of compliance with a variety of technical guidelines for papers submitted for publication.That such a skewing does not require general approval is clear. This became clear to me when one of the contributors to this volume initially refused to comply with some points in the style sheet, objecting to its tendencies to establish an anglophone linguistic monoculture in the philologies. In terms of event-type characteristics, academics engage in all sorts of formal and informal interactions. From the point of view of a discourse community approach to academic communication, it follows that only institutionalized and expert-acknowledged written interactions are relevant, significant, or decisive for community constitution. This seems to be a limiting view. Oral paper presentations, followed by questions and answers, can add to our perception of integrating and disintegrating strategies in verbal conduct among professionals. Last but not least, the rationale behind the genre must be "recognized by experts" (Swales 1990: 58). This may be so; yet reference to human expertise will not by itself explain which discoursal patterns are selected for imitation and why. Neither can it answer the question of why some text patterns integrate, whereas others erode or evolve in contact with competing patterns: like any other form of language communication, academic genres are dynamic and liable to change. 4.3.

Members

Community membership is a matter of degree: there are experts and novices, as well as aspiring experts and aspiring novices. Experts are prototypical members in that they are assumed to combine high field expertise

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with high language skills for the purposes of scientific exposition. They produce texts valued on both the content level and the interactive level of text interpretability. With the adoption of the idea of an expert, we are confronted with the problem of expertise evaluation. Are experts selfmade authorities, which would mean that they usurp for themselves the right to foster some communication patterns and suppress others? Or are they assigned that role through some process of initiation? It is doubtful whether field competence predisposes a person naturally to attain high communication skills on matters related to research presentation. Observation shows that those who are already vocal on the academic scene show significant differences in communication skills, and they admit varying levels of difficulty in articulating scholarly contents. Clearly, evaluations of writers are marked by the reader's subjective needs and style preferences. It seems that expertise standards are negotiable among more competent members of the community, and that attributed levels of expertise are correlates of one's scope of readership. On the other hand, widely recognized experts may take the liberty to diverge from standardized patterns in academic communication. As Swales (1990: 129) notices himself, Chomsky's later writings show a number of atypical textual properties. An expert turns into an authority, and then may develop an idiosyncratic style of writing that is not to be imitated or criticized for its violations of academic standards. This brings to mind striking occurrences of colloquialisms in Boguslawski (1983). In qualifying a methodological stance toward the definition of the text (Boguslawski 1983: 29), he uses a very informal expression kawa na lawie, which is comparable to 'talking turkey' or 'calling a spade a spade'. At an other point (1983: 21), he argues that two candidates for the status of the theme of a given sentence are totally unrelated, using the expression majq do siebie jak piernik do wiatraka 'resemble one another like gingerbread and windmill'. I cannot say at this point to what extent these are rare gimmicks of an author who manages to get away with his stylistic idiosyncracies, or perhaps whether they point to a subliminal tendency in Polish academic jargon to ease the heaviness of style through some importation of colloquial formulations. Talking of "experts" brings to mind an earlier discussion of "ideal" communicants in the Chomskyan sense of the word (Chomsky 1965). The two terms, an "ideal" and an "expert" user of language, authorize no simple comparisons. It is interesting, though, that the nature of human competence in language skills - gradable as it is — should invariably encourage descriptions and evaluations in terms of optimized and sehe-

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matized patterning. The concept of a "skilled", "competent", or "better" reader/writer has of late received a lot of attention in text and discourse studies (Brown 1980; Collins-Brown-Larkin 1980; Flower 1981; Stubbs 1983; Jordan 1984; Hult 1986; Nystrand 1986: Carrell 1988). To what extent the idea of a "better" writer/reader has been operationalized is not quite clear to me; to paraphrase Coulthard (1994: 3), it could simply be used as "a flattering redefinition of the label 'ideal speaker'". Membership in one discourse community does not preclude adherence to other groupings on the basis of pursuit of a common goal. In this case performance under a particular set of communal standards is likely to show traces of discoursal interference from other standards. The writer's individual (subjective) and sociocultural (group) patterns of thinking and acting play here the role of an interface. Multiple community membership opens up space for operation within an international grouping. This participation can be seen in terms of individual membership, yet it may also affect entire local communities. Thus, for instance, scholars in the Netherlands are more likely to function in the sphere of English-dominated academic communication than, say, Poles or Czechs for a number of reasons of a historical, political, and economic nature. Internationalization of scholarship can have varying effects on regional communities, and can lead to the constitution of groupings of professionals that are characterized by varying levels of institutionalization and language awareness. The very concept of an international community is a fuzzy one in terms of community size and closeness of contact among its members. Today the English-speaking community is the best full-fledged example of an academic discourse community, even though more local international communities may exist on the basis of German or possibly French. This is the community that "absorbs" people with different linguistic and ethnic backgrounds, and makes them try to adapt to uniform discoursal standards of academic ideation. On the other hand, partial internationalization of a regional community takes place through ad hoc contacts and exchanges among people from different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. Here measurements of discoursal expertise are irrelevant or secondary to the execution of the primary goal: academic message transfer. Regional communities that do not develop into international communities normally lose some of their members to communities responding to internationalizing tendencies. These are the people who sever their ties with their original academic environments, or at best retain a partial presence as satellite members or passive onlookers. At the same time, integrative or isolative tendencies within an academic community have to do with the level of conservativeness it culti-

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vates with respect to field engagement and form management. The notion of an academic community is sometimes interpreted not as a grouping of individual researchers, but as an impersonal construct: a community "as a whole". Myers (1989) argues that an academic community "as such" deserves special respect even though relations between individual researchers may show little deference. Conservative academic communities, probably associable with less egalitarian societies in general, tend to highlight this sense of communal being. The community as a whole has authority and repels criticism; its pronouncements deserve attention and concentration of effort. In other words, community stands for knowledge and truth. It could be mentioned at this point that the word nauka (science/scholarship) in Polish can on top of its reference to the type of activity and the products of that activity also be used to designate the (expert) group of people involved in that activity and credited for its outcomes. Also relevant here are Clyne's (1987 a: 80) remarks on idealization of knowledge in the German tradition, and the ensuing intellectualization of academic register in order to make it more scientific. Intellectualization of Polish academic jargon is highlighted by Gajda (1982, 1990) and Mikolajczak (1990). It is another matter indeed that a highly intellectualized way of talking may be a cover-up for the writer's discoursal ineptitude or conceptual ramblings. The development of an international academic community is a process of constant standard reconciliation, where attitudes to discourse compete with attitudes to field and method, including here attitudes to knowledge and academia. Rapprochement is more likely to occur in cases of similar self-images in the groups concerned, in the event of comparable sources of academic authority or parallel intellectual traditions. Some areas of value incompatibilities are discussed below. As has been shown (e. g., Kaplan 1972; Clyne 1987 a, b; Cmejrkovä 1994; Duszak 1994 b), various intellectual traditions attach varying degrees of importance to the relative positions of content and form in the evaluation of academic texts. Disparities of this kind are historically conditioned and still transmitted by educational systems. Unlike English, languages such as German, Polish, and Czech are — even though not necessarily to the same extent or effect - low on (text) form in judgments of academic achievement and quality of research. In schools, exercises in creative writing replace the English drill in step-by-step instruction in the production of expository and argumentative texts. The ability to produce academic prose is viewed more as an art than a skill to be mastered through observation and practice. This attitude is extended to research

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presentation and assessment, where revelations of the states of one's mind in the act of creation are allowed to proceed less rigorously and with less heed to the transactional nature of communication. For a Pole aspiring to join the international caste of English-speaking academics, it becomes necessary not only to assimilate the structural and stylistic patterns of English, but also to overcome the psychological barriers of an alien academic "text appeal". Text properties such as symmetry, linearity, internal structuring, redundancy, or complexity are not necessarily equally appropriate as measures of the writer's discoursal skills. The distribution of emphasis in discourse evaluation varies cross-culturally, and so do estimates of scientificity of expositions. By the same token, expertise standards are negotiable on the basis of comparable yet not identical criteria. They are the property of a given academic community and function as gatekeepers for writers and texts. In effect, what is an acknowledged form of behavior in one community may be dispreferred or discredited in another. In Polish research papers, authors normally do not declare at the very outset their main goal in pursuing a given topic, whereas such declarations are typical in introductions to English papers. Similarly, Polish academic discourse easily accommodates papers low on structuring (internal organization) and structure-identifying devices. The value of scientiflcity is sought in the text's conceptual and terminological clarity and coherence. The language used in academic texts is first of all scrutinized for what it says about the writer's thinking processes. Much attention is paid to the author's formulations of the terminological apparatus as well as to its internal and external consistency, where internal relates to a given text reality, and external to other systems and approaches. The handling of the methodological and conceptual issues bears witness to the author's credibility as a researcher. For this reason "tool" analysis enjoys a high priority among expertise criteria, and tool negotiations normally occupy large portions of the text. The requirement of good warsztat naukowy (roughly: 'methodology of scientific work') constitutes an important element in evaluations of junior academics and in laudationes prepared for senior researchers. Incidentally, the term warsztat naukowy has no good equivalent in English. Literally, it means 'scientific workbench' or 'workshop', and connotes both instruments and methods of applying them to objects. Most importantly, however, it implicates a particular disposition to address scholarly issues. That Polish or German academic cultures are low on form may account only in part for the "poor" elegance of such writings as against the

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English-style understanding of an interactive and reader-friendly text. It is characteristic, for instance, that Polish should still cultivate the longstanding campaign for 'culture of the word' (kultura slowa), under which grammatical correctness is the primary target of language education and the best sign of linguistic competence. In the context of academic communication, this attitude changes into culture of scientific argumentation, where the clarity of semanticizations in talking science is more important than the sole communicativeness of the exposition. Such care for language and tool is illustrated in (3)

Istotnym momentem porzqdkujqcych refleksji, ktore tu przedstawig, jest, po pierwsze, dqzenie do poczynienia w miarg moznosci wszystkich rozroznien, jakie mogq wchodzic w gre, chocby byly one calkiem trywialne: nie znaczy to naturalnie, ze owo dqzenie ma bye juz tutaj w pelni zrealizowane. Po drugie zas, chodzi ο wprowadzenie tych rozroznien za pomocq sformulowan budowanych ζ terminow mozliwie prostych lub do takich terminow dajacych siq zredukowac (Boguslawski 1983: 7) [An important element of the ordering reflections that I shall present here is, first, the striving to make, if possible, all the distinctions that may come into play, including the most trivial ones; obviously this does not mean that this strife can be fully realized here. Second, the point is that these distinctions should be introduced by means of formulations that consist of terms as simple as possible, or such that can be reduced to such simple terms... (my translation - A. D.)]

Attention to language is a way of showing respect for field and responsibility for one's own image as a researcher. Being careful, however, normally means being precise, and attempts at precision can have the opposite effect of producing impenetrable complexities of meaning. Focus on semantics leads to preoccupation with language in the service of science, rather than in the service of interpersonal academic rhetoric. Such tendencies are sometimes attributed to the European intellectual tradition, and in particular to the German-style research on the continent. If only to some extent, such interest in language could perhaps explain why in countries like Poland, most linguistic work is still done in the areas of syntax and semantics, while little recognition is given to the interactive properties of texts, academic texts included. It is characteristic, for instance, that the very few works on Polish academic jargon espouse a

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primary interest in its structural properties and practically none in its social characteristics (e. g., Gajda 1982, 1990; Mikolajczak 1990). Discussing the evolution of Polish scientific style, Kurkowska and Skorupka (1959: 353) argue that it was the growing abstractness of its lexis and grammar that led to its ultimate dissociation from common and artistic modes of communication. Historically entrenched traditions may also lead to emphasis on either the empirical or the theoretical involvement in research, and thus project the community's attitude to data and practical extensions of science.1 Some fifty years ago Tatarkiewicz (1937: 4) stressed the theoretical profile of European culture, and its dedication to the pursuit of the truth irrespective of what practical applications, if any, it may have. More recently, Galtung (1985) argued that the Anglo-Saxon love for empirical pursuits sets in relief the Teutonic (Germanic) trust in theorizing. Supportive evidence can be found in the area of text studies. A large number of textlinguistic studies in continental Europe display a theoretical interest in modeling discourse phenomena (e. g. Heinemann-Viehweger 1991; Strohner 1990; Vater 1992; Wawrzyniak 1980). On the other hand, AngloSaxon and Anglo-American work on text and discourse shows a skewing to pragmatization and the applicative potential of discoursal phenomena (Cook 1989; McCarthy 1991; Renkema 1991; Coulthard (ed.) 1994; Schiffrin 1994; Scollon-Scollon 1995). There are additional parameters that affect the speed, ease, and scope of internationalization of academic communication. Among them is the size of the regional community, its location, and its contacts with other communities. In this volume Prozorova talks about the isolation of the Russian linguistic community, Cmejrkovä and Danes address the crossroads location of the Czech academic community (see also Melander et al. for Swedish), and Farrell discusses the situation of an emerging Malaysian academic community. All these authors point to the relation that exists between the size of the community and its dominant patterns of internal communication. They show how size affects solidarity and power relations among members, and what global effects it has on preferred rhetorical patterns. If interpersonal relations within an academic community can be portrayed along a cline from symbiosis to competition, patterns of interaction in small communities are likely to be marked by tendencies for peaceful and harmonious coexistence. On the interpersonal level, they are governed by avoidance of tension. The tendency not to antagonize comembers of the community is clear once we realize that academic exchanges take place among colleagues or people at close

