Dialogue within Discourse Communities: Metadiscursive Perspectives on Academic Genres 9783110933222, 9783484750289

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Beiträge zur Dialogfbrschung

Band 28

Herausgegeben von Franz Hundsnurscher und Edda Weigand

Dialogue within Discourse Communities Metadiscursive Perspectives on Academic Genres

Edited by Julia Bamford and Marina Bondi

Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 2005

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http:Vdnb.ddb.de abrufbar. ISBN 3-484-75028-6

ISSN 0940-5992

© Max Niemeyer Verlag G m b H , Tübingen 2005 http://www.niemeyer.de Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Printed in Germany. Gedruckt auf alterungsbeständigem Papier. Druck und Einband: Α Ζ Druck- und Datentechnik G m b H . Kempten

Table of Contents

Julia Bamford and Marina Bondi: Introduction

VII

Part 1 - Written Dialogue Marina Bondi: Metadiscursive Practices in Academic Discourse: Variation across Genres and Disciplines

3

Maria Grazia Busä: The Use of Metadiscourse in Abstracts: A Comparison between Economics and Psychology Abstracts

31

Maria Freddi: How Linguists Write about Linguistics: The Case of Introductory Textbooks

49

Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti: Editorial Strategies and Metadiscourse in Marshall's 'Elements of Economics of Industry'

67

Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli: The Role of Metadiscourse in University-level EAP Reading Instruction

87

Christina Samson: Advance Labelling in Macroeconomics Textbooks

103

Part 2 - Oral Dialogue Julia Bamford: Interactivity in Academic Lectures: The Role of Questions and Answers

123

Laurie Anderson and Roberta Piazza: Talking about Texts: Production Roles and Literacy Practices in University Seminars in Britain and Italy

147

Glenn Alessi: The Use of Metadiscourse in EAP Presentations by Native Italian Speakers

179

Julia Bamford and Marina Bondi Introduction

1. Preliminary remarks

The papers which make up this volume have evolved as the collective effort of a group of researchers working in several Italian universities. Over the last few years we have been looking into various aspects of academic discourse both written and spoken. Although each researcher has investigated different aspects of academic discourse there are several concepts and research parameters which we have in common. First and foremost among these, which is in fact common to almost all those whose research interests involve academic texts, is the notion of genre. The approach to genre presented in this volume sees texts as socially produced, patterned and functional (Hyland 2000). The studies included here focus on different genres and try to: - describe textual patterns and regularities which can be said to characterise the genre; - show how texts in a genre are socially situated and relate to the society in which they are produced and consumed; - show their historical development over time. We attempt to analyse and discuss why specific academic genres are spoken or written and used by specialist communities the way they are. This involves not only looking at lexico-grammatical regularities or rhetorical characteristics in the text itself, but also examining how the text relates to its social context, its purpose, its audience and how these various features are woven together to form a coherent and cohesive whole. Genre analysis, as Bhatia (1993) has noted, is a powerful and useful tool to arrive at significant form-function correlations which are of use in a wide range of applied linguistics purposes. However, it has also been suggested that genre analysis has developed as a product-based concept, to describe what is read rather than the process of writing (Devitt 1993). A historical approach to genre such as that of Del Lungo in this volume may help to avoid some of the rigidities ascribed to the theory of genre and its emphasis on form. Historical approaches show that forms change over time although the genre label remains the same. Bazerman (1988) has shown that the research article, for example, has changed radically over time in its formal aspects and the description of Del Lungo of the economics textbook written at the end of the eighteenth century by Marshall differs radically from

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present day economics textbooks as described by Bondi or Samson, yet although the form changes the generic label remains the same. Swales' (1990) definition of genre is still the backbone of most of the discussion in and around the subject. Swales proposed five defining features of genre: 1. A genre is a class of communicative events; 2. It has shared communicative purposes; 3. Instances of genres vary in their prototypicality; 4. Constraints operate on content and form; 5. Discourse community names for genres are a source of insight. Since Swales made this initial proposal, the idea of genre has been refined and added to. Genres are seen as constituting networks or webs, so that members of a discourse community can engage in various genres, some of which may be more central to their discipline than others. In the case of academic discourse these may be research articles, textbooks, lectures, conference presentations, research proposals, seminars, workshops, faculty and departmental meetings and their agendas and minutes, letters of reference, end of research reports, just to mention a few of the many professional genres the academic may engage in. Genres may no longer be as separable from one another as was once supposed; a research article for example may be the end result of a series of other genres - a conference paper, a seminar, conversations with colleagues, research reports etc. Moreover the academic may produce popularisations, newspaper articles, television interviews and other hybrid genres which are a cross between professional and non professional genres. Genres cut across disciplinary communities in the sense that both art historians and physicists use similar genres in their communicative practices but they do so in quite different ways. Their textual practices are usually highly conventionalised and although we find both of these disciplinary communities using, for example, the research article in their intra disciplinary communications, its lexico-grammar and rhetorical structure often presents marked differences (see Hyland 2000). Knowledge of the linguistic and structural conventions of a genre and how these are constructed, interpreted and used gives legitimacy to those members of a disciplinary community who possess the genre knowledge. Genres are conventionalised and patterned because they respond to typical rhetorical purposes which are replicated continually: they share communicative purposes as Swales (1990) puts it. The concept of "communicative purpose" has also become more complex in genre studies, and its role as a means of assigning genre membership has been increasingly questioned. Askehave and Swales (2001) see different uses of "purpose" at different levels of the analysis, starting from the purpose identified by expert opinion and moving on to activities of "repurposing" the genre and of "reviewing" genre status which are typical of the observer and the analyst: in this perspective, genre

Introduction

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is no longer privileged by centrality, prominence or self-evident clarity, nor indeed by the reported beliefs of users about genres, but by its status as reward or pay-off for investigators as they approximate to completing the hermeneutic circle (2001: 210) Although genres are typically associated with recurring rhetorical contexts and identified on the basis of shared communicative purposes, with typical patterns of lexico-grammatical and discursive forms, they are at the same time dynamic. Genres are dynamic because they are embedded in the discursive practices of disciplinary cultures which in turn are part of a society and culture which is in a state of constant flux (Berkenkotter and Huckin 1995). An illustration of this is the current use of power point as a tool in a lecture or paper presentation (Myers 2000). Until a relatively short time ago this was used exclusively by businessmen for whom it was originally designed, now it is widespread in academic life thus constituting an innovation showing the influence of the wider society on academia. Technological changes influence generic conventions in the written text also through multimediality, ease of use of such tools as tables or graphs through computer software. Social changes such as the greater tendency to persuasion and promotion (Fairclough 1993) also influence academic genres. Changes tend to be incremental rather than sudden and it is often the established figure in the discipline who flouts generic conventions rather than the novice writer. One of the most troubling aspects of genre, in particular in relation to the teaching of academic writing, is the normalising, constraining effect it has been seen to have on the individual writer. Generic conventions can be seen as excluding individuality, although it has been argued that textual conventions can also be used to create an interplay between conventionality and innovation/ individualism. Each text functions both in relation to the text conventions of its genre and to the individual communicative needs of its author. Generic conventions can also be seen, however, not as eliminating choice but as enabling the writer to use textual conventions to present innovative ideas (Christie 1989). The existence of textual conventions gives the writer - and particularly the novice - the opportunity to compare texts to a prototype or examine the degrees of variation of several texts from a prototype. The reader and the writer may have different points of view as regards generic constraints vs. individuality, although generalisations are tricky since novice and expert readers and writers might feel generic constraints in different ways and disciplinary differences can also be relevant. The novice writer may find generic constraints helpful, indeed the presence of explicit linguistic or rhetorical patterns can be useful when starting to write in a disciplinary genre. However it is not only non-native speakers who find learning the generic conventions of a discipline in order to publish something of an ordeal, generic constraints obviously apply also to academic writers who wish to publish whatever their background since many communities or publishers such as the American Statistical Association, The Review of Development Economics or the American Psychological Association,

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Bondi

to mention but a few, establish relatively rigid guidelines for publication of both research articles and textbooks.

2. Patterning in Academic Discourse

Academic discourse, both written and spoken, is highly patterned, interactive and socially constrained. It displays to a high degree such features as politeness, hedging, and metadiscourse. One of the themes of the chapters which make up this book is the existence of such characterising patterns as metadiscourse, patterns of questions and answer sequences, citation patterns or advance labelling. What constitutes a pattern in academic discourse or indeed discourse in general? Scott and Thompson (2001) answer this question by dividing patterns into two main categories: conjunction and repetition. Both of these are categories at the lexico-grammatical level but patterning also occurs at other levels both ideational and interactive. In addition distinct patterns can be identified through features of the graphic organization of the text such as the use of titles, subtitles, sections, boxes or phonological patterns in the case of spoken discourse. Obviously patterning involves different types of repetition and not merely lexical repetition or paraphrase, but maybe more significantly repetition of grammatical forms, e.g. the passive which Biber (1988) found to be frequent in written academic discourse, ' i f clauses (Bloor 1998), or discourse strategies such as metadiscourse (Crismore and Farnsworth 1990, Hyland 1999). Textual patterning means that readers and listeners recognize the genre through its characterising patterns. Readers of research articles expect to be addressed by imperatives consider, take (Swales et al 1998) or modality - may, possibly (Hunston 1993), intransitivity - interest rates rise (Malcolm 1987), or to find intertextuality - the Drucker stability postulates (Hyland 2000) and nominalization - glass crack growth rate (Halliday 1993). Readers of textbooks come to expect a whole range of features - they are not surprised to be addressed as you or to be told to imagine a situation or be involved in the discussion through an inclusive we (Freddi this volume). They expect to be guided through a text by such features as explicit reference to text stages, reference to other parts of the text or code glosses (Crawford this volume). Students will rapidly become familiar with the genre and writers draw upon its norms when undertaking textbook writing, indeed some features are encouraged or even imposed by publishers such as the examples in different typeset or bulleted points, talking points for discussion, practical exercises etc. In order to understand and interpret a text readers are more efficient if they know something about its generic conventions, especially in a research world which is over-

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loaded with information. Members of a discourse community have developed conventionalised or standardized solutions both as writers and as readers to manage recurrent social tasks (both written and spoken) since texts respond to recurrent communicative needs. In academic discourse textual patterns typical of genres in various disciplines come to assume a particular social valency within the discourse community and apprentice readers and writers can ill afford to ignore them.

3. Academic discourse is interactive

Although all texts are interactive, some are more interactive than others. Spontaneous conversation, for example, is taken to be typically interactive largely because both or all interactants intervene actively in the discourse. Although academic speech events, in particular lectures, are less interactive than conversation, just because this active intervention is either greatly reduced or missing, there is a growing consensus among those who study them that they have many of the interactive characteristics of spontaneous conversation. Written academic texts, on the other hand, have traditionally been considered to be quintessentially formal and written, therefore less interactive. On the contrary, in this volume we argue that writing can be highly interactive from a variety of perspectives. In fact the dialogic features of the formally monologic written text are of increasing interest to discourse analysts and others (Bondi 1999). The idea of the "inner dialogue" which the writer engages in, brings the spoken and written text closer together than was hereto supposed. As Hoey (2001) has noted, a -writer has the task of catering to the needs of his audience; on the one hand the writer has his own objectives to meet such as persuading, informing, etc.; on the other the reader also has needs and requirements and these must be taken into consideration. The writer constructs a target reader and either explicitly or implicitly has him/her in mind when making decisions about the content, organization and presentation of the subject matter. In academic texts these decisions on the part of writers differ according to the position of the target reader in the discourse community. A writer with an undergraduate student reader in mind will make very different decisions with respect to one whose target reader is a fellow member of a discourse community but higher in the hierarchy than the writer. In fact there are a myriad of possible relative positions of writer and reader in academic texts and the question of how the reader is addressed is one of the most fascinating with respect to these. Moreover the interest that linguists have in the interactional, conversational aspects of discourse is mirrored by that of scientists and social scientists who see their scientific

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writing and speaking as a form of persuasive argumentation, a way of resolving controversies between different research paradigms. Academic discourse - in particular the research article - is seen as a conversation among members of a community and the ability to participate successfully in this conversation is constitutive of full membership. Discipline experts themselves (e.g. McCloskey 1994, 2001) have been at the forefront of discussions on how research is presented and the crucial role language plays in this, in particular on acceptance for publication and general "impact factor". One of the typical ways in which the writer makes his text interactive is through anticipating the sorts of questions the reader might ask. Textbooks often use questions as ways of directing the reader through the text and in lectures they can be used as ways of asking the sorts of questions the listeners might be expected to ask and then providing the answer (Bamford this volume). There are also many other means by which this textual interactivity is kept up such as the problem/ solution pattern, the goal/ achievement pattern, the gapin-knowledge filling pattern, the question/ answer pattern discussed by Hoey (1983) or Tadros's (1989) advance labelling (as discussed by Samson, this volume). The simile of reader and writer as dancers proposed by Hoey illustrates the interactive interdependence of the two participants very aptly. Reader and writer are like dancers following each other's steps, and the reader's chances of guessing correctly what is going to happen next in a text are greatly enhanced if the writer takes the trouble to anticipate what the reader might be expecting: that is one reason for the regularity of patterning in genres. The writer knows that readers will expect certain things on the basis of previous texts of the same kind that they have read and so takes the trouble to conform to those expectations; the act of conforming to those expectations confirms readers in the lightness of their original expectation and makes it still more likely that they will expect the same thing the next time they encounter a text of this type. (Hoey 2001: 43)

4. Discourse community

A further assumption common to the papers which make up this volume is that of the discourse community. Like the notion of genre, the discourse community was catapulted into prominence for those who study academic discourse by John Swales (1990), where he discusses at length ideas like Hymes' (1974) communicative competence and speech communities, which were its intellectual predecessors (see also Swales 1998). Like the idea of genre, the discourse community is also controversial. As Bazerman has pointed out, "Most definitions of discourse community get ragged round the edges rapidly" (Bazerman 1994: 128). Central to Swales' idea of the discourse community is the goal driven nature of their

Introduction

XIII

communicative practices whereby members have shared goals and communicate with each other to pursue those goals. Others (Johns 1997) have suggested that members of discourse communities might have common interests but not necessarily common goals. Maybe more central to the discussion of the discourse community, at least from our point of view, are the textual and generic patterns and regularities that characterise them. Identification of such patterns, revealing discursive homogeneity within disciplinary communities also helps the teacher to target instruction more accurately. (Johns 1997, Swales and Feak 2001). There are also problems in the definition and delimitation of the discourse community which range from a rather nebulous "academic discourse community" to the more specific discourse community of, say, geologists or economists. In addition while some academic discourse communities are ready to recognise themselves as such, for various cultural and historical reasons, others would be more reluctant to recognise themselves as part of a community. Economists often write we economists or talk about economists as a recognisable community. Most economists, when questioned about their views of methodology, will agree with Friedman's instrumentalism but only if Friedman's name is not mentioned. (Boland 2003:521)

On the other hand an art historian apparently (personal communication, McCauley), would never dream of claiming to write on behalf of other art historians. Ethnographic, participant observation research has helped to flesh out our knowledge of the discursive practices of the insiders (Berkenkotter and Huckin 1995, Swales 1998) not to speak of the contributions of the insiders themselves (McCloskey 1994, 2001) to an understanding of how a discourse community works. Obviously the term "discourse community" means different things to different people, depending on the perspective of the writer; for example Rodin and Steinberg (2003) take the University as a social institution to be a discourse community and describe its civic engagements with the surrounding community in terms of engagement and communication. For those who analyse academic discourse the usefulness of the notion far outweighs its notorious fiizziness and inconsistencies. This is also because it provides a useful metaphor for describing apprentice or novice members of the community, the process of induction that these undergo in the university through the reading and production of texts and conversations. Discourse is constitutive of the community and its identity and has to be learned by interaction between the expert and the novice member. Another useful aspect of the idea of community is the realisation that teaching, learning, researching and the other activities that academics engage in are not individual but rather collective, social, efforts. Discourse communities are not, of course, monolithic nor static and can change over time or splinter into fragmented sub communities. Like all communities and social groups,

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members of academic discourse communities can belong to them wholeheartedly in some circumstances or distance themselves or even split into sub groups in others. Furthermore just as individual academics use many genres in their professional and private lives so also do they belong to several discourse communities. Some communities are more cohesive than others, some more globalised than others, but as many observers of the spread of English as the lingua franca for academic communication have noted, the tendency is towards increasing internationalisation (Mauranen 2001, Wood 2001). While until recently most teachers of English for academic purposes have viewed their role in the spread of English as relatively neutral, recent voices (Phillipson 1992, Pennycook 1994) have raised concerns about how English is being marketed as a global commodity and the ideological consequences of this. In the field of education Lave and Wenger (1991) have developed the idea of "communities of practice" which has much in common with the discourse community. Their idea is that individuals are engaged in various communities of practice both at home and at work. In some of these they are core members and in others more marginal. Much of the collective activity individuals engage in involves interaction, adjusting to the needs of others as individuals and as a group - in other words learning. Over time, this collective learning results in practices that reflect both the pursuit of our enterprises and the attendant social relations. These practices are thus the property of a kind of community created over time by the sustained pursuit of a shared enterprise. It makes sense therefore to call these kinds of communities communities of practice. (Wenger 1998: 45)

As with the discourse community an important component is the shared repertoires, lexis, styles, documents that the community develops over time. The community of practice involves people who are organised around a particular area of knowledge with a shared repertoire of ideas and resources; it involves ways of doing and approaching things that are shared to some significant extent by the members. Learners inevitably participate in communities of practitioners and the mastery of knowledge and skill requires newcomers to move toward full participation in the socio-cultural practices of a community. "Legitimate peripheral participation" provides a way to speak about the relations between newcomers and old timers, and about activities, identities, artefacts and communities of knowledge and practice. This social process includes, indeed it subsumes, the learning of knowledgeable skills. (Lave and Wenger 1991: 29)

These concepts have much in common, although the concept of communities of practice focuses more on the mastery of repertoires by the novice, while that of the discourse community has focused on the products of these repertoires. Another more "high tech" approach with affinities to the discourse community, is the idea of "knowledge networks" which are online communities or a conflation of the concepts of knowledge and informa-

Introduction

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tion. In fact increasingly members of a discourse community communicate via chat sites (such as Linguist List, Math-history List, Ornithology List) thus reinforcing their sense of belonging to a global community.

5. Spoken and written academic discourse

Both written and spoken genres are constituted by bundles of co-occurring features. For example, in written texts, the global text format and typographical features used interact with the kind of lexis and syntax, sound qualities like rhyme, as well as with the choice of speech acts and their realizations. In spoken discourse sequences and kinds of speech acts and their realizations, kinds of turn taking, the choice of words and syntax as well as prosodic structures and voice quality, are particularly important. Altogether the co-occurrence of style features form a particular whole. Such holistic entities suggest stylistic functions which can be interpreted by recipients and recognised as characteristic of either spoken or written academic discourse. Academic discourse is of particular interest because it is thought to be at the formal end of a formal / informal continuum and even spoken academic discourse has generally been assumed to be more "written like" than other speech. The volume deals with both spoken and written academic discourse in an attempt to redress the previous imbalance in favour of the written, which over the last twenty years has attracted much greater attention. Recently, however, the construction of small corpora of spoken academic discourse such as those used in the articles in this volume or the Micase data (Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English) have enabled us to put our fingers on exactly those features which make academic so much more like other spoken discourse rather than like written discourse with respect to previous studies. For example, like its conversational counterpart, spoken academic discourse avoids overt confrontation and prefers consensus building. Moreover spoken academic discourse tends to be heavily signposted and signalled, often with strings of discourse markers such as okay so "now" (Swales and Malczewski 2001) which mark or announce the beginning of a new segment of discourse and various kinds of reflexivity tend to mark spoken academic genres in ways unparalleled in the written variety (Mauranen 2001, Anderson and Piazza this volume). These phenomena are characteristic of other kinds of talk, in particular spontaneous conversation. One of the interesting findings which emerge from recent analyses of spoken discourse within applied linguistics is that although grammatical patterns are largely similar to those of written there are important differences between the two, in fact as McCarthy says:

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We cannot assume that grammars modelled on written language can be simply be imported wholesale into the description of spoken language. (McCarthy 1998)

Although Biber's (1988) findings about spoken/ written differences seemed to suggest that there are other relevant dimensions of variation in language, cutting across the spoken/ written distinction, recent empirical research is beginning to focus on the specific language features of spoken discourse. McCarthy and Carter (1997) for example discuss pre- and post- posed items which occur almost exclusively in spoken discourse and the prevalence of certain types of ellipsis (McCarthy 1998). Ford's (1993) study of adverbial clauses, although generally confirming previous studies of initial and final adverbial clause function, provides a richer understanding of their interactional uses. The idea of grammar being no less than 'sedimented conversational practices' (Hopper and Thompson 1993) finally takes into account the previously underestimated role of spoken discourse in those aspects of language which have until recently been the preserve of its written form. The concept of genre, however, has not been applied very widely to spoken discourse (see McCarthy 1998 for discussion of some attempts to define genre in relation to spoken discourse). Closer attention to the speech event in studies of spoken discourse could help to describe the sense of involvement that participants have in particular events such as lectures or seminars, which develop more or less predictably, are institutionally embedded and have recognisable beginnings and endings. These events are also ritualised and socially constrained in the sense that participants have recognised roles and expectations, the length of the interaction and its physical location is predetermined, the topic usually has been established previously and it often forms part of a series. Written discourse studies, on the other hand, can be further enriched by focusing on "textual interaction" (Hoey 2001). The academic writer aims to involve the reader through a convergence of the reader with the "reader in the text" (Thompson and Thetela 1995, Thompson 2001) or the ideal reader. This is a crucial step in most types of argumentative, persuasive texts which of course includes most academic discourse. Bakhtin's notion of the dialogic nature of language applies equally to spoken and written texts, where the writer is constantly responding to imagined utterances from others with the result that all texts have "dialogic overtones". Bakhtin's work has been very influential also in promoting an understanding of genre. His idea of the unit of discourse the utterance - can be thought of as corresponding to the turn in conversation and "each sphere in which language is used develops its own relatively stable types of these utterances" (Bakhtin 1986: 80). These stable types of utterances are genres and Bakhtin claims that these are social constructs rather than individual psychological expressions.

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6. Metadiscourse

Metadiscourse or "discourse about discourse" is another way of looking at discourse as interaction between writer and reader. It is an ubiquitous feature of our everyday language and plays an important facilitating role in communication in a range of genres and settings. Although much of the work done on metadiscourse revolves round written discourse in an educational or academic setting, it can be argued that the type of discourse in which it plays the most prominent role is in fact conversation (Schiffrin 1980). Here its function is to ensure effective communication, assist the co-construction of meaning and create rapport between participants (Tannen 1984, Anderson and Piazza this volume). The fact that metadiscourse is so frequent in conversation only serves to reinforce the argument that metadiscourse is used in written texts by the writer not only to make his text more communicative but also to convey his attitude toward the content and the reader (Bondi this volume). Metadiscourse refers to those aspects of the text which direct the reader, show him round the text, explicitly revealing the organization of the text and it is precisely these characteristics which make it so relevant in genres such as textbooks, lectures, or presentations (Alessi this volume). However it is used extensively in all other forms of academic discourse including conference papers and research articles as discussed in many of the papers included in this volume. Different aspects of metadiscourse seem to be typical of different genres and patterns of metadiscourse emerge as one of the defining characteristics of a genre, e.g. We saw in chapter 23, see fig 24-1, can you all see this, are all metadiscursive extracts of academic discourse but while the first characterises a textbook, the second a research article, the third is typical of a lecture. Hyland (1998b) discusses the disciplinary differences in use of metadiscourse showing, for example, that the hard sciences use more textual markers while the social sciences display a more frequent use of interpersonal markers. So we can see that metadiscourse varies according to genre and along disciplinary lines (Bondi and Busä in this volume). Metadiscourse has been defined both extensively (Vande Kopple 1997, Crismore and Farnsworth 1990, Hyland 1998b) and more restrictedly (Swales 1990, Mauranen 1993). The more extensive definition (adopted by most contributors to this volume) distinguishes between textual and interpersonal metadiscourse, while the more restricted definition refers to textual organization. The idea of metadiscourse closely follows Halliday's formulation of the macrofunctions of texts consisting of ideational, textual and interpersonal elements. Thompson and Thetela (1995) and Thompson (2001) in discussing textual interaction make the distinction between "interactive" aspects relating to the management of the flow of information which guide readers through the text and "interactional" aspects which aim

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to involve readers in the argument or ethos of the text. The latter enable writers to carry on more or less overt interaction with their audience by intruding in the text to comment on and evaluate the content through the use of modality and evaluation. This distinction between "interactive" and "interactional" is very close to the textual and interpersonal distinction developed by Crismore and Hyland which shows how, in fact, interaction and metadiscourse are closely related, with the latter being a specialised form of the former. The more extensive definition of metadiscourse has been discussed in terms of two interrelated ways in which the writer relates to the reader. The first involves the complex of linguistic and rhetorical devices used by authors to comment on the texts they write showing their attitude both towards the propositional content and the readers themselves. The second describes forms of textual organization which help create a coherent, cohesive text relating propositions to one another and to other texts. In short, it is the linguistic and rhetorical manifestation of the author's presence in the text. However, metadiscourse remains a rather fuzzy and heterogeneous category which can be realised by a whole series of very different linguistic features ranging from punctuation or intonation to whole clauses or sentences/ utterances. Indeed in some cases it may be difficult to distinguish between the textual and the interpersonal function since they can be performing the same communicative task simultaneously. Fuzziness is not necessarily a negative trait because it reflects the complexity of textual organization and communication and despite its classificatory shortcomings remains a useful analytical tool for dealing with a very frequent pattern in academic discourse. Metadiscourse, as Hyland (1999) says, is integral to the context in which it occurs and is intimately linked to the norms and expectations of particular cultural and professional communities. Writing is a culturally situated social activity and effective metadiscourse use is critically dependant on a rhetorical context and the writer's observation of appropriate interpersonal and intertextual relationships. To understand the pragmatics of metadiscourse, then, it must be located in the settings which determine its use and give it meaning. Thus how metadiscourse is used is one of the conventions of the particular discourse community in which the text is produced (and often towards which it is aimed). How the author intrudes in the text to organize it or to comment on it is strictly related to the discipline, the genre and ultimately the audience.