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range. This has symptomatic consequences in the rhetorical patterns that prevail. Closeness of scientific matter and method permits authors to make daring assumptions about each other's state of knowledge. As a result texts are more implicit and show fewer orientation signals and contextualization cues (see Mauranen 1993, and Ventola 1994 for Finnish). In contrast, patterns of academic communication change dramatically with the growth of community membership, depersonalization of readership, extension of relevant field territory, or density of occupied "niches". Access to code becomes more difficult, and so does entry into the new territory. The modern English academic community is an instance of such a big and internationalized community, in which competitive principles dominate over symbiotic rules of peaceful cooperation. To meet the increased demands on texts, academic writing assumes a more readerfriendly attitude, resorts to predictable schematizing through content packaging, text segmentation, and segment labeling, as well as through explicit meanings and personalized tones. An academic text becomes more of a marketable product that must make its way in order to get on the market. As Ventola (this volume) argues, affinities are sometimes seen between "doing science and practicing politics". 2

5. Internationalization of scholarship and interrhetoric of science Internationalization of academic communities is a natural phenomenon in the world of growing multinational contacts, relatively easy access to literature, and considerable human mobility. In addition, strong anglicization of scholarship eases circulation of information in much the same way that Latin contributed to the development of the sciences centuries ago. Multinational dialogue is, and will remain, an important element in the advancement of scholarship (Bungarten 1981), even though particular regional communities can or may be part of it only to varying degrees and with different consequences for their field and rhetoric identity. Scientists have unequal personal interests, varying field needs, and diverse objective possibilities to expand the scope of their activity beyond their native-tongue professional groupings. The advantages of internationalization of scholarship cannot obscure the fact that such integrative processes can lead to states of tension, communication failure, or misattributions of intention to authors or readers.

Cross-cultural

academic

communication

33

Due to differences in general and discoursal values, people develop biased attitudes to alien patterns in reporting research. It is also natural that they should transfer such attitudes to authors and content. While advancing cooperation, internationalization of scholarship also brings about compartmentalization and specialization of research, as well as divisions within communities. For internationalization to proceed at its best, constant negotiation of standards of academic discourse is a most plausible solution. The indispensability of a common tool makes necessary the selection of a narrow range of preferred languages for communicating science. Today the uncontroversial dominance of English is a practical consequence of a choice that has been made partly through the academics' own doing and partly as a result of the generally unchallenged position of English in many fields of international public life. For a nonnative speaker of English, this means responding to the "territorial imperative" (Widdowson 1990): being cooperative requires efforts to abandon one's own territory and to adapt to another community's view on language and discourse appropriateness. Part of that comes from developing mastery of the lexico-grammatical resources of a given language. Another, and much more critical, effort is learning to perceive, and to produce, texts unmarked for style and rhetoric. From an individual's point of view, the process is a constant approximation to an interrhetoric of (academic) communication. In order to enter a new community, the scientist must be able to code-switch and respond to new discoursal requirements. The better one is at changing styles, the easier one will find it to integrate into the new academic invironment. So far internationalization trends in academic communication have been seen mainly as problems of compatibility in discourse standards and in underlying interpersonal meanings. However, the growth of multicultural academic contacts has consequences for field and method. It bears on what territories are selected for further exploration, and by means of what methods. On the one hand, internationalization funnels research along shared lines of interest, and thus perhaps limits areas worthy of research. On the other, it enriches research by supplying more data to formulate and verify hypotheses. At the same time, internationalization of scholarship may have a disintegrating effect on regional groupings of academics. It may cause divisions within such communities — make them lose members or keep them only as satellite associates. Important here is the language that is put to active use in addressing academic matters. The situation of Polish lin-

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guists with education in English (anglicists) can be taken as an illustration of such distance-developing tendencies within a regional community. Several years ago, in the heyday of Polish-English contrastive studies, the work done by native Polish anglicists received no substantial feedback from linguists specializing in Polish studies (polonists). Practically no dialogue took place, even though some of the relevant texts were in Polish and many polonists have a sufficient knowledge of English to read material in that language. The two field and method expertises - one in analyzing English data and one in analyzing Polish - have never met, probably to the detriment of the quality of such contrastive studies. Today, a Polish scholar who publishes in English will most certainly alienate himself/herself from his/her "own" academic community. To a considerable extent the choice of language for academic communication is not only a linguistic decision. The role of language is significant in that it has a strong bearing on the choice of field and method. There are orientation preferences that arise from historical and intellectual traditions. Not surprisingly, issues of relatively high relevance to the English-bound academic readership often remain outside the sphere of interest of regional communities geared to other linguistic and cultural traditions. Access to information and language barriers are not the only reasons. Various perceptions of what is worth intellectual involvement may be another. Conservativeness in academic ideologies is still another. Ideas are accepted selectively, and biased attitudes are not uncommon. The rapid development of text and discourse studies in the West (van Dijk 1989, 1990) has no parallel in central and eastern Europe. In Poland this field of study is practically nonexistent. This is due at least in part to a strong resistance among the intellectuals to the Anglo-American inducement in apparently trivial and mundane problems of language use. Ideological orientations in sciences are regulated through access to code: normally editors prefer topics that already have some readership and some reputation. Finally, internationalization of scholarship makes ideas meet. With this it also brings up the delicate problem of the original and the derived, of creative ideas, of precedence, inspiration, and borrowing. Modern linguistics has an interesting history of such a search for roots and offshoots while studying points of contact between European and American perspectives on language. Probably a most notable example is the discussion of Chomsky's views and their evolution in the light of earlier work by Hjelmslev and in particular by Saussure. It has been asked, for instance, to what extent Chomsky's ideas were actually influenced by "his late

Cross-cultural academic communication

35

readings of European structuralists" (Grucza 1983: 218), and whether Chomsky did not in fact "borrow more than he was ready to admit" (1983: 188). In a world of growing international contacts, academic communities are in a state of constant definition. They are field communities in that sharing cognitive models is a prerequisite for engagement in dialogue. They are discourse communities in that the production, and interpretation, of academic texts requires negotiation of textual and interpersonal values in reporting research. All this highlights the role of the human factor in explaining cross-cultural variation in academic communication.

Notes 1. Discussing "the lure of occidentalism" for Thai scholars in the humanities, Chatana Nagavajara (1995) points out some of its implications and difficulties. He maintains, for instance, that in some Western academic circles, the best way to evaluate a colleague in a negative way is to call him or her a "journalist". This kind of discrimination is apparently not accepted in Thailand, "for even a most distinguished scholar will not consider it beneath his dignity to write for a magazine or a newspaper, or to appear on a television programme" (1995: 12). Nagavajara goes on to argue that the absence of a too rigid academic tradition in Thailand is the reason why debates are carried over into "a public forum" rather than being strictly held on university campuses. 2. With reference to note 1, it might be of interest to add that, especially in socialist Poland, the term "courtier professor" was used as a derogatory description of academics assuming official positions in government institutions.

References Boguslawski, Andrzej 1983 "Slowo ο zdaniu i ο tekscie" [A word about the sentence and about the text], in: Teresa Dobrzyhska-Elzbieta Janus (eds.), 7 - 3 1 . Brown, Ann 1980 "Metacognitive development and reading", in: Rand Spiro-Bertram BruceWilliam Brewer (eds.), 453-481 Bungarten, Theodor (ed.) 1981 Wissenschaftssprache. Munich: Fink. Carrell, Patricia 1988 "Interactive text processing: implications for ESL/second language reading classroom", in: Patricia Carrell-Joanne Devine-David Eskey (eds.), 239-259.

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Carrell, Patricia-Joanne Devine-David Eskey (eds). 1988 Interactive approaches to second language reading. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chomsky, Noam 1965 Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. Clyne, Michael 1987 a "Discourse structures and discourse expectations: Implications for AngloGerman academic communication in English", in: Larry Smith (ed.), 73-83. 1987 b "Cultural differences in the organization of academic texts", Journal of Pragmatics 11: 211-247. Clyne, Michael-Jimmy Hoeks-Heinz-Josef Kreutz 1988 "Cross-cultural responses to academic discourse patterns", Folia Linguistica 22: 457-475. Cmejrkovä, Svetlä 1994 "Non-native (academic) writing", in: Svetlä Cmejrkovä-Frantisek D a n e s Eva Havlovä (eds.), 303-310. Cmejrkovä, Svetlä-Frantisek Danes—Eva Havlovä (eds.) 1994 Writing vs speaking. Language, text, discourse, communication. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Collins, Allan-John Seely Brown - K a t h y M. Larkin 1980 "Inference in text understanding", in: Rand Spiro-Bertram Bruce-William Brewer (eds.), 385-407. Connor, Ulla—Robert Kaplan (eds.) 1987 Writing across languages: Analysis of L2 text. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. Cook, Guy 1989 Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Coulthard, Malcolm 1994 "On analysing and evaluating written text", in: Malcolm Coulthard (ed.), 1-11. Coulthard, Malcolm (ed.) 1994 Advances in written text analysis. London: Routledge. Couture, Barbara (ed.) 1986 Functional approaches to writing. Research perspectives. London: Frances Pinter Publ. Croft, Kenneth (ed.) 1972 Readings on English as a second language. Cambridge, Mass.: Winthrop Publishers. de Beaugrande, Robert 1990 "Textsorten im Mittelpunkt zwischen Theorie und Praxis", in: Roger Mackeldey (ed.), 173-190. de Beaugrande, Robert-Wolfgang Dressler 1981 Introduction to text linguistics. London: Longman. Dobrzynska, Teresa-Elzbieta Janus (eds.) 1983 Tekst i zdanie [Text and sentence]. Wroclaw: Ossolineum. Duszak, Anna 1994 a "Academic discourse and intellectual styles", Journal of Pragmatics 21: 291 313.

Cross-cultural academic communication 1994 b

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"Styl teutonski czyli ο tworzeniu barier komunikacyjnych" [Teutonic style: on creating communication barriers], in: Stanislaw G a j d a - J o l a n t a Nocon (eds.), 257-263. Flower, Linda 1981 Problem-solving strategies for writing. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc. Gajda, Stanislaw 1982 Podstawy badan stylistycznych nadjqzykiem naukowym [Foundations of stylistic studies of scientific language]. Warszawa: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. 1990 Wspolczesna polszczyzna naukowa. Jqzyk czy zargon? [Contemporary Polish scientific style. Language or jargon?]. Opole: Instytut Sl^ski. Gajda, Stanislaw-Jolanta Νοΰοή (eds.) 1994 Ksztalcenie porozumiewania sig [Educating for communication], Opole: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Opolskiego. Galtung, Johan 1985 "Struktur, Kultur und intellektueller Stil", in: Alois Wierlacher (ed.), 151193. Grucza, Franciszek 1983 Zagadnienia metalingwistyki [Issues in metalinguistics]. Warszawa: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. Gudykunst, William-Stella Ting-Toomey 1988 Culture and interpersonal communication. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications. Gumperz, John 1982 Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haiman, J o h n - S a n d r a Thompson (eds.) 1988 Clause combining in grammar and discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Halliday, Michael Α. K. 1985 An introduction to functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold. Hatim, Basil-Ian Mason 1990 Discourse and the translator. London: Longman. Heinemann, Wolfgang-Dieter Viehweger 1991 Textlinguistik. Eine Einführung. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Hinds, John 1987 "Reader versus writer responsibility: A new typology", in: Ulla C o n n o r Robert Kaplan (eds.), 141-154. Hult, Christine 1986 "Global marking of rhetorical frame in text and reader evaluation", in: Barbara Couture (ed.), 154-168. Jordan, Michael 1984 Rhetoric of everyday English texts. London: George Allen and Unwin. Kaplan, Robert 1972 "Cultural thought patterns in inter-cultural education", in: Kenneth Croft (ed.), 399-418. Kurkowska, Haiina-Stanislaw Skorupka 1959 Stylistyka polska [Polish stylistics]. Warszawa: Paristwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.

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Mackeldey, Roger (ed.) 1990 Textsorten-Textmuster in der Sprech- und Schrift-Kommunikation. Leipzig: Universität Leipzig. Mauranen, Anna 1993 "Contrastive ESP rhetoric: Metatext in Finnish-English economics texts", English for Specific Purposes 12: 3 - 2 2 . McCarthy, Michael 1991 Discourse analysis and language teacher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mikolajczak, Stanislaw 1990 Skladnia tekstow naukowych: dyscypliny humanistyczne [The syntax of scientific texts in the humanities]. Poznan: Wydawnictwa Naukowe UAM. Myers, Greg 1989 "The pragmatics of politeness in scientific articles", Applied Linguistics 1: 1-35. Nagavajara, Chatana 1995 "The plight of the humanities in Thailand", Αν Η = Magazin 65 (Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung Mitteilungen): 3 -120. Nichols, Johanna 1988 "Nominalization and assertion in scientific Russian prose", in: John Haim a n - S a n d r a Thompson (eds.), 399-428. Nystrand, Martin 1986 The structure of written communication. Studies in reciprocity between writers and readers. Orlando: Academic Press. Renkema, Jan 1991 Discourse studies. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Saville-Troike, Muriel 1982 The ethnography of communication. An introduction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers. Schiffrin, Deborah 1994 Approaches to discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scollon, Ron-Suzanne Wong Scollon 1995 Intercultural communication. A discourse approach. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Snell-Hornby, Mary 1988 Translation studies: An integrated approach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Smith, Larry (ed.) 1987 Discourse across cultures. Strategies in world Englishes. New York: PrenticeHall. Spiro, Rand-Bertram Bruce-William Brewer (eds.) 1980 Theoretical issues in reading comprehension. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Strohner, Hans 1990 Textverstehen. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag GmbH. Stubbs, Michael 1983 Discourse analysis.OxioiA: Basil Blackwell. Swales, John 1990 Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Tatarkiewicz, Wtadyslaw 1937 Nauka a tradycja europejska. Kultura i nauka [Science and the European tradition. Culture and science]. Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Mianowskiego. van Dijk, Teun 1989 "New developments in discourse analysis (1978—1988)", Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 1: 119-145. 1990 "The future of the field: Discourse analysis in the 1990s", Text 10: 133-156. van Dijk, Teun-Walter Kintsch 1983 Strategies of discourse comprehension. New York: Academic Press. Vater, Heinz 1992 Einführung in die Textlinguistik. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Ventola, Eija 1994 "Finnish writers' academic English. Problems with reference and theme" Functions of Language 1,2: 1 - 3 3 . Wawrzyniak, Zdzistaw 1980 Einführung in die Textwissenschaft. Warszawa: Paristwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. Widdowson, Henry 1990 Aspects of language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wierlacher, Alois (ed.) 1985 Das Fremde und das Eigene. München: Iudicum Verlag. Wierzbicka, Anna 1983 "Genry mowy" [Speech genres], in: Teresa Dobrzyhska-Elzbieta Janus (eds.), 125-137. Wierzbicka, Anna 1991 Cross-cultural pragmatics. The semantics of human interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Academic writing and cultural identity: the case of Czech academic writing V

Svetla Cmejrkovä and Frantisek Danes Identity is both ascribed and acquired. Ascribed characteristics are those over which individuals have the least control .... Of course, there may be mismatches between an individual's "actual" identity and the ascription of attributes by some or even all of the surrounding society. — Dennis R. Preston, Sociolinguistics

and second language acquisition

1. Introduction Robert B. Pynsent, a British bohemicist, wrote a book entitled Questions of identity. This book deals with the questions of identity in the history of Czech culture, from the National Revival Movement in the Romantic period up to now. He says: "Problems of identity are particularly keenly felt by individuals or groups who find themselves left outside what is considered the norm in those parts of society or the world which appear to be the bearers of culture" (Pynsent 1993: vii). Czech society, due to its crossroads position in Central Europe, has often been forced to trigger adopting and adapting mechanisms to comply with the norms that appeared to be the bearers of culture, or to confront them. As John Swales states (1990: 31), communities vary in the extent to which they are norm-developed, or have their set and settled ways. At a particular moment in time, some will be highly conservative, while others may be norm-developing and in a state of flux. Czech scholars seem to be constantly developing their discourse interaction norms, due to their position in Central Europe, and to their paradoxical wish "to enter Europe" after all (a well-known slogan in our country) and to participate in its discourse communities. When he compares Saxonic, Teutonic, Gallic, and Nipponic intellectual styles, Galtung (1981, 1985) notices that Central and Eastern

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Europe, including the former Soviet Union, were historically under the influence of the Teutonic intellectual style. Czech scholarship has developed through direct contact with German thinking, and the Czech academic register has inherited quite a lot from the German intellectual style: its syntax and terminology as well as its general ideas on the purpose of academic discourse (here we refer to Clyne's well-known analysis of German academic style [1987] in comparison with English writing). German influence has been intermediated and transformed in Central Europe via the Russian intellectual tradition, which has also significantly affected Czech academic thought. Due to its Slavonic origin, Czech terminology and sentential and textual patterns are similar to the Russian; Czech is also typologically disposed to tolerate analogous word-formation and sentential and textual patterns of expression that are characteristic of German. Recently, Czech academic discourse has been profoundly affected by the spread of English academic norms, and it has been exposed to the requirements of emerging discourse communities that are governed by these norms. Owing to the mixture of cultural and scientific influences, Czech writing culture can be ascribed features analogous to those Clyne (1987) postulates for German in contrast to English, Nichols (1988) postulates for Russian in contrast to English, Enkvist (1987) and Ventola and Mauranen (1991) postulate for Finnish in contrast to English (as Finnish is a small European language like Czech), and Duszak (1994) postulates for Polish (with which Czech shares not only geographical proximity in Central Europe but a common Slavic origin as well).

2. Features discussed in cross-cultural rhetorics 2.1. Michael

Clyne

Knowledge is idealized in the German tradition. The way knowledge is presented in German academic texts presents a demanding task for the reader. Whereas English academic texts tend to resemble nonacademic ones, academic texts written by Germans are by design less easy to read. Their emphasis is on providing readers with knowledge, theory, and stimulus to thought.

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English academic texts obviously adhere to particular discourse norms, taught and trained in the process of essay writing, the rules for writing essays being rather rigid: there are the requirements of linearity in discourse structure and "relevance" (i. e., narrowly limiting the area covered, determined by the wording of the question, and excluding everything beyond this, even if the information is correct). English-educated scholars are more likely than German-educated colleagues to use advance organizers that explain the path and organization of the paper, and to place them at the start of it. Main terms are far more likely to be defined or explained at or near the start of the text if the author is English-educated. In German papers - at least in some of them — the definition process develops over the course of the whole text. In both cultural traditions, there is a cooperation between author and reader, with the author engaged in an elaborative process and the reader's perspective affected by a reductive process. In English-speaking countries, most of the onus falls on writers to make their texts readable, whereas it is the readers who have to make the extra effort in Germanspeaking countries.

2.2. Johanna Nichols The Russian text is not so much a communicative contract between writer and reader as it is a statement of truth and general knowledge. In other words, the Russian text resembles a statement of general truth that the reader may learn, rather than a communication from a writer to a reader intended to be experienced as a text by the reader. If the Russian scientific text is a gnomic statement of the knowledge available to scientific tradition, this is consistent with its use of the depersonalizing editorial "we", a fairly uniform style and level, a favored expository strategy consisting of a statement or generalization followed by illustration, and such features of synthesis as lengthy surveys of literature. In the English text, which is a communicative contract from a personal writer to a personal reader, the editorial "we" is obsolescent, style is personal and variable, the favored expository strategy is argument designed to lead the reader through a thought process to certain opinions, intuitions often figure as objects of analysis, and whole papers can be devoted to presenting hypotheses and showing that they are appealing, rather than testing them.

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2.3. Anna Mauranen In Finnish texts, the authorial presence is missing. Finnish writers use metatext much less than Anglo-American writers, and favor a more impersonal style of writing. Both of these features can be seen as contributing to a more "implicit" rhetorical strategy in Finnish texts. Anglo-American writers use more metatext, or text about text, than Finnish writers. They are more concerned than Finns with guiding and orienting the reader, and show more explicitly the presence of the writer in the text. This is taken to reflect a more reader-oriented attitude, a more positive notion of politeness, and a generally more explicit textual rhetoric. Finnish writers show a more negative kind of politeness and a greater tendency toward implicitness in their writing. Anglo-American writers seem to condition the reader's interpretation by explicitly expressed guidelines. They also convey the impression of having a more acute sense of the audience than Finns seem to have, as if the readers were more present in the minds of Anglo-Americans. They thus appear to show more awareness of the text as text, to be more oriented toward the reader.

2.4. Anna Duszak Introductions in Polish articles are unspecified as to the immediate intention of the author; accordingly, they give poor previews of the lines and directions of the exposition to come. The author is reluctant to reveal his/her ultimate thesis, using a strategy of avoidance. It is apparently left to the reader to figure out the intentions of the writer. Polish writers tend to put things on hold and exercise restraint in outlining their goals. Instead, they concentrate on entering a given field so as to clear ground for their prospective engagements. Typically, Polish authors tend to adopt a defensive position, as if trying to pass off the responsibility for misreadings of their formulations, to anticipate criticism and questions, or to clarify their intentions. They often make use of face-saving devices to mitigate the negative tone of their criticism, and they often resort to tentative and qualified language. Academic writing in English enforces much more strictly the requirement for early and meaningful disclosure of one's purpose for engaging in a given piece of writing. English writers are more positive and direct in their formulations. They tend to make their pronouncements in a much more assertive and matter-of-fact tone.

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All the features stated in these linguistic analyses follow from a contrastive perspective, applied to the writing culture of a language χ in contrast to English (or rather Anglo-American) writing style. The interpretations of this contradistinction coincide strikingly. Does this coincidence indicate something very substantial, predestined, and by nature irrefutable? Before we try to answer this question, we shall outline the features of Czech academic writing, taking examples from texts in the humanities, our closest area of interest, and more narrowly, from linguistics.

3. Academic writing in Czech Let us introduce two examples of lingusitic descriptions of Czech. Both concern the same topic, but the first is written by Henry Kucera, an American linguist of Czech origin, while the second is written by Josef Vachek, an outstanding Czech linguist and one of the members of the pre-war Prague Linguistic Circle. (1)

Literary Czech has ten vowel phonemes. In articulatory terms, the opposition of front vs. back and high vs. mid tongue position, and the quantitative opposition of short vs. long account, in all possible combinations, for eight phonemes. Two central low vowels, one short and one long, complete the inventory. A comparison of the matrix in 2.11 with the following table will show the correspondence of these articulatory oppositions and the respective distinctive features. (Kucera 1961: 25)

(2)

The problems of the vowel subsystem of the phonological system of Standard Czech are undoubtedly less complicated than the problems of the subsystem of consonants Nevertheless, its more detailed analysis from the point of view with which we are concerned in our Monograph, i. e., from the point of view of the dynamics of the language system, arrives at the unambiguous conclusion that even here it is possible to ascertain many a point giving evidence of a clear tension in some sections of this domain of the system. This fact holds good for the subsection of long vowel phonemes and its relation to the subsection of short vowel phonemes; nevertheless,

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even in the subsection of short vocalic phonemes itself, although its system is relatively balanced, there exist some not unimportant problems. (Vachek 1968: 28; our translation) Were we to compare the style of the two texts we could say, that the first is economical and clearly expository in its style, whereas the second is contemplative and rather narrative, with a story-like tension. There is a problem to be solved and several clues to be followed. In other writings by the same author, even those written in English by Vachek himself, we can find many expressions of this character: "the first thing that cannot fail to strike", "one might be tempted to suppose", "the fundamental importance of this question is beyond doubt", "yet we believe it can be answered in the affirmative", "this is by far not the most convincing conclusion". It is the task for the author to find the right solution, to grasp the heart of the problem. From this point of view, the text is rather writer-oriented. Nevertheless, the contemplative, narrative, story-like (if not "detective") features make the text attractive to the reader. In fact, there is a whole continuum between the pole of the straightforward and economical expository style and that of the narrative ("redundant") style. Czech expository texts (in the humanities) occupy positions on the scale nearer to the narrative pole, and Vachek's text appears to be quite near this pole. To be sure, any style involves an individual or subjective component, and there are some Czech academic authors who prefer the economical way of exposition. The following sample, written by another outstanding member of the Prague Circle, the late Pavel Trost, is extremely economical - his style is bare, austere, and terse (cf. the harmonia austera of the classical rhetorics). Only technical terms (noun phrases) and the most basic predicates occur, and the thematic structure is very transparent, based on the two basic types of thematic progressions in a pure form (Danes 1974): (3)

The sentence may be defined as a field of syntactic relations. Syntactic relations in general are formal mutual relationships of words at the level of discourse; they are either determinative or nondeterminative (copulative). Syntactic relations do not go beyond the sentence. A word without syntactic relation to the preceding or following words is equal to a sentence. As a rule, sentences contain the main determinative relation (i. e., predicative relation), as well as secondary relations. The main determinative relation presupposes a main determined constit-

Academic

writing and cultural identity

47

uent and a main determining constituent; the main determined constituent is independent and the main determining constituent can determine only the independent constituent. (Trost 1962: 267; our translation) However, Czech academic texts written in this style tend to be individual exceptions rather than the rule; by introducing here a specimen of them we mean to indicate the inadequacy of any simplifying classification and labelling characterizations. Now we shall present some observations.