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7. The organization of this book

Over the last few years there has been an explosion of interest in academic discourse and although most of this has concentrated on written discourse there is also a growing attention to oral academic discourse focussed particularly on lectures and seminars. The individual chapters of this book focus on various aspects of academic discourse and although the majority discuss written discourse there is a significant section on oral discourse. The first part is dedicated to written academic discourse and starts with Marina Bondi's investigation of metadiscursive practices across genres and disciplines. The study is based on the analysis of three small corpora, which were designed to compare economics textbooks, economics abstracts and historical abstracts. The analysis focuses on meta-argumentative illocution markers, i.e. those references to discourse procedures that signal an argumentative element in discourse. The overview highlights the different representations of disciplinary argument offered by different genres and different disciplines. Syntactic foregrounding of argumentative procedures, for example, is shown to be part of the abstract's textual structures, whereas in textbooks it is mostly attributable to the ideational dimension of introductory chapters. Meta-argumentative expressions also highlight different textual patterns in the structure of economic and historical abstracts. The study includes an analysis of selected lexical items, which are studied from the combined point of view of corpus and text analysis. Maria Grazia Busä focuses on abstracts as a genre, characterised by the need for brevity and the elimination of redundancy. In particular she examines the role of metadiscourse in economics and psychology abstracts, with a view to the way in which they represent the research process, its scientific procedures and objects. She notes that syntactic foregrounding is used to achieve this focus. Comparing economics and psychology abstracts she finds that while the former make specific reference to participants and products of the research process, the latter highlight, instead, the research object. Maria Freddi's dialogic perspective, using a small corpus of introductory textbooks in linguistics, serves to argue that these help to create a dialogue involving a plurality of voices - the expert writer's and the student reader's together with past and present members of the scientific community. She examines the lexicalisation of discourse participants and among the interesting findings she unearths we find that linguists prefer we for self reference three times more than I. As regards the other half of the role relationship i.e. the reader, the textbooks create dialogue through explicit mention, imperatives, rhetorical questions or directly addressing the reader as you.

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A diachronic perspective on academic discourse is provided by Gabriella Del Lungo who discusses the stylistic patterns used by the nineteenth century economist Alfred Marshall in two of his most important textbooks, in particular his use of metadiscourse. She takes a close look at the introductory sections from the two texts "Principles of Economics" and "Elements of Economics" to throw light on how the author addresses different readerships. While the "Principles" uses a wide variety of metadiscourse, the "Elements" - the textbook for junior students - omits much of this, especially interpersonal metadiscourse. This choice, together with the use of a less abstract lexicon and syntactic simplification, is attributed to the status of the reader as student and the stance of writer as teacher. A textbook asks the student to accept what he is told while the treatise involves the reader in appealing for judgement, inviting consent or attempting to keep anticipated objections at bay. The experimental perspective provided by Belinda Crawford is a nice parallel to the previous chapter since it examines the role of metadiscourse in reading comprehension in Marshall's "Principles" and "Elements". Crawford notes that in the literature metadiscourse is widely thought to facilitate reading comprehension. Consequently, two groups of EAP students were given corresponding passages from these two texts, the "Principles" having more metadiscourse than the abridged version. Subsequently both groups were required to answer the same reading comprehension test and a post-reading questionnaire, to evaluate the level of perceived difficulty encountered by each group. Although a general confirmation of the research hypothesis was not possible, it was, however, partially confirmed since those students who were given the 'Principles' to read scored significantly higher in two out of four questions. Christina Samson uses a small corpus of introductory chapters of economics textbook to re-examine Tadros's (1994) study of linguistic prediction or advance labelling. By signalling in advance a future intention the writer commits him/ herself to provide a future linguistic event. This involves two sequentially connected stages, the provision of a predictive item followed by the predicted item itself. The former can take the form of enumeration, questions, imperatives, or incomplete clauses and Samson identifies a number of verbs, nouns and noun phrases which function as predictors in economics textbooks. The second part of the book is dedicated to spoken academic discourse in the form of lectures, seminars and student presentations. Lectures in economics provide the data for Julia Bamford's study of question and answer sequences. She starts by claiming that the questions found in the lectures can not be considered as rhetorical questions since the answer is always provided or at least a missing answer is always accounted for. In lectures questions are often pre-announced, especially when the answer is controversial, conceptually problematic or when the question may contain criticisms or face threatening acts. Questions can be repeated or reformulated, in this respect mirroring the clarification re-

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quests of spontaneous conversation. In fact question and answer sequences serve to make the lecture "listener friendly" by recreating the dialogic conditions of conversation. Laurie Anderson and Roberta Piazza examine the university seminar in Britain and Italy in which two interrelated discourse communities coexist: the local, consisting of students and teachers and the wider one constituted by the authors and scholars whose work is being read and discussed. In particular the two authors discuss citation patterns from the different cultural contexts and identify the parameters which are linked to the ways participants use textual citation in seminar settings. These are: field of discourse, text related speech activities, participation structure, and conditions of intertextuality. While citation patterns in seminars from the two cultural settings were seen to have some things in common - use of value neutral reporting verbs, similar sequential position with respect to topic structure - they differ in two important ways. In the Italian seminars all the instances of textual citation occur in reported speech format and the student rarely refers to him/ herself overtly. On the contrary in the British data direct as well as reported citations occur and self reference also is frequent. The last chapter also deals with spoken academic discourse in the form of student presentations and the approach is experimental with a pedagogic slant. Glenn Alessi investigates the form, function and frequency of metadiscourse markers in student presentations and the types of metadiscourse they produce. The experiment was designed with the students having to give an oral presentation and provide a recording of it and the various types of metadiscourse used was tabulated. Speakers were seen to prefer certain types of metadiscourse markers such as connectives and emphasis while illocution markers and code glosses were less frequent. On the whole, the purpose of the book was to explore the wide range of language issues that can be addressed when looking at academic discourse as interaction. The studies presented here offer a varied picture of how metadiscourse can be used to organize discourse, as well as to construct and maintain relations between participants. The issue has been shown to link both to a dialogic view of language use and to the ways in which discourse reflects the value-system of the speaker/ writer and the discourse community he or she is part of. Issues of language use and reflexivity have always been central to EAP research: we hope we have offered an example of the variety of methodological tools and approaches that are available for the study of academic discourse; we also hope this book will also offer readers suggestions for their own teaching and research.

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References

Askehave, Inger and Swales, John (2001): Genre identification and communicative purpose: A problem and a possible solution. - Applied Linguistics 22 (2), 195-212. Bahktin, Mikhail (1981): The Dialogic Imagination. - Austin: University of Texas Press. - (1986): Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. - M. Holquist (ed.) Austin: University of Texas Press. Bazerman, Charles (1988): Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science. - Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. - (1994): Constructing experience. - Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Berkenkotter, Carol and Huckin, Thomas (1995): Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication. - Hillsdale N.J.: Erlbaum. Bhatia, Vijay (1993): Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. - London: Longman. Biber, Douglas (1988): Variation across Speech and Writing. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bloor, Thomas (1998): Conditional expressions. - In: A. Sanchez-Macarro, and R. Carter (eds.) Linguistic Choice across Genres. Variation in Spoken and Written English, 47-64. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Boland, Lawrence A. (2003): Methodological criticism vs. ideology and hypocrisy. - Journal of Economic Methodology 10 (4), 521-527. Bondi, Marina (1999): English Across Genres. Language Variation in the Discourse of Economics. Modena: II Fiorino. Christie, Frances (1989): Language Education. - Oxford: Oxford University Press. Crismore, Avon and Farnsworth, Rodney (1990): Metadiscourse in popular and professional science discourse. - In: W. Nash (ed.) The Writing Scholar: Studies in Academic Discourse, 118-136. Newbury Park: Sage Publications. Devitt, Amy (1993): Generalising about genre: New conceptions of an old concept. - College Composition and Communication 44 (4), 573-586. Fairclough, Norman (1993): Discourse and Social Change. - London: Polity. Ford, Cecilia (1993): Grammar in Interaction. - Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Hopper, Paul and Thompson, Sandra (1993): Language universals, discourse pragmatics, and semantics. - Language Sciences 15 (4), 357-376. Halliday, Michael (1985): An Introduction to Functional Grammar. - London: Arnold. - (1993): Some grammatical problems in scientific English. - In: M.A.K. Halliday and J. Martin Writing Science, 69-85. London: The Falmer Press. Hoey, Michael (1983): On the Surface of Discourse. - London: George Allen & Unwin. - (2001): Textual Interaction: An Introduction to Written Discourse Analysis. - London: Routledge. Hunston, Susan (1993): Evaluation and ideology in scientific writing. - In: M. Ghadessy (ed.) Register Analysis: Theory and Practice, 57-73. - London: Pinter. Hyland, Ken (1998a): Hedging in Scientific Research Articles. - Amsterdam: Benjamins. - (1998b): Persuasion and context: The pragmatics of academic metadiscourse. - Journal of Pragmatics 30, 437-455. - (1999): Talking to students: Metadiscourse in introductory textbooks. - English for Specific Purposes 18 (1), 3-26. - (2000): Disciplinary Discourses. - London: Longman. Hymes, Dell (1974): Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach. - Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

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Johns, Ann (1997): Text, Role and Context: Developing Academic Literacies. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lave, Jean and Wenger, Etienne (1991): Situated Learning. Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Malcolm, Lois (1987): What rules govern tense usage in scientific articles? - English for Specific Purposes 6, 31-44. Mauranen, Anna (1993): Contrastive ESP rhetoric: Metatext in Finnish-English economics texts. English For Specific Purposes 12, 3-22. - (2001): Reflexive academic talk: Observations from Micase. - In: R. Simpson and J. Swales (eds.) Corpus Linguistics in North America, 165-178. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press. Myers, Greg (2000): Powerpoints: Technology, lectures, and changing genres. - In: A. Trosborg (ed.) Analysing Professional Genres, 177-192. Amsterdam: Benjamins. McCarthy, Michael J. and Carter, Ron A. (1997): Grammar, tails and affect: Constructing expressive choices in discourse. - Text 17 (3), 231-252. McCarthy, Michael (1998): Spoken Language and Applied Linguistics. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCloskey, Deidre (2001): Storytelling in Economics. - Cheltenham: Elgar. - (1994): Knowledge and Persuasion in Economics. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pennycook, Alistair (1994): The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. - London: Longman. Phillipson, Robert (1992): Linguistic Imperialism. - Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rodin, Judith and Steinberg, Stephen (2003): Public Discourse in America: Conversation and Community in the Twenty-First Century. - Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Schiffiin, Deborah (1980): Meta-talk: organizational and evaluative brackets in discourse. Sociological Inquiry 50 (3/4), 199-236. Scott, Mike and Thompson, Geoff (2001) (eds.): Patterns of Text: In Honour of Michael Hoey. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Swales, John (1990): Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - (1998): Other Floors Other Voices: A Textography of a Small University Building. - Mahwah NJ: Erlbaum. - Ahmad, Ummul, Chang Ying, Ye, Chavez, Daniel, Dressen, Dacia, Seymour, Ruth (1998): Consider this: the role of imperatives in scholarly writing. - Applied Linguistics 19(1), 97-121. - Feak, Christine (2000): English in Today's Research World: A Writing Guide. - Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. - Malczewski, Bonnie (2001): Discourse management and new-episode flags in Micase. - In: R. Simpson and J. Swales (eds.) Corpus Linguistics in North America, 145-164. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press. Tadros, Angela (1994): Predictive categories in expository texts. - In: M. Coulthard (ed.) Advances in Written Text Analysis, 69-81. - London: Routledge. Tannnen, Deborah (1984): Conversational Style: Analysing Talk among Friends. - N.J. :Ablex. Thompson, Geoff and Thetela, Puleng (1995): The sound of one hand clapping: The management of interaction in written discourse. - Text 15 (1), 103-27. Thompson, Geoff ( 2001): Interaction in academic writing: Learning to argue with the reader. - Applied Linguistics 22 (1), 58-78. Wenger, Etienne (1998): Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning and Identity. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wood, Alistair (2001): The language of research scientists around the world. - In: J. Flowerdew M. Peacock (eds.) Research Perspective on English for Academic Purposes, 71-83. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Vande Kopple, William J.(1997): Refining and Applying Views of Metadiscourse. - Paper presented at the 1997 Meeting on Conference on College Composition and Communication, Phoenix Arizona.

Part One Written Dialogue

Marina Bondi

Metadiscursive Practices in Academic Discourse: Variation across Genres and Disciplines

1. Introduction

Metadiscursive practices have recently become an area of great interest to applied studies of academic discourse (e.g. Mauranen 1993,2001, 2002, 2003, Hyland 1998b, 1999,2000, 2002, Swales et al 1998, Swales 2001). Many of the activities within academic communities are indeed reflexive: scholars often report and comment on other scholars' discourse. The representation of the different positions is one of the core activities in the discourse community and may even become the distinctive feature of some genres. Reflexive practices also offer a representation of the discursive procedures of the community as seen by the members themselves, thus reflecting the inherently discursive nature of knowledge. The lexico-grammar of metadiscourse has often found its place in EAP programmes, mostly for reasons related to its role in making the reading/listening process more efficient. Metadiscourse, defined by Vande Kopple (1985) as "discourse about discourse", can also be seen as "the author's linguistic manifestation in a text" (Hyland 1999: 5). It reveals the presence of the author trying to guide the reader through the text and thus seems to belong - in Hallidayan terms (Halliday 1985) - to the interpersonal or textual dimensions of language, rather than to the ideational component. Crismore and Farnsworth (1990: 119) talk about the "author's overt or non overt presence in the discourse in order to direct rather than to inform readers" and call it "secondary" with reference to the "primary" discourse (identified with propositional content). Both the notion of "meta"-discourse and of a "secondary" discourse, however, seem to imply that discourse can be somewhat isolated from metadiscourse and that metadiscourse is somewhat "additional". Other discourse analysts, however, perceive the notion to be so central to the definition of the specific type of verbal interaction that there is some kind of priority in metadiscourse itself: Sinclair eliminates the use of the term altogether, preferring to talk about the interactive plane of discourse (1982). Even if there is consensus on the importance and the centrality of the issue, it is not easy to identify metadiscourse unequivocally as such. Most classifications of metadiscourse take a functional perspective, where metadiscursive elements are classified according to

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the function they play in discourse. Many classification systems have been produced; the most widely used system is that of Vande Kopple (see for example Crismore 1989 and Stainton 1996). Vande Kopple presents a system with seven categories: "text connectives", "code glosses", "illocution markers", "narrators", "validity markers", "attitude markers" and "commentary". 1 The scheme has been adapted to Halliday's macro-functions by Crismore and Farnsworth (1990), by attributing a textual function to the first four categories and an interpersonal function to the last three. Textual metadiscourse is meant to make propositional material coherent, convincing and suited to the purpose, whereas interpersonal metadiscourse allows the writer to express his/her own evaluation of propositional content and attitude towards the reader. It will soon be noticed, however, that some of these distinctions are purely heuristic. Both narrators and attributors, for example, are used to attribute a statement to some external source; narrators, however, are meant to identify who said what and therefore seem to have a merely informative role, whereas attributors are interpersonal validity markers, meant to influence the reader's judgement. The distinction does not always hold. Where voices are introduced in the text, the information about who is speaking is hardly separable from the writer's position as to the other voices, as numerous studies of reporting verbs, citation practices and intertextuality have shown in the last decade or so (Thompson and Ye 1991, Hunston 1993, 1995, Thomas and Hawes 1994, Thompson G. 1996, 2001, Thompson P. 2000, Groom 2000, Stotesbury 2002). There is also substantial overlapping between the lexical tools of narrators/ attributors and those of illocution markers, specifying the act that the author is performing, as third party arguments are often brought in as part of the author's own lines of thinking (Mauranen 2003: 29). Our main aim here, however, will not be to develop a typology of metadiscursive expressions, but rather to investigate the ways in which some metadiscursive expressions (illocution markers in particular) offer a representation of academic discourse as argumentative. 1

Textual metadiscourse includes: 1) Text Connectives (signalling relations between parts of the text): -sequential indicators (first, second, next)·, -logical/temporal connectives (however, thus, at the same time); -reminders (as I noted earlier)·, -announcements (as we shall see in Chapter Six); - topicalizers (there is, in regard to); 2) Code Glosses (meant to help the reader understand the meaning of key/difficult terms); 3) Illocution Markers (used to specify the act that the author is performing , to sum up, for example, I hypothesize that, My aim is); 4) Narrators (used to inform about the person who said/wrote what is reported). Interpersonal metadiscourse includes: 5) Validity Markers (expressing the degree of certainty or uncertainty towards discourse content): Hedges (perhaps, may); - Emphatics (clearly, certainly); - Attributors (according to); 6) Attitude Markers (expressing the author's attitude towards discourse content, surprisingly, I found it interesting); 7) Commentary (creating implicit dialogue between reader and writer, you may not agree, my dear reader).

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From a lexical point of view, a number of categories will play a major role. Some of these, like referring expressions {verba dicendi with their nominalisations) have been a key issue in metapragmatic studies of illocution and in studies on reflexivity (Verschueren 1995, Lucy 1993). Reporting expressions - for example verbs like find, suggest, show, argue have been widely studied for their contribution to the intertextuality of academic discourse. The basic distinction in issues of voice identification has been described by Sinclair (1987) in terms of averral and attribution. Averral is the default condition of a text, where the reader assumes that the responsibility for each proposition rests with the speaker or writer. Attribution is the case where a proposition is indicated as deriving from a source. Reporting expressions may allow writers to detach themselves from the proposition they introduce by attributing it to others, thus creating a variety of textual voices and an evaluation of reported discourse through reporting verbs (Thompson and Ye 1991, Thomas and Hawes 1994, Thompson 1996, Hunston 2000). Attribution does not necessarily imply detachment from "others": writers can even refer to themselves in forms of self-attribution, which often provide prospective or retrospective reference to their own discourse (Hyland 2001, see also Bondi 1997b). Following a recent interest in the interrelationship between argument and academic discourse (see for example Bondi 1999, Thompson 2001), special attention should be paid to meta-argumentative expressions. Meta-argumentative expressions are defined by Stati (1998) as nouns referring to argumentative roles (like Claim, Concession, Objection, Proof, etc.)2 and verbs used to introduce an argumentative proposition or to report argumentative processes realised by another person3. These include both forms of self-projection (In chapter 8 we show...) and forms of other-projection (Keynes believes...) (See Bondi 1997b). This study extends the definition of meta-argumentative expressions to include lemmas like consider, examine, investigate and discuss, which are not often regarded as "verbs of arguing" (see for example Hunston 1993). It is true that they do not refer to an explicit claim on the part of the writer/author, or to a potential difference of attitude be2

Argumentative roles may be defined with Stati (1990: 16) as "la fonction, offensive ou defensive, que la phrase est capable d'exercer dans le mecanisme de la persuasion: preuve, rectification, conclusion, etc." This may be distinct from the illocutionary force of a speech act, although both functions pertain to the area of pragmalinguistics, and - in their reflexive dimension - to metapragmatics (Verschueren 1995; Lucy 1993: 11-21 and Silverstein 1993: 33-35). The close link between meta-argumentative expressions and reporting expressions in general is recognised by many, including Stati (1998) - though not analysed in detail. A verb like say is a potential - and often actual - operator for the projection of reported discourse, but it does not in itself refer to argumentativity. A verb like show, on the other hand, when used to refer to a verbal process, does indeed imply that a Claim is made and that there is a Justification of the Claim(s) made, whether this is then made explicit or not. A verb like state, finally, though less explicitly argumentative, does indeed signal a pragmatic function that is often associated with a Claim.

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tween the two; and yet they refer to the pre-requisites of arguing, to considering something from different angles, which can be regarded as a constitutive condition of argument itself. This set of verbs does not always fall under the ordinary heading of reporting verbs, because they do not allow any clear-cut distinction between reporting and reported propositions: they do not introduce an object clause (a reported proposition), but simply a direct object, which is presented as the object of discourse, or of investigation. They are mostly used in what has been termed "narrative report of speech act" (Leech and Short 1981, Thompson 1996). This study hopes to show that, in academic discourse, these verbs have an important role as "verbs of problematizing": i.e. they usually signal moves which identify the research space chosen by the researcher or problematize an issue (whether a methodological tool or a conclusion). The kind of representation of argument offered by an academic text may depend on the ethos of the discipline. Different disciplines may hold different views as to the role of argument in the advancement of knowledge. The emphasis initially placed by genre studies on academic discourse as such has recently given way to an emerging interest in its crossdisciplinary variation (MacDonald 1994, Holmes 1997, Hyland 2000). Hyland (2000), for example, emphasizes the need to consider the different sets of conventions and modes of inquiry that constitute each discipline and its "disciplinary culture", with "a certain degree of interdisciplinary diversity and a degree of intradisciplinary homogeneity" (2000: 10). The present chapter will explore this hypothesis by focusing on the representation of argumentative scientific procedures4 offered by different disciplines, in the area of the humanities and the social sciences: history and economics have been chosen as case studies. Another important dimension of variation that was felt to be relevant was variation across genres. Genre-based studies of academic discourse have often concentrated on the textual structures (Halliday-Hasan 1989) of research-based genres like the research article (Swales 1990, Bazerman and Paradis (eds.) 1991, Bhatia 1993, Freedman and Medway (eds.) 1994, Paltridge 1997), often combining linguistic and rhetorical analysis (Berkenkotter and Huckin 1995). The study of metadiscursive practices may be particularly fruitful in other genres, particularly in those where the representation of disciplinary discursive procedures plays a major role, like textbooks and abstracts.

4

I use "scientific" to refer to the creation and dissemination of knowledge, rather than to the activity of experimental or natural sciences. Scientific procedures (activity etc.), as defined here, are thus the procedures (activity etc.) that lead to the creation and dissemination of knowledge in an academic discourse community, irrespective of the specific nature of the discipline. The emphasis is thus on the production of specialist knowledge, rather than on the institutional nature of the activity, which may be more explicitly signalled by the use of "academic".

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The representation of academic discourse in textbooks may tend to downtone the argumentative dimension of disciplinary knowledge, in order to offer an established view of the discipline. The kind of metadiscourse used by textbooks, on the other hand, seems to contribute to their "apprenticeship" function, by explicitly or implicitly introducing the readerstudent to the conventions of the discourse community (Hyland 1999, Bhatia 2002). Previous studies of economics textbooks (Bondi 1999: 37-69) have shown that the representation of scientific procedures is a key issue in the genre and plays a highly explicit role in introductory chapters. These chapters, normally devoted to a presentation of the discipline and its methodology, often make use of a well-defined set of lexicalizations of cognitive and verbal processes - many of which represent scientific activity as argument - that may be taken as key-words in the representation of scientific procedures. The representation of scientific procedures - and of argumentative procedures in particular - also plays a major role in abstracts. The lexicalizations of scientific procedures can even be seen as constitutive in the definition of the genre. Many studies of the relationship between an abstract and the abstracted article (Bazerman 1988, Berkenkotter and Huckin 1995, Kaplan et al. 1994, Dos Santos 1996, Bondi 1997a, Stotesbury 2003) focus on how abstracts represent the structure and content of the article itself, in a multiple semiotic process in which words are used to represent verbal objects. Abstracts are meant to represent perhaps the most important scientific activity carried out within the community: argument/ exposition in research articles. The article itself and its textual structure become objects to be represented and interpreted. A brief survey of the development of abstracts in economics (Bondi 1997a), for example, has shown an increasing use of metadiscursive references as a distinctive feature of the genre. The analysis of the types of entities chosen as sentence subjects 5 has revealed a pattern of syntactic foregrounding of metadiscursive references to the original article and its procedures as objects of abstracting discourse. The resulting writing style foregrounds discourse procedures by giving them main-clause position and thematizes discourse products and producers rather than discourse objects: the results show..., we analyze... rather than inflation is seen... The increasing focus on metadiscursive features suggests a growing

5

MacDonald's (1992: 543) major distinction between Phenomenal Classes and Epistemic Classes - "the phenomenal consisting of the material that the researcher studies and the epistemic consisting of the methods, conceptual tools and previous research that the researcher brings to bear on that material" - was integrated with the classification of the functional roles of grammatical subjects suggested by Gosden (1993): Participant domain - ranging from more internal, writer-oriented, to more external, community-oriented; Discourse domain - including discourse event, macro- and micro-entities, and interactive discourse; Hypothesized/objectivized domain - references to viewpoint and to hypothesized entities or relations; Real world domain (Gosden 1993: 65-67).

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awareness of the nature and characteristics of the genre, as well as of the role it now plays within the discourse community. The pervasiveness of the genre in contemporary academic discourse, as well as its growing importance in academic production, emphasize the need for more detailed analyses of the different subgenres of abstracts, of their language features and of their variability across disciplines. After a brief presentation of the materials and methods used for the study (Section 2), this chapter will examine how metadiscursive practices define disciplinary discourse structures across genres and disciplines. In particular, variation across genres will be studied by comparing a small corpus of economics textbooks with a small corpus of economics abstracts; variation across disciplines will be explored by comparing the same small corpus of economics abstracts with a similar corpus of historical abstracts. The results of the general qualitative analysis of moves are presented in Section 3. Section 4 focuses on metaargumentative illocution markers, i.e. those references to discourse procedures that signal an argumentative element in discourse. The overview will include an analysis of selected lexical items from the point of view of corpus and text analysis (Stubbs 1996, 2001).

2. Materials and Methods

This study is based on the analysis of three small corpora which have been designed in order to compare genres and disciplines. A small corpus of economics abstracts was used as a basis for a double comparison: it was compared with a corpus of introductory chapters of economics textbooks in order to explore variation across genres and with a corpus of historical abstracts in order to explore features of abstract writing in English in different disciplines. It was thus necessary to make use of the following small corpora:

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a) a corpus of 10 introductory chapters of economics textbooks published in English6 (consisting of about 71,000 words); b) a corpus of 422 economics abstracts taken from the first issue of Econlit, 1997, the electronic version of the standard abstracting journal in economics {Journal of Economic Literature) (consisting of about 41,000 words); c) a corpus of 873 abstracts taken from the 1995 database of the Historical Abstracts (consisting of about 75,000 words). A qualitative analysis of sample materials was first carried out to identify and classify metadiscursive practices. An attempt was made to relate reflexive features to specific pragmatic moves and textual patterns, as well as to explore their relation to genre and discipline. The results are provided in Section 3. The study then focused on meta-argumentative expressions. Using Wordsmith Tools (Scott 1996), the frequency lists of each of the corpora were first studied in order to identify the most frequent potentially meta-argumentative expressions in economics textbooks, economics abstracts and historical abstracts. References to discourse procedures, however, can hardly be separated from references to discourse producers and products (or units) with which they collocate. This suggested studying the context (and collocations) of expressions that refer to potential argumentative voices in the texts. The exploration of frequency data was intended to provide some preliminary background and support for the analysis of selected lexical items, which was carried out by studying the concordances and the anaphoric chains within the text. The occurrences of each item were studied in their context in order to identify the most frequent collocational patterns. The trends emerging for the three small corpora offered an opportunity for comparative analysis acrosss genre and discipline. The general trends also offered the opportunity for specific analysis of selected lexical elements: the choice of lemmas to be analysed across disciplines fell on examine and discuss. These were subjected to closer scrutiny from two points of view: immediate context and textual sequences. The study of immediate context started from a consideration of the

6

Baumol, W J . and A.S. Blinder, Economics. Principles and Policy, 4th Edition, Orlando, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988; Begg, D., S. Fischer and R. Dornbusch, Economics. British Edition, Maidenhead, McGraw-Hill, 1983; Craven, J., Introduction to Economics, 2nd Edition, Blackwell, Oxford, 1990; Dolan, E.G. and D.E. Linsey, Economics, 5th Edition, NY, Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1988; Fischer, S. and R. Dornbusch, Economics, NY, McGraw-Hill, 1983; Hardwick, P., B. Kahn and J. Langmead, An Introduction to Modern Economics, 3rd Edition, London, Longman, 1990; Lipsey, R., An Introduction to Positive Economics, 7th Edition, London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1989; Samuelson, P.A. and W.H. Nordhaus, Economics, 14th Edition, NY, McGraw-Hill, 1992; Stanlake, G.F., Introductory Economics, 5th Edition, London Longman, 1989; Wonnacot, P. and R. Wonnacot, Economics, 2nd Edition, NY, McGraw-Hill, 1982.