3.1. Modality

in Czech academic

writing

Any contrastive comparison of Czech and English academic texts in linguistics reveals that Czech texts show a relatively high degree of modalization. Modal expressions accompany Vachek's specimens (although they are not found in Trost's text): "it is undoubtedly less complicated", "it is possible to ascertain", "the thing that cannot fail to strike", "one might be tempted to suppose". Similar expressions may be found in the text of the present authors: "were we to compare", "we could say", "we can find", etc. At least two kinds of modality are to be distinguished in this connection: deontic and epistemic. 3.1.1. Deontic modality Expressions like "it is possible (necessary, indispensable) to ascertain ...", "we are obliged to recognize t h a t . . . " , and "it is wise to consider ..." appear, more or less occasionally, in English as well. As Greimas (1990: 30) rightly recognized, they "allow us to interpret them as an autonomous level of discourse where we find the discursive subject's reasoning concerning the principles and requirements of its organizing activity". This deontic level of discourse appears as "the locus at which the subject of enunciation organizes its own performances, foresees obstacles, and passes tests" (1990: 30). In Czech texts, this "deontic doing" is so prevalent that it takes the character of a rhetorical device. The texts teem with such expressions (predicates) as je, bude treba zjistit, zda 'it is, will be requisite, indispensable, necessary to ascertain, whether', je, bude zähodno vysvetlit pricinu 'it is, it will be desirable, expedient, advisable to explain the cause', je vhodne pripomenout, ze 'it is suitable to remember that', je uzitecne vzit ν

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üvahu 'it is useful to take into account', je dülezite presne formulovat 'it is important to formulate exactly', je nutne däle zkoumat 'it is necessary to conduct further research', musime poznamenat 'we must, we are obliged to make a note', nesmime zapominat 'we must not forget', Ize snadno zjistit 'it is easy to find out', nelze, neni mozne se nezminit ο torn 'it is impossible not to mention', and so on. It is not unusual for the adduced modal expressions to appear in the so-called conditional mood (rather than in the indicative mood): bylo by tfeba 'it would be necessary', bylo by Ize 'it would be possible', bylo by velmi rozu/ηηέ 'it would be very wise', povazovali bychom za nezbytne 'we would consider it indispensable', ζ tohoto faktu bychom meli vychäzet 'this fact should be our starting point', to by ovsem znamenalo, ze bychom museli povazovat 'this would, of course, mean that we would have to consider' and so on. This usage also reflects the tendency of Czech writers to modalize the degree of certainty of their statements (cf. the following subsection dealing with epistemic modalization and hedging — in Greg Myer's [1989] sense). The same aspect is partly revealed by the use of the future tense: bude tfeba 'it will be necessary' and very clearly by the use of epistemic hedging particles (see below). 3.1.2. Epistemic modality Better known now as modality of assertion, this is the author's modalization of his statements in terms of the degree of his conviction or certainty as to their validity. Czech academic writers tend to appear wary of committing themselves fully, without hesitation and reserve, to their statements, propositions, and suggestions. In other words, they formulate their pronouncements in a far less assertive, direct, and matter-of-fact tone than English writers usually do. This high degree of hedging also implies a certain modesty or understatement (which might be, of course, sincere or merely a rhetorical trick). Consider the following example: (4)

It is only natural that a handful of modest marginal remarks which we can submit here today cannot do anything like full justice to the said monograph. (Vachek 1970: 24)

The next formulations of the introductory paragraph of an article written by a Czech in English display the Czech stylistic bias mentioned above to an extremely high degree:

Academic writing and cultural identity

(5)

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I know only too well how much I expose myself to the danger of being accused to be again humming the same, old tune. I do not want to deny that the research into the problems of written language and into its particular status, as opposed to that of spoken language, has been one of the subjects repeatedly attracting my attention. And each time I was fairly and honestly convinced I would never take up the subject again. My only excuse for the repeated breaches of this good intention rests on an argument the importance of which, I believe, can hardly be disputed away. This argument points out the increasing interest of linguists all over the world in the status of written language, the interest that would shock an orthodox Neogrammarian of the nineteen-twenties and that appears rather puzzling even to some very outstanding personalities of today's linguistic world. (Vachek 1972: 47)

The list of Czech hedging predicates, particles, and adverbs is similar to that in other languages, but their text frequency with Czech authors is conspicuously high. Several examples: je ηιοζηέ, ze ..., moznä ze, je mozno/müzeme (fici, ze ...) 'it is possible, may be that, we can/may say t h a t . . . ' , jak se zdä, zdä se, ze, ..., zdä se näm zfejme, ze ... 'it seems that, as it appears, it seems clear to us t h a t . . . ' , tato moznost se näm zdä nejpfijatelnejsi 'this possibility seems the most acceptable to us', zfejme se tu ukazuje, ze ... 'it evidently appears t h a t . . . ' , dojit k jistemu zäveru 'to arrive at a certain, not further specified, conclusion', patrne 'apparently, to all appearance', asi, snad, moznä 'perhaps, possibly, maybe', ye patrne tfeba rozlisovat 'it is apparently necessary to distinguish', patrne jeste jasne anaforicke uziti 'apparently still a clearly anaphoric use', spise nez 'rather than', stezi 'hardly'. A typical Czech hedging expression may be seen in the particle ovsem, combining the adversative feature 'but' with the presupposition 'obviously'. This particle enables the Czech writer to weaken or restrict the validity of his previous statement (a Czech philosopher wittily called this phenomenon "the Czech ovsemism"). A similar effect is achieved by the use of the double expression na jedni strane - na druhi strane ovsem 'on the one hand — on the other hand, however', witnessing the Czech tendency to dialectic treatment of the tackled phenomena. Purely verbal predicates: pokusili jsme se ukäzat 'we have tried to show', naznacili jsme 'we have hinted at', nastinili jsme 'we have outlined', nase vysledky ukazuji 'our results indicate', navrhujeme 'we suggest',

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predpoklädäme 'we assume', povazujeme za 'we take as', pojimäme jako 'we treat it as', chäpeme jako 'we take it, we understand', vidime ν torn, ze 'we see in it that', and a wide usage of je vi se 'it appears', müze se jevit 'it may appear', müze byt poklädän za 'it may be viewed as', müze byt chäpän jako 'it may be treated as', etc., instead of je 'it is'. The verbs soudit and domnivat se 'presume, gather, infer' occur frequently. Also typical are collocations with the nouns näzor 'opinion, view, conviction': doslijsme k näzoru 'we arrived at the opinion', podle naseho näzoru 'in our opinion', podle naseho presvedceni 'in our conviction, belief'. (6)

Toto tvrzeni neznamenä panestetismus, hläsim se toliko k näzoru .... [This statement does not mean panesthetism, I only adhere to the opinion that ] (Mukarovsky 1970 [1936]: 9; our translation)

A hedging function can be ascribed also to the frequently used adverbials ν podstate 'in essence' and ν zäsade 'in principle': (7)

Vpodstate se relativni vety substantivni zäsadne od vet atributivnich nelisi. [In principle, relative clauses with nominal character do not differ, in essence, from attributive clauses]. (Grepl 1978: 28; our translation)

As in the field of deontic modality, here also the transposition of the indicative mode into the conditional typically occurs: tento vyklad by znamenal, ze ... 'this explanation would mean that...', dalo by se namitnout, ze ... 'it could be objected that...', tento postup by bylo mozno aplikovat take na ... 'it would be possible to apply this procedure also to ...', tut ο strukturu by snad bylo ιηοζηέ interpretovat jako ... 'this structure could, perhaps, be interpreted as ...'. Czech texts teem with hypothetical constructions of "ifs" and "thens". Consider the following translation of a fragment taken from a Czech monograph: (8)

It probably will not be out of place to use, with these units, the same symbol for the function and the form that are connected by primary relation. Thus, if it would be possible, for example, to differentiate agent, subject, and nominative only

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in respect to the fact whether the unit belongs to the tectogrammatical, syntactic, or morphematic level, then it would not be necessary to use more or less redundant rules translating agent into subject, subject into nominative, etc. With cases having secondary form, the rules of the change of a unit in a given context would, of course, remain valid. - This conception ... should, of course, be applied on a large scale. (Panevovä 1980: 20; our translation) On the one hand, this habit bears on the fact that Czech academic texts often have a tenor of reasoning and contemplation, of evaluating different possibilities and finding one's way through them; on the other hand, the impersonal character of the majority of the predicates given is in accord with the overall impersonal character of Czech writings. (To be sure, the personal character claimed for English writings by many textlinguists does not preclude the use of impersonal constructions and of the "editorial we", as can easily be seen in English texts.) Example (9) quite interestingly shows the author's low degree of determinacy and his successive steps toward an optimal solution: (9)

There exists a third possibility that seems to us most acceptable: to separate the cases of expression of the speaker's attitude to a proposition from the frame of structures with propositional argument altogether, and, moreover, not even to speak here of the predicate of attitude, but, in fact, of the speaker's attitude (or relation) to the proposition or, if needed, of the operator of attitude. If we employed Fillmore's scheme S - Μ + P, this operator would belong then to the component M. (Grepl 1978: 26; our translation)

As a parallel to this kind of hedging, different types of article headings may also be considered. The modern English heading, in the great majority of cases, has a nominal form (a noun phrase in the nominative case), whereas Czech authors often use noun phrases with modifying prepositions ο 'on', 'about' or k(e) 'toward', indicating a particular result the author is trying to achieve, or 'a contribution to'. Thus, for example, Tomlin (1987), which contains 20 articles by different authors, includes only 2 headings (10 percent) that have the form "On the status" and "On the role", respectively. In contradistinction in the Czech volume Slavica Prageusia IV (1963), containing 65 contributions in Czech, 34 headings

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begin with preposition k... and 3 with preposition o... (together more than 50 percent!). This Czech tendency also prevails in English articles written by Czech authors. Thus in volume 8 (1983) of Prague Studies in Mathematical Linguistics, one third of the headings begin with On, and two other headings have the form "Some notes on" and "A note on", respectively. In the volume 10 of the same series (1990) we find fully one half of the headings beginning with On. This practice corresponds, in principle, with the German usage of the prepositions über and zu (old Czech purists even demanded the on-form as a norm, as an expression of the author's modesty) and the Russian usage of o(b) and especially k (voprosu) 'on the question of'. The hedging effect of these prepositional phrases is obvious. In general, the lower degree of assertiveness, the less positive and less persuasive formulations may be taken to correspond to the features of the German and Russian intellectual style. What is the deeper motivation of this phenomenon? Anna Duszak (1993: 307-309) stated that Polish academic authors adopt a defensive position, trying to anticipate criticism and questions, and that they often resort to tentative and mitigated language. This evidently holds true for Czech authors, too. It seems to us that these formulations reflect a certain approach to a possible comprehension of the very nature of the scientific process — of the role of the individual participating in it. If we should succinctly contrast this approach with that of the English scientists, we would use the opposition "cooperation vs. competition". Recently, a Czech scientist recalled a formulation by the famous botanist A. Löve: "The aim of the scientific worker in a discussion with his colleagues is not to persuade, but to explain and to reach a better understanding". And the founder of the Prague Linguistic Circle, Vilem Mathesius (1966: 150), characterized the scientific atmosphere and spirit of this group in a similar way: "Our symbiosis has developed, in a very pleasant way, the mutual contact 'give and take', which should characterize any and every occasion of scientific cooperation". Certainly, the feature of keen competition is now rapidly spreading from the West to the East, overlaying the other attitudes and calling forth positive as well as negative responses and effects. It is not without significance when a young Czech scholar writes in a scientific journal that nowadays everyone wants to call attention to his work under the conditions of an increasingly fierce competitive struggle. In such a situation, it appears necessary to use a rather self-centered and persuasive

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vocabulary and rhetoric. Though the scientists do not tell lies or cheat, they make deliberate selections from among facts. How then should we take their scientific contributions (cf. Cilek 1995)? 3.2. The build-up of texts 3.2.1. Composition and arrangement Czech academic texts are often not well arranged, do not necessarily follow any accepted text pattern, and are not very easy to survey. This applies to several aspects of composition: (a) The introductory formulation of the topic and the author's intention of the main term (concept), or of the thesis he/she will discuss or defend, is often lacking. (b) Metatextual expressions as a guide through the text organization - signals of text articulation — are not used consistently or sufficiently. (c) The composition of the whole text often does not reflect the arrangement of canonical text parts. Texts are likely to show discontinuities between sections and are less likely to end with summaries. (d) The division of the text by means of subheadings is in most cases neglected (and appears, in fact, only in English versions of Czech papers, due to the interventions of text editors). Numbering of paragraphs or groups of paragraphs is quite uncommon. (e) Clyne (1987) mentions the tendency of German authors to use relatively frequent digressions (Ger. Exkurse). The same tendency appears, though not to such a high degree, in Czech texts as well. Mostly they form a part of the text, and their beginning is signaled by a subheading, mostly as Pozmmka ('a remark, a note, a comment'), and also usually by a different type of script. Shorter remarks of this type sometimes appear in brackets or in footnotes. A note: It appears problematic to view the tendency in English academic writing to avoid footnotes, etcetera by integrating them directly into the main body of the text as of unambiguous merit. Though it seems to make the text simpler and easier to survey, this integration in fact obscures vertical articulation of the text - the differentiation between the main expository line of the text and the less important and subsidiary text pieces supplementing the main argument with additional information, illustrative examples, comments, and so on. It seems to us that the trend to linearity has been motivated by the situation of oral communication, and does not exploit the specific possibilities of the graphic code.

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3.2.2. Writer-reader relation As mentioned above, Czech texts are writer- rather than reader-oriented. The reader has to make an extra effort to understand the text. The text is in general conceived not as a dialogue with the reader, but as the writer's monologue. The author's knowledge, which represents part of the general knowledge of the discourse community, is taken to be more important than the way in which it is presented. Czechs, like Finns, "appear to have adopted the role of a solitary writer, focusing on the propositional content of the text, or the text-external reality that they are dealing with" (Mauranen 1993 a: 16). A "digression" on a linguistic theory of writing: The theory of text processing has arisen from various roots and has been shaped through differing motivations in the respective "national linguistics". Anglo-Saxon linguistics, due to its philosophical tradition of a pragmatic approach to language, naturally aimed at handling the phenomena of text composition in terms of interaction, and even transaction from sender to receiver, building up (a) a theory of writing encompassing the achievements of communication and discourse theory, and (b) its pedagogical application. Czech text-linguistic activity appears an organic continuation and development of the "classical" ideas of the Prague functional-structural school (Danes 1994). Whereas Anglo-Saxon tradition treats writing academic texts against the background of the general theory of writing with its strong emphasis on the interactive nature of any writing process, Czech structuralist and functionalist stylistics treats the so-called scientific (scholarly, or expository) functional style in its opposition to the other four language styles, ascribing to it the following constituent features: regarding the parameters of spoken vs. written it is conceived as primarily written, and as regards the distinction between monologue and dialogue it is attributed the features of monologue. Scientific style is defined as belonging to the public styles, as opposed to those with a close or well-known addressee. Public design should not be understood as a comprehensive intelligibility of a scientific text, since due to its exacting and demanding nature scholarly discourse is not intended to address everybody. Being aimed at an unknown and distant addressee, the public design is to be understood as a formal design. Furthermore, scientific style is opposed to journalistic style from the point of view of persuasiveness — which is ascribed to the latter, not to the former. Most importantly, the macrostructure of a scientific exposition is considered to follow from "the internal needs of the

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topic development", not from external factors such as situation or reader, etcetera. This summarizes the classical treatments of expository discourse in the Czech linguistic tradition that reflects a certain scholarly practice and assesses it at the same time (Cmejrkovä 1994 a, b). It is not typical for Czech authors to explicitly lead the reader through the text and explain the path and organization of the paper at the outset. Consequently, Czech academic texts are less explicit on this point. This holds also for definitions of central or crucial terms and concepts, and for formulation of theses, rules, and so forth. On the other hand, this kind of implicitness does not necessarily result, as we have seen in our examples, in brevity, conciseness, economy, or condensed style. Often the reader is reminded again and again of the author's idea, frequently formulated in a slightly different way each time, modified, and as if viewed from a new perspective. The author tries again and again to grasp the phenomenon described in a more appropriate way, to come closer and closer to its nature - compare Clyne's (1987: 229) formulation: "the definition process is seen as developing in the course of the whole text". This continuing definition process, or rather grasping effort, of Czech scholars causes many problems for English translators, who are never sure whether the author is referring to the same phenomenon by all these different designations; English translators often suggest consistently using the same term and avoiding parallel expressions. We should not say, however, that Czech academic texts are not based on a contract between the writer and the reader. As Clyne states, in both cultural traditions (i. e., English and German), there is cooperation between the author and the reader. The writer is engaged in a kind of vicarious interaction with a presumed reader, and anticipates and provides for likely reactions. The reader, for his part, is drawn into the discourse role in which the writer has cast him/her. It is the author's and reader's expectations of each other that may be different as a whole in the respective cultures. We could say, with Mauranen (1993 a: 15—16), that the Czech reader is apparently assumed to follow the writer's train of thought with care. He or she is apparently judged to be in a good position to see the significance of the point without help from the writer. Such a rhetorical strategy is much more demanding of the reader than one offering support to the reader's conclusions (cf. Hinds's [1987] opposition of writer's vs. reader's responsibility). Let us now try to examine how the individual cultures, characterized by the stated sets of features, cope with the demands of cross-cultural communication. The following formulation offers an insight into this problem:

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It is plausible to assume that there are various intellectual styles that combine with specific patterns of discourse organization and discourse expectations. On the other hand, growing internationalization of scholarship has led today to considerable levelling of standards of academic writing. (Duszak 1994: 291)

4. Territorial and cooperative principles in academic writing Let us return to the question we posed earlier: do the strikingly numerous coincidences in German, Russian, Finnish, Polish, and Czech (and probably other) writing styles on the one hand, and their global disparities from English, or rather Anglo-American, norms on the other give evidence of something predestined and irrefutable by its nature? To answer the question, let us once more (now in a cross-cultural perspective) examine the cluster of statements we have discussed: that the English text is more like a contract between the writer and the reader, that the English writer provides the reader more assistance than do the writers of other languages. A possible explanation may lie in the fact that when Czech scholars, for instance, write their articles in Czech (and later transfer their habits to English), they adhere to a contract established within their territorially limited community. As they write, they make assumptions about what their readers already know, about the common ground of knowledge. They make decisions as to which points need to be spelled out, which can be stated sparely, and which do not need to be mentioned at all but can be left for the reader to infer. Generally, when they write within their own "national" community, the degree of explicitness may be lower and the degree of implicitness may be higher (especially in the social sciences and the humanities, of course). People who have particular knowledge and experience in common, whose contextual realities are closely congruent, will manage to communicate by engaging relevant aspects of contexts with only sparing use of the linguistic resources at their disposal. Conversely, of course, those who have little in common have to place greater reliance on the language. (Widdowson 1990: 102)

In wider networks of interaction we cannot rely on particular instances of shared knowledge and experience. It is not in the first stages of nonnative writing that the (Czech) writer realizes that when he/she starts to

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write for an international audience or discourse community, he/she should abandon the habits acquired writing for the domestic community. To become a member of an international discourse community, the writer must acquire other norms to make himself/herself understood, and to meet the expectations. Present-day English and Anglo-American norms are those elaborated precisely for the purposes of cross-cultural communication. They are what they are, to a certain degree, due to this function. Writing for an international discourse community is a kind of cooperation that has its own norms and its own maxims. When an author writes about his native language, manifested in native literature and anchored in native culture, he/she cannot assume that the potential reader who comes across the text in a cross-cultural communication knows all the data available to the author. The reader probably knows less of the writer's world, and the writer should furnish the necessary clues, otherwise the meanings remain inaccessible. In other words, a source of information should be found in the text. This may be another (i. e., cross-cultural) explanation for the fact, stated in many descriptions of it, that English and American academic style "appears to show more awareness of the text as text" (Mauranen 1993 a: 16), that it is more like "a communication from a writer to a reader which is intended to be experienced as a text by the reader" (Nichols 1988: 405). It seems to us that at least some distinctions between the Anglo-American style of writing and writing in other languages should be ascribed to the fact that cooperation in cross-cultural discourse communities makes extra demands on the writer and entails objectives the author does not realize when he writes within his native culture. Meeting them, on the other hand, the writer abandons his territorial assumptions. An analogous conclusion was formulated by Eija Ventola: "Finnish writers make bolder assumptions about the sharedness of information and the familiarity and closeness of the scientific community when reporting their research, whereas English writers have been trained to approach the task of reporting research results from the point of view of presenting something totally new to the reader" (Ventola 1994: 281). In other words, cross-cultural communication makes its own specific demands on the proportion of contextualization and decontextualization cues (the proportion that has always been discussed in the theory of translation and its well-known antinomies calling for reconciliation). Widdowson (1990: 108—109), whose notional pair of territorial and cooperational principles has anticipated our final reflection, says:

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The negotiation of meaning which is both accessible and acceptable, therefore, involves the reconciliation of two potentially opposing forces: the cooperative imperative which acts in the interests of the effective conveyance of messages, and the territorial imperative which acts in the interests of the affective wellbeing of self.

And in the interests of one's identity, let us add.

References Baker, Mona—Gill Francis—Elena Tognini-Bonelli (eds.) 1993 Text and technology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Cilek, Vaclav 1995 "Radiokarbon a biblicky exodus" [Radiocarbon and the biblical exodus], Vesmir 74: 28. Clyne, Michael 1987 "Cultural differences in the organization of academic texts: English and German", Journal of Pragmatics 5: 211—247. Cmejrkovä, Svetla 1994 a "Nonnative (academic) writing", in: Svetla Cmejrkovä-Frantisek Danes Eva Havlovä (eds.), 303-310. 1994 b "Academic writing in Czech and English", in: Academic writing - research and applications. Papers from symposium May 21—23. Helsinki. Cmejrkovä, Svetla-Frantisek Danes-Eva Havlovä (eds.) 1994 Writing vs speaking: Language, text, discourse, communication. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Cmejrkovä, Svetla-Frantisek Sticha (eds.) 1994 The syntax of sentence and text: Festschrift for Frantisek Danes. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 1987 "Argumentative patterns in student essays: Cross-cultural differences", in: Ulla Connor-Robert B. Kaplan (eds.), 57-71. Connor, Ulla—Ann M. Johns (eds.) 1990 Coherence: Research and pedagogical perspectives. Alexandria, VA.: TESOL. Connor, Ulla—Robert B. Kaplan (eds.) 1987 Writing across languages: Analysis of L2 Text. Reading, MA.: Addison-Wesley. Danes, Frantisek 1974 "Functional sentence perspective and the organization of the text", in: Frantisek Danes (ed.), 106-128. 1987 "On Prague School functionalism in linguistics", in: Rene Dirven—Vilem Fried (eds.), 3 - 3 8 . 1994 "Prague School functionalism as a precursor of text linguistics", in: Apport ipistemologique de l'Ecole de Prague (Cahiers de l'IZSL5), 131-142. Lausanne. Danes, Frantisek (ed.) 1974 Papers on functional sentence perspective. The Hague: Mouton.

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Dirven, Reve-Vilem Fried (eds.) 1987 Functionalism in linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Duszak, Anna 1994 "Academic discourse and intellectual styles", Journal of Pragmatics 21: 291 — 313. Enkvist, Nils Erik 1987 "Text linguistics for the applier: An orientation", in: Ulla C o n n o r - R o b e r t B. Kaplan (eds.), 2 3 - 4 4 . 1995 "Discourse organization, intercultural rhetoric, and translation", in: Brita Wärvik-Sanna Kaisa Tanskanen-Risto Hiltunen (eds.) Organization in discourse. Turku: University of Turku, 4 1 - 5 8 . Galtung, Johan 1981 "Structure, culture, and intellectual style: An essay concerning saxonic, teutonic, gallic and nipponic approaches", Social Science Information 6: 817— 856. 1985 "Struktur, Kultur und intellektueller Stil", in: Alois Wierlacher (ed.), 151193. Greimas, Algirdas Julien 1990 Narrative semiotics and cognitive discourse. London: Pinter Publishers. Grepl, Miroslav 1978 "Souveti ν semanticky orientovanem popisu syntaxe" [Complex sentence in a semantically oriented syntactic description], Sbornik pracifilosoficke fakulty brnenske university, A 25—26: 7 - 2 9 . [Universita J. E. Purkyne, Brno.] Haiman, J o h n - S a n d r a Thompson (eds.) 1988 Clause combining in grammar and discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hinds, John 1987 "Reader versus writer responsibility: A new typology", in: Ulla C o n n o r Robert B. Kaplan (eds.), 141-152. 1990 "Inductive, deductive, quasi-inductive: Expository writing in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Thai", in: Ulla C o n n o r - A n n M. Johns (eds.), 87-110. Kaplan, Robert B. 1966 "Cultural thought patterns in intercultural education", Language Learning 16: 1 - 2 0 . 1987 "Cultural thought patterns revisited", in: Ulla C o n n o r - R o b e r t B. Kaplan (eds.), 9 - 2 2 . Kucera, Henry 1961 The phonology of Czech. The Hague: Mouton. Mathesius, Vilem 1942 "Ree a sloh" [Speech and style], in: Cteni ο jazyce a poezii [Readings on language and poetry], 13-102. Prague: Melantrich. 1966 [1936] "Ten years of the Prague Linguistic Circle", in: Josef Vachek (ed.), 137-151. Mauranen, Anna 1993 a "Contrastive ESP rhetoric: Metatext in Finnish-English economics texts", English for Specific Purposes 12: 3—22. 1993 b "Theme and prospection in written discourse", in: Mona Baker-Gill Francis—Elena Tognini-Bonelli (eds.), 95-114. Mistrik, Jozef 1974 Stylistika slovenskeho jazyka [Stylistics of the Slovak language], Bratislava: Slovenske pedagogicke nakladatel'stvo.