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types of entities chosen as sentence subjects, following MacDonald (1992: 536^3) and Gosden 1993 (65-67). The focus was on: a) "whose" voice was projected in active voice constructions, whether oriented to the participant domain (the writer(s)/ the whole discourse community) or discourse domain (unit/event); b) "what" was examined or discussed in passive voice constructions, whether presented as a Real World entity / process, or a relationship / problem. Concordances were explored from the point of view of "extended units of meaning" (Sinclair 1996): starting with a node at the core, the analyst looks at the types of recurrent relationships that the word entertains with other words in the co-text. This means looking not only at collocation proper (the more than random occurrence of a word with another word), but also at semantic preference (Sinclair 1996), i.e. the occurrence of a word with a semantic class of words or words belonging to the same semantic field. Textual sequences were further explored to establish patterns of occurrence in specific textual patterns, i.e. to check whether the verbs under examination tended to occur in specific moves or to co-occur with other metadiscursive elements in the co-text.

3. Metadiscursive practices across Genres and Disciplines: an Overview

3.1. Focus on genres: Textbooks and Abstracts The first stage of the study was to identify metadiscursive practices and to study how they contribute to the textual structure of the two genres under examination. As has been shown in previous studies (Bondi 1999, Bondi 2001), introductory chapters of economics textbooks are normally devoted to a presentation of the discipline and its methodology. This necessarily involves the identification of problem areas and the representation of scientific procedures through lexicalisation of cognitive and verbal processes (italicized in the examples). Example 1 illustrates a typical topic identification move, which usually prepares more explicit discussion of the arguments at issue: (1) Even in the relatively affluent countries substantial economic problems remain. (See Box 1-1.) For example, we may wonder. Why are so many unable to find work, when so much needs to be done? Why have prices spiraled upward — to the discomfort of Japanese and US. citizens alike? Why does the average black in America have a lower income than the average white? Are we really going to run out of oil? What will happen if we do?

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Are we really producing the right things? Should we produce more housing and fewer cars? Or more medical services and fewer sports spectaculars? (Wonnacot, Ch.l) Attributed statements are not very common in textbooks. The most common forms are generalized attribution and self-attribution. Example 2 provides an illustration of an explicit representation of debate within the discipline through forms of generalized attribution, i.e. statements that are attributed to a generalized voice: (2) According to one argument, economists are able to give expert advice on issues related to economic efficiency, but equity considerations are outside the purview of economics and should be left to philosophers, politicians and social reformers. A counter-argument is that the economist is as good a judge as anyone else in society and by the very nature of his role cannot neglect equity considerations. Balanced, expert advice involves appraising the system of production and consumption on the grounds of both efficiency and equity. According to this argument, equity considerations are important because every policy action, like building a road or raising a tariff, makes some people better off and others worse off. (Hardwick, Ch.l) In self-attribution, the projected text coincides with the communicative event in progress: the argumentative procedures in focus are those established in the book itself, as in example 3: (3) Assume for simplicity that a country produces only two goods, food and cloth. Figure 1 shows the different combinations of these two commodities which can be produced. The vertical axis measures the quantity of food in tonnes and the horizontal axis measures the quantity of cloth in metres. The straight line AB is the production possibility frontier. It shows that when all resources are efficiently employed in the production of food, OA tonnes can be produced and when all resources are employed in the production of cloth, OB metres can be produced. All points on the production possibility frontier represent combinations of food and cloth which the country can just produce when all its resources are employed. [...] The production possibility frontier thus provides us with an illustration of the problem of scarcity and choice facing a country when deciding what goods and services to produce. The analysis of production is dealt with in greater detail in Chapter 2. (Baumol, Ch. 1) The introductory chapters of economics textbooks are thus focused on a representation of the discursive procedures of the discourse community: a representation of what economists think or should think. Forms of both self- and other-projection are intended to offer the reader a map of the text and a map of the discipline. Metadiscursive practices centre on generic reference and highlight moves like: a) identifying a problem, b) presenting methodological tools, c) representing debate within the discipline, d) guiding the reader through argument.

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Abstracts, on the other hand, constitute a basically reflexive practice themselves. The representational nature of the genre is clearly marked by its typical structures, by the recurrent pattern of main clauses centred around mental or verbal processes and by the thematization of discourse products or procedures (Bondi 1997a). Their syntactic patterns clearly highlight two well defined semantic areas: the area of scientific procedures and that of scientific objects, identified by opposition. Their reflexive activity is clearly focused on specific reference to the abstracted paper. The focus of their representation is on how researchers go about their research. Extract 4 offers an example abstract from an empirical research paper, where common expressions are used to highlight the process of research as represented in the article itself: a model is presented and tested empirically on data; the data provide results that show theoretical conclusions and suggest practical applications. (4) This paper offers a model of the allocation of funds in Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOE) and provides an empirical test of the theory using firm-level data. The paper explains why bank loans and grants coexist with self-financing, which SOEs take out loans, and why subsidies on loan interest payments exist. The model is based on heterogeneous SOEs, asymmetric information, sales taxes, and quota requirements. The results show that reforms of enterprise finance must come as a package, suggesting that the interlocking nature of reform measures should be considered in deciding the direction of further policy modification.

Example 5 presents a different structure, which is not unusual in economics discourse. The reflexive features of the abstract do not simply reveal the "internal structure" of argument - its internal consistency - but also its interactive patterns, by referring to an external discourse event, i.e. a theory produced by some other article. The analysis of this "counterdiscourse" occupies all the opening sequence of the abstract which then proceeds to juxtapose the writers' claim: (5) Piccione and Rubinstein argue that a seemingly paradoxical form of time inconsistency can arise in games of imperfect recall. Their argument depends on calculating the expected value of a game from the standpoint of a player in the middle of play. We claim that this concept is not well defined in games with absentmindedness (where two nodes on a path can be in the same information set) without additional assumptions. We show that, under some reasonable assumptions, no time inconsistency arises. Different assumptions will validate Piccione and Rubinstein's calculations, but these are such as to remove the appearance of paradox.

3.2. Focus on Disciplines: Economics and History The purpose of the second stage of the study was to analyze how metadiscursive practices contribute to the representation of scientific procedures in the different disciplines. In particular it focused on the two textual patterns exemplified above for economics abstracts:

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patterns based on the structure of inquiry (identification of the problem, methods, results, conclusions) and patterns based on argumentative dialogue, with discourse and counterdiscourse. The distinction between the two basic types of abstracts is rather clear-cut in economics discourse: the abstracts that follow the pattern of model-testing (thus presenting claims as logically derived from correctly applied procedures) clearly outnumber those highlighting the role played by dialectic reasoning in presenting an argument before the discourse community. Dialectic argumentative patterns, however, are clearly established, either through signals of unexpected results or by highlighting the possibility of different interpretations of the results as well as cautious conclusions. Economists seem to prefer to establish argumentative dialogue on the basis of the interpretation of their results rather than on the novelty of the issue dealt with. The corpus of historical abstracts clearly highlights a further preliminary distinction, signalled by the unexpectedly high frequency of the various forms of the verb review: 88 occurrences in history (12 per 10,000 words) as against 10 (2 per 10,000 words) in economics. This striking difference should not be overemphasized, because it may be simply attributable to abstracting policies. The few instances of review found in economics, however are mostly attributed to a variety of discourse domain subjects - section (2), article (1), essay (1), paper (3) - one has the author as subject and another one has a real world economic agent. History shows much greater interest in the act of reviewing as defining the macro communicative event: 71 of the 88 verbal occurrences of the lemma express the main purpose of the article (mostly selecting the article itself as subject by ellipsis) and qualify the abstracted article as a review article; the remaining 17 are more varied in form: the grammatical subjects of the 15 main clauses are still mostly discourse domain subjects, whether actively referring to the abstracted article itself (8) or to verbal events reviewed (3), but also to the authors (4). The historical corpus helps outline the distinction between abstracts of review articles and abstracts of research articles. Review articles - or articles that are explicitly presented as critical reviews of current literature - seem to be a widely established genre in the field. Although I have not been able to investigate the full text articles, the structure of their abstracts - such as Example 6 - clearly brings out the dialectic nature of reviewing. This is often signalled by contrastive connectors (see also Bondi forthcoming) marking the shift from positive to negative features, i.e. (in terms of argumentative roles) from Agreement / Praise to Disagreement / Criticism: (6) Reviews nine books which reveal a liberal consensus that the spread of democracy, free trade, and the growth of interdependence is producing an unprecedented era of peace and cooperation in inter-American relations. This perspective, however, does not provide clear answers to problems growing out of US power or the costs connected with neoliberal models.

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Research article abstracts present great variation in the quantity of expressions that refer to discursive and theoretical procedures or constructs. Most historical abstracts seem to be clearly dominated by their narrative empirical structures and the only metadiscursive element they make use of is often the opening projecting framework, as in Example 7: (7) Examines the experiences of British medical women in the war zone during World War I, their later careers, and whether their war experiences had any later effect on the position of women in medicine. The two founders of the first all-women unit were Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Flora Murray; the second was founded by Mabel St. Clair Stobart, while in 1914 there was also a unit with women physicians in Belgium. After the fall of Belgium, the main destination for volunteer units was Serbia, and by far the largest all-women organization was the Scottish Women's Hospitals (SWH). The need for medical care was so urgent, however, that women could easily find work on their own initiative, and therefore gained experience that previously would have been inconceivable. Some worked for the War Office, and the experience of women in the field gave rise to a debate over their lack of uniform and rank. While these women blazed trails for others, few practiced as surgeons after the war and the profession was still regarded as a precarious one for women. The relatively lesser importance of metadiscursive reference to scientific procedures is in line with the distinctiveness of history texts noticed for example by Holmes (1997: 328) and related "to the discipline's concern with providing accounts of discrete events rather than with the discovery of generalizable patterns". Another distinctive feature of historical abstracts - when compared to economics abstracts - is the fact that it becomes difficult to distinguish patterns that highlight the narrative of research from those that highlight the dialectic of discourse and counter-discourse. Attention to sub-genres in historical abstracts does not exclude the possibility of identifying empirical research papers, based on references to data; quite the contrary: history often presents itself as "empirical" by foregrounding reference to data. What is backgrounded is rather the idea of research as being "model-based" testing of a theory or of a hypothesis: the researcher tends to hide behind the data and appear rather as a neutral reporter, rarely making explicit recourse to pre-existing theories or interpretations. Example 8 shows how reflexive elements can illuminate the problematizing of an event and the way in which conclusions are suggested by investigation of circumstances. (8) Recounts the discovery of an unpublished manuscript by Harold Begbie, a prolific British author of children's nonfiction, biography, and other work, concerning the use of wireless telegraphy in World War I. Investigation of surrounding circumstances suggests that additional chapters may have been written by Begbie, but were "weeded" (confiscated) by the intelligence services. Although they may be lost, the search for this possibly missing material will continue. Historical abstracts tend to reveal the internal structure of argument, rather than its interactive patterns. Only a few "argumentative"/ "dialectic" abstracts allow themselves reference to an external discourse event (a theory produced by some other article) or to forms of hy-

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Discourse

pothesised counter-discourse. Example 9, for example, clearly highlights the ways in which the writer's act of interpretation is explicitly linked to related theories {presents a critical assessment of theories). (9) Explores the economic and political roots of privatization and democratization pervading the Third World in the past decade. By examining the case studies of successes and failures, the paper attempts to reevaluate the possible links between privatization and democratization. By analyzing perils and promises, anomalies and patterns, indigenous and international factors, the study presents a critical assessment of theories of democratization and offers some insights into the causes and consequences of privatization and democratization in the Third World.

The difference between sub-genres cannot be expressed in typological (either/or) terms, but is rather "topological", a matter of showing fewer or more characteristics of two not necessarily exclusive prototypes: abstracts that tend to emphasize the notion of "history as story-telling, or narrative" and those that tend to emphasize the notion of "history as argument". The variation can be indicated on a cline as shown in Figure 1: Figure 1: Topological Variation in Historical Abstracts History as Narrative

History as Argument

In abstracts where emphasis is placed on the narrative element of history, the text tends to coincide with sequences of sentences reporting causally and temporally linked processes, and metadiscursive practices contribute to claiming significance and credibility by: a) Problematizing: highlighting the "problematicity" of an initial situation to be explained; b) Claiming significance: showing the unexpectedness of an ending/explanation ("resolution"). The distinction - not always clear-cut, especially when articles represent events synthetically - is illustrated in Example 7 {Problematizing) and 8 {Problematizing and claiming significance) above. In abstracts that more explicitly refer to "history as argument", whether following empirical models (such as the Introduction-(methods)-results-discussion pattern) or dialectical models of arguing by balancing different opinions, metadiscursive practices can be found to contribute to claiming significance and credibility by: a) Problematizing (Claiming novelty): showing the novelty of an issue; b) Claiming significance: relating the claim to debate within the discourse community; c) Signalling stance: highlighting "incoherence" in evaluation of results / data / conclusions.

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Examples of moves that explicitly relate significance to a disciplinary debate and more or less explicitly signal stance within the debate can be seen in Example 9 above and 10 and 11 below. (10) Historical comparisons of the Soviet and US economies most often focus on the stark contrasts between market and centrally controlled systems. However, expediency in response to dynamic pressures caused the adoption of central planning in both countries. After summarizing Soviet central planning experiences before 1965, similarities to US wartime planning are discussed. These comparisons provide insights into the problems of moving between market and planned economies. (11) Describes the author's experiences in transcribing and checking the oral history interviews he conducted with Sir Laurence Hartnett, chief executive of General Motors-Holden, 1934-47. Hartnett's testimony was found to contain substantial inaccuracies, of varying degrees of historical importance. However, this should not be assumed to lessen the value of oral history. Examination of the reasons underlying the inaccuracies leads to a more complete picture.

4. Meta-argumentative Expressions

4.1. A preliminary Overview: exploring frequency Data The analysis of meta-argumentative expressions started with the identification of potential argumentative voices in textbooks and abstracts: discourse participants and products. A brief consideration of frequency lists brings out the importance of the representation of the discipline in introductory chapters: this is shown by references to the discipline and its sectors or nature (economics, macroeconomics, microeconomics, science), to the scientist as such (economists, economist, scientists), to a few paradigmatic cases (Smith and Marx) to the cognitive tools of research {model, models, theory, theories, graphs but also more general terms like issues, topics, questions), as well as products and procedures of research like statements, questions, judgements, predictions, forecasts. References to expository procedures based on example and illustration (especially through graphs, with curves and points) are also noticeable, as well as personal pronouns (we/you). When considering abstracts, on the other hand, we find that the most frequent metadiscursive items can be accounted for in terms of the research process, again identifying participants {authors, author, Nash, Pareto, Bertrand, coauthors), products {paper, results, literature, data, papers, studies, essay, findings, research) and cognitive tools {model, models, theorem, approach).

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If we now move on to our main focus, references to argumentative procedures, again we may see that there are common lexical elements. Some belong to the widest area of metaargumentative expressions, like issues (which shows similar frequencies in the two corpora). Many refer to argumentative procedures, mostly to the semantic areas of 'claim' and 'justification', like statements, assumptions, implications, show, prove.... others to the semantic areas of roles like agree, disagree, used to represent dialogic interaction between argumentative voices. These are more frequent in textbook introductions, where they play a major role in the representation of debate within the disciplinary area. In abstracts, on the other hand, divergence of opinions or points of view may be implicitly related to lexical elements like discusses or reviews, which presuppose a plurality of voices as their object. Quantitative data on selected lemmas are reported comparatively in Table 1. Table 1: Frequencies of selected verbal lemmas Lemma Ec. textbooks Ec. abstracts Historical abstracts Agree/disagree 7 (30) 1 (5) (6) Analysis 10 (70) 15 (61) 8 (62) Analyze 2 12 (44) (13) 9 (69) Approach 3 (23) 9 (37) 4 (30) Assumption 9 7 (28) (68) 2 (12) Consider 3 (22) 9 (35) 6 (43) Data 4 (30) 14 (59) 4 (29) Describe 2 5 (13) 7 (17) (53) Discuss 4 (29) 10 (37) 12 (89) Examine 3 (25) 15 (54) 21 (156) Example 24 (176) 6 (26) 4 (27) 1 Indicate 6 (23) 3 (8) (19) Investigate 6 (22) 1 (9) (1) Issue 11 (76) 10 10 (41) (76) Model 14 54 (101) (223) 7 (54) Problem (144) 20 17 (70) 2 (15) Prove 4 2 (7) (17) (12) Results 4 (32) 34 (143) 7 (50) Review 2 12 (10) (88) (1) Show 7 (52) 31 (117) 8 (63) Suggest 2 (15) 8 (62) 8 (31) Theory 13 (91) 8 (33) 8 (58) NB: Frequency is expressed per 10,000 words; actual figures are given in brackets

A few general trends emerge: the higher frequency of nominalizations of cognitive and discursive processes (analysis, theory, model, assumptions) in textbooks as against the higher frequency of verbal expressions in abstracts (show, reviews, discusses, examines, analyses)·, the higher frequency of nouns referring to discourse units like example in text

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books is set against the higher frequency of references to research constructs like data and results in abstracts. Further elements can be noticed in comparing frequencies across disciplines. On the whole, economics is characterized by a much higher frequency of references to discourse participants {paper, we, authors, article) and theoretical / discursive constructs: model(s), results, data are highly frequent words (all above 6 per 10,000 words) followed by words like effects, estimates, expectations, problem, probability. On the other hand, economics is perhaps more limited in the range of references to discourse procedures: show is definitely the most frequent lemma, followed by examine, analyze and discuss. In historical abstracts, the discourse unit is most often referred to as an article (rather than a paper), but both article and author are characterized by much lower frequency of references, due to widespread use of subject ellipsis (referring to the discourse product). The general trend of much lower reference to discursive and theoretical constructs, however, cannot be simply explained by formatting style or policy. The "real world", i.e. the object of study of the discipline, largely dominates the ideational scene of the text, with the identification of problems and the study of influences and factors. The discursive procedures highlighted, on the other hand, are also more varied than in economics; apart from the striking example of reviewing, a number of processes are frequently mentioned: in particular examine, discuss and analyze, but verbs like show, suggest, describe or consider are also used.

4.2. Meta-argumentative Expressions across Genres: Concordances and Collocations A further, more specific, exploratory procedure consisted in studying the concordances and collocations of the potential subjects of argumentative projection identified in the frequency lists. The trends that emerge are summarized in Table 2. Textbooks are shown to relate use of we with expressions like discuss, find, show, assume, assumptions, think, explain, consider, whereas the you constructed in the text is often related to verbs like think, find, suppose. Economists and economics are related to verbs like agree, disagree, explain, predict, think, argue and nouns like disputes, questions, statements, approach, prescriptions. Reference to discourse units, on the other hand (expressions like book, chapter, graph, figure, table, exhibit) invariably collocate with the lemma show. Theoretical constructs like model, method, theory, question, issue, assumption, judgment, prediction, forecast, statement are also used, mostly in connection with other theoretical constructs or procedures (assumptions / assume, explanation / explain, question).

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Abstracts show slightly different patterns. References to the writer (we) usually collocate with verbs like find, consider, show, prove, analyze, introduce, present, propose, argue, believe, examine, prove, study. References to the community of economists or to specific authors usually collocate with verbs like publish, focus attention, give a diagnosis, show, investigate, study, analyze, consider, find, propose, discuss, present, argue, provide, prove, compare, define. The most common form of introduction of a potential argumentative voice in abstracts, however, is through reference to discourse units, especially to textual constructs like the paper itself: collocations found are with a wide range of verbs: examine, consider, present, develop, analyze, provide, use, study, argue, report, focus, address, compare, explore, extend, review, show, outline, focus, look, provide, summarize, discuss, consider, assess, estimate, apply, aim. Results and findings, on the other hand, tend to collocate with indicate, suggest, show, be obtained, imply, suggest. Theoretical constructs like models, methods, theories, issues variously collocate with assume, incorporate, apply, concern, relate·, they can also collocate with be based, required, employed, associated. Table 2: Collocations of discourse participants and procedures Participants

Economics Textbooks

Economics Abstracts

Discourse Participants • Writer oriented: We

discuss, find, show, find, consider, show, prove, analyze, introassume, assumptions, duce, present, propose, argue, believe, examthink, explain, consider ine, prove, study

You

think, find, suppose

• Community oriented: Economist(s)

agree, disagree, dis- publish, focus attention, give a diagnosis putes, questions, explain, predict, think

Economics

involves, statements, approach, prescriptions

Author(s)

argued

show, investigate, study, analyze, consider, find, propose, discuss, present, argue, provide, prove, compare, define

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Discourse Units • Textual constructs: Book / chapter

show

Paper / article

—

examine, consider, present, develop, analyze, provide, use, study, argue, report, focus, address, compare, explore, extend, review, show, outline, focus, look, summarize, discuss, analyze, consider, assess, estimate, apply, aim

Graph / figure / -show table / exhibit(s) Study / studies

examine, estimate, apply, aim

Results / findings • Theoretical Constructs:

indicate, suggest, show, be obtained, imply

Models / meth- assumptions, explana- Assume, incorporate, apply, concern, relate, ods / theories / tion, questions are based, required, employed, associated issues

Closer analysis of cross-generic variation has already shown that variation in general collocational patterns also reflects variation in semantic patterns of quite a number of the lexical units analysed (See Bondi 1999 and Bondi 2001 for a cross-generic analysis of show, argue, discuss, agree/disagree, examine). The object of the metasemiosis of a verb like argue, for example, can be both a set of statements supporting an opinion (providing a justification for a claim) and a disagreement over a specific issue. Abstracts invariably use the various lexicalizations in the sense of 'supporting an opinion', whereas textbooks actualize both meanings. Analysis of the discourse functional roles of grammatical subjects of main verbs also brings out cross-generic variation. When considering the lemma show, for example, (Bondi 2001: 148) textbooks manifest a clear preference for discourse products (and formal representations in particular: exhibit 1 shows). Abstracts, on the other hand, privilege participant domain (we show, authors show) and the objectivized/hypothesized world (results show, it is shown that). Cross-generic analysis of data also brings out a general preference for nominalizations in the textbook corpus. This confirms the impression that argument (and divergences of opinion) are a key-issue in introductory chapters and that there is a deliberate attempt to represent the process and objectivize it through a nominalization procedure that is often identified as typical of scientific discourse. Nominalization explicitly turns argument into

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an object of scientific exposition. Nominal forms are also often used as introductory pro jecting frameworks and thus further foregrounded by their thematic position and by their status within the grammatical structure of the clause complex. On the whole, textbooks seem to worry about moving from a fully explicit representation of the process of arguing with its human agents to a nominal definition of it, whereas abstracts tend to shift the reader's attention from the human agent to verbal and cognitive units as grammatical subjects of arguing.

4.3. A lexical Case Study: Examine and Discuss across Disciplines Further reflections on cross-disciplinary analysis can be offered by studying the concordances of semantically related expressions. Verbs like examine and discuss, for example, are closely related both from a semantic and from a pragmatic point of view. The lexical basis of discuss denotes both 'debate' and 'examination or investigation of an issue'. According to the COBUILD dictionary, for example, its meaning can be both 'consider thoroughly, from different points of view, by talking to someone else about it' and 'write or talk about in detail'. In both cases it means 'considering something from different points of view', which is also a way of looking at something as potential object of argument. It thus refers to the constitutive conditions, or pre-requisites of arguing, by implying a multiplicity of points of view. When referred to scientific procedures, examine refers to a process of carefully considering or discussing something. Relevant meanings listed again in the COBUILD are 'look carefully or closely' (inspect, scrutinize); officially look or inspect every part as carefully as possible in order to discover something about it (go over); 'consider or discuss very carefully' (investigate). The implication of a multiplicity of points of view is perhaps weaker, and the emphasis lies rather on finding out the truth about something (cf. its judicial meaning). The object of the examination is often presented in the form of indirect questions {examine how, why, whether, the way in which etc.), which presuppose a multiplicity of answers. The lemma thus points at a strategy of problem identification and implies at least a potential multiplicity of views. When their meaning is considered in the context of the metadiscursive practices of abstracts (the representation of the process of inquiry in the abstracted article), we can say that discuss predicts that a multiplicity of points of view will be presented dialectically, whereas examine predicts that different aspects of a question will be considered. The concordances in the two small corpora analysed highlight the syntactic and semantic patterns favoured by these problem identification markers. Tables 3 and 4 report the classification of main clause subjects. Both verbs show a decided preference for active

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constructions (always around 80%): preference for discourse domain subjects is also clearly visible, but greater variation can be seen in the two disciplines. History almost invariably selects discourse domain subjects for discuss, whereas it allows a few more participant domain subjects with examine. Economics, on the other hand, shows greater tolerance for participant domain subjects, especially with discuss. Table 3: DISCUSS: main clause subjects across disciplines Reference domain

History

Participant domain Discourse domain

the author (1)

Hypothesized / objectivized domain

Real world domain (Phenomenal)

the two symposiums (1), the three works (1), each (article) (1), the article (3), ellipsis (62) conflation (1), threat (1), need (1), similarities (1), extension (of analyses) (1), role (1), extent (1), implications (1), issues (1), questions (1) the leadership of this organization (1), the introduction of the land policy (1), the gathering and transmission of news (1)

Total 82 =100% 1 (1%) 68 (83%)

Economics

proper Nouns (3), authors / author (7), we (3) section (2), article (3), paper/s (4), analysis (1), reply (1), ellipsis (1)

Total 35 =100% 13 (37%) 12 (34%)

10 (12%)

results (1), issue (1), the logical problems (1), some applications of these methods (1), implications (2), implications and applications (1), a solution concept and its application (1)

8 (23%)

3 (4%)

international money, subsidiarity and diffusion of federal sovreignty (1), confidence in the projection (1)

2 (6%)

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Table 4: EXAMINE: main clause subjects across disciplines Reference domain

History

Participant domain

Internal Author(s) (9), External Authors (4)

Total 129 =100% 13 (10%)

Discourse domain

Ellipsis (83) Article (12)

95 (74%)

Hypothesized / objectivized domain

Views (1), problems (1), decision (1), aspect (1), importance (1), techniques (1), use of records (1), standards (1), figures (1), characteristics (1) Development, parisians, records...

10 (8%)

Real world (Phenomenal)

11 (8%)

Economics

proper nouns (3), authors / author (3), we (4), they (2/64), a western authority (1), Government official (1) Anaphoric it (2) article (3) paper/s (19) ellipsis (7) study (4) analysis (1), review (1) sections (1) details (1), forms (1), characterizations (1), growth (1) behaviour (1) approaches (1), disadvantages (1), prospects and problems (1), characteristics (1), properties (1), relationship (1), factors (1) —

Total 64 =100% 14 (22%)

38 (59%)

12 (20%)

—

The most interesting features of the two verbs, however, emerge when we look at concordances focusing on all the expressions that are chosen as object of the examination/discussion in the two corpora, irrespective of syntactic pattern. In both cases and with both lexical items, the object of investigation is more often presented in terms of theoretical constructs than of real world entities or processes (e.g. the effect of measures, rather than the measures themselves). Focus on the objects of investigation highlights patterns of semantic preference according to discipline. Historical abstracts tend to associate verbal forms of discuss with expressions of causal/final relations like consequences, factors, reasons, aim, results, threats as well as with problems,

questions and issues in general. The multiplicity of points of view is em-

phasized by collocates like differences, similarities, debate, controversy. Examine, on the other hand is mostly associated with relationship and characteristics.