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Mukarovsky, Jan 1970 [1936] Aesthetic function, norm, and value as social facts. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Myers, Greg 1989 "The pragmatics of politeness in scientific articles", Applied Linguistics 1: 1-35. Nichols, Johanna 1988 "Nominalization and assertion in scientific Russian prose", in: John Haim a n - S a n d r a Thompson (eds.), 399-428. Panevovä, Jarmila 1980 Formy a funkce ve stavbe ceske vety [Forms and functions in the structure of the Czech sentence], Prague: Academia. Prague Studies in Mathematical Linguistics 1983 Vol. 8. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 1990 Vol. 10. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pynsent, Robert B. 1993 Questions of identity: Czech and Slovak ideas of nationality and personality. Prague: Central European University. Slavica Pragensia 1963 Vol. 4. Praha: Universita Karlova. Swales, John 1990 Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tomlin, Rüssel S. (ed.) 1987 Coherence and grounding in discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Trost, Pavel 1962 "Subjekt a predikät" [Subject and predicate], Slavica Pragensia 4: 267-270. Vachek, Josef 1968 Dynamika fonologickeho systemu soucasne spisovne cestiny [Dynamics of the phonological system in Contemporary Standard Czech], Praha: Academia. 1970 "Remarks on the sound pattern of English", Folia Linguistica 4: 24-31. 1972 "The present state of research in written language", Folia Linguistica 6: 47-61. 1973 Written language: General problems and problems of English. The Hague Paris: Mouton. 1994 "Vilem Mathesius as one of the forerunners of modern textological research", in: Svetla Cmejrkovä-Frantisek Sticha (eds.), 67-71. Vachek, Josef (ed.) 1966 The linguistic school of Prague: An introduction to its theory and practice. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Ventola, Eija 1992 "Writing scientific English: Overcoming intercultural problems", International Journal of Applied Linguistics 2: 379-418. 1994 "Finnish writers' academic English: Problems with reference and the theme", Functions of Language 1: 261—294. Ventola, Eija (ed.) 1991 Functional and systemic linguistics: Approaches and uses. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

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Ventola, Eija—Anna Mauranen 1991 "Non-native writing and native revising of scientific articles", in: Eija Ventola (ed.), 457-492. Widdowson, Henry G. 1990 Aspects of language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wierlacher, Alois (ed.) 1985 Das Fremde und das Eigene. München: Iudicum Verlag.

Doing well ... doing badly: An analysis of the role of conflicting cultural values in judgments of relative "academic achievement" Lesley Farrell

1. Introduction Australia is a "multicultural" community. Since World War II it has accepted more migrants per head of population than any other country except Israel (Kalantzis-Cope—Slade 1989). Families often choose to migrate to Australia in order to improve the life chances of their children, and especially to provide them with a "good education", an education that many parents have been denied. Taken as a group, children of ethnic minority parents stay at school longer than do Anglo-Australian students, and their parents have higher expectations for them with regard to tertiary education and entry to the professions. We might expect that children of ethnic minority families would achieve a high degree of academic success at school and at university. While this is the case for some ethnic groups, it is not the case for many. Despite their apparent advantages, "a few Non-English-Speaking-Background students are doing well [in Australia], and a lot are doing badly." (Kalantzis—Cope—Slade 1989: 77). Trueba, reflecting on similar phenomenon in the United States, has suggested that the academic under-achievement of ethnic minority children is "a function of conflicting cultural values" (1990: 2) and that these cultural values are evident in characteristic ways of using language. He argues that there are two contextual dimensions that operate in the production and interpretation of text. The first dimension consists of broad cultural values, the second of the specific demands of unique contexts: "The appropriate interpretation of people's use of linguistic symbols is found first in broader culturally patterned social structures and later in the context specific behaviours that can be observed or recorded by means of projective techniques or via traditional ethnographic methods". (Trueba 1990: 2). All texts are produced in the dynamic interaction of these two contextual dimensions. Concepts of "academic achievement", as they are realized in the texts produced in these contexts, are not static. They are

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continually renegotiated in response to the pragmatic demands of individual contexts. Therefore, if we are to understand the role that cultural values play in defining academic achievement, we must investigate specific expressions of relative "academic achievement" in specific contexts. It is only by developing a bank of case studies that general inferences about the importance of conflicting cultural values in the definition and realization of academic achievement for ethnic minorities can be drawn. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to document and analyse an instance in which relative academic achievement and under-achievement is defined and realized in a specific context. It describes an attempt to better understand why it is that two Vietnamese students, Hang and Tran, are "doing badly" in the highly specific educational context of their Australian tertiary entrance examination. The uniqueness of the context must be emphasized. While Hang and Tran are Vietnamese students living in Australia, and aspects of their Vietnamese culture are understood to be significant in the way in which they generate texts and interpret them in this context, they can not be considered representative of Vietnamese students. In the course of their studies, Hang and Tran have developed "schemata", or conventionalised ways of viewing the world (Rumelhart 1975), by which they interpret the demands of examination tasks and generate texts which they believe respond to those demands. The schemata they develop for each individual instance will call on their "world knowledge" and "personal experience". While some of their world knowledge and personal experience will be very different from that of their classmates, and relate specifically to their Vietnamese identities, Hang and Tran are also likely to share many experiences with their nonVietnamese classmates. They have, after all, attended the same school, and they have been taught the same curriculum by the same teachers. This does not mean, however, that they have understood those shared experiences in the same way. As Gee (1992) explains, even those who have had similar concrete experiences will not necessarily develop similar schemata. The schemata they develop will be fundamentally defined by the ways in which they have learned to attend to, weigh, and value that experience (McClelland et al. 1986). The phenomenon of "culture", and the way in which culture realizes social differences like class, gender, and generation, and cultural concepts like "knowledge", provides a broad framework against which Hang and Tran, like the other candidates, and the Examiners, engage in discursive practices of this examination (Van Dijk—Kintsch 1983). The "cultural values" which shape culture must not, however, be considered static. They are always dynamic (Bruner 1991),

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and this is especially the case in multi-ethnic settings where they are influenced by the complex cross-cultural negotiations of everyday life (Ferdman 1990). This analysis of Hang's and Tran's texts provides insights into the ways in which aspects of their Vietnamese culture may influence their responses to these examination tasks, and insights into the ways in which their Anglo-Australian examiners may call upon their own cultural values to interpret those responses. The focus of this analysis is, first, on the discourse phenomena taken to signify "academic achievement" in this examination, and second, on the underlying discourse structure of the texts that Hang and Tran generate as "practice essays" in preparation for their final external examination. My argument is that, if there is a conflict of cultural values in this context, it may be realised in discursive practice and illuminated in a close analysis of underlying discourse structure.

2. Defining "academic achievement": The examiners' perspective Australian tertiary entrance examinations may be distinguished from many European and American examinations by their emphasis on extended written texts as the basis on which judgments about "academic achievement" are formed. Candidates are expected to write comparatively long "essay-type" answers to the questions set, within a stipulated time period. Definitions of "academic achievement" operating in this examination context are, therefore, necessarily framed as features of extended written texts. There are two further factors shaping the definition of "academic achievement" in this context. The first is essentially pragmatic, and concerns the primary purpose of the examination. The examination has been designed to produce a rank order of candidates. This rank order is important because it provides the basis on which undergraduate places in highstatus tertiary institutions are distributed. A rank order can only be achieved if the examiners are able to make fine distinctions between the examination essay texts. Any definition of "academic achievement" operating in this context must, therefore, refer to "relative" academic achievement and provide an effective means of discriminating between candidates.

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The second factor shaping the definition of academic achievement is that it be acknowledged as "legitimate" by the community. The examination is keenly competitive because there are always more candidates than there are high-status tertiary places. Because of its important role as the mechanism by which the social and material benefits that attend higher education in Australia are distributed, it must be seen to be fair and objective. To be fair and objective in this context means to appear to treat all candidates equally and to objectively test the content of the curriculum. The definition of "academic achievement" must generate criteria which not only distinguish between candidates but also appear to provide a legitimate basis on which to do so. These two factors are each important in shaping the operational definition of "academic achievement" but they exert opposing pressures. It is not easy to develop a definition of academic achievement which provides a fine degree of discrimination while at the same time appearing to be legitimate. The obvious criterion for distinguishing between candidates in subjects like Australian History, Legal Studies, and Economics is the amount of factual knowledge included in the essay answers. However, while the criterion of factual knowledge is an obvious, and apparently objective criterion, it occupies an ambiguous position in this examination context. This is because, while it apparently satisfies the criterion of legitimacy, it is not, by itself, an effective means of achieving a rank order of candidates. Most of the candidates for this examination have an adequate amount of factual knowledge and so, as a criterion, factual knowledge cannot provide sufficiently fine distinctions between candidates. However, Examiners bring their own schemata to the process of evaluating examination scripts and the schemata they construct are influenced by their Anglo-Australian cultural values. These schemata influence the way in which the Examiners expect factual material to be organised and expressed in examination essays. Because many candidates do not share the cultural values and "world experience" which inform the schemata developed by the Examiners, the organisation and expression of factual material provides a useful basis on which to discriminate between essays, and thus between candidates. The important role of underlying discourse organization in discriminating between candidates is identified in the annual Reports of Examiners, the documents through which the Chief Examiners provide an account of the examination process that has just been completed. The documents operate as both an accountability mechanism for the students who have been examined, and as guidance for students who are about to be

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examined and their teachers. In the Economics Report, for instance, the Chief Examiner comments: "Markers [Examiners] reported that while many answers showed evidence of a satisfactory level of economic knowledge, far too often this was not adequately displayed, and therefore rewarded, due to poor writing skills and inability to structure answers appropriately." (Economics 1990: 1) A crucial criterion for determining that candidates are relatively less capable, even though they have control of the factual knowledge, is, therefore, the criterion of appropriate underlying discourse structure. It is not the case, however, that the criterion of underlying discourse structure is used exclusively to separate those students who have already demonstrated that they have adequate factual knowledge. Candidates who are judged to have inadequate control of factual material, but who do have control of the valued discursive practices, are rewarded. The Australian History Report of Examiners make this explicit: "Even if their [the able students'] information is thin, they do not relent on the task in hand. They persevere with thinking, rather than writing tons of coherent but irrelevant stuff, all "glued together" by a trite conclusion which fools no marker who has a list of discriminators in front of her or him. Few of the discriminators are attempted. They are absent from the essay." (Australian History 1984: 2). In this examination, in every subject in which essay writing is used as a major means of assessment, underlying written-discourse structure is identified as being the single most important criterion in achieving a rank order of candidates. The criteria by which these examination scripts are assessed are primarily concerned with underlying text structure, and underlying text structure is taken to be prima facie evidence of "academic achievement". In other words, the underlying written-discourse structure of examination essays is understood by the Examiners to be conclusive evidence of the quality of "thinking" that is going on in a candidate's mind. It follows that candidates who express themselves in ways that are familiar to the Examiners (that resemble their habitual ways of ordering information and expressing it) are likely to be advantaged in this examination. This situation is exacerbated by the rapidity with which Examiners are required to make their judgments about individual essay papers and, thus, about individual candidates. Examiners typically spend a relatively short time, two, or at most three minutes, assessing individual examination essays. It is not surprising that they reward texts which organise information in patterns with which they are accustomed. A "well-structured essay" is one which the Examiner, under considerable pressure of