Causal/final relations

are also present (impact), as well as problems, issues and debate, but multiplicity of points of view tends to be just implicit in expressions like model and perspective.

Historical ab-

stracts also show a marked preference for associating both verbs with expressions like significance and importance, which act as explicit claims of significance for the research object introduced by the verb. Economic abstracts do not associate problematizing verbs with explicit claims of significance, but show a clear preference for expressions referring to reasoning procedures. This is particularly true of discuss·, discussion may be focused on causal relations like im-

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pact, effects or results, but the most common objects of discussion have a higher degree of abstraction from the real world: they are often implications and applications of theoretical artifacts like theorems, methods, models. And when the discussion seems to focus on analysis of "components" (system, structure, role, concepts), the aim is more often one of bringing out trends and patterns. What is discussed is mostly presented as issue, or in terms of problem/solution. Examine, on the other hand, is more often associated with an evaluation of real world processes (efficiency and effectiveness of policies, but also changes, impact, consequences and effects of events and performance of actors) and above all - individual components of models/hypotheses: factors, determinants, characterizations, details, forms, relationships, perceptions, properties, etc. The data can be explained, on the one hand, by the great interest generally shown by economics for model-based reasoning, and, on the other, by the interest shown by historians in the interpretation of events, in exploring the relations that characterize them. The clearest differences between the two disciplinary corpora, however, are shown when verbs of problematizing are studied in a textual perspective. In historical abstracts, verbs like examine or discuss are mostly used to provide an opening metadiscursive macro-framework that identifies the main purpose of the article (cf. Example 7 above), whereas economics is not often characterized by this use of the verbs. If we consider discuss, for example, 54 occurrences out of 89 (60.6%) act as a macro-framework in history, while only 9 occurrences out of 40 (25.5%) do so in economics; similarly, examine is to be interpreted as a macro-framework in 85 occurrences out of 154 (55.1%) in history, but only in 26 out of 66 (39.3%) in economics abstracts. In economics, on the other, hand, these verbs are part of a much more articulated structure of metadiscursive elements, and they are often associated with particular sections of the paper rather than with its main purpose. A typical sequence of meta-argumentative expressions referring to sections of the article in economic abstracts can be seen in example 12 below, highlighted in italics: examines is used to introduce one of the main argumentative procedures in the development of the paper, whereas discusses introduces some of the conclusions (12) The paper considers international per capita output and its growth using a panel of data for 102 countries between 1960 and 1989. It sets out an explicitly stochastic Solow growth model and shows that this has quite different properties from the standard approach where the output equation is obtained by adding an error term to the linearized solution of a deterministic Solow model. It examines the econometric properties of estimates of beta convergence as traditionally defined in the literature and shows that all these estimates are subject to substantial biases. Our empirical estimates clearly reflect the nature and the magnitude of these biases as predicted by econometric theory. Steady state growth rates differ significantly across countries and once this heterogeneity

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is allowed for the estimates of beta are substantially higher than the consensus in the literature. But they are very imprecisely estimated and difficult to interpret. The paper also discusses the economic implications of these results for sigma convergence.

The association with specific moves is by no means fixed, but the association of examine with introductory and analytic sections of the paper and of discuss with conclusions is fairly predictable, especially in economics, where the conventional introduction-methods and materials-results-conclusions sequence is widely accepted.

5. Conclusions

This paper has studied metadiscursive practices in academic writing with a view to a definition of how they vary across genres and disciplines. Comparative analysis of textbook introductory chapters and abstracts in the field of economics has shown that metadiscursive practices play a major role in the two generic structures. Introductive chapters of textbooks centre on generic reference to the disciplinary community and use metadiscourse to highlight moves like: identifying a problem, presenting methodological tools, representing debate within the discipline, guiding the reader through argument. Abstracts, on the other hand, constitute a basically reflexive practice themselves and focus their reflexive activity on specific reference to the abstracted paper, in a representation of how researchers go about their research. The overview and the analysis confirm the expectation that the syntactic foregrounding of argumentative procedures, mostly linked to thematization of discourse constructs is really constitutive in abstracts, part of the abstract's textual structures, whereas in textbooks, the representation of processes in relation to their human agents and their frequent nominalization is mostly attributable to the ideational dimension of textbooks, part of a strategy meant to offer the reader a representation of the argumentative procedures of the community. The findings presented here restate the need to consider multiple dimensions of language variation in the analysis of discourse patterns and their signals. The interplay between text and context can be analyzed with different degrees of delicacy, with reference to both discourse, defined as the general field of social activity in which the speech event takes place, and to genre, defined as the class of communicative events to which the specific set of texts belongs. Meta-argumentative expressions can be seen as constitutive in the definition of both academic discourse in general and academic abstracts in particular.

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In addition to highlighting the importance of reflexivity and argumentation in the study of academic discourse, the analysis has shown the close link between language choice and epistemology in academic discourse. When considered from the point of view of variation across disciplines, this case study confirms that metadiscursive expressions highlight issues that reflect the epistemological ethos of the disciplines, i.e. the way scholars represent their own activities and procedures as against major methodological debates. Metadiscursive practices play a constitutive role in both fields, economics and history, but tend to represent discipline-specific argumentative procedures. Economics abstracts clearly allow identification of two basic textual patterns: patterns based on the structure of inquiry (identification of the problem, methods, results, conclusions) and patterns based on argumentative dialogue, with discourse and counter-discourse. Historical abstracts tend to be dominated by their narrative empirical structures and thus favour an opening projecting framework focusing on the research space or reflexive moves with pragmatic functions like: problematizing, claiming significance, signalling stance. As for the specific metadiscursive expressions that characterise the two disciplinary corpora and their typical lexico-grammatical patterns, the analysis has shown differing patterns. Illocution markers tend to be more clearly foregrounded in the economics corpus, where they are also preferably associated to subjects that may be classified as discourse participants or discourse units. History, on the other hand, shows a clear preference for less "representational" textual patterns. Discourse processes are often thematized only in an introductory framework, which is then followed by sequences of direct statements about the object of discourse. The different strategies can be related to the variety of languages and approaches which characterise the two disciplines: the demonstrative logic of mathematical economics as against the factual reasoning of history; the different use of narratives and the different role played by empirical research, etc. Hopefully, the study has also contributed to showing the need for corpus-based analyses to complement more intensive studies of particular texts, and vice versa. Text and discourse studies can only be fully developed when closer analysis of particular instances of communicative events is integrated with quantitative data from wider textual bases. These provide the necessary background and support to textual interpretation.

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References Bazerman, Charles and Paradis, James (ed.) (1991): Textual Dynamics of the Professions. Madison, Win.: University of Wisconsin Press. - (1988): Shaping Written Knowledge. - Madison, Win.: University of Wisconsin Press. Berkenkotter, Carol and Huckin, Thomas (1995): Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication. Cognition/ Culture/ Power. - Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates. Bhatia, Vijay K. (1993): Analysing Genre. Language Use in Professional Settings. - London: Longman. - (2002): A generic view of academic discourse. - In: J. Flowerdew (ed.) Academic Discourse, 2139. London: Longman. Bondi, Marina (1997a): The rise of abstracts. Development of the genre in the discourse of economics. - Textus 10, 395—418. - (1997b): Reported argument in economics textbooks. A meta-pragmatics of argumentative dialogue. - In: B. Caron (ed.) Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of linguists (Paris, 2 0 25 Luglio 1997). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science. Paper 41 (CD) - (1999): English Across Genres. - Modena: U Fiorino. - (2001): Small corpora and language variation. Reflexivity across genres. - In: M. Ghadessy, A. Henry, R. L. Roseberry (eds.) Small Corpus Studies and ELT, 135-174. Amsterdam: Benjamins. - (forthcoming): The discourse function of academic connectors in abstracts. - In: A. Stenström and K. Aijmer (eds.) Discourse Patterns in Spoken and Written Corpora. Amsterdam: Benjamins (Series: Pragmatics and Beyond). Crismore, Avon (1989): Talking with Readers. Metadiscourse as Rhetorical Act. - New York: Peter Lang. - and Farnsworth, Roger (1990): Metadiscourse in popular and professional science discourse. - In: W. Nash (ed.) The Writing Scholar. Studies in the Language and Conventions of Academic Discourse, 118-136. Newbury Park: Sage. Dos Santos, Mauro B. (1996): The textual organization of research paper abstracts in Applied Linguistics. - Text 16 (4), 4 8 1 ^ 9 9 . Freedman, Aviva and Medway, Peter (eds.) (1994): Genre and the New Rhetoric. - London / Bristol PA: Taylor and Francis. Gosden, Hugh (1993): Discourse functions of subject in scientific research articles. - Applied Linguistics 14 (1), 56-75. Groom, Nicholas (2000): Attribution and averral revisited: three perspectives on manifest intertextuality in academic writing. - In: P. Thompson (ed) Patterns and perspectives: Insights for EAP writing practice, 15-26. Reading, UK: CALS, The University of Reading. Halliday, M.A.K. (1985): An Introduction to Functional Grammar. - London: Arnold. - and Hasan, Ruquaya (1989): Language Context and Text: Aspects of language in a socio-semiotic perspective. - Oxford: OUP. Holmes, Richard (1997): Genre analysis and the social sciences: An investigation of the structure of research article discussion sections in three disciplines. - English for Specific Purposes 16 (4), 321-337. Hunston, Susan (1993): Professional conflict: disagreement in academic discourse. - In: M. Baker, G. Francis and E. Tognini Bonelli (eds.) Text and Technology, 115-134. Amsterdam: Benjamins. - (1995): A corpus study of some English verbs of attribution. -Functions of Language 2 (2), 133158.

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(2000): Evaluation and the planes of discourse: Status and value in persuasive texts. - In: S. Hunston and G. Thompson (eds.) Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stancc and the Construction of Discourse, 176-207. Oxford: OUP. Hyland, Ken (1998a): Hedging in Scientific Articles. - Amsterdam: Benjamins. - (1998b): Persuasion and context: the pragmatics of academic metadiscourse. - Journal of Pragmatics 30, 437-55. - (1999a): Talking to students: metadiscourse in introductory coursebooks. - English for Specific Purposes 18 (1), 3 - 2 6 . - (1999b): Academic attribution: citation and the construction of disciplinary knowledge. - Applied Linguistics 20 (3), 341-367. - (1999c): Disciplinary discourses: writer stance in research articles. - In: C. Candlin and K. Hyland (eds.) Writing: texts, processes and practices, 99-121. London: Longman. - (2000): Disciplinary Discourses. Social Interactions in Academic Writing. - London: Longman. - (2001): Humble servants of the discipline? Self-mention in research articles. - English for Specific Purposes 20, 207-226. - (2002): Directives: Argument and engagement in academic writing. - Applied Linguistics 23 (2). Kaplan, Robert B. et al. (1994): On abstract writing. - Text 14 (3), 401^126. Leech, Geoffrey and Short, Michael (1981): Style in Fiction. - Harlow: Longman. Lucy, John (1993): Reflexive language and the human disciplines. - In: J. Lucy (ed.) Reflexive Language. Reported Speech and Metapragmatics, 9-32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MacDonald, Susan Peck (1992): A method for analyzing sentence-level differences in disciplinary knowledge making. - Written Communication IX (4), 533-569. - (1994): Professional Academic Writing in the Humanities and the Social Sciences. - Carbondale and Eatansville: Southern Illinois University Press. Mauranen, Anna (1993): Contrastive ESP rhetoric: metatext in Finnish-English economics texts. English for Specific Purposes 12, 3 - 2 2 . - (2001): Reflexive academic talk: Observations from MICASE. - In: R. C. Simpson and J. M. Swales (eds.) Corpus Linguistics in North America: Selections from the 1999 symposium, 165— 178. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. - (2002): "A good question": Expressing evaluation in academic speech. - In: G. Cortese and P. Riley (eds.) Domain-specific English: Textual practices across communities and classrooms, 1 1 5 140. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. - (2003): "But there's a flawed argument": Socialization into and through metadiscourse. Language and Computers 46 (1), 19-34. Paltridge, Brian (1997): Genre, Frames and Writing in Research Settings. - Amsterdam: Benjamins. Silverstein, Michael (1993): Metapragmatic discourse and metapragmatic function. - In: J. Lucy (ed.) Reflexive Language. Reported Speech and Metapragmatics, 33-58. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. Sinclair, John (1982): Planes of discourse. - In: S. N. A. Rizvi, The Twofold Voice: Essay in honour of Ramesh Mohan, 70-91. - (1987). "Mirror for a Text". Manuscript (Published 1988, Journal of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad, India) - (1991): Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. - Oxford: OUP. - (1996): The search for units of meaning. - Textus 9 ( 1 ) , 75-106. Stainton, Caroline (1996): Metadiscourse: The Rhetorical Plane of Text. - Nottingham: Department of English Studies (Nottingham Working Papers). Stati, Sorin (1990): Le Transphrastique. - Paris: PUF. - (1998): II lessico dell'argomentazione. - In: M. Bondi (ed.) Forms of Argumentative Discourse. Perun'analisi linguistica dell'argomentare, 51-56. Bologna: CLUEB.

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Stotesbury, Hilkka (2002): A study of interpretation in critical writing. - In: G. Cortese and P. Riley (eds.) Domain-specific English. Textual Practices across Communities and Classrooms, 325-344. Bern: Peter Lang. - (2003): Evaluation in research article abstracts in the narrative and hard sciences. - In: M. Bondi and A. Mauranen (eds.) 2003. Evaluative Language Use in Academic Discourse, Special Issue of Jeap (Journal of English for Academic Purposes), 327-341. Stubbs, Michael (1996): Text and Corpus Analysis. - Oxford: Blackwell. - (2001): Words and Phrases: Corpus Studies of Lexical Semantics. - Oxford: Blackwell. Swales, John (1990): Genre Analysis. English in Academic and Research Settings. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - (2001): Meta-talk in American Academic Talk. The Cases of 'point' and 'thing'. - Journal of English Linguistics 29 (1), 34-54. Thompson, Geoffrey (1996): Voices in the text: discourse perspectives on language reports. Applied Linguistics 17 (4), 501-530. - (2001): Interaction in academic writing: learning to argue with the reader. - Applied Linguistics 22(1). - and Ye, Yiyun (1991): Evaluation in the reporting verbs used in academic papers. Applied Linguistics 12 (4), 365-82. Thompson, Paul (2000): Citation practices in PhD theses. - In: L. Burnard and T. McEnery (eds.) Rethinking Language Pedagogy from a Coipus Perspective, 91-102. Hamburg: Peter Lang. Vande Kopple, William J. (1985): Some exploratory discourse on metadiscourse. - College Composition and Communication 36, 82-93. Verschueren, J. (1995): Metapragmatics. - In: J. Verschueren, J. Ola-Östman, J. Bommaert and C. Bulcaen (eds.) IPrA Handbook of Pragmatics, 367-371. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Maria Grazia Busä

The Use of Metadiscourse in Abstracts: A Comparison between Economics and Psychology Abstracts

1. Introduction

1.1. Abstracts as a Genre Abstracts play an important role in scientific discourse. They represent a condensed version of the paper they report on, and serve the purpose of rapidly describing the aims, the methods and the results of the study they summarize. The importance of scientific abstracts in research reporting can be explained by the enormous amount of scientific literature being published daily. Abstracts have the key function of helping the reader to decide on the relevance of the paper for his/her interests, so that it can be deemed worth reading, scanning or discarding. At other times, when the original work is unaccessible, abstracts may constitute the only source of reliable and accurate information. Abstracts can be used with different functions; it is thus possible to talk about subgenres of abstracts. It has become common practice for journals to require an abstract preceding the body text of the paper. In this case, authors have to comply with certain rules, for example with regard to the number of words, lines or other stylistic features of the abstract. More rarely, abstracts precede papers published in volumes. The abstracts preceding journal and volume papers may be used in electronic abstracting journals, which are probably scientists' easiest way of accessing information regarding what is published in their field of interest. Electronic abstracting journals often have their own procedures for abstracting scientific papers and books, which may differ from the practices used by the authors. Abstracts are also often submitted in response to a 'call for papers' for a conference or an invited volume. Finally, they can be written for scientific reviews in specific sections of journals. Abstracts can vary in length, largely depending on the purpose for which they were written. For example, abstracts written in response to a call for papers are generally more lengthy and detailed than abstracts preceding a paper reporting on a study. It is also not uncommon for authors to be requested two different versions of the same abstract, a longer one to be placed in a booklet of abstracts for congress participants and a shorter one to precede the text of the paper, or viceversa.

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1.2. Previous Studies In spite of their important function in scientific discourse, some studies have focused on the textual organization of abstracts. There is general agreement in recognizing a four-part arrangement corresponding to four different moments (moves) in the description of the research process - though there are terminological differences from author to author. Following Swales (1990), these moves correspond to Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion. On the other hand, the amount of research carried out on the language of abstracts is still relatively scarce and many details of their linguistic features are unknown. Below the macrolevel, the language of abstracts has been described as characterized by a need for brevity and concision (for a review of studies, cf. Salager-Meyer 1990, Kaplan 1994, Dos Santos 1996, Stotesbury 2003). Many features of abstracts are seen as the result of this need for brevity, above all the elimination of redundancy. It is this latter feature which often makes the comprehension of abstracts difficult for non-native speakers. A number of studies have attempted to define which features and structures create good informative, non-misleading and well-structured abstracts. However, publications that make large use of abstracts, such as scientific journals, do not provide authors with clear guidelines for writing them, the result being that abstracts are often written in a way that is detrimental to their main function, i.e., conveying fast and condensed informative content (Dos Santos 1996, Salager-Meyer 1990). This can be particularly disadvantageous for non-native speakers. The fact that different types of abstracts serve different purposes explains the possibility of different features in the subgenres. Some studies witness an interest in defining these features. A study by Kaplan et al. (1994) highlights the key features of about 300 abstracts originated through a conference call for papers, and distinguishes between the latter type of abstracts and other types such as abstracts preceding published research articles, abstracts which occur in annotated bibliographies, etc. Little research has examined the language of abstracts across disciplines. The existence of differences within the world of 'Scientific' or 'Academic' English comes as no surprise. Reporting Bizzell (1982), Swales (1990: 4) suggests that writing should be viewed as the process of an individual in "response to the discourse conventions which arise from preferred ways of creating and communicating knowledge within particular communities". The desire to investigate writing processes and products across disciplines has contributed interesting studies on various genres and is at the basis of the whole ESP field. It seems important to study how language in abstracts also reflects differences across disciplines. Bondi's analysis of economics textbooks and abstracts (in this volume) shows how the representation of scientific procedures plays a major role in economics discourse (cf. also Bondi 1999) and how meta-argumentative expressions contribute to the representation of the discipline itself. Economics appears to be a discipline where the scientific discourse is

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centred around the economist. This feature is less marked in abstracts where the use of metadiscourse reflects the purpose of reporting on current research over that of explaining to non-experts in the field. The focus is on the research process, its scientific procedures and objects, and their representation is achieved through a high degree of syntactic foregrounding.

1.3. The present Study The aim of the present study is to investigate features of abstracts from a crossdisciplinary perspective (Hyland 2000). Through the analysis of the role played by some metaargumentative expressions, this study investigates differences in the representation of scientific procedures across two disciplines, i.e., Economics and Psychology. Object of the analysis will be the study of the textual preferences, both in frequency of occurrence and choice, for both lexical expressions and grammatical constructs, in research paper abstracts. While we expect that the consistent use of metadiscursive features of abstracts reflects an awareness of the nature and characteristics of the genre, as well as of the role it plays within the scientific community, we want to see if there are any divergences in their 'representationality', in their use of metadiscursive references, which could be considered constitutive of the discipline itself.

2. Methods, Materials and Procedure

The corpus consists of two small corpora of abstracts. For comparative purposes the economics corpus analyzed is the same as that analyzed by Bondi (in this volume), and it consists of 456 abstracts taken from the first issue of Econlit, 1997, the electronic version of the standard abstracting journal in Economics, consisting of 47087 words. The psychology corpus consists of 462 abstracts taken randomly from the January 1997 issue of Psychlit, the electronic version of the standard abstracting journal in Psychology, consisting of 62645 words. These texts were analyzed with the same procedure described by Bondi (1999). The procedure was the following: first, identification of all the keywords of the two corpora in relation to each other; second, study and comparison of the frequency list of each of the two subcorpora; third, identification of expressions which act as a potential subject of argumentative projection by referring to discourse products or to voices and theoretical con-

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structs in the words of the text; fourth, comparison of the concordances and collocations in the two corpora of expressions such as: paper!article!authorfs); data!findings!result(s) or cases of ellipsis of grammatical subject; textual voices mentioned; theoretical constructs, e.g., model, theory, approach, etc. Finally, a lexical analysis of the most frequent lemmas relating to research processes was carried out. This was based on the types of entities chosen as grammatical subjects, following McDonald's (1992) classification integrated with Gosden's (1993) categories. Four main categories were used to investigate the discourse function of the grammatical subjects: a) the participant domain; b) the discourse domain; c) the hypothesized/objectivized domain; and d) the real world domain (cf. Gosden 1993: 6264). For each of these domains, subjects were further subdived depending on whether the reference was internal or external to the discourse domain. For example, within the participant domain, subjects with external reference are proper and common nouns, subjects with internal reference are author, we, I, etc. Within the discourse domain, examples of subjects with external reference are studies, previous work, literature, etc. while subjects with internal reference are this paper, article, study, etc. Within the hypothesized / objectivized domain, result, model, problem, etc. represent examples of hypothesized entities (which have been 'externally' validated by the reasearch community) as opposed to hypothesized viewpoints such as possibility, idea, etc. (which express concepts more related to the author's mental activity in the reasearch process). Finally, in the real world domain belong all the subjects that are nominalizations of mental processes (such as calculation, comparison, analysis, etc.), research and scientific actions and procedures (such as preparation, subministration, etc.) (cf. Gosden 1993: 67). In the analysis, ' Z X T was used as a notational convention to refer to the ellipsis of grammatical subject in the body of the abstracts. All of the above analyses were carried out using the various routines provided by the program WordSmith Tools (Scott 1996). A note should be made on how the program defines the keywords in the analyzed corpora. WordSmith Tools identifies keywords by comparing patterns of frequency. In order for a word to be identified as a keyword, it has to occur with unusual frequency in the text as compared to its frequency in a larger corpus which the program uses as a reference corpus (cf. also Wangheng 1997). The concept of keyness is thus a relative concept, highly dependent on the corpus working as a reference. Given two corpora, the larger one is taken by default to be the reference corpus for the other one. In our study, the two corpora are about equal in size. However, since the Psychlit corpus is a few words larger than Econlit, the former is taken by the program to be the reference corpus. This gives a somewhat restricted list of keywords for Psychlit, which has only 43 entries. The keywords lists may thus be slightly skewed and different results may be obtained with different reference corpora. The results obtained in the present analysis show nonetheless some interesting patterns as well as important differences between the two corpora.

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3. The representation of Scientific Procedures - Examples from Economics and Psychology Abstracts

The following abstracts have been selected to exemplify common metadiscursive features in Psychology and Economics abstracts. Abstracts 1, 4, 5 and 7 are taken from the Econlit database, while abstracts 2, 3, 6 and 8 are taken from the Psychlit database. A first observation of the abstracts taken from both disciplines shows that they are characterized by the presence of similar expressions, structures and lexical choices to refer to the original paper, the object of the study, the procedures, the data and the results obtained. These identify the four moves which describe the research process. In general, we can see that in both disciplines discourse procedures are given main clause position, and discourse products and producers are thematized. In the introductory move both Economics and Psychology use similar expressions to open the abstract, identify the object of research, and introduce the research products and its logical constructs: "This paper offers a model... and provides an empirical test of the theory" (1, Econlit)·, "The paper explains..." (1, Econlit)·, "XXX Presents a ... model" (2, Psychlit)·, "XXX Extends the theory ..." (3, Psychlit)·, "A structural model and a classification ... are proposed" (3, Psychlit)·, "This model offers an explanation", "A model... is presented...", "A framework... is proposed" (9, Psychlit). The logical constructs introduced at the beginning of the abstracts often recur, maintaining their thematic position as grammatical subject, during other moves of the abstract to provide a synthetic and efficient means of internal cohesion: "The model is based on..." (1, Econlit)·, "Model properties stimulate..." "These properties arise..." (2, Psychlit). Expressions for referring to hypothesis testing, experimental procedures and exemplification, and discussion of the results are also similar in the two corpora: "The results show..." (1, Econlit)·, "This ... model shows ...", "The model exhibits" (2, Psychlit)·, "This model offers an explanation...", "The ...model ... provides insights" (3, Psychlit)·, "They ... show...", "The authors provide examples which show..." (4, Econlit)·, "We address the following issues....", "We illustrate our discussion..." (5, Econlit); "Murphy... discusses... agrees... concludes...", "Further work is necessary..." (6, Econlit)·, "Conditions are ... established...", "These results are extended ..." (7, Psychlit). (1) This paper offers a model of the allocation of funds in Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOE) and provides an empirical test of the theory using firm-level data. The paper explains why bank loans and grants coexist with self-financing, which SOEs take out loans, and why subsidies on loan interest payments exist. The model is based on heterogeneous SOEs, asymmetric information, sales taxes, and quota requirements. The results show that reforms of enterprise finance must come as a package, suggesting that the interlocking nature of reform measures should be considered in deciding the direction of further policy modification. (Econlit)

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Maria Grazia Busä (2) XXX Presents a neural network model that is able to rapidly resynchronize desynchronized neural activities and provide a link between perceptual and brain data. Model properties quantitatively simulate perceptual framing data, including psychophysical data about temporal order judgements and the reduction of threshold contrast as a function of stimulus length. This model shows that many data may be understood as manifestations of a cortical grouping process that rapidly resynchronizes image parts that belong together in visual object representations. The model exhibits better synchronization in the presence of noise than without noise, a type of stochastic resonance, and synchronizes robustly when cells that represent different stimulus orientations compete. These properties arise when fast long-range cooperation and slow short-range competition interact via nonlinear feedback interactions with cells that obey shunting equations. (.Psychlit) (3) XXX Extends the theory of cognitive analytic therapy to offer an understanding of borderline personality disorder (BPD). A structural model (the multiple self states model) and a classification of different levels of developmental damage are proposed. This model offers an explanation of the phenomenology of BPD. The multiple self states model, illustrated here with the case example of a 37-yr-old female patient, provides insights that will be useful for clinicians involved in the psychotherapy and management of BPD. (Psychlit)

As illustrated by examples 2 and 3, subject ellipsis is a common way of representing the discourse domain in Psychlit abstracts. Another common way of doing this is through references to integral units of discourse {paper, article, etc. - cf. example 1 (Econlit))·, or to the events or processes {explanation, result, etc. - cf. examples 1, 7 {Econlit)·, 8 {Psychlit)). In the participant domain, subjects can be called in for internal consistency {we, I), but also for external authority {the authors, they, coauthors, R.Gibbs, Murphy). Examples 4 and 5 {Econlit)·, 6, {Psychlit) show instances of these theme choices. (4) The authors show that the core of a continuous convex game on a measurable space of players is a von Neumann-Morgenstern stable set. They also extend the definition of the Mas-Colell bargaining set to games with a measurable space of players and show that, for continuous convex games, the core may be strictly included in the bargaining set but it coincides with the set of all countably additive payoff measures in the bargaining set. The authors provide examples which show that the continuity assumption is essential to their results. Coauthors are Ron Holzman, Dov Monderer, and Benyamin Shitovitz. (Econlit) (5) We argue that in extensive decision problems (extensive games with a single player) with imperfect recall care must be taken in interpreting information sets and strategies. Alternative interpretations allow for different kinds of analysis. We address the following issues: 1. randomization at information sets; 2. consistent beliefs; 3. time consistency of optimal plans; 4. the multiselves approach to decision making. We illustrate our discussion through an example that we call the "paradox of the absentminded driver." {Econlit) (6) XXX comments that R. Gibhs in his response to an article by G. L. Murphy provides further information about the thinking underlying claims for metaphoric representation. Murphy rebuts Gibbs by arguing that the empirical evidence Gibbs cites for the notion of metaphoric concepts is not very conclusive in supporting metaphoric representation and the problems with linguistic evidence remain in spite of his defence. Murphy also discusses conceptual consistency, asymmetry and similarity. He agrees with Gibbs that the idea that parts of a concept must be completely con-

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sistent is likely not to be fully correct, and concludes that further work is necessary on this question. (Psychlit)

Though abstracts are characterized by a conspicuous foregrounding of discourse procedures and thematization of discourse products and producers, examples where it is the discourse objects which are foregrounded and thematized are not lacking. These are thematized as a hypothetical / objectivized construct (model, framework - see abovej, or, much more rarely, as a real world domain entity. So, in 7 (Econlit) we find: "A two-sector model of urban employment is developed..." and "The optimal location of this (single-firm) sector is shown...", while in 8 (Psychlit) we have: "A model of the ethnic identity development of South Asian immigrants to America...is presented"; and: "Cultural identity is considered..."; "Cultural and gender identity, the worldview of South Asian Americans, and implications for counselors... are presented". (7) A two-sector model of urban employment is developed which focuses on the formation of a secondary sector in response to a primary-sector demand shock. The optimal location of this (,single-firm) sector is shown to give rise to a multicentric urban spatial structure. Conditions are then established under which the new labor market equilibrium involves both a decrease in unemployment and an increase in net income for those unemployed. These results are extended to a case where all unemployment benefits are financed by local taxation of firms. Here it is shown that profit incentives may exist for the primary sector to subsidize entry of the secondary sector. (Econlit) (8) A model of the ethnic identity development of South Asian immigrants to America, primarily from Indian and Pakistan, is presented. Cultural identity is considered in the context of the social, psychological, political, and historical context of the Indian subcontinent and the United States. A framework for understanding identity development is proposed for both immigrant and native bom South Asian Americans. Cultural and sender identity, the worldview of South Asian Americans, and implications for counselors are presented. (Psychlit)

It appears then that, by and large, a number of features which were found to be representative of economics abstracts in Bondi's study - are also representative of Psychology abstracts. The analysis carried out in the present study is aimed at highlighting the similarities as well as the differences in the genre across the two disciplines.

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4. Results of the Analysis

4.1. Keywords The analysis of the two corpora's keywords allows for a first generalization on the way Economics and Psychology vary in the representation of the scientific procedures of their disciplines. The analysis yielded 136 keywords for Econlit and 43 for Psychlit (for this difference in number of keywords, see the section on Methods and Materials). In Economics, abstracts tend to make a specific reference to the participants and products of the research process. The word paper has very high keyness (keyword n. 2, 0.42%), which means that it is the preferred way to refer to the research product the abstract reports on. Paper is preferred to study, which has low keyness and occurs almost at the bottom of the list (keyword n. 123, 0.07%), because the former word is a more precise term for the final research product. The high keyness of the words we (n. 5, 0.33%) and authors (n. 25, 0.24%) indicates the consistent use of explicit reference to the participants in the research process. Other keywords give a representation of the discipline through the use of cognitive tools of research {model: n. 14, 0.38%), the scientific procedures (result n. 56, 0.12%, estimates·, n. 57, 0.07%, considers: n. 58, 0.07%, find: n. 65, 0.07%, examines: n. 93, 0.08%, findings: n. 120, 0.02%, etc.), and the objects of the research (market: n. 7, 0.12%, income: n. 35, 0.11%, output: n. 36, 0.08%, rate: n. 38, 0.15%, firms: n. 49, 0.08%). The use of ellipsis of grammatical subject (marked by XXX) does not have high keyness in Economics abstracts (it is keyword n. 133, with 0.15% frequency). In Psychology abstracts, in clear contrast with Economics abstracts, little emphasis is placed on who produces the research or on the research product (i.e., the research article) but rather on what the object of the research is. In this process the discourse entities are objectivized. In Psychlit rather than finding high keyness for words like authors (not a keyword in this corpus) and we (keyword n. 40, 0.02%) high keyness is given to SS, i.e., subjects (keyword n. 2, 0.55%),patients (n. 4, 0.39%), controls (n. 13, 0.12%), groups (n. 20, 0.14%). As opposed to Econlit, there is a clear preference for the ellipsis of grammatical subject (our notation XXX occurs as keyword n. 7, 0.52%) where the latter refers to the product of the scientific process (i.e., this paper, this study) and to the discourse unit reported (this abstract). Also, as compared to Econlit, the range of keywords referring to meta-argumentative expressions is more restricted, being limited to a few verbs: examined (n. 11, 0.17%), assessed (n. 21, 0.09%), reported (n. 22, 0.10%), and a few expressions referring to cognitive tools of research or to research procedures and products: index (n. 30), result (n. 34), rate (n. 37), all of them occurring with rather low frequency (around 0.02%). Other words, more specific to the psychological experimental and medical disci-

The Use ofMetadiscourse

in Abstracts

39

pline have higher keyness: symptoms (n. 9, 0.12%), task (n. 16, 0.09%), abuse (n. 24, 0.07%), therapy (n. 25, 0.07%). In short, the analysis of the keywords in the two corpora indicates that in Economics abstracts there is a greater emphasis on the producers of the research process and on expressions specifically referring to their research activity and cognitive tools of research. In Psychlit, on the other hand, it is not so much the producer of the research process that is the central figure in the scientific scene, but rather the research process itself, the description of which plays an important part in the discipline. Thus the theoretical constructs used referring to entities which form part of the experimental procedures in Psychology become highly representative of the discipline.

4.2. Frequency Wordlists For each corpus, words were grouped into lemmas. The grouping of words into lemmas ensures that, for each word, all morphological variants are analyzed as a unit. A frequency list of all the lemmas was obtained for each coipus. Such frequency lists were then compared, as done for the keywords lists. For both corpora, the frequency patterns for references to discourse participants and discourse units and for meta-argumentative expressions provide a more complete representation of the disciplines than that shown solely by the keyword lists. It appears that some words occur with about the same frequency in both disciplines, while others show completely different frequency patterns, which indicates a discipline-specific preference for the use of particular meta-argumentative expressions. As for the discourse participants, in Econlit we and author (both 0.33%) are by large the preferred way of referring to the participants in the economics discourse. Other participants who appear with more marginal frequency are: first person pronouns (I, 0.08%), participants in the process of research production (coauthors, 0.02%), and scientists (economist, 0.02%). The data from Psychlit, on the other hand, confirm the tendency to avoid specific references to the human subjects carrying out the research process or its products. Where a mention to the discourse participants is made authors (0.09%) seems to be preferred to the first person pronouns / (0.03%) and we (0.02%), or even to the self-referring psychologists (0.02%). It is, again, objectivized discourse entities that tend to be more frequently foregrounded (SS - Q.55%, patients - 0.39%, groups - 0.14%, controls - 0.12%, etc). With regard to discourse units, in Econlit the lemma paper is by far the most frequent expression (0.46%). Other ways of referring to the reported product of research are less frequent: subject ellipsis (0.15%), study (0.14%), article (0.08%), and research (0.04%). In Psychlit the product of research is most frequently referred to with subject ellipsis (0.052%), while study (0.32%) is preferred over research (0.09%), article (0.05%) and pa-

40

Maria Grazia Busä

per (0.01%). It appears then, that Econlit tends to make a direct reference to the abstracted paper, while Psychlit tends to avoid specific reference to the research product, or to refer to it emphasizing the aspect of the dynamic research process by using words like study, rather than its final product by using words like article or paper. Other discourse units, on the other hand, have similar frequency in both corpora: results (0.34% in Econlit; 0.35% in Psychlit)·, data (0.14% in Econlit, 0.14% in Psychlit). Looking at the use of meta-argumentative expressions, it is easy to distinguish between expressions which are common in scientific discourse in general, and so appear to have a similar frequency in both corpora, and others which, on the other hand, seem to be more widely used by one of the two. To the first category belong lemmas like: show (0.28% in Econlit·, 0.29% in Psychlit), discuss (0.13% in Econlit; 0.12% in Psychlit), explain (0.06% in Econlit·, 0.04% in Psychlit)·, conclude (0.04% in Econlit; 0.05% in Psychlit). Other expressions which are more frequent in one discipline than in the other seem to characterize more closely the way the discipline is represented or represents itself. In Economics, for example, expressions which are more markedly meta-argumentative show higher frequency than in Psychology, probably due to the fact that argumentation and debate play a more central role in the former than in the latter discipline. This appears to be the case with lemmas like: consider (0.17% in Econlit; 0.04% in Psychlit), analysis (0.29% in Econlit; 0.20% in Psychlit), problem (0.16% in Econlit; 0.10% in Psychlit), issues (0.12% in Econlit; 0.05% in Psychlit), assumption (0.12% in Econlit; 0.03% in Psychlit), implication (0.11% in Econlit; 0.04% in Psychlit), approach (0.10% in Econlit; 0.04% in Psychlit), etc. In Psychology, on the other hand, given the more experimental, data-driven nature of the discipline, expressions referring to testing, evaluation, etc., and, in general, to the experimental process have a higher frequency than in Economics: find (0.26% in Psychlit; 0.18% in Econlit), examine (0.26% in Psychlit; 0.17% in Econlit), assessed (0.22% in Psychlit; 0.6% in Econlit), test (0.21% in Psychlit; 0.7% in Econlit), indicate (0.11% in Psychlit; 0.5% in Econlit), evaluate (0.11% in Psychlit; 0.5% in Econlit). Here too, some frequent lemmas in Psychlit did not appear at a relevant frequency in Econlit. compared (0.22% in Psychlit), reported (0.20% in Psychlit), suggest (0.18% in Psychlit), include (0.11% in Psychlit).

4.3. Concordances and Collocations of Discourse Participants and Units Overall, fixed collocations are not very frequent. However, while in Econlit collocations are found mainly in the discourse participant domain, in Psychlit it is the textual constructs which are found to collocate more often with the verbs indicating the study/experimental procedure. So, in Econlit, we collocates with show, consider and find; author collocates

The Use of Metadiscourse in Abstracts with show, and paper

41

collocates with examines.

collocate with indicate and suggest

The only textual construct appearing to

is result. In Psychlit

it is the subject ellipsis which ap-

pears to have the greatest number of collocations with verbs like examined,

discussed,

de-

scribes,

indicate,

sug-

tested, studied,

assessed,

etc.; result collocates with show, showed,

gest, support. The expressions finding, data, analysis are the other textual constructs which collocate with suggest and showed in Psychlit.

4.4. Lexical Analysis A lexical analysis was carried out on the most frequent lemmas in the two corpora. In this section, each of the chosen lemmas will be briefly discussed separately and the results of the whole analysis will then be summarized in Tables 1A and I B below. Show*1 ranges at the top of the frequency lists of both corpora. In Econlit it occurs 131 times, and it is thematized in 121. In Psychlit it occurs 183 times, and it is in main clause position in 176 cases. So in both disciplines the procedure tends to be thematized in the great majority of cases. However, the two corpora show a relevant difference in how they assign the role of grammatical subject, in line with the type of scientific representationality which, w e have seen, is characteristic of the two disciplines. In Econlit, the subject of the main verb is in the participant domain in 4 5 % of the cases, it is in the hypothesized/objectivized (H/O) domain in 37% of the cases and in the discourse domain in 16%. The most frequent grammatical subjects in the participant domain of show* are author,

we,

and they (respectively with 24, 17 and 10 occurrences out of 54); in the discourse domain they are paper (8/19), anaphoric it (4/19), article (2/19), etc.; and finally in the H/O domain the most frequent ones are anticipatory it (24/45) and result (6/45). So, Econlit

shows

a preference for the thematization of the participant and the H / O domains, though references

to the

discourse

domain

are not

absent.

In Psychlit,

it is the

hypothe-

sized/objectivized domain which is made the grammatical subject of the verb show*,

in

nearly all its occurrences (95%), either as a hypothetical entity or a viewpoint. The most frequent subject in the H / O domain is results (66/168), followed by analysis ings (11/168), patients

(9/168), subjects

( f i n d -

(9/168), etc. The total absence of roles of gram-

matical subject in the participant domain is remarkable in comparison with the Econlit corpus. Also, for this lemma, no ellipsis of the grammatical subject is found in either discipline. Examine*

1

is another frequent lemma in both corpora, occurring mainly in main verb po-

In this paper, the notation * has been used to conventionally indicate lemma (cf. pag. 32).

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Maria Grazia Busä

sition both in Econlit and in Psychlit - in the former there are 64 main verb forms out of 72 total lemmas; in the latter the main verb forms are 113 out of 126 lemmas. With examine* both disciplines have a majority of grammatical subjects in the discourse domain, the percentages being 61% and 76% for Econlit and Psychlit respectively. In Econlit, it is mainly paper which is the grammatical subject of examines (20 out of 39 subjects in the discourse domain), other subjects being subject ellipsis (i.e., XXX) (7/39), study (4/39), article (3/39), and other lemmas, such as analysis, review, section, anaphoric it, etc. Psychlit shows a strong preference for the ellipsis of the grammatical subject, occurring as 84 out of 94 subjects in the discourse domain, the other much less relevant choice being study (6/94), and finally paper, article, review, anaphoric it, all occurring just once. With regard to grammatical subjects in other domains, Econlit shows a greater percentage of grammatical subjects in the participant domain as compared to Psychlit (20% of total grammatical subjects in Econlit vs 3% in Psychlit). As for the H/O domain, Econlit has a total of 19% of total grammatical subjects in this domain, and Psychlit has 20%. Analyz/s* tends to occur in its nominalized form rather than as a main verb, more so in Psychlit, where there are 16 verb forms out of 127 occurrences of the lemma (13%), than in Econlit, where there are 48 main clause verb forms out of 137 occurrences of the lemma (35%). In Econlit the preferred structure seems to be the one which thematizes the discourse domain (46%), with paper and ellipsis of grammatical subject being the most frequent choices (9/22 and 8/22 respectively), but the participant domain is also frequently thematized (33%), and less so the H/O domain (21%). In Psychlit, once again, the thematization of the subject in the participant domain is strongly disfavoured (0%), while a structure with a thematized subject in the hypothesized/objectivized is favoured (75%), and ellipsis of grammatical subject being the only choice for a thematization of the discourse domain (25%). Discuss* occurs mainly as a main verb form in both Econlit (51 out of 62 occurrences) and Psychlit (64 out of 75 occurrences of the lemma). In Econlit most thematized subjects are in the discourse and the participant domain, with the former having a higher percentage of occurrences than the latter (43% vs 37%). In the participant domain, the subjects are proper nouns (8/19 occurrences), author (8/19) and we (3/19). In the discourse domain, it is mainly paper (9/22) and the ellipsis of grammatical subject (7/22) which appear to be favoured. In Psychlit, on the other hand, there is a clear dominance of subjects in the hypothesized/objectivized domain (53%), followed by a high percentage of subjects in the discourse domain (37%), with ellipsis of grammatical subject being the most frequent choice (20 occurrences out of 24); the participant domain is represented only in 10% of the total occurrences (author being the most frequent choice (5 out of 6 cases). Consider* occurs mainly as a main verb form, both in Econlit (in 71 out of 78 occurrences) and in Psychlit (in 21 out of 23 occurences). In Econlit most grammatical subjects

43

The Use of Metadiscourse in Abstracts

are in the discourse domain, with paper and ellipsis of grammatical subject being the most frequent choices (occurring respectively 17 and 9 times out of 34 occurrences), other more marginal choices being essay (3) and article (2). M a n y grammatical subjects (24) occur in the participant domain, and we and author are the preferred choices (12 and 5 occurrences respectively). Only 10 are the grammatical subjects in the H/O domain. In Psychlit

13 of

the total grammatical subjects are in the H / O domain, the remaining being subjects in the real world domain (4), in the participant domain (3), with only one in the discourse domain. Tables 1A and IB sum up the results of the lexical analysis for the chosen lemmas. They summarize and illustrate the thematic choices each discipline makes. In Economics abstracts grammatical subjects tend to cluster in the discourse domain and in the participant domain, with the latter slightly less favoured than the former. Subjects in the hypothesized/objectivized domain are a less favoured choice, though they still appear with some frequency. In Psychology, there is a clear avoidance of the thematic choice of grammatical subjects in the participant domain. The most favoured thematic choice is to have subjects in the hypothesized/objectivized domain, and secondly in the discourse domain. Within this latter domain, Psychology abstracts prefer the ellipsis of the grammatical subject when referring to the research product. The tendency for the two disciplines to make certain thematic choices over others can be considered relevant for the characterization of the genre for each discipline. Table 1A. ECONLIT: Functional roles of grammatical subjects for the lemmas Show* + Examine* + Analyst z* + Discuss* + Consider* DOMAIN participant domain

discourse domain

REFERENCE

LEX.ITEM

authors: external

proper nouns (1 ]), common nouns (6), others (3)

internal

author (45), we (42), they (15), he (2), 7(1)

external d. units

studies (1), previous work (1), literature (1) anaphoric it (2)

empty d. theme micro-unit macro-unit

section (3), others (1) paper (64), XXX (31), article (11), study (5), essay (3), other (9)

event/process

analysis (5)

tot

%

125/359 35

137/359 38

44 hypothesized/ objectivized domain

real world domain

Maria Grazia Busä

hypothetical entity result (7), model (3), problem (2), other and H/O viewpoint (47) empty H/O theme (propositions)

anticipatory it (24), anaphoric this (1), anaphoric they (3)

entity

various (10)

87/359

24

10/359

3

process Table IB. PSYCHL1T: Functional roles of grammatical subjects for the lemmas Show* + Examine* + Analystz* + Discuss * + Consider* DOMAIN participant domain

discourse domain

REFERENCE authors: external

proper nouns (2), they (2), psychologists (1), common nouns (1)

internal

we (I), author (6)

external d. units empty d. theme micro-unit

study (10) anaphoric it (5) example (1), figures (1)

macro-unit

XXX (10%), article (2),paper (1), review (2), research (3), experiment (3)

event/process hypothesized/ objectivized domain

real world domain

LEX.ITEM

tot

%

13/399

3

154/399 38

analysis (18)

hypothetical entity and H/O viewpoint

results (70),findings(l3), subjects (12),patients (12), data (8), implications (7), model (4), controls (4), humans (2), role (4), measures (2), variations (2), limitations (2), responses (2), recordings (2), other (77)

empty H/O theme (propositions)

anticipatory it (2)

entity

various (5)

process

procedures (1)

226/399

57

6/399

2

The Use of Metadiscourse in Abstracts

45

5. Conclusions

The need for more detailed studies on the linguistic characteristics of abstracts was emphasized in the introduction to this paper. Little is known of the features distinguishing subgenres of abstracts such as, for example, research paper abstracts, abstracts written in response to a call for papers, abstracts written by authors vs abstracts obtained with some electronic procedure (e.g., for an electronic abstracting journal), etc. How abstracts present different characteristics across disciplines has received little attention. Studies on the features characterizing abstract subgenres both within and across disciplines are important not only for linguistic theory. They can also be used to define what constitutes a clear, synthetic and informative abstract, and be useful to publishers of manuals and scientific journals for the creation of guidelines for authors, who are often left unclear as to how a good abstract should be written. This would be of help for both native and non-native speakers. This paper has analyzed the use of meta-argumentative expressions in Economics and Psychology research paper abstracts. The abstracts were taken from electronic abstracting journals and the results of this study are indicative of this particular subgenre (research paper abstracts from electronic abstracting journals). The present data suggest an awareness of the nature and characteristics of the genre. This is shown by the use of common linguistic features in the two disciplines. In both Economics and Psychology, the research process is foregrounded, and scientific procedures and objects are thematized and given main clause position. This finding thus confirms previous findings (cf. Bondi 1997) that the syntactic foregrounding of argumentative procedures, mostly linked to the thematization of discourse constructs, is constitutive in abstracts. Both disciplines make use of similar expressions to refer to discourse participants {author, we, etc.), products (papers, results, study, etc.), and logical constructs (model, approach, etc.). Some verbs referring to the scientific procedure, like show, discuss, explain, conclude, etc. recur with similar frequency in the two disciplines. The data also point to the existence of a different set of preferences for each discipline. As compared to Psychlit, Econlit shows a preference for the thematization of discourse products (e.g., Economics) and producers (e.g., the economist, the author) over discourse objects (e.g., patients, data, etc.). We also see the preference for the use of references to person subjects (we, I, the author, proper nounsj and references to integral units of discourse (paper, article, study). Other frequently foregrounded meta-argumentative lemmas characterizing Economics abstracts are expressions in the hypothesized/ objectivized domain such as problem, issue, consider, assumption, implication, etc. In Psychlit there is a clear preference for the thematization of discourse objects over discourse products and producers. This leads to a rather extensive use of the passive form.

46

Maria Grazia

Busä

Much more frequently than in Econlit, reference to integral units of discourse comes about through the ellipsis of the grammatical subject. If an explicit reference to the final research product is made study is preferred to paper, article, etc. Expressions referring to human subjects (agents) as producers of the research process are extremely rare. References to human subjects are rather replaced by references to objectivized discourse entities, highly recurrent in the discipline, such as subjects (or SS), patients, groups, controls, etc. The fact that the human participants are presented as a theoretical construct, i.e., an object part of the research process, makes Psychology appear as a highly impersonal discipline. The foregrounding of the scientific process is also achieved through the large use of a few verbs referring to specific aspects of the experimental procedure, such as assess, test, etc., which do not seem very relevant in the scientific process in Economics. In conclusion, in a comparison of Economics and Psychology abstracts, the human agent, as well as verbal and cognitive units as grammatical subjects of arguing, play a more central role in the former than in the latter, where they are rather substitued with objectivized constructs and cognitive units as grammatical subjects of the research process. So, while in Economics argument and debate occupy a central position and seem to be constitutive of the nature of the discipline, in Psychology it is the data and the scientific procedures and processes which are seen as the constitutive and ultimate source for scientific discourse. Both Economics and Psychology are so called social sciences. The comparison with data from a discipline from the "hard" sciences and/or from the humanities would probably reveal even greater differences with regard to the role of the grammatical subject and the use of meta-argumentative expressions to refer to the discourse participants and products in the characterization of the discipline.

References

Bondi, Marina (1997): The rise of abstracts. Development of the genre in the discourse of Economics. - Textus X, 395-418. - (1998): Libri di testo e argomentazione riportata. Esempi di metapragmatica nell'inglese degli economisti. - In: M. Bondi (a cura di) Forms of Argumentative Discourse. Per un'analisi linguistica dell'argomentare, 85-107. Bologna: Clueb. - (1999): English Across Genre. - Modena: II Fiorino. - (2004): Metadiscursive practices in academic discourse. Variation across genres and disciplines. - In this volume. Dos Santos, Mauro B. (1996): The textual organization of research paper abstracts in applied linguistics. - Text 16, 4, 481-499. Oosden, Hugh (1993): Discourse functions of subject in scientific research articles. - Applied Linguistics 14, 1, 56-75.

The Use of Metadiscourse in Abstracts

47

Hyland, Ken (2000): Disciplinary Discourses: Social interactions in academic writing. - London: Longman. Kaplan, Richard et al. (1994): On abstract writing. - Text 14, 3, 401-426. MacDonald, Susan P. (1992): A method for analyzing sentence-level differences in disciplinary knowledge making. - Written Communication 9, 533-569. Salager-Meyer, Francoise (1990): Discoursal flaws in medical English abstracts: A genre analysis per research and text type. - Text 10, 4, 365-384. Scott, Mike (1996): WordSmith Tools. - Oxford: O.U.P. Stotesbury, Hilkka (2003): Evaluation in research article abstracts in the narrative and hard sciences. - JEAP (special issue on Evaluation in academic discourse, M. Bondi and A. Mauranen, eds.), 2, 4, 327-342. Swales, John M. (1990): Genre Analysis. English in academic and research settings. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wangheng, Peng (1997): Keywords in theme and rheme. - Language and Discourse 5, 43-69.

Maria Freddi How Linguists Write about Linguistics: The Case of Introductory Textbooks

1. Introduction

This paper aims to investigate some argumentative strategies adopted by linguists in the opening chapters of introductory textbooks in linguistics, i.e. general introductions for first year university students. It is argued that in introducing the student-reader to the foundations of the discipline, opening chapters build up a dialogue involving a plurality of voices, - the expert-writer's, the student-reader's and those of past and present members of the scientific community, all of which contribute to the development of the argumentation. The sender-receiver relationship and the argumentative dimension with which it is inherently linked can be thought of in terms of a triadic structure comprising the addresseras-expert, and either the addressee-as-student, or the addressee-as-peer. In other words, while adjusting to his/her readers and moving flexibly among different writing roles, the writer engages in a relationship with his readership in different rhetorical contexts: it is how this relationship manifests itself linguistically and what its functional status is, that I will investigate here. Research on academic discourse has posed questions such as: which linguistic features characterise academic discourse, 1 or: how does a writer adopt an institutional voice? Ivanic (1998), in particular, whose work is associated with critical literacy approaches, has investigated the ways in which the writer's identity is discursively constructed in academic writing. Developing the concept of positionings,

she claims, together with social theorists, that

people's identities are socially constructed, that is, people are positioned directly b y the interests, values, and beliefs of the groups or communities to which they belong. This is true also of academic writers, so that their discourse choices are the inevitable outcome of that positioning. In turn, the ways in which they write position them as members of the academic community, as a result of the existing circularity between discourse and social identities. Although the academic community is by n o means a monolithic institution, in 1

See Myers (1998) for an account of some of the major recent contributions to the subject: among others, Myers (1992), Ventola and Mauranen (1996), Ventola (2000), Hyland (2000; 2002a; 2002b) and Flowerdew (2002).