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time, can read with ease. Another way of putting this is to say that successful candidates demonstrate to the Examiners that "people like us use language, think, value, and talk in these ways, with these objects at these times and in these places" (Gee 1992: 123). While the criteria that emerge are local in the sense that they refer only to this highly specialised discourse, they are represented in the Reports of Examiners as if they apply universally and are transparent markers of academic achievement in all social settings. In brief, candidates in this examination are rewarded for texts that organise information in a "linear", "co-ordinated", and "symmetrical" way. Essays conforming to this structure typically adopt a clear and unambiguous opinion with regard to the question (Farrell 1994 b). In producing texts of this kind, candidates identify themselves to the Examiners as people like themselves; "ordered", "logical", and "independent" thinkers who know how to sustain a "persuasive" argument. These structural requirements reflect culturally influenced judgments about what counts as "literate", what counts as "relevant" and what counts as "polite" (Farrell 1994 a) in the highly specialised discourse of this examination. The discourse of schooling under discussion here is a "literate" discourse in the sense that Reid (1993) means it, a discourse derived from the logo-centric Platonic discourse described by Havelock (1963), distinguished from the essentially oral discourse of the Greeks before Plato, and concerned primarily with "objective, analytical and sequential thinking" (Reid 1993: 20). The distinctive form of "the school essay" can be understood as a significant literacy practice situated within the body of specialised school literacy practices which adopt "objective, analytical, and sequential thought" and the values, viewpoints, and ideologies implied and realised in those modes of thought. Similarly, judgments of "relevance" refer to the "relevance" that applies in this highly specialised school discourse. Judgments of relevance can be understood as integral elements of discourse (Sperber-Wilson 1986). The term "relevance" refers to decisions about both whether something is relevant and how it is relevant. This latter understanding of relevance is sometimes referred to as "relative importance" (Cazden 1988; Givon 1989). In school discourses, as with any other discourses, shared understandings of the "what" and "how" of relevance are the means by which it is established that "people like us use language, think, value, and talk in these ways, with these objects at these times and in these places" (Gee 1992). Membership of a discourse community is contingent on an individual establishing shared notions of relevance with other members of a discourse

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community. If these notions are not shared then each individual will experience the texts of the others as fragmentary or incoherent. Like concepts of literateness and relevance, concepts of politeness applying in Australian school discourse are specialised versions of those applying in the English-speaking Australian community generally. They reflect a relatively high value placed on combativeness and individualism, and a relatively low value on community identity and traditional forms of knowledge. To be appropriately "polite" in their essays, candidates should assume a relationship of apparent equality with the Examiner who is reading their essay. They should argue in favor of a point of view, and against other points of view without any concern that they may show lack of respect or arrogance in doing so. Candidates who have not been introduced to this specialised school discourse as young children may bring different views of politeness to school. This is especially the case for young people from those cultures where individual "face" is an inappropriate concept and where the identity of the community is emphasised above that of the individual, and harmony is prized over dissent (Janney-Arndt 1993). Two additional points need to be made with regard to this examination. The first is that the criteria applied to examination essays are not static. While they are governed by the principles outlined above, they shift in response to the features of the texts that are presented for each individual examination. It is the primary task of the Examiners to provide a rank order of candidates, and to do so they must distinguish between the examination essays and exploit whatever differences they find in the texts. The second point concerns the role of the candidates' teachers in preparing them for the examination. Teachers act as "brokers" (Bourdieu 1971), interpreting the Reports of Examiners from previous years and predicting the ways in which the criteria might be applied in the current year. They explicitly teach the underlying written-text structure described by the Examiners, and in many instances candidates adopt, or adapt, these structures. One consequence of this explicit teaching is that Examiners are faced each year with a corpus of examination papers which are increasingly similar in broad structure, but from which they must, nonetheless, achieve a rank order of students. Examiners, therefore, rely on increasingly subtle differences between texts to achieve their rank order. If relative academic achievement is, from the perspective of the Examiners, largely defined in terms of underlying discourse structure, then it is important to be able to describe the underlying text structures generated by Hang and Tran in the examination context and to consider the extent to which they may be influenced by cultural values.

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The focus of this analysis is, therefore, on "examination essays" of the kind referred to above. Twenty-two texts written by Hang and Tran over the course of the academic year were collected and, of these, seventeen texts in Economics and Legal Studies were analysed. Very short, incomplete texts were discarded. Each of the essays analysed was written in response to a topic set by the subject teacher and most of these topics had been culled directly from previous examination papers. The texts were produced as "practice essays" and so were written within the time limit applying during the examination. This is generally a period of fortyfive to fifty minutes, although students can spend a longer time on one essay, and a correspondingly shorter time on another, if they wish. Students sometimes wrote their essays in class but more often they were written at home with students imposing the time limit on themselves.

3. Realising "academic achievement" in discursive practice: an analysis of Hang's and Tran's texts 3.1. Hang and Tran Hang is nineteen years old. She completed her elementary education in Vietnam and began her secondary education in Australia. In Vietnam, Hang's parents were the proprietors of a small business. The family came to Australia as refugees and, at the time this study was undertaken, Tran's mother worked in the home and her father in a local factory. The family speaks mostly Vietnamese in the home and within the local Vietnamese community. Hang speaks Vietnamese to her Vietnamese friends and English to her school frieds. The texts analysed here are essays written in preparation for the Economics and Legal Studies Higher School Certificate (HSC) examinations. Tran is seventeen years old. He completed four years of schooling in Vietnam before migrating to Australia with the rest of his family. He completed his elementary education, and started his secondary education, in Australia. Tran's father was a medical doctor in Vietnam, his mother was a teacher. At the time this study was undertaken both his parents worked as dressmakers. Tran speaks Vietnamese at home and reads the Vietnamese newspapers his parents buy. Tran speaks Vietnamese to his friends in the local Vietnamese community and to his school friends who are almost exclusively Vietnamese. The texts analysed here are essays written in preparation for the Legal studies Higher School Certificate (HSC) examination.

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3.2. A framework for analysis The framework of analysis is informed by many text level analyses which cannot be directly applied to extended written texts. In general, these studies focus on spoken discourse (Kintsch-Van Dijk 1978), on lowerlevel discourse phenomena (Meyer 1977; Halliday-Hasan 1976; Halliday 1985) or on discourse processing (Kintsch 1974; Rumelhart 1975; Schank-Abelson 1977; Kintsch-Van Dijk 1978; McClelland, Rumelhart et al. 1986). In cases where written texts are the subject of cross-cultural analyses, the paragraph rather than the whole text is the unit of analysis (Kaplan 1972). Although the direct application of Givon's (1983) model of discourse analysis to this study is limited by its emphasis on spoken language and its orientation towards lower-order discourse phenomena (and its corresponding application to much shorter texts than those considered here), it is informative because it provides a detailed model of topic continuity which enables cross-language comparisons. This framework incorporates those aspects of broad text organisation identified by Clyne (1987) in addition to those discussed by Givon. The present study follows Clyne in mapping the discourse organisation of written text. Each text is analysed on four dimensions: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

Linearity Hierarchy Symmetry Continuity

Texts are rendered as a set of propositions. Like Clyne (1987), I am using the term "proposition" in the sense in which it is used in formal logic, but I am not expressing those propositions formally. The function of the propositions in this analysis is to characterise the components of the discourse content so that they can be manipulated in the concrete representations of the texts. Two representations of each text were developed. The first, which represents the evolution of the text, is the graph (an example is provided in Appendix A). It provides a strictly chronological account of the movement of the text from one topic to another, and back again. The graph represents the dynamics of the text. It reveals the points at which arguments are introduced, interrupted, resumed, and repeated. It plots the movement between the major topics of the essay as the movement occurs chronologically. The graph is a concrete representation of topic continuity in the text. For purposes of discussion, however, this dimension of the

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analysis is conceived of as a continuum, one pole of which is "very linear" and the opposite pole of which is "very digressive". Following Clyne (1987) texts are characterized as "linear", "slightly digressive", or "very digressive". Texts have been deemed to be "slightly digressive" if: (a) Some propositions are not dependent on the overarching proposition (macroproposition) of the segment of the text in which they are situated; and/or (b) Some propositions do not follow the macroproposition on which they depend; and/or (c) Some segments are inserted inside another text segment on a different topic. If one or more of these patterns persist throughtout the text it is deemed to be "very digressive". If one or more of these patterns are evident in segments of the text, but do not persist throughout the text, then it is deemed to be "slightly digressive". If, on the other hand, none of these conditions apply, a text is deemed to be linear. Although the terms "linear" and "digressive" may denote negative or positive rhetorical features in specific contexts, in this discussion the terms are considered neutral; "linear" is not intended to be a code word for "good", just as "digressive" is not intended as a code word for "bad". The second representation of each text is the tree chart. The tree chart (an example is provided in Appendix B) provides a static rather than a dynamic representation of the text. It is concerned with conceptual dependency and is intended to provide a diagram of the dependency relationships between propositions. The tree chart is a static representation of the relationships of conceptual dependency between propositions of the text. It is developed by identifying the macroproposition of the text and arranging subsequent propositions in their order of dependence. The tree chart provides a map of the development of the different topics and illustrates the extent to which each topic is developed and the relationship of topics to each other. It provides the basis on which judgments about relative subordination and co-ordination are made. The measure of degree of co-ordination is a measure of the extent to which the overarching propositions are of the same order. The dimension of symmetry is a judgment of the extent to which each of the topic segments is developed. A symmetrical text is one in which topics are developed at similar length; an asymmetrical text is one in which some topic segments are developed at relatively greater length while others are comparatively underdeveloped.

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The final category for analysis of the student texts is labelled "continuity". While each of the preceding categories for analysis is concerned with aspects of continuity, there are also specific features of the discourse which contribute to continuity. These include the use of "bridging sentences" designed to link one topic with another and "topic sentences" designed to introduce the next topic for discussion. The final point I need to make with regard to the analytical framework is concerned with the question of objectivity. The analysis presented in this paper has been developed by a member of the discourse community under investigation; it represents a series of categories, and a series of judgments, more likely to be made by members of that community than by members of other cultural or social groups. Any form of linguistic analysis requires that linguistic phenomena be categorized. Often the culturally and socially specific nature of the categories, and of the categorization process, is obscured by a patina of "objectivity" laid down by the discursive practices of linguistic research. When the focus of the analysis is cultural variation, however, attempts to declare the categories developed for analysis, or the analytical process, to be "objective", or "culturally universal", are not credible. This is the point that Brodkey (1992) makes when she emphasises that a careful account of context is the only way in which researchers into language can avoid "naive empiricism" while doing useful empirical work and acknowledging that all research is partial, that it is "both an incomplete and interested account of whatever is envisioned" (1992: 298). The subjectivities of the researcher are clearly at work in this study. This is not only an inevitable characteristic of this analysis, it is essential to the study. Because of my background as a "successful" product of mainstream education, this analysis inevitably provides a graphic representation of a dominant reading of the texts. It does not, however, provide an idiosyncratic representation of these texts. This is because, where possible, initial decisions have been checked with the student writers, with students' subject teachers, or with other subject teachers who, while not familiar with the work of the student, were familiar with the subject matter of the text, the curriculum, and the examination. 3.3. A summary of the analysis This analysis of the underlying written discourse structure of Hang's and Tran's essays reveals an identifiable default pattern which is set out in Table 1.