50

Maria Freddi

that it allows for a multiplicity and differentiation of practices, yet there are some discourse patterns or conventions common to the whole community that seem to influence the writing more than others (cf. Ivanic 1998). However, my interest is not in discriminating between what is and what is not academic in textbook writing, in other words, I am not aiming at establishing a threshold of academicism, rather I focus on some grammatical and lexical markers of the argumentative dialogue mentioned above. These fall into different lexico-grammatical categories, particularly verbs, nouns, pronouns and nominal groups, adverbials and connectives.

2. Data and methodology

The criteria, which I adopted in designing the roughly 128,300 word computer-readable mini-corpus of 22 introductory chapters taken from 8 introductory textbooks in linguistics were the following ones.

2.1. Introductory chapters The need to overcome the vagueness of what constitutes an "introductory" chapter and find a clear demarcation has been met by choosing those chapters, usually ranging from the first to the third or fourth, but occasionally limited to the first and second, or even just the first, which serve the purpose of presenting linguistics to the student-reader. Introductory chapters normally provide a definition of the new discipline, offer a brief sketch of its evolution, and introduce the methodology. In some cases the order is: what linguistics is not, what the layman thinks it is, followed by a definition of linguistics as "the scientific study of language", and an exposition of the past and still current debate on the main issues of language study. In these chapters the polyphonous structure is especially evident because of the pedagogic purpose. The chapters that come next describe the various strata of language and the relevant levels of linguistic analysis. Therefore, I consider as no longer introductory those chapters which deal with single strata or levels in depth, usually starting with phonetics. Again, since organisation can vary depending on the author, and also according to the length of the book, this does not necessarily mean that chapter 2 is always introductory while chapter 3 belongs to the body of the book.

How Linguists

Write about

Linguistics

51

2.2. Introductory textbooks I based my selection, which included Aitchinson (from now on abbreviated as AIT), Akmajian (AKMA), Brown (BRO), Crystal (CRY), Robins (ROB), Wallwark (WAL), Widdowson (WID) and Yule (YUL),2 on criteria such as new editions, availability in bookshops, and in University and British Council libraries indicating that they were textbooks which were widely used in undergraduate courses. Once the corpus had been created, I then processed it using Wordsmith Tools (Scott 1996), a suite of programmes for looking at how words in a text, or, a set of texts, behave which include, for example, the Wordlist, Concordancer, and Keyword retrieval. Such processing allowed for some rhetorical considerations to be made, and for a comparison of the various textbooks in the corpus.

3. The lexico-grammar of dialogue and argumentation

The focus of this analysis is thus to highlight the argumentative cohesion construed by the dialogue between: 1)

the expert-writer,

2) 3)

the other experts, past and present members of the scientific community, and the student-reader.

In particular, I focused on how the various participants in the dialogue are realised, choosing as indicators of their presence: - Lexico-grammatical units referring to the dialogue itself (nouns and verbs lexicalising certain cognitive and scientific processes) - The subject pronouns / / we!you - The textual voices (names of other academic writers) - Lexico-grammatical items which address the readers (nouns, imperatives and questions) - Connectives (indeed / of course) Working with Wordsmith Tools, I was able to draw up a frequency wordlist of the whole corpus: the 8th word of the list is language, while linguistics shows up down in the 52nd position. A search for repeated word-clusters of language, that is, words that are found repeatedly in its company, revealed the frequencies shown in table 1 below:

2

See appendix for full bibliographical references.

52

Maria Freddi

Table 1: Four Word-Cluster of language Cluster the study of language the nature of language the use of language

Nr. of occurrences 28 19 16

These data reflect the way in which the opening chapters are structured: they all start by giving a definition of Linguistics as "the (scientific) study of language", only in AIT do we find "the systematic study of language". The authors then move on to the explanation of what language is, thus accounting for a preoccupation of linguists to define the object of their study. Moving on to the consideration of the lexicalisations of the dialogue between the writer-as-expert and the other experts, members of the community of linguists, it is interesting to notice that it is presented as debate, controversy, discussion, or dispute as in the examples which follow: (1) The status of the abstractions employed in the description and analysis of linguistic form has been the subject of considerable debate. (ROB)

More in detail, debate occurs only in BRO, CRY and ROB, while it is totally absent in the other authors. The lemma controversy/-ies referring to the scientific dialogue is exemplified by: (2) Linguistics is still a very new discipline, and it still arouses controversy, particularly when it comes into conflict with traditionally held ideas. (CRY)

Discussion occurs as a co-referential of debate in (3) It is the earliest surviving linguistic debate: a wide-ranging discussion about the origins of language. (CRY)

and as hyponym in (4) The discussions about meaning were largely part of a general debate as to the nature of reality. (CRY)

In the next citation the scientific dialogue has a threefold lexicalisation: first discussion meaning 'enquiry', 'investigation' (as in the recurring phrase "the scope of linguistic enquiry"), then controversy and the synonymous dispute both meaning 'argument'. (5) The nature of the evidence which should be allowed into linguistic discussion is still a source of some controversy and the issues are by no means fully thrashed out yet - hence it maybe premature to expect the dispute over the term 'science' to be resolvable. (CRY)

How Linguists

Write about

53

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The reader is explicitly warned as to the need to consider this dynamism of research and the contentious aspect of the object of study: (6) In this book, some account is taken of major unresolved controversies, prepared for others to arise. (ROB)

and the reader must be

That science, in this case linguistics, is presented as argument is evident in the many concordances of the lemma argument/s itself. See, for example, (7) There are ways of countering this argument, but problems about the link between abstraction and actuality remain. (WID)

Bondi (1997; 1999) has demonstrated that this holds true for economics textbooks as well where the representation of science as argument can be taken as a keyword in the introductory chapters. In my corpus of linguistics textbooks argument shows interesting collocation patterns: it occurs three times in the sequence the argument is that, which introduces an embedded clause, thus conferring compactness to the discourse, with an identifying function, such that the clause makes explicit what "the argument" in effect is. Argument also occurs in the argument runs / continues / goes patterns that typically anticipate a Counter-Argument. In general, most occurrences of argument do not report the writer's arguments, but someone else's, those of another writer, and work as a kind of distancing device in order for the writer to counter-argue3 thus showing the dialogic nature of textbooks writing style. The following example best illustrates this last point: (8) The second argument, based on the alleged nature of 'primitive' languages, rests on a common, though deplorable misconception of these languages. Linguistically, there are no primitive languages. (ROB)

This connotation of the usage of argument meaning 'a counter-argument will follow' is very frequent in CRY where the representation of the scientific dialogue and its participants is more explicit than in the other textbooks of my corpus. (9) How valid is the argument I referred to earlier ( Ί know my own language, don't Γ) in this context? I would argue that it has no validity at all. (CRY)

Moreover, CRY uses meta-discursive4 expressions widely, that is to say references to the ongoing discourse itself: I shall be going into this issue in greater detail in Chapter

3,1

3

I would like to thank Joanna Channel who initially suggested this point to me. Corpus evidence corroborates it. (For her contribution to lexical analysis, see among other things, Channel 1994 and 2000)

4

See Williams (2003: 66) for an interesting perspective on metadiscourse as "writers and readers as characters".

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Freddi

shall argue in the rest of this book that, I shall have more to say on this point below, and again I shall discuss this view further shortly, and the like. This is of course typical of opening chapters which usually anticipate the overall structure of the textbook, but also tells us something of the writer's specific concern with keeping his readers involved in his discourse. Sometimes it is not the dialogue that is represented, but the participants themselves, so that we hear a variety of voices intervening in the flow of writing. In particular, references to other members of the scientific community and to their thoughts and theories are in the form of reported argument. The verbs chosen for analysis belong to the verba dicendi group, all with a reporting role: concordances of lemmas of the following verbs, claim, argue, suggest, propose and maintain have been retrieved in order to be able to identify the most frequent patterns. These include: it is claimed / it is argued that and it has been argued / it has been suggested that, with the variant χ claimed that / χ argued that / jc proposed. As for maintain, only ROB and CRY use the verb as synonym of claim as can be seen in extract (13) from ROB further down. Furthermore, the same reporting function is realised also by nouns occurring in the Head-Noun + that-clause pattern, such as the argument / the idea / the claim that and the view that. They are general nouns encoding argumentative moves, which need propositions to substantiate them (cf. Ivanic 1998: 267; Francis 1993: 149). In particular, the table that follows shows that view is used in a wide range of patterns: Table 2: A set of instances of view here an earlier 'imperialistic' d the use of the system. Such a lso be rather skeptical about a wledge discussed in 1 2. Such a sent day. The modern linguistic ead but fallacious. One popular ored. Or, to take a more recent ede Andreas Kempe presented the Sapir constantly emphasized the sses of human thought. In this he nature of language. In this e functions it serves. In this ystem, langue, itself. In this performance. According to this as irrelevant. Indeed, in this

view ('If they really want our pr view would argue that the two are view that seems to assume that a view has the advantage that in ab view, on the whole, is that of th view is that the 'true' or 'corre view, it is illuminating to see 1 view that in Paradise Adam spoke view that to call languages fluen view the study of language is ult view, linguistics is essentially view, form and medium would be se view, the linguists will ignore s view, a hearer might compute the view, what linguistics is about i

Similarly, theory and approach lexicalise the peers' participation into the scientific debate as, for instance, in (10) In order to present an alternative approach, the linguist must first thoroughly understand the inadequacies oithe approaches already available, and sometimes these are very explicit. (CRY)

How Linguists Write about Linguistics

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Other operators have the same reporting function in so far as they give the information that what follows is part of the argumentation developed b y another person, as it were. The expression according

to attributes an idea to a specific source (a certain scholar), and fre-

quency and modal adverbials like usually, generally,

sometimes,

often together with the

passive form of the verb are used to express generic, unspecified reference to other schools or tendencies in linguistics as can be seen in the example and table below. (11) According to Chomsky, Bloomfieldian linguistics was both far too ambitious and far too limited in scope. (WID) Table 3: A set of instances of generally are language independent. It is Is, these inscriptions are more onment. Animal communication is ure worlds. Arbitrariness It is The answer to this question has anguage, in conformity with the ation and language, it is still ms, discussion groups - what is study we are thinking of. It is e to give a straightforward and does this mean? It seems to be ders, there is one aim which is ted to convey meanings. This is nteresting, but the linguist is re precisely. Within the domain

generally generally generally generally generally generally generally generally generally generally generally generally generally generally generally

thought that described as considered to lack this the case that there is been that linguists the accepted ideas of their agreed that the main pu referred to as 'Works I agreed, for instance, t agreed answer to this q agreed outside linguist considered primary, and labelled 'syntax'. In t only interested in it f recognized as 'one lang

Hyland has observed that since the emphasis in textbooks is on the established facts rather than who stated them, unspecified sources as in the above concordances replace intertextual citations (cf. Hyland 1999: 15). Ivanic also highlights the fact that the high frequency of relational processes, in Hallidayan terms (cf. Halliday 1994), means an interest in general truths, states of affairs, and in what people think. In other words, they reinforce the ideational meaning of a text (cf. Ivanic 1998: 264). However, reference is sometimes specific, for instance in the case of quotations or suggestions for further reading: (12) (for those interested, R.H. Robins' Short History of Linguistics, provides an admirable treatment) (CRY) W h o belongs to the linguistics community according to these textbooks? If w e look at the frequency wordlist, the lemma Chomsky

occurs 59 times, and its presence is dominant in

WID, AIT and CRY. Other significant presences of "textual voices", as in Bondi (1997), or published academic writers, are Saussure

(27 occurrences), Bloomfield

(9 occurrences),

56

Maria

Sapir (4 occurrences), and grammarians by, if not collocating with, traditional.

Freddi

(21 occurrences), the latter usually surrounded

What follows is a more detailed analysis of an excerpt from ROB where the debate within the scientific community resolves in a discussion leading to, I quote, "preference in scientific attitude", rather than a contrast between opposing theses. (13) The status of the abstractions employed in the description and analysis of linguistic form has been the subject of considerable debate. It has been variously maintained: [i] That the constants... [ii] That the linguist's abstractions are...[iii] That the linguist's abstractions have... These three viewpoints follow somewhat along the classical philosophical lines of realism, conceptualism, and nominalism respectively. In so far as their differences fall within the field of philosophy or of general scientific theory, they need not be the direct concern of the linguist. But there are certain implications for linguistics in each view, which should therefore be mentioned. (ROB)

The first two expressions in italics are used as textual synonyms: "it has been variously maintained" reiterates "has been the subject of considerable debate", without specifying the agent, but referring indirectly to the community. The clausal construction is later nominalised as viewpoints which cataphorically projects into the specification of the classical philosophical lines, with the pronoun these being anaphoric and cataphoric at the same time. Two levels of reporting are present here, the first referring to more recent research in linguistics, the second, harking back to the more remote past in the philosophy of language. If we read on, in example (13a) we find a description of the anticipated implications relevant to linguistic investigation: the clausal expression "the first view implies" is shifted to the nominalised form, precisely "the implication of the second view". (13a) The first view implies as a consequence that languages have an organization independent of any analyst, and that the analysis consists in discovering the inherent patterns of that organization, (...). The implication of the second view is that the linguist's analysis of a language as he observes it corresponds in some way to the linguistic working of the speaker's mind or brain, and that the language should be described in terms such as could be related to the production of speech by a speaker and its comprehension by a hearer. (ROB)

In the follow up this attitude co-refers anaphorically to second view, while all three standpoints is co-referential with these three viewpoints at the beginning of the excerpt. Again, reference is made to the fellow members of the scientific community by means of the expressions general usage and most linguists, and by explicit mention of Saussure and Chomsky. (13b) This attitude was expressed rather strongly by de Saussure in his well-known antithesis between 'langue' and 'parole'; the terms have now passed into general usage in linguistics. (...) A

How Linguists Write about Linguistics

57

comparable, but not identical, distinction is drawn by Chomsky between competence and performance. All three of the standpoints mentioned above possess a degree of validity in relation to the work of the linguist, and probably most linguists, whether they expressly intend it or not, maintain some part of each, tending to give preference in scientific attitude to one of them. (ROB)

It is evident in the passage above that anaphoric and cataphoric co-reference is the first lexical means conferring cohesiveness to argumentation. This reflects what is often noticed in the literature about expressions of argumentation (cf. Hunston 1994), that they are normally anaphorically (and cataphorically) co-referential, and thus contribute to a stratification of argumentative meanings.

4. The voice of the writer

The authorial voice is best analysed by considering the opposition of Uwe Subject pronouns. An analysis of frequencies of the two pronouns shows that we occurs roughly three times as much as I in the corpus with 947 occurrences of the first-person plural pronoun as against 301 of the first-person singular pronoun. However, the plural corresponds to different writing roles and expresses several rhetorical nuances. Authorial reader-exclusive we can be the only way in which the writer refers to him/herself, as in AIT, for instance, where I does not occur at all5. But it can sometimes switch to reader-inclusive we and also to a wider impersonal we that embraces the scientific community as, for instance, in YUL. In the example below the plural encompasses both the author and his peers having the meaning 'it is well-known that' or 'it is widely accepted': (14) We simply do not know how language originated. We do know that spoken language developed well before written language. (YUL)

In AKMA, of course, since the authors are more than one, they necessarily use we when referring to themselves (We will be introducing fundamental concepts of linguistics, and We believe that these have to be applicable to all languages).

5

Interestingly enough, a look at the preface of her book where acknowledgments are presented reveals usage of first-person singular, as if this were a more personal and informal section differing from the scientific body of the book.

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Maria

Freddi

A close analysis of the concordances of we, alphabetised to the right, shows that about 1/3 of the total occurrences is we followed by a modal verb as summarised by the table below. Table 4: List of we followed by modal verb Moduls we can

Nr. of

occurrences 116

we cannot

11

we will

58

we shall

39

we might

28

we may

28

we should

25

w e must

17

we need to

12

we have to

9

we could

4

Analogously, concordances of we, alphabetised to the left, give if we as a very frequent pair with 58 occurrences. The high frequency of we followed by a modal and of if we induces us to think that when there is either a modal or hypothetical nuance the intended reference of we is 'you and I and they', that is, people in general as a kind of exemplum fictum. In other words, an exemplary case is advocated as general and thus involves the reader as well. A third case is that of we replacing one: this is a real impersonal which is much more common in English than one. This type of we sometimes occurs in a context of selfevidence. In both cases, however, the usage of we reflects a sort of generalisation practice, whether it is reader-inclusive or impersonal. To sum up, a non-authorial first-person plural subject fits into two categories: readerinclusive and impersonal. The former in turn either includes the student-reader, (as in the many meta-discursive references as we shall see below, as we have seen, and the like), or the scientific community, especially in order to pass off a thesis as a widely held one or to corroborate a point. It should be noticed however, that since the reference is sometimes ambiguous, it is difficult to differentiate with any degree of certainty the authorial we from the inclusive we.

How Linguists Write about Linguistics

59

Keywords retrieval shows we as the most negative6 keyword in both AIT and YUL. This data contrasts with the rank of linguists in AIT, where it is counted as positive keyword. As a matter of fact, when going back to the reading of Aitchinson's introductory chapters, one realises that linguists is a much more frequent subject than the first-person plural pronoun. Similarly, in both ROB and WAL, the subject we is given as negative keyword. As already mentioned, ROB is more interested in foregrounding the debate within the community, while WAL has you almost on top of the positive keywords list contrasting with the low rank of we. On the other hand, BRO has we as positive keyword, having an outstandingly high number of occurrences if compared to the rest of the corpus. He uses all three types of we that I have identified, reader-exclusive/authorial {in this section we have shown that), reader-inclusive (as we shall see) and impersonal (when talking about linguistic behaviour as, for instance, in we learn to speak). In the following citation from CRY the author adopts a reader-inclusive first-person plural pronoun, he then switches to the first-person singular to report his own answers to the questions raised, thus adding a rather personal and informal tone (All I can do, I think) to the writing. (15) Now that we have seen a little of the historical background of modern linguistics, (...) we are in a much better position to appreciate some of the reasons for the emergence of the new subject (...). We may therefore return to the questions raised at the beginning of this chapter. (...) There is no simple answer: there are many reasons. All I can do, I think, is to classify these reasons (...) and hope that the simplification necessarily involved will not distort our understanding of the real-life complexity of the situation. (CRY)

In other words, what CRY does is to take the reader along with him on his journey through the epochs of Linguistics (inclusive we) somehow mapping his argument by meta-referring to it (now that we have seen). He however prefers / to refer to his intellectual activity. Notice that in the above example the last first-person plural determiner our is inclusive of people in general. Ivanic has investigated the use of the pronoun in academic discourse among the various discoursal practices with which scholars align themselves to build their identity as members of an academic community. In her opinion, the fact that few first person pronouns are used to talk about one's own research corresponds to the academic belief that intellectual work is an impersonal activity, and to a lack of authorial involvement in writing or in the

6

The Keywords application in Wordsmith Tools picks out words in a text, whose frequency is unusually high with respect to some reference corpus. In other words, if compared with the rest of the corpus (using a chi-square statistical test of significance), each textbook can be searched for its outstandingly frequent words (cf. Scott 1997; 2000 for an application of the concept). Negative keywords, as opposed to positive keywords, are those words that occur with an unusually low frequency in comparison with the reference corpus.

60

Maria Freddi

author's relationship with his/her readers (cf. Ivanic 1998: 2 7 2 - 7 3 ) . C R Y is an exception in this corpus, in this respect also, in that he uses the first person pronoun and determiners, thus giving a more vivid account of what he is doing, as shown in the next example: (16) It is so standard a practice, in fact, that many lecturers and authors on linguistics (...) find themselves psychologically unable to talk about the subject in any other way - and I am no exception. (CRY) That he paces the rhythm of his investigation and thus of his prose with spoken-like first person insertions can be seen also in the frequency with which the expression I think occurs, if compared with the total number of occurrences in the corpus, namely 5 out of 7, (keeping in mind that only the first two chapters of the whole textbook are included in this corpus). Table 5: Concordances of I think from CRY 1 2 3 4 5

er way - and I am no exception. heme. But enough has been said, are many reasons. All I can do, iants of the past - hut mainly, embodies, it is necessary - and

I I I I I

think, however, that this is qu think, to show that the history think, is to classify these rea think, it is a reflex of the st think prudent in an introductor

There are other ways in which the author perhaps refers to his research, as when they use the passive voice (cf. the "objective passive" in Williams 2003: 65). See, for instance, (17) Similar statements can be made for the Latin and Greek cases and for many other grammatical categories (ROB)

5. The voice of the reader

There are various places in the corpus where one can hear the voice of the reader. First of all, explicit mention of the reader as such, that is, as general addressee of the ongoing discourse is made in ROB, B R O and CRY. Out of the 20 concordances of the lemma reader retrieved, I have left out f r o m the list below those which were object language and therefore not relevant to my description. The exhortations in line 9, 10 and 11 which produce the cluster the reader is invited to are f r o m BRO (in fact, also line 8 although not showing the same pattern). Formulas such as these add a rather formal, almost quaint connotation to B R O ' s style. The same kind of exhortation is present in line 15 and 19 f r o m ROB, yet with

How Linguists

Write about

61

Linguistics

a much more informal and spoken-like quality. The same is true for CRY's preoccupation with his readers in line 3 and 4. In each case, however, it is meant to include them as discourse participant. Table 6: Concordances of reader (20 entries in total) 3 d commitment on the part of the 4 east attempted. For the general 6 ds of snow is one example which 8 section. Here, even though the 9 ows the pattern of KEEP, as the 10 the intonation centres, as the 11 brother is an only child). The 15 resolved controversies, and the 16 at the plain man and the common 19 t one thing (listen to me); the

reader. It is, after all, no small reader, too, a historical perspec readers will constantly come aero reader may not command the techni reader is invited to verify. Now, reader is invited to verify. Such reader is invited to ring the cha reader must be prepared for other reader would wish to include unde reader will be painfully able to

The relation with the audience is more complex in CRY than in the other authors examined. In the opening paragraphs he clearly states that he wants to be read by specialists as well as by laypeople, therefore he constantly addresses the potential categories to which his readers may belong. For want of space, I will quote only one citation: (18) Much of what follows will be old hat for anyone who has had anything at all to do with scientific analysis in other fields, but the way in which linguistics illustrates the application of these concept may not be so familiar; and for potential students of the subject (especially those with a predominantly arts background) the perspective is essential. (CRY)

Other reader-inclusive devices are imperatives and rhetorical questions. Imperatives work well as a means for the reader to orient him/herself to the ongoing argumentation when occurring in formulas such as Consider for example!suppose that, they are used to introduce an Exemplification or Hypothetical-Argument to illustrate and support a Thesis: (19) Consider, for example, the map of the London Underground. This bears very little resemblance to the actual layout of the track the trains run on. (WID)

The attention-getting devices notice that, and note that are not very frequent and preferably replaced by the more attenuated forms it is interesting/important to notice/note, or one should/might note, as in the example taken from Widdowson: (20) There are a number of issues arising from Saussure's distinction. To begin with, one note that the concept of langue eliminates from language its instability. (WID)

should

The let us consider now, let us now look at/turn to patterns, i.e. imperative + temporal indicator, are a softened invitation to the reader to follow the development of the discussion.

62

Maria

Freddi

Such formulas often map the structure of the chapter, as shown below. Finally, see usually introduces a direct citation; it is used as a tool for economy (cf. Swales et al. 1998: 110). (21) Let us now look again at the network of interlocking items which constitute language. (AIT)

Rhetorical questions realise the argumentative function of engaging the reader in the writing. They are often kinds of macro-questions such as "Why study language?" or "Why bother to study language?" "Why do people speak differently?" (found in CRY) posed at the beginning of the book, and directed to the student-reader, which are answered in the course of his/her reading the whole textbook. Sometimes, they report a potential Objection to the ongoing argumentation, thus working in a fashion very akin to Concession, as in: (22) However, it might be argued: Why do you need a new academic, scientific discipline in order to find out about language? Has not language been studied for centuries-indeed, thousands of years? (CRY)

An interesting way of incorporating the reader into the flow of writing is by means of the anticipation of Objections. This is the argumentative move called Concession which consists in expressing a temporary Agreement with the antagonist's Thesis, followed by a rejection of it, i.e. an Objection. 7 The dialogue with the reader, whether it be peer/opponent, or simply student is made explicit, we thus hear two voices. Often, though not necessarily, Concession is signalled by linguistic indicators such as indeed and of course. In the following examples indeed signalling Concession has an adversative correlate in the sentence introduced by nonetheless: (23) Firstly, while it is indeed possible to find examples of linguistic investigation which had a permanent value (...) it is nonetheless the case that by far the greater proportion of the work which went on under the heading of language stody had very little relevance to a real understanding of the structure and function of language. (CRY)

The same can be said for of course preluding to the Objection introduced by but: (24) English is a complex enough language without trying to force the complexities of Latin into it. This is not, of course, to deny the existence of genuine points of similarity between any two languages; but such points must always be taken as hypotheses which have to be carefully tested (CRY)

Finally, also the second-person pronoun reveals the presence of the reader in the text. There are some significant occurrences of you as direct form of address in YUL, CRY and 7

An exhaustive discussion of this move, linked to prolepsis, can be found in Mortara-Garavelli (1988/2002).

How Linguists Write about Linguistics

63

WID. The two following examples, although taken f r o m two different textbooks, have very similar contexts. Both authors require f r o m their readers a phonetic exercise, which potentially corresponds to an interruption in the reading. Notably, both instances have the question form, so that the appeal function is reinforced: (25) The children may not have picked up this 'word' from any human source, but, as several commentators have pointed out, they must have heard what the goats were saying. (Remove the kos ending; can you hear the goats?) (YUL) (26) But there are innumerable instances, and English is notorious in this respect, where the sound/spelling relationship is not at all straightforward (how do you pronounce the written word 'sow', how do you write the spoken word /sait/—'cite', 'sight', 'site'?) (WID) Such strategic way of addressing the readership is more typical of face-to-face interaction than of writing. However, it confers immediacy and a spoken-like quality to the text. The same happens in C R Y ' s use of insertions such as if you like: (27) We may firmly believe that God 'invented' language, but without some verifiable evidence, the issue remains outside the realm of science. It is, if you like, pre-scientific. (CRY) But, especially in A K M A , the reader-as-student is clearly the addressee of the message, as can be seen in citations 3 to 6 as opposed to citations 1 and 2 where you stands for the indefinite generic pronoun: Table 7: Concordances of you from AKMA (6 entries in total) 1 g h l y e d u c a t e d people, w i l l tell 2 e language experts who c a n h e l p 3 nguage. This s h o u l d not m i s l e a d 4 c h o s e n E n g l i s h examples so that 5 e c i a l l y in c h a p t e r 5, "Syntax," 6 e a r g u m e n t a t i o n in the chapter,

you you you you you you

that t h e y have o n l y a v a g u e i decide w h e t h e r it is b e t t e r t into s u p p o s i n g that w h a t we s c a n c o n t i n u a l l y check o u r fac will be able to a s s e s s the ac will be in a p o s i t i o n to carr

Indeed, the other numerous second-person pronouns in the rest of the corpus are used to refer to people in general, and could be replaced by the indefinite generic subject one or by inclusive we: (28) While you may inherit brown eyes and dark hair from your parents, you do not inherit their language. You acquire a language in a culture with other speakers and not from parental genes (YUL) Sometimes you corresponds to 'you-readers' and could be translated b y the Italian voi, when occurring in the imperative form or in hypothetical sequences, as was the case for we occurring in what I have called exemplum

flctum:

64

Maria Freddi (29) You take a word - on its own, to begin with - and you alter one of its sounds: if you get a different word thereby - that is, if a speaker of the language tells you the words no longer are the same - then you have a 'minimal pair'. (CRY)

6. Conclusions

To say a word of conclusion, the data from the corpus offer some linguistic evidence of the ways in which the dialogue accounting for the plurality of roles of textbooks, and therefore of textbook writers, is developed. A hybrid genre at the intersection of pedagogic and scientific discourse (cf. Bondi 1999), textbooks are written to fulfil the needs of a heterogeneous audience. Primarily, their authors as expert-teacher address a readership made of non-expert students. Secondly, though at the same time, the author is also an expert addressing other experts, and is presenting his/her own scientific view on the discipline in question and thus addressing the scientific community in which the book is likely to circulate. In other words, because of the multiplicity of voices participating in this dialogue, textbooks can be thought of as a polyphonous genre. Thus basing my analysis of the corpus on the sender-receiver relationship, my claim is that a rhetorical account of the linguistic features of this genre is a function of the role of the readership and the purpose of communication, here pedagogic, more or less popularising, and persuasive. Analysis carried out with Wordsmith Tools has made it possible to at least envisage some stylistic commonalities and/or differences among the various authors as signals of the scientific community's practices.

References

Bondi, Marina (1997): Reported argument in economics textbooks: A meta-pragmatics of argumentative dialogue. - In: B. Caron (ed.) Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Linguists. Amsterdam: Pergamon. - (1999): English Across Genres. Language Variation in the Discourse of Economics. - Modena: II Fiorino. Channel, Joanna (1994): Vague Language. - Oxford: Oxford University Press. - (2000): Corpus-based analysis of evaluative lexis. - In: S. Hunston and G. Thompson (eds.) Evaluation in Text. Authorial stance and the construction of discourse, 38-55. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Flowerdew, John (ed.) (2002): Academic Discourse. - London: Longman.

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Francis, Gill (1993): A Corpus-driven approach to grammar. - In: M. Baker, G. Francis and E. Tognini-Bonelli (eds.) Text and Technology. Studies in Honour of John Sinclair, 137-156. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Halliday, Michael A.K. (1994): An Introduction to Functional Grammar. (2nd edition) - London: Arnold. Hyland, Ken (1999): Talking to students: Metadiscourse in introductory coursebooks. - English for Specific Purposes 18/1, 3-26. - (2000): Disciplinary Discourses: Social interactions in Academic Writing. - London: Longman. - (2002a): Directives: Argument and engagement in academic writing. - Applied Linguistics 23/2, 215-239. - (2002b) What do they mean? Questions in academic writing. - Text 22/4, 529-557. Hunston, Susan (1994): Evaluation and organisation in a sample of written academic discourse. - In: M. Coulthard (ed.) Advances in Written Text Analysis, 191-218. London: Routledge. Ivanic, Roz (1998): Writing and Identity: The Discoursal Construction of Identity in Academic Writing. - Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Mortara-Garavelli, Bice (1988/2002): Manuale di Retorica. - Milano: Bompiani. Myers, Greg (1992): Textbooks and the sociology of scientific knowledge. - English for Specific Purposes 11, 3-17. - (1998): Whereto in the description of academic discourse? - In: P. Evangelisti Allori (ed.) Academic Discourse in Europe, 147-150. Roma: Bulzoni. Scott, Mike (1996): WordSmith Tools. Version 2.0. - Oxford: Oxford University Press. - (1997): PC analysis of Key Words and Key Key Words. - System 25/2, 233-245. - (2000): Focusing on the text and its keywords. - In: L. Burnard and T. McEnery (eds.) Rethinking Language Pedagogy from a Corpus Perspective, 103-121. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Swales, John et al. (1998): Consider this: The role of imperatives in scholarly writing. - Applied Linguistics 19/1, 97-121. Ventola, Eija and Mauranen, Anna (eds.) (1996): Academic Writing: Intercultural and Textual Issues. - Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Ventola, Eija (ed.) (2000): Discourse and Community: Doing Functional Linguistics. - Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Williams, Joseph Μ. (2003): Style: Ten lessons in clarity and grace. (7th edition) - London: Longman.

Corpus Aitchinson, Jean (1995): Linguistics. An Introduction. - London: Hodder and Stoughton. Akmajian, Adrian, et al. (1997): Linguistics. An Introduction to Language and Communication. (4th edition) - Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Brown, Keith (1984): Linguistics Today. - London: Fontana. Crystal, David (1990): Linguistics. (2nd edition) - London: Penguin. Robins, Robert H. (1989): General Linguistics. An Introductory Survey. (4th edition) - London: Longman. Wallwork, J.F. (1985): Language and Linguistics. (2nd edition) - London: Heinemann, Widdowson, Henry G. (1996): Linguistics. - Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yule, George (1996): The Study of Language. (2nd edition) - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti Editorial Strategies and Metadiscourse in Marshall's "Elements of Economics of Industry"*

1. Introduction

A literary approach to the study of economics texts, particularly the classics, has recently developed with the aim to investigate the nature of economics writing and language. The stimulating and influential work was The Rhetoric of Economics

by Donald Mc Closkey

(1985), which established the opportunity of applying insight from the field of literary criticism to economics. Mc Closkey brought attention to the rhetorical structure of economics texts and the introduction of his ideas opened up a new field of enquiry for economists and applied linguists. Both have since devoted their attention to the investigation of economic discourse and important contributions have followed which enable us to understand how economics texts work (Henderson, Dudley-Evans 1990; Henderson, DudleyEvans, Backhouse 1993). Among the many literary perspectives from which it is possible to study economic texts, the investigation of the writer's style seems particularly fruitful when applied to 19thcentury economics given the strict relationship attributed, in this period, to the exposition of theory and the personality of the writer. Intellectual culture was not split by academic specialisation and style was a concern for many economics writers; in fact, economists, both theoreticians and popularisers, had to do with literary writing to express economic ideas for different types of audiences - mathematisation was still to come. Henderson, in particular, has emphasised the literariness of 19th-century economics and has successfully attempted to delineate its stylistic tradition in several essays, mostly devoted to non 'canonised' authors, 1 which are collected in a volume Economics

as Literature

(1995). Today

the language and rhetoric of economics is again a concern for economists (Klamer,

*

1

An earlier version of this paper was presented at a conference on "Institutional Linguistics" held in Bologna, in April (1998). For an explanation of the concept of canonisation of economics writers see Brown (1993) and (1994).

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Mc Closkey, Solow 1988; McCloskey 1994) and the persuasive dimension of economics writing in connection with style has been examined in many a modern classic.2 Though the establishment of economics as an academic discipline and professional community in the decades after 1870 is in no small part the result of Marshall's successful efforts - due to his tactical skill and tenacity as well as to his eloquence (Maloney 1985: 24) - a full study of Marshall as writer is still lacking. Sparse observations on his writing are contained in essays dealing with other subjects; for example Henderson (1995: 149150) makes an interesting comparison between Edgeworth and Marshall contrasting the simple and polished prose of the latter with the imaginative and nearly allegorical style of the former, Marshall's frequent use of analogies and metaphors has been studied (Mirowski 1989; Limoges and Menard 1994). Muir (1995) speaks of Marshallese to describe the prose style which characterises the Principles and makes use of stylistic criteria for authorship attribution.3 Nevertheless a comprehensive stylistic analysis of Marshall is yet to be undertaken, albeit advocated (Henderson 1995: 150). A full appreciation of style is particularly important for reading Marshall given the literariness of the Principles and his concern for the educational aspect of his work. He is part of the mainstream tradition of literary economics - beginning with Adam Smith and culminating with Keynes - whose representatives were well aware of the importance of the rhetorical-persuasive dimension of writing. Marshall himself, the leading figure in the professionalisation of economics by the end of the 19th century, had one eye on the economics profession and the other on the general public (Henderson 1995: 5-6). Indeed, the attainment of professional consensus under his leadership became one of his long-term career objectives (Coats 1990: 161) thus reinforcing his concern for the audience he wished to address. Such an approach makes his work particularly apt to be analysed from the stylistic point of view. The importance of Marshall for the pedagogy of economics has been stressed by Mirowski (1990: 83) who writes: "The (perhaps unpopular) point to be made here is that Marshall should not be regarded as a discoverer of anything nor an original theorist of any stripe in the light of the history of neoclassical theory; he was first and foremost a textbook writer, apopulariser and synthesiser of contradictory doctrines." 2

For instance the "The General Theory" by Keynes (Rossini Favretti 1989, Marzola and Silva 1990 and Henderson 1995).

3

She demonstrates the attribution of the second edition of the Economics of Industry to Marshall by means of changes in style notable in the rewriting of the few passages altered for the second edition, which resulted in the exclusion of the co-author of the first edition, Mary Paley Marshall. She explains the importance of style for her methodology: "Looking at selected passages in the book I hope to prove my point by showing differences in the discourse of the two editions, in both stylistics and content - "how" the work is written as well as "what" is written."

69

Editorial Strategies and Metadiscourse in Marshall From the rhetorical point of view it is undisputed that Marshall's Principles

play an impor-

tant role in the textual construction of academic economics: their rhetorical programme gave order to the past, so as to establish a shared present that was to be the basis for coordinated future work. 4

2. Principles of Economics and Elements of Economics

Alfred Marshall (on his life and complex personality see Groenewegen 1995) had a strong sense of professional obligation as an academic writer and was very much concerned with popularising and systematising economics. Only after writing his larger treatise he thought he might be ready to write a short popular treatise. Actually the proposed order was inverted by circumstances; his first completed work is a short account called Economics Industry,

of

a small textbook designed as a manual for use by Cambridge University exten-

sion lectures (simplified for working-class readers); this textbook was published in 1879 in collaboration with his wife Mary Paley (on the co-authorship of this text see Muir 1995). Marshall published the book on which his fame chiefly rests, Principles

of Economics,

in

1890 at the age of forty-eight and continued to revise it at intervals during the remainder of his life. The eighth and last edition appeared in 1920, only four years before his death, but we can say that, by the fifth edition, 1907, the treatise had reached what was virtually its final form (Guillebaud 1961, II). His other major works were also written late in life: Industry and Trade (1919) and Money Credit and Commerce of his short textbook entitled Elements

of Economics

(1923). In 1892 a new edition

of Industry

was published; this suc-

cessful textbook (about 400 pages, last reprint 1964) is derived from the Principles will supersede completely the previous Economics

of industry

and

(Becattini 1981: 16-17).

The scope of the volume and the editorial procedure followed in deriving the textbook from the longer treatise is best described in Marshall's words (Elements 1932: V): This volume is an attempt to adapt the first volume of my Principles of Economics to the needs of junior students. The necessary abridgement has been effected not by systematic compression so much as by the omission of many discussions on points of minor importance, and of some difficult theoretical investigations. For it seemed that the difficulty of an argument would be increased rather than diminished by curtailing it and leaving out some of its steps. The argumentative parts of the Princi-

4

On the textual construction and maintenance of professional communities see Bazerman and Paradis (1991).

Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti

70

pies are therefore as a rule either reproduced in full or omitted altogether; reference in the latter case being sometimes made to the corresponding places in the longer treatise. Notes and discussions of a literary character have generally been omitted. As w e can see a very close connection between the two works is established by Marshall himself, the shorter being derived f r o m the longer one by a procedure that today w e would perhaps label as 'cut and paste'. 5 However, though the first impression w e receive in reading parallel samples of the two works is that they are written in the same style, there are important differences, which linguistic analysis can highlight. For the purposes of this paper, I will focus only on one aspect of his style, that which best reflects his construction of the intended audience and his assumption of the role of teacher: the use of metadiscourse. Both in his Principles

and Elements

Marshall nearly manages to reduce to one the dou-

ble obligation usually confronting the academic writer: the internal obligation, that is to communicate with the expert reader, and the external obligation, that is to communicate with the non-specialist reader (Nash 1990). In his works the two audiences nearly merge. H e admits of differences between the language of scientific treatises, which should contain analysis and general reasoning, and ordinary conversation (Principles 1961,1: 37), but his basic communicative philosophy is that economics should be intelligible to the general public and consequently be written in a simple language which very much resembles "ordinary conversation". As to this point, he expresses his opinion in m a n y places; for instance, speaking about the difficulties of economic terminology, he writes (Principles 1961,1: 51): Our task is difficult. In physical sciences indeed, whenever it is seen that a group of things have a certain set of qualities in common, and will often be spoken of together, they are formed into a class with a special name; and as soon as a new notion emerges, a new technical term emerges to represent it. But economics cannot venture to follow this example. Its reasonings must be expressed in language that is intelligible to the general public; it must therefore endeavour to conform itself to the familiar terms of every-day life, so far as possible must use them as they are commonly used. In fact Marshall was very desirous for his Principles

to be widely circulated among the

educated lay public, in particular business men, and, therefore, omitted much that he regarded as of purely theoretical interest. He also avoided the use of mathematical language in the main text in that he considered it a hindrance to communication; his ideas on the role of mathematics, which was beginning to be considered a feature of economics as a science (Mirowski 1988), are contained in the preface to the first edition (Principles

5

1961,1: X):

See also Becattini (1981: 16): "Dai Principles, lavorando di forbici e colla , Marshall ricava, nel 1892, un nuovo Elements of Economics of Industry".

Editorial Strategies

and Metadiscourse

in

Marshall

71

The chief use of pure mathematics in economic questions seems to be in helping a person to write down quickly, shortly and exactly, some of his thoughts for his own use: and to make sure that he has enough, and only enough, premises for his conclusions (i.e. that his equations are neither more nor less in number than his unknown). But when a great many symbols have to be used, they become very laborious to any one but the writer himself.

The complexity of Marshallian style is better understood by an analysis of the Principles rather than the Elements', nevertheless this latter work is interesting in that it highlights his idea of a text explaining economics to 'junior students', specifically intended then as a textbook. It has been observed that economics textbooks tend to hide the dialogic nature of economics (Klamer 1990), that is the debate within the scientific community is reduced to a monologue, but we can say that a different type of dialogue is established, that between teacher and student ,6 Since the aim of this paper is to identify and describe in some detail the main strategies adopted by Marshall to transform a 'conversation' 7 into an educational dialogue, I think that the comparative analysis of the "Introductory Book" in both Marshallian texts is particularly suited to shed light on the interactional nature of didactic discourse because it is in introductions that the contract between writer and reader is established.

3. Theoretical background: Metadiscourse

In the next section I will compare some extracts taken from Principles of Economics with the corresponding sections in Elements of Economics of Industry primarily in order to investigate how Marshall chose to address different readerships 8 . However, it is necessary, first, to define metadiscourse and, second, to give at least a brief outline of the use of metadiscourse in the main treatise as a component of Marshall's style. We will see that Marshall's stance as writer is authoritative; it has been noted that this is the result of the

6 7

8

On the plurality of voices in economics textbooks see Bondi Paganelli 1998. The term "conversation" used by Mc Closkey (1985) to refer to the argumentative nature of economics is also used by Marshall as a metaphor for the method followed by the economist; he writes ("Principles" 1961, I: 20): "He [the economist] follows the course of ordinary conversation, differing from it only in taking more precautions to make clear the limits of his knowledge as he goes. He reaches his provisional conclusions by observations of men in general under given conditions without attempting to fathom the mental and spiritual characteristics of individuals." The text analysed in this paper is Elements of Economics of Industry (being the first volume of Elements of Economics) printed in 1932, being a reprint of the third edition 1899.

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Augustan tone of his prose which gives an impression of authority, balance and reasonableness (Muir 1995). This impression is certainly due to a syntactic structuring made up of long and complex sentences containing subordinate and coordinate. His style is apparently the same in both texts because the sections included in the textbook are derived nearly verbatim

f r o m the "Principles" nevertheless the omissions and rewritings are quite

interesting in that they reveal his rhetorical strategies in consideration of the shift in intended readers. The analysis will be qualitative rather than quantitative, being an aspect of wider research into Marshall's style as academic writer. Apart from the fact that a study of a larger corpus is beyond the scope of this paper, I think that a detailed comparison of the introductory books allows for a relatively systematic analytic focus on metadiscursive patterns in Marshall. Metadiscourse is the complex of linguistic and rhetorical devices used by authors to comment on texts they write and keep readers informed of the rationale of composition, to explain the reasons and principles on which their practice is based (Crismore and Farnsworth 1990: 118). In a nutshell, it is the linguistic and rhetorical manifestation of the author's presence in the text. Metadiscourse and related strategies, in fact, are not an inherent property of text but a product of writer-reader communication since the linguistic expressions used get their meaning through the response they produce in readers; 9 consequently any alteration in audience correlates with variation in linguistic expressions. In addition to this constraint, the use of metadiscourse may also depend on the personality of the writer, that is how he chooses to interact, which persona he wants to present to readers, the friendly/competitive colleague or the friendly/authoritative teacher. There is a variety of metadiscursive types, which involve both the textual function of language or the interpersonal function (as defined by Halliday 1985), and they have been used by authors f r o m different countries and cultures. As shown by Crismore (1989) there is a long tradition of use of metadiscourse: a survey of written texts reveals that authors from different cultures, writing in different time periods, disciplines, and genres, use metadiscourse. Metadiscourse is in fact a basic aspect of any communication, its main function being to direct the communicators' attention to the matter at hand and to take into account the relationship that exists between the communicators. Recently there has been increasing interest in linguistic research on the use of metadiscourse in academic writing (Vande Kopple 1985, Fahnestock 1986, Crismore 1989, Crismore, Farnsworth 1990, Vande Kopple 1997) and the potential importance of metadis-

9

On the rhetorical exploitation of metadiscursive devices see Crismore (1989). In particular on the effects of metadiscourse on readers see Crismore and Vande Kopple (1997).

Editorial Strategies and Metadiscourse

in Marshall

73

course for conveying knowledge in treatises and textbooks has been suggested by scholars in different disciplines. Rhetoricians and communicators believe that metadiscouse can guide and direct readers through a text by helping them understand the text itself and the author's perspective. As for textbooks the use of metadiscourse varies historically. Modern economics textbooks demand for scientific precision has led scholars to appreciate exactitude and objectivity in writing, mostly obtained by excluding the authorial personality in favour of an impersonal stance. However, this opinion should be modified in the light of recent research because, despite the fact that the quest for clarity and objectivity still seems to be a necessary feature of good scientific writing, some studies have demonstrated that contemporary "academese" is far from devoid of rhetorical strategies (see Nash 1990). In any case, towards the end of the 19th century the avoidance of subjectivity and literariness was not a matter of concern for the academic writer and particularly so for Marshall, whose personality is certainly present in his Principles in all its contrasting aspects.10 In fact Marshall makes extensive use of devices for engaging readers often mixing the two basic functions of metadiscourse, the textual and the interpersonal: he draws attention to the acts of discourse, he alerts readers to various degrees of certainty and guides their reading by frequent previews and reviews of referential material. Many specific classifications of metadiscursive devices have been presented by linguists, all within the broad functional classification identified by Halliday, the textual and the interpersonal. As to economics texts, they also use metalanguage in both functions: on the referential, informative plane, when it serves to direct the reader towards an understanding of the primary discourse message, referring to text and book structure and to the writer, to discourse actions and purposes; on the expressive, attitudinal plane when it serves to direct readers towards an understanding of the author's perspective or stance towards the content or structure of the primary discourse. These metadiscursive goals are fulfilled by a variety of linguistic expressions, ranging from one word to full sentences, which have been variously classified. I will follow the taxonomy proposed by Vande Kopple in 1985 and revised in 1997 to give a cursory description of the devices most frequently used by academic writers. According to Vande Kopple there are two groups of textual devices: connectives and code glosses. In the first group we find sequence indicators, logical connectives, and topicalizers, that is elements that help the reader to connect blocks of text to each other; in the second group we find parenthetical definitions or proposed interpretations, that is glosses which help readers to 10

See for example the statement by Maloney (1985: 199) that Marshall the private citizen appeared constantly throughout the Principles. See also "A man for all Seasons - and None: the Enigma of Marshall's Character" in Groenewegen (1995: 766-794).

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better understand the text. These elements are very common in Marshall as in any other academic writer, but what is perhaps more interesting for the present analysis is the use of interpersonal devices, of which Vande Kopple identifies four groups: illocution markers, which identify speech acts performed by the writer; epistemology markers, that is indicators of modality, hedges or evidentials, all elements which assess the degree of certainty of the propositional content or the degree of commitment of the author to that assessment; attitude markers used to reveal the writer's attitude towards the propositional content; and bits of commentary, that is evaluative words and sentences whose effect is to establish an implicit dialogue. To refine our analytic tools it is necessary to add the discourse framing function as defined by Nash (1990: 24), that is the statement, at the beginning of an article or section of an article, of its proposed content (e.g. "In this study I propose to examine[...]") which is an aspect of the metacommentary function which steers the reader through the text and also establishes an interpersonal relationship between the writer, expository I/We, and the reader, explicit or implicit You. Similar statements can be found at the end of a section as a concluding coda. Both framing devices rhetorically organise the discourse: they have the effect of presenting the text as a piece of interpersonal communication with the aim of involving the reader. Various definitions and classifications of metadiscursive functions and devices proposed by scholars overlap to some degree because, as Barton (1995) suggests, there are texts where some kinds of metadiscourse may fulfill functions both in the interpersonal and textual domains. It is particularly difficult to separate these two aspects in Marshall's Principles because of his subtle exploitation of these devices. His style reflects his desire to present himself as an authoritative writer and at the same time to captivate his reader. For the purposes of this paper, what is relevant is not to classify exactly the devices used by Marshall, but to underline the fact that he makes extensive use of metalinguistic expressions to establish a sort of 'conversation', on the one hand, with past economists frequently mentioned or quoted to assert a continuity in the tradition of economic thought;11 on the other, with a contemporary audience to affirm the importance of economics as an academic discipline and professional occupation. Such a vast rhetorical programme could not be attained without metadiscourse. A few examples will illustrate the wide range of metadiscursive strategies employed by Marshall in his Principles. References to the content and structure of his text are particu-

11

Dialogue with predecessors is an important rhetorical feature of the Principles, with in this paper.

though not dealt

Editorial Strategies and Metadiscourse in Marshall

75

larly frequent in introductory sections, as we can see in the following paragraph from the beginning of chapter III of Book V (.Principles: 337): We have next to inquire what causes govern supply prices, that is prices which dealers are willing to accept for different amounts. In the last chapter we looked at the affairs of only a single day; and supposed the stocks offered for sale to be already in existence. But of course these stocks are dependent on the amount of wheat sown in the preceding year; and that, in its turn, was largely influenced by farmers' guesses as to the price which they would get for it in this year. This is the point at which we have to work in the present chapter.

As we can see the textual plane is in the foreground in this opening paragraph, which mainly consists of previews and reviews of content, but the use of interactional devices such as inclusive we, illocutionary markers such as "inquire, look at, suppose, work with", the evidential "of course", modals expressing deontic requirement both in the opening and closing sentences, all point to a strategy of politeness on the part of the writer in order to establish common ground with the reader. The whole text is interspersed with textual indications, not infrequently informal and reader-friendly, such as (348): "But it may be well to say a word or two here on this last point". Another textual device frequently used is code glossing. See, for example, how Marshall gives a definition (,Principles: 341); after a full paragraph devoted to the practical illustration of a principle, he concludes "We may call this, for convenience of reference, The Principle of Substitution". As we can see the definition is not straightforward, the reader is involved in the responsibility of defining the concept illustrated as the principle of substitution (we), the act of defining is modalized ("may call") and delimited by a gloss indicating strict interpretation ("for convenience of reference") which also functions as a shield, that is a modality marker delimiting the validity truth of the proposition in order to avoid possible criticism. The modern reader will be struck by the tentativeness of the definition; as a matter of fact, illocutionary markers and claims are normally hedged in the Principles', see for instance, the following examples: "But taking a broader view, we may consider that[...]; the supply price[...]may for some purposes be divided up[...]; yet all such incidents may be ignored, so far as the general reasoning of this Book are concerned; thus we may conclude that, as a general rule,[...]". Indeed, information is rarely asserted by Marshall; on the contrary, it is usually embedded in a frame of metalinguistic expressions which contribute to the impression of polite dialogue we get in reading the Principles. Examples of commentary are also very frequent (Principles: 347): "This is the real drift ofthat much quoted and much-misunderstood doctrine of Adam Smith". In many cases the reader is involved in an apparently commonsensical commentary, 12 which mixes common 12

On the rhetorical exploitation of common sense see Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1976). On

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Gabriella Del Lungo

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lore and scientific observation, mostly given in modalized and hedged terms. Note, in the following extract, the use of the evidential appears which reinforces the epistemic modality of may by attributing information to sensory experience rather than a logical basis (Principles'. 348): "But we cannot foresee the future perfectly. The unexpected may happen; and the existing tendencies may be modified before they have had time to accomplish what appears now to be their full and complete work." A very common attitude marker is a clause such as "It is true that; It has now become certain that; it must be admitted indeed that; It is not indeed necessary for our argument that[...]" mostly introducing a concession to the opponent to be refuted by a subsequent But. Rather than to shed light on the writer's attitude towards the truth validity of the proposition, these sentences are rhetorically used as a framing device to signal to the reader the beginning of an argument, which very often follows the basic structure "counterclaim/claim". In fact, Marshall's opinion is advanced only after different opinions have been presented; thus we can say that it is a device to mitigate his claims or to shield them from objections. In fact the basic argumentative structure used by Marshall, though extremely amplified by qualifications and often expressed by a highly complex syntactic organization, is the adversative one, which is also one of the most frequently used to argue colloquially in a friendly way. See for example: It is true that there may be some slight irregularities. The drifting from one trade to another must occupy time; and some trades may for a while get more than their normal share of the earningsstream, while others get less, or even lack work. But in spite of these disturbances, the current value of everything will fluctuate about its normal value; which will in this case, as in the preceding, depend simply on the amount of labour spent on the thing: for the normal value of all kinds of labour will still be equal. (Principles of Economics: 512)

or: It is indeed possible that a true equilibrium may be arrived at under a system of barter; but barter, though earlier in history than buying and selling, is in some ways intricate; and the simplest cases of a true equilibrium value are found in the markets of a more advanced state of civilization. (Principles of Economics: 332)

or: It is often said that the modern forms of industrial life are distinguished from the earlier by being more competitive. But this account is not quite satisfactory. (Principles of Economics: 5)

the relationship between common sense and scientific ideas see Billig (1995). Dardi (1984) has noted that according to Marshall common sense is the guiding principle both of economic theory and ordinary economic practice.