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Tablel. Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text Text

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17

Summary of analysis: Hang and Tran Linearity

Symmetry

Hierarchy

Continuity

slight digress slight digress linear linear linear linear linear linear linear linear digressive linear linear linear linear linear linear

asymmetrical asymmetrical asymmetrical asymmetrical asymmetrical asymmetrical symmetrical asymmetrical asymmetrical asymmetrical asymmetrical asymmetrical asymmetrical asymmetrical symmetrical asymmetrical symmetrical

co-ord/subord co-ordinated co-ordinated co-ord/subord co-ord/subord co-ordinated co-ordinated co-ordinated co-ord/subord co-ord/subord co-ord/subord co-ord/subord co-ord/subord co-ordinated co-ordinated co-ordinated co-ordinated

topic/repetition topic/repetition topic/enumeration topic sentences topic/enumeration topic sentences topic/enumeration topic/enumeration topic/enumeration topic/enumeration topic sentences topic sentences topic sentences topic sentences topic/advanceorganiser topic/enumeration topic sentences

Tabulated in this way, it is apparent that the qualities of "asymmetry" and "linearity" tend to appear together in these texts. Fourteen of the seventeen texts analysed are judged to be "linear", and only one is categorized as "digressive"; fourteen of the texts are judged "asymmetrical", and only three are categorized as "symmetrical". With regard to hierarchical structure, the situation is more complex. Half the texts analysed are judged to be "co-ordinated", with the balance of the texts exhibiting both "co-ordinated" and "subordinated" structures. No text is categorized as "subordinated". The pattern identified occurs equally in Hang's and in Tran's texts; it is not linked to an individual writer or a specific subject. In summary, Hang's and Tran's underlying text structure is identified as predominantly "linear", and "asymmetrical", and either "co-ordinated" or a combination of "co-ordinated" and "subordinated". Topic sentences, enumeration, and, to a lesser extent, repetition are the strategies generally used to achieve continuity. This pattern persists in over 70 per cent of the texts analysed and occurs in both subject areas. In some important respects this pattern conforms with the underlying written-discourse structure taken to be evidence of academic achievement in the examinations under investigation. It is apparently only with regard

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to "symmetry" that these texts diverge in a significant way from the underlying discourse organisation taken by the Examiners to be evidence of academic achievement. This divergence is the more obvious because it seems to defy expectations. It is generally the case that linear texts which are primarily co-ordinated, are also symmetrical. Typically, writers of texts structured in this way begin by identifying arguments, deal with the arguments one at a time, and then conclude, so producing a linear, coordinated, and symmetrical text. It is not surprising, then, that in the Reports of the Examiners, "asymmetry" is taken to be evidence of the incomplete development of some aspects of the argument. It provides an effective, and apparently legitimate, means of discriminating between otherwise similar texts. The legitimacy of the criterion of symmetry rests on the assumption that asymmetry in a text is caused by the candidate's failure to develop a topic segment. If asymmetry can be attributed to some other cause then the legitimacy of the criterion of symmetry must be called into question. 3.4. An interpretation

of the analysis

The Examiners in this study, by their own report, interpret texts in the light of unexamined assumptions about the (apparently unambiguous) way in which discursive practice reflects academic achievement. They base their judgments about relative academic achievement on variation in discursive practice. Each essay marked in the examination is judged to be a relatively successful, or relatively unsuccessful, attempt to produce a linear, co-ordinated, and symmetrical text which realises the valued qualities as "literateness", "relevance", and "politeness" in the highly specialized discourse of the examination. In this section, I propose an alternative interpretation. I argue that Hang's and Tran's texts may be driven by different understandings about what constitutes an appropriately "literate", "relevant", and "polite" text in the context of this examination. In generating their texts it may be that Hang and Tran simultaneously comply with, and subvert, the text structures they have been taught to adopt, and in doing so challenge some of the cultural values implied in the discourse structures valued in the examination. I will discuss the texts under the criteria the Examiners select as providing the most effective means of discriminating between candidates: "literateness", "relevance", and "politeness".

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3.4.1. Literateness The requirement for a literate text is a requirement for a linear, sequential, and analytical text. Hang's and Tran's linear and co-ordinated texts generally meet the requirements for linearity and sequence. It is in the area of "analysis" that their texts diverge, and it is this divergence that results in the asymmetrical structure which is characteristic of their texts. Typically, Hang and Tran begin their essays by rephrasing the examination question, sometimes directly engaging with it by commencing "I agree t h a t . . . " . This formulaic introduction is followed by a series of literal definitions of the terms appearing in the task. Sometimes terms are defined abruptly, without the formulaic rephrasing of the question serving as a preamble, and these definitions provide the scaffolding for the rest of the essay. The definitions that they provide are textbook definitions and often recalled word for word. Where texts include introductory comments they are brief, serving only to mark out the terrain to be discussed in the rest of the essay. What follows is an essentially co-ordinated text in which each paragraph begins with a topic sentence and the topic sentence is followed with items of information about the topic. Undergirding the requirement that texts be linear, co-ordinated, and symmetrical is the requirement that they be "analytical". The outcome of "analysis" in this context is a clearly articulated position in relation to the examination question. While Hang and Tran must give the impression that they have carefully considered all the arguments pertaining to the question, they must clearly argue that one position is, on balance, superior to all the other positions they have canvassed. It is, however, likely that, in developing a schemata to interpret and generate texts in this examination context, Hang and Tran will draw at least in part on Confucian traditions, on concepts of knowledge and understanding which place emphasis on the value of considering apparent oppositions together in order to develop a more complete understanding of any issue (Bond 1991; Hofstede 1991). From such a perspective, the requirement that one position must be defended, and other positions rejected, may be difficult to imagine and accommodate. Similarly, the ability to argue in favor of one position, and oppose alternative positions, may not seem to be obvious evidence of academic achievement; instead it may be interpreted as arrogant intransigence. An analysis of Hang's and Tran's texts suggest that they are designed to achieve different purposes, and consequently adopt different structures, from those their teachers, acting as de-facto Examiners, expect. Hang and Tran each produce several texts which present and elaborate

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opposing views but do not resolve the opposition in the text. In doing so they generate texts which are judged by their teachers as failing to meet some of the criteria associated with "literateness" in the context of this examination. Text 7.11 (Appendix C) provides a useful illustration of the way in which Tran's teacher interprets an essay in which he presents two apparently contradictory opinions which are not resolved at the conclusion of the text. The bulk of the text focuses on the argument that legislation against drunk-driving is effective because it reduces road deaths. In this branch of the argument Tran marshals arguments and facts to establish that drunk-driving is linked to road fatalities, and that legislation can control road fatalities. The contrary argument is put in the branch of the argument dealing with young people. Tran argues that young people often find legislation against drunk-driving unreasonably restrictive and so ignore it. Tran's text does not conclude with a statement evaluating the effectiveness of legislation in the control of drunk-driving. Instead it finishes with an apparently unrelated point about new legislation limiting the number of passengers a probationary driver might carry. Thus there is no resolution of the apparent conflict in the text. Tran's teacher interprets Tran's essay as presenting two conflicting points of view, a personal position and a public position. He advises Tran to argue in favor of the position of which his teachers would approve: The aim is to pass the essay, sometimes to do so you have to put your personal opinions aside and write what the marker (namely, year-12 teachers) wants to hear. This is called "politics" and is something you have to learn. Discuss the effectiveness of educational programs e. g. programs in schools, those very emotional ads on tv and radio. How about a change in the Australian drinking habits e. g. most drinking now occurs at home with family and friends or while drinking and eating in restaurants. How about low-alcohol beer etc, has this helped?

In this response Tran's teacher has interpreted Tran's text, from his own cultural perspective, as presenting two conflicting points of view, a personal view and a public view. He is used to young people rebelling against authority and so he reads the essay as an expression of rebellion and cautions Tran against expressing anti-authority views in his essay. He asks that Tran provide a resolution which supports a publicly appropriate position. This is certainly wise advice, if Tran is to succeed in his examinations he must present himself as a responsible young person. The advice may, however, be based on a misinterpretation of Tran's purpose

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in presenting opposing arguments in this essay. In order to propose an alternative interpretation of the text, it is helpful to read it in the light of the other texts that Tran and Hang write in preparation for the examination. Tran's essay on drunk-driving legislation is not an isolated example provoked by an emotional topic. In the essays analysed here, Hang and Tran routinely place contradictory propositions next to each other without supporting one position and rejecting others. In an essay on alternative voting systems, for instance, Tran on the one hand puts the case that the preferential system of voting is a fair one, and on the other hand presents the view that it is not fair. Hang adopts a similar pattern in her essay on the Australian system of government. She develops the case that Australia has a unitary system of government while simultaneously presenting the case that Australia has a truly federated system. In evaluating this essay, Hang's teacher requires that she present the approved opinion in her essay. In response to a sentence which occurs about half way through the essay, "So, our system even though it is moving towards a unitary system is in fact not unitary because residual powers are still in effective use", Hang's teacher has commented, "Hang, I think this statement, which clearly states your position, should have been included in the introduction." This statement carries no special weight in the essay, however, and Hang's position remains unclear at the end of the essay. Hang's teacher is identifying the line of argument that Hang should have taken in the essay, not the line of argument that she did take. Hang's teacher reinforces this message when she comments on her essay on States' Rights: "Previously you said the states lost power over these areas! You are aware of all the major issues, but have not taken a clearly distinguishable line in your essay. There are also contradictions that need to be dealt with." For a text to be understood as "literate" in the specific context of the public examination under discussion here, it must adopt a logo-centric approach to argument. When it does not do so, Examiners, and teachers acting as de-facto Examiners, interpret the text as failing to meet the obvious structural requirements of the examination. The text is judged deficient in "structure" and these structural deficiencies are taken to indicate academic deficiencies, especially the inability to "analyse", to present and defend an argument. These structural deficiencies provide potent discriminators in the examination. The analysis presented here suggests that, at least in some contexts, the underlying text structure in which

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oppositional propositions are placed next to each other is a genuinely alternative structure rather than a deficient one, and that it may realise an alternative cultural orientation to the way that oppositions should be regarded in intellectual inquiry. The demonstrated capacity to argue one case over another may be regarded, therefore, as a measure of academic achievement which draws upon cultural values which do not apply universally in the broader, multi-ethnic Australian community. 3.4.2. Relevance Relevance has been identified as a central criterion by which candidates are ranked in this examination. This analysis suggests that Hang and Tran generally meet the requirement for relevant texts as they are defined by the Examiners and interpreted by their teachers. Certainly, their teachers do not generally comment that aspects of their texts are irrelevant; their comments are more often concerned with ways the texts might be elaborated rather than ways in which they might be focused and limited. 3.4.3. Politeness The discriminators which cluster around the criteria of politeness are concerned with the ways in which the relationship between the candidate and the Examiner is mediated through the examination script. Examiners read personal qualities from the underlying discourse organisation of the examination essays and so they make judgments about individual candidate's "independence", "originality", "spark", or "stolidity". These judgments are made on the basis of the way in which the candidates position themselves in relation to the examiner, position themselves in relation to examinable knowledge in general, and position themselves in relation to the specific content under examination in an individual examination task. Vietnamese commentators, living in Australia, make the point that it is generally inappropriate for students in Vietnam to assume equality, insert personal views, or argue an independent case in academic settings (Do Quy Toan 1989; Nguyen Xuan Thu 1988). More generally, they emphasize that community harmony is a central value and direct statements of opinion are understood to threaten the cohesiveness of the group. Core values like these must undergo constant reinterpretation and reformulation by individuals in specific social contexts, and this is especially the case in multi-ethnic contexts like Australian schools. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to speculate that Hang's and Tran's texts may be shaped by alternative understandings of the appropriate relationship to be initiated with the Examiner and the appropriateness of directly expressing opinions.

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The underlying discourse structure of Hang's and Tran's texts is marked by asymmetry. One rhetorical strategy, employed frequently by both Hang and Tran, is the introduction of a major question at the end of the text. This strategy contributes significantly to the asymmetry identified in the texts because the questions are only posed, they are neither elaborated upon nor answered. So, one branch of the argument remains comparatively underdeveloped. These questions have the effect of refraining the discussion which has gone on before, deflecting attention from the argument proposed, and reducing the prominence of the statement of a point of view that has been made. In response to the task: "All that remains of our federal system is the name. In fact it is unitary. Discuss." Hang concludes: "The important question remains, was the Constitution intentionally written to favour the Commonwealth???" The question, emphasised with three question marks, serves to reframe the preceding discussion. Hang's teacher comments: "Why introduce such a major question in the last sentence?" Similarly, in another essay on the Australian Connstitution, Hang ends her essay with: "The question remains, did the authors of the Constitution intend to use Section 128 effectively or was it written to prevent change?" Tran uses a similar technique in his essay on the preferential system of voting. In this essay he concludes his text by introducing, but not developing, a discussion of gerrymandering. 3.4.4. Summary Hang and Tran present texts which meet the explicit demands of the Examiners in several important respects. They produce texts which are co-ordinated and linear and in doing so meet the needs of the Examiners to have information organised in familiar ways. In other important respects, however, their texts deviate from the patterns expected and valued by the Examiners. The analysis presented here suggests that the texts reflect in their underlying discourse structure attempts to accommodate the demands of the examination, when these demands are made explicit, and to realize and give expression to the complex cultural values called into play for the individual student in the context of this examination.

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4. Cultural values and judgments about academic achievement: Some reflections from this study Hang and Tran have satisfied many informal assessment procedures to reach the stage where they are candidates for the tertiary entrance examinations discussed here. They have demonstrated that they can accommodate many of the requirements of academic achievement that their school imposes; if they could not meet these requirements they would not be permitted to present themselves for the examination. However, the pragmatic requirement that they achieve a rank order of students demands that the Examiners search for differences in underlying written-discourse structure in order to distinguish between candidates and so distribute university places. It is this requirement that determines the precise discursive practices taken to be evidence of academic achievement in any given instance of this examination. When competition is tight, relatively subtle differences in underlying discourse structure are magnified. As Hang's and Tran's teachers demonstrate in their written comments on the essays, variation in written discourse structure, which may be the result, as Trueba suggests, of conflicting cultural values, is taken to be transparent evidence of inadequate academic achievement. Difference becomes deficit.

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Lesley Farrell

Conflicting cultural values and relative "academic achievement"

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