Editorial Strategies and Metadiscourse in Marshall

77

Modality is mostly used by Marshall in truly hypothetical and methodological contexts; however, it is also an important aspect of style.13 Necessity is normally used by Marshall to express logical deduction in reasoning, but it is also put forward to strengthen or soften a claim, particularly when accompanied by an emphatic or an element delimiting or mitigating its meaning (326): "A thing which is so bulky that its price is necessarily raised very much when it is sold far away from the place in which it is produced, must as a rule have a narrow market". Modality is very often used by Marshall in harmonic combinations, where an adverb of similar meaning reinforces the modal in expressions such as "may perhaps, would probably", but he also uses combinations where the meaning of the modal is variously modified, e.g. "may for some purposes, it is of course necessary, may in a sense, must as a rule[...]". To conclude this section, we can say that Marshall uses metadiscourse in both its textual and interpersonal aspects in the Principles. But why? The first type, textual metadiscourse, is easily explained in terms of Marshall's determination to write a reader-friendly text, to present his discipline to a public wider than the academic one; the explanation of the extensive use of the second type, interpersonal metadiscourse, is more complex and must necessarily remain tentative. It may be an expression of the ethos of caution and humility in line with one aspect of his personality. However it could also be a strategy to assert his academic status, which again would be in line with another aspect of his personality; 14 in fact, as Crismore and Farnsworth (1989) have observed scientific writers probably gain credibility through notes of tentativeness. Having briefly sketched the use of the main metadiscursive devices used by Marshall in the Principles, let's now turn to the relationship between Principles and Elements. The collation of some passages will, 1 hope, make clear that this relationship is not simply one of abridgement.

13

The importance of modality in scientific texts has been underlined by Butler (1990: 138); according to this scholar modal verbs are among the most powerful devices available in English for the presentation of conclusions with a range of subtle gradations in strength and confidence. Moreover they are essential to the scientific proccss of hypothesis and argumentation. On modality as a stylistic strategy see Simpson (1990). Groenewegen thinks that Marshall's personality is reflected in the Principles and is well aware of the contradictory aspects of his personality. He writes (1995: 784): "Aspects of Marshall's method of communicating the Principles in combination with his writing style tell as much about his own character as about the character-moulding intentions of his major book." He also defines Marshall's attitude to other economists as excessively modest and patronising at the same time and notes that various roles can be attributed to Marshall: the moralist, the preacher and the scientist.

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4. The analysis

In this section passages taken from the Principles and the Elements have been contrasted in order to highlight the main differences. Extracts from the Principles are on the left side and corresponding passages from the Elements are on the right side of the page.

Extract la

Extract lb

Principles, Book I, Chap.II, 15. Elements, Book I, Chap.III, 20: It is essential to note that the economist does not claim to measure any affection of the mind in itself or directly; but only indirectly through its effect. No one can compare and measure accurately against one another even his own mental states at different times; and no one can measure the mental states of another at all except indirectly and conjecturately by their effects. Of course various affections belong to man's higher nature and others to his lower , and are thus different in kind. But even if we confine our attention to mere physical pleasures and pains of the same kind, we find that they can only be compared indirectly by their effects. In fact, even this comparison is necessarily to some extent conjectural, unless they occur to the same person at the same time. For instance, the pleasures which two persons derive from smoking cannot be directly compared: nor can even those which the same person derives from it at different times. But if we find a man in doubt whether to spend a few pence on a cigar, or a cup of tea, or on riding home instead of walking home, then we may follow ordinary usage and say that he expects from them equal pleasures. If then we wish to compare even physical gratifications, we must do it not directly, but indirectly by the incentives which they afford to action. If the desires to secure either of two pleasures will induce people in similar circumstances each to do just an hour's extra work, or will induce men in the same rank of life and with the same means each to pay a shilling for it; wc then may say that those pleasures are equal for our purposes, because the desires for them are equally strong incentives to action for persons under similar conditions.

For instance.

if we find a man in doubt whether to spend a few pence on a cigar, or a cup of tea, or on riding home instead of walking home, then we may follow ordinary usage, and say that he expects from them equal gratifications. Again if we find that the desires to secure either of two gratifications will induce men in similar circumstances each to do just an hour's extra work, or will induce men in the same rank of life and with the same means each to pay a shilling for it, we then may say that those gratifications are equal.

Editorial

Strategies and Metadiscourse

in

Marshall

79

In extract la, an initial framing device introduces an argumentative passage where Marshall takes into consideration the conjectural nature of comparing data so subjective as the "affections of the mind". Many voices concur to this conclusion: "the economist" is generalized into "no one" and then again specified as "we". A counterclaim, supposedly on the part of the reader but given as an unspecified source, is introduced by the evidential "of course" and then contrasted by the author's position introduced by But and attributed to we, which could express either the authorial writer or both reader and writer. The writer's position is reinforced by a final generalisation introduced by the logical connector "In fact", which presents the conclusion in the form of deduction. The illocution marker "For instance" signals the illustration of the concept of incommensurability. This introductory passage shows many linguistic markers which foster a dialogical, participatory relationship with the text: the use of the first person pronoun and of emphatics and hedges, particularly in the concluding section, where the final remark is presented so tentatively that it is difficult to imagine a less straightforward assertion. In addition the illustrative passages are not exactly the same in both texts: in the Elements (lb) only the examples are reported, while in the Principles (la) these are embedded in a generalising framework, composed of a general case followed by a concrete example, another general statement followed by a concrete example and a concluding comment which delimits the conclusion reached. In the Elements (lb), on the other hand, only the two examples are reported, excluding the more argumentative and speculative sections, amply modalized and qualified. Moreover the partial rewriting of the example is interesting in that it shows the adaptation to a readership of different socio-economic status: the word pleasures is consistently substituted with gratifications and the doubt "whether to spend a few pence on a cigar, or a cup of tea, or on riding home instead of walking home" is significantly reduced to the first two alternatives. Extract 2a

Extract 2b

Principles, Book I, Chap.II, 19: Elements, Book I, Chap.Ill, 21: Next we must take account of the fact that a Again the desire to earn a shilling is a much stronger incentive will be required to induce a stronger motive to a poor man with whom person to pay a given price for anything if he is money is scarse than to a rich one. A rich man in poor than if he is rich. A shilling is the measure doubt... of less pleasure, or satisfaction of any kind, to a rich man than to a poor one. A rich man in doubt...

In this second example we can see that in the Principles (2a) the generalisation preceding the illustration is introduced by a modalised framing device which establishes a relationship between writer and reader expressed by the use of inclusive we. This relationship is completely absent in the passage from the Elements (2b). We can also note that the rewrit-

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i n g o f t h e p a s s a g e r e s u l t s in f e w e r a n d l e s s a b s t r a c t w o r d s (e.g. t h e i n t r o d u c i n g s e q u e n c e i n d i c a t o r next

b e c o m e s t h e m o r e c o l l o q u i a l again),

syntactic simplification and

more

straightforward presentation of information. Extract 3 a Extract 3 b Principles, Book I, chap.II, 25: Elements, Book I, chap.IV, 27: Perhaps the earlier English economists confined The earlier English economists paid almost extheir attention too much to the motives of indi- clusive attention to the motives of individual vidual action. But in fact economists, like all action. But it must not be forgotten that econoother students of social science, are concerned mists, like all other students of social science, with individuals chiefly as members of the so- are concerned with individuals chiefly as memcial organism. As a cathedral... bers of the social organism. A s a cathedral... Almost every point touched in the present chapter will need to be discussed in fuller detail with reference to some one or more of the leading problems of economics.

In t h i s t h i r d e x a m p l e w e c a n see that, w h i l e t h e i n t r o d u c t o r y s t a t e m e n t is p r e s e n t e d in a v e r y t e n t a t i v e w a y in t h e Principles

(3a), in t h e Elements

( 3 b ) t h e s a m e p r o p o s i t i o n is m o r e

s t r o n g l y asserted. T h e evidential " i n f a c t " w h i c h p r e s e n t s t h e c o u n t e r c l a i m a s b a s e d o n f a c t u a l d e d u c t i o n (it c o u l d b e p a r a p h r a s e d as "it is a f a c t t h a t " ) is s u b s t i t u t e d in t h e

Elements

( 3 b ) b y a m o r e c o l l o q u i a l f r a m i n g d e v i c e "it m u s t n o t b e f o r g o t t e n " . B o t h t e x t s t h e n exp l a i n t h e m e t a p h o r o f t h e social o r g a n i s m i l l u s t r a t i n g its f u n c t i o n i n g w i t h t h e s a m e c o m p a r i s o n b e t w e e n a c a t h e d r a l a n d t h e l i f e o f society. O n l y in t h e Principles

(3 a), h o w e v e r ,

t h e r e is a n a m p l i f i c a t i o n o f t h e c o m p a r i s o n a n d a final f r a m i n g d e v i c e w h i c h s i g n a l s a p r e v i e w to t h e r e a d e r . M o r e o v e r t h e t e x t o f t h e Principles l a c k i n g in t h e Elements

( 3 a ) h a s a f i n a l s u m m a r y , w h i c h is

(3b). T h e s e o m i s s i o n s i n d i c a t e that s o m e t i m e s t e x t u a l m e t a d i s -

c o u r s e is a l s o cut b y M a r s h a l l .

Extract 4a Principles, Book 1; chap.Ill, 35-36: Lastly it is sometimes erroneously supposed that normal action in economics is that which is right morally. But that is to be understood only when the context implies that the action is being judged from the ethical point of view . When we are considering the facts of the world as they are, and not as they ought to be, we shall have to regard as "normal" to the circumstances in view, much action which we should use our utmost effort to stop. For instance, the normal condition of many of the very poorest inhabitants of a large town is to be devoid of enterprise, and unwilling to avail themselves of the opportunities that may offer for a healthier and less squalid

Extract 4b Elements, Book I, chap.IV, 27: Normal action is not always morally right; very often it is action which w e should use our utmost efforts to stop.

For instance, the normal condition of many of the very poorest inhabitants of a large town is to be devoid of enterprise, and unwilling to avail themselves of the opportunities that may offer for a healthier and less squalid life elsewhere;

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life elsewhere; they have not the strength , they have not the strength, physical, mental and physical, mental and moral, required for work- moral, required for working their way out of ing their way out of their miserable surround- their miserable surroundings. The existence of a ings. The existence of a considerable supply of considerable supply of labour ready to make labour ready to make match-boxes at a very low match-boxes at a very low rate is normal in the rate is normal in the same way that a contortion same way that a contortion of the limbs is a of the limbs is a normal result of taking strych- normal result of taking strychnine. It is one renine. It is one result, a deplorable result, of those sult, a deplorable result, of the action of those tendencies the laws of which we have to study. laws which we have to study. This illustrates one peculiarity which economics shares with a few other sciences, the nature of the material of which can be modified by human effort. Science may suggest a moral or practical precept to modify that nature and thus modify the action of law of nature. For instance, economics may suggest...

In extract 4 the example is reported verbatim in the Elements (4b), while the opening generalisation is reduced to a categorical assertion, which sharply contrasts with the rhetorically elaborate passage in the Principles (4a). Following his frequent argumentative pattern Marshall introduces his opinion only after a counterclaim, which is presented as "an erroneous supposition" and after a code gloss explaining that this opinion should be further delimited ("But that is to be understood only"), then his point of view is presented in qualified terms, following a strategy of delaying important information. Also in this case we can note the strategy frequently adopted by Marshall to stress the contrast of positions by using the personal voice we to express his point of view, after objections have been presented in the impersonal voice ("it is supposed; it is to be understood"). Following the example introduced by "For instance" we have a final section in the Principles (4a), where Marshall openly expresses his opinion, which is lacking in the Elements (4b). This passage is a good illustration of the procedure adopted by Marshall for editing the Elements (4b): very often hedged and qualified statements are reduced to impersonal statements of facts or of proposed content.

5. Concluding remarks

It is now time to put forward some conclusions. In this paper a comparison has been drawn between the Principles and the Elements in order to consider the strategy adopted by Marshall to adapt his main treatise to a text for "junior students". The analysis presented in this paper, though limited to a few extracts, is part of larger study of Marshall's style; moreover

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the passages here included represent a fairly good illustration so that it is possible to draw a number of conclusions from the comparative examination of the two texts. In fact, though - because of the small size of the corpus here analysed - these conclusions must be seen as preliminary observations, they do suggest interesting aspects of Marshall's style as an academic writer. The first observation is that argumentative sections are either cut or rewritten in a more colloquial and straightforward form. A second observation is that rewriting results in syntactic simplification. A third, and most important observation, is that metadiscourse is consistently omitted, particularly interpersonal metadiscourse. The main consequence is that the rhetoric of conversation which is such a striking characteristic of the Principles

is absent f r o m the Elements.

If we go back to the description given

by Marshall himself of the procedure followed in editing the Elements

(see page 3 above),

we can say that his statement that the argumentative parts are either reproduced in full or omitted, doesn't fully explain his editorial strategy. I think that the most important aspect is perhaps the omission of metadiscourse and it is interesting to understand w h y this is so. The reason is probably functional: Marshall had a very clear idea of the implied readership of treatises and textbooks and of different ways to address them. It is m y opinion that the major difference between the two texts, apart from the cutting of parts of the treatise, lies in the different interactional strategies adopted by Marshall. The basic interactional strategy of the Principles

is that of balancing strengthening and

weakening devices. Marshall never uses the strategy of self-criticism and pessimism by qualifying his claim through a parenthetical admission of weakness. On the contrary, his main strategy is to present his position, though hedged, only after possible objections and counterclaims have been presented; the main effect of this delay is to focus his position and thus to enhance its relevance (end-weight principle). Thus his position is, I would say, that of the authoritative writer. This stance, however, is mitigated b y his "rhetoric of conversation", to present information in a sort of polite dialogue with readers, as readerfriendly, and this is attained by using interpersonal metadiscourse. Economic knowledge, in the Principles,

is not given as the product of contrast and competition, but as the result

of a long tradition of economic thought and polite conversation with readers. The rhetorical strategy adopted in the Elements,

on the other hand, is completely different. The omis-

sion of metadiscursive devices results in the suppression of the authorial personality and the promotion of the subject, inhibiting any attempt at direct conversational dealing between writer and reader. This choice together with the simplification of syntactic structures and the use of less abstract words is possibly linked to the status of the reader as student and the connected stance of the writer as teacher. A textbook for "junior students" asks nothing of the audience except to accept what they are told, while the treatise, in some ways, involves the reader in appealing for judgement, inviting consent or attempting to keep anticipated objections at a distance. Generally speaking the parallel analysis suggests

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that the editorial strategy adopted by Marshall finds a textual justification: different rhetorical strategies correlate with different functions of the texts and different communicative situations. This conclusion is supported by recent research in metalinguistic analysis of textbooks and scientific writing. Several scholars (Fahnestock 1986, Carter 1990, Crismore and Farnsworth 1990) have found that most science authors remove hedges and qualifications when they write for the general public in order to confer greater certainty on the reported facts or events. Also specific research in textbooks points to the same direction: Non textbooks use more informational and attitudinal metadiscourse than textbooks (Crismore 1989: 181) and these, because of their functions of explanation and didactic aim, present knowledge in less qualified terms (Butler 1990). Moreover, hedging strategies are used by academic writers for politeness reasons (Myers 1989), but, as suggested by Meyer (1997), they are also employed for face-saving strategies, that is to try to make their statements impregnable in order to save their reputation as scholars vis-ä-vis their colleagues. In general metadiscursive devices are part of a competitive interactional framework, a dimension which is typically lacking from the relationship between teacher and student since the goal of the educational system is, in part, to dispense factual knowledge to students by means of teachers and textbooks,15 which are taken by students as the authorised version of society valid knowledge and which they do not question because of the difference in status.

References

Backhouse, Roger (ed.) (1994): New Directions in Economic Methodology. - London: Routledge. Barton, Ellen L. (1995): Contrastive and non-contrastive connectives: Metadiscourse functions in argumentation. - Written Communication 12, 219-239. Bazerman, Charles and Paradis, James (eds.) (1991): Textual Dynamics of the Professions. Historical and Contemporary Studies of Writing in Professional Communities. - Madison Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press. Becattini, Giacomo (1981): Marshall. - Bologna: II Mulino. Billig, Michael (1995): Ideologia e opinioni. - Laterza: Roma-Bari. Bondi Paganelli, Marina (1998): Dialogues within Discourse Communities in Economics Textbooks. - In: S. Cmejrkovä, J. Hoffmannovä, O. Müllerovä, J. Svetlä (eds.) Dialoganalyse VI. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Bourdieu, Pierre, Passeron, Jean Claude and de Saint Martin, Monique (1994): Academic Discourse. Linguistic Misunderstanding and Professorial Power. - Cambridge: Polity Press. Brown, Vivian (1993): Decanonising Discourse: Textual Analysis and the History of Economic 15

For a criticism of the academic communicative situation see Bourdieu, Passeron, de Saint Martin (1994).

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Thought. - In: Henderson, Dudley-Evans, Backhouse, Economics and Language, 64-84. London, New York: Routledge. - (1994): Adam Smith Discourse: Canonicity, Commence and Conscience. - London: Routledge. Butler, Christopher S. (1990): Qualifications in Science: Modal Meanings in Scientific Texts. - In: Nash (ed.) The Writing scholar: Studies in Academic Discourse, 137-170. Newbury Park, London, New Dehli: Sage Publications. Carter, Ronald A. (1990): When Is a Report Not a Report? Observations from Academic and Nonacademic Settings. - In: Nash (ed.) The Writing scholar: Studies in Academic Discourse, 171191. Newbury Park, London, New Dehli: Sage Publications. Coats, A.W. (1990): Marshall and Ethics. - In: McWilliams Tullberg R. (ed.) Alfred Marshall in Retrospect, 153-177. Aldershot: Edward Elgar. Crismore, Avon (1989): Talking with Readers. Metadiscourse as Rhetorical Act. - New York: Peter Lang. - and Farnsworth, Rodney (1989): Mr. Darwin and his readers: Exploring interpersonal metadiscourse as a dimension of ethos. - Rhetoric Review 8, 91-112. - (1990): Metadiscourse in Popular and Professional Science Discourse. - In: Nash (ed.) The Writing scholar: Studies in Academic Discourse, 118-136. Newbury Park, London, New Dehli: Sage Publications. Crismore, Avon and Vande Kopple, William J. (1997): Hedges and Readers: Effects on Attitudes and Learning. - In: R. Markkanen and H. Schroeder (eds.) Hedging and Discourse. Approach to the Analysis of a Pragmatic Phenomenon in Academic Texts, 83-114. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. Dardi, Marco (1984): II giovane Marshall: accumulazione e mercato. - Bologna: II Mulino. Dudley-Evans, Tony and Henderson,Willie (1990): The Language of Economics: The Analysis of Economics Discourse. - London: MacMillan and British Council. Fahnestock, Jeanne (1986): Accomodating science: The rhetorical life of scientific facts. - Written Communication 3, 275-296. Groenewegen, Peter (1995): A Soaring Eagle: Alfred Marshall 1842-1924. - Aldershot: Edward Elgar. Guillebaud, Claude W. (1961): Editorial Introduction to Marshall's Principles of Economics 2nd vol., 3-30. Halliday, Michael A.K. (1985): An Introduction to Functional Grammar. - London: Edward Arnold. Henderson, Willie, Dudley-Evans, Tony, Backhouse, Roger (eds.) (1993): Economics and Language. - London, New York: Routledge. Henderson, Willie (1995): Economics as Literature. - London, New York: Routledge. Klamer, Arjo (1990): The textbook presentation of economic discourse. - In: W. Samuels (ed.) Economics as Discourse, 129-154. London: Kluver Academic Publications. Limoges, Camille and Menard, Claude (1994): Organization and the division of labour: biological metaphors at work in Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics. - In: P. Mirowski, Natural Images in Economic Thought, 336-359. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maloney, John (1985): Marshall, Orthodoxy and the Professionalisation of Economics. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Markkanen, Raija and Schröder, Hartmut (eds.) (1997): Hedging and Discourse. Approach to the Analysis of a Pragmatic Phenomenon in Academic Texts. - Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. Marshall, Alfred (1932): Elements of Economics of Industry. - London: MacMillan. - (1961): Principles of Economics, 9th variorum edition, 2 vols., with annotation by C.W. Guillebaud. - London: MacMillan. Marzola, Alessandra and Silva, Francesco (eds.) (1990): John M. Keynes: Linguaggio e Metodo. Bergamo: Lubrina Editore.

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Mc Closkey, Donald (1985): The Rhetoric of Economics. - Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books. - (1994): How to do a rhetorical analysis and why? - In: R. Backhouse (ed.) New Directions in Economic Methodology, 319-342. London: Routledge. Mc Williams Tullberg, Rita (ed.) (1990): Alfred Marshall in Retrospect. - Aldershot: Edward Elgar. Meyer, Paul G. (1997): Hedging Strategies in Written Academic Discourse: Strengthening the Argument by Weakening the Claim. - In: Markkanen and Schröder (eds.) Hedging and Discourse. Approach to the Analysis of a Pragmatic Phenomenon in Academic Texts, 21-41. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. Myers, Greg (1989): The pragmatics of politeness in scientific articles. ~ Applied Linguistics 10, 1 35. Mirowski, Philip (1988): Shall I compare thee to a Minkowski-Ricardo-Leontief-Metzler matrix of the Mosak-Hicks type? Or, rhetoric, mathematics, and the nature of neoclassical economic theory. - In: A. Klamer, D. N. McClowskey, R. M. Solow (eds.) The Consequences of Economic Rhetoric, 117-145. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - (1989): More Heat Than Light: Economics as Social Physics. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - (1990): Smooth operator: How Marshall's demand and supply curves made neoclassicism safe for public consumption but unfit for science. - In: Mc Williams Tullberg (ed.) Alfred Marshall in Retrospect, 61-90. Aldershot: Edward Elgar. Muir, Valerie A. (1995): Points of View and Room to Move: Some Perspectives of A Late Victorian Academic Partnership. - Marshall Studies Bulletin 5, 3-16. Nash,Walter (ed.) (1990): The Writing Scholar: Studies in Academic Discourse. - Newbury Park, London, New Dehli: Sage Publications. Perelman, Chaim and Olbrechts-Tyteca, Lucie (1976): Trattato dell'argomentazione. La nuova retorica. - Einaudi: Torino. Rossini Favretti, Rema (1989): II Linguaggio della Teoria Generale: proposte di analisi. - Bologna: Patron. Simpson, Paul (1990): Modality in Literary-Critical Discourse. - In: Nash (ed.) The Writing Scholar: Studies in Academic Discourse, 63-94. Newbury Park, London, New Dehli: Sage Publications. Vande Kopple, William J.(1997): Refining and Applying Views of Metadiscourse. - Paper presented at the 1997 Meeting on Conference on College Composition and Communication, Phoenix Arizona.

Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli The Role of Metadiscourse in University-Level EAP Reading Instruction*

1. Introduction

Recent trends in reading instruction have emphasised reading as an interactive process of bottom-up, top-down and metacognitive skills (Dubin and Bycina 1991: 195-215; Shih 1992: 289-311; Vacca, Vacca and Grove 1995). This approach is particularly helpful in the context of reading for academic purposes. In addition to decoding meaning from print with bottom-up skills, successful readers implement top-down skills to activate their prior knowledge and use textual cues to help them cope with new information, and at the same time, utilise metacognitive strategies to monitor their understanding of the text. Parallel to this interactive process between reader and text content, there is also another important interaction: the one between reader and author. This dialogue is known as metadiscourse, defined by Vande Kopple (1997: 2) as "discourse that people use not to expand referential material, but to help their readers connect, organise, interpret, evaluate and develop attitudes towards that material". The presence of metadiscourse in a written text has several benefits for readers. On a general level, Crismore (1989) noted that the explanatory and persuasive role of metadiscourse creates solidarity between reader and author. Moreover, due to its interpersonal nature, metadiscourse renders written text more like spoken language and thus "friendlier" for readers. The organisational and structural functions of metadiscourse help readers to better manage information which thus becomes more accessible to them. Crismore further suggests that metadiscourse may promote critical thinking as readers formulate their own opinions as compared to the author and can encourage metacognitive control as readers follow the author's indications throughout the text. With particular reference to reading in a second or foreign language, Bruce (1989) suggests that an awareness of metadiscourse and competence in recognising it gives readers a better grasp of the writer's position and therefore a clearer understanding of the text. Similarly, Vande Kopple (1997) discusses the importance of metadiscursive instruction with

An earlier version of this article appeared in Reading in a Foreign Language,

15, 1, 2003.

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non-native speakers of English to help overcome difficulties in distinguishing fact from speculation and opinion in written texts. As Crismore (1989) pointed out, metadiscourse has often been investigated from the descriptive standpoint of discourse analysis. It has also been studied comparatively in order to determine the quantity and quality of metadiscourse in various text types (Crismore 1989; Crismore and Farnsworth 1990: 119-136; Hyland 1999; Hyland 2000; Del Lungo in this volume). However, there is relatively little experimental research to study the possible effects of metadiscourse on comprehension. Among the few, Crismore (1989) conducted a study to determine whether including informational and attitudinal metadiscourse in passages of social studies textbooks would influence retention (among other factors) with sixth graders. The results were inconclusive as there was some improvement in retention after reading passages with both types of metadiscourse, but only in certain subject subgroups. More recently, Crismore and Vande Kopple (1997: 83-114) carried out a study with ninth graders on the effects of a type of metadiscourse known as hedging (i.e. the modification of a speaker's or writer's commitment to the absolute truth of the proposition being made) on attitudes and learning related to academic writing. They found that experimental groups that had read passages from social studies and science textbooks with hedging demonstrated higher gains in learning on a reading retention post-test than the control group that had read the passages with all types of hedging removed. In a study comparing the comprehension levels of abridged vs. longer versions of newspaper articles, Botta, Pingree and Hawkins (1993) investigated the differences between the shorter style of USA Today as compared to the longer style of The New York Times on articles dealing with the same subject. More specifically, USA Today articles were found to be shortened and simplified primarily by removing background information that also contained metadiscursive textual connectives and transition phrases to help the reader link the main ideas. They found that readers of the longer articles had significantly higher mean scores on a comprehension test than readers of the shorter articles. Although limited in number and scope, the above findings suggest that metadiscourse may play a role in comprehension. The present study was undertaken in the context of classroom research to gain more insight into the relationship between metadiscourse and comprehension of academic texts among a group of Italian university EAP students. In fact, a better understanding of this aspect of the reading process would be particularly useful in this instructional setting which emphasises strategies for reading economics textbooks in English. Therefore, the research question of this study is: does the presence of metadiscourse in university-level academic texts lead to improved comprehension? The underlying hypothesis is that a text containing more metadiscourse is easier to understand than one with less. The investigation was undertaken from two different approaches:

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1) small-scale exploratory experiment to investigate the role of metadiscourse by comparing mean scores on a brief comprehension test administered after reading corresponding extracts of a complete version (more metadiscourse) vs. an abridgement (less metadiscourse) of the same text, and 2) a comparison of responses on a questionnaire administered after the reading comprehension test to determine student perceptions of the level of difficulty of the two text treatments and the degree of awareness of metadiscourse.

2. Methodology

2.1. Materials The texts chosen for this study have traditionally been considered as classics for students of economics: Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics first published in 1890 in the form of a main treatise and a later abridged version entitled Elements of Economics of Industry published in 18921. As the author indicated in the preface, the second version was produced in an effort to adapt Principles of Economics to the needs of less expert student readers. He further noted that the difficulty of the abridged version had been reduced mainly by eliminating some of the less important points and more complex theoretical concepts. However, an analysis of selected parts of the two versions (Del Lungo in this volume) revealed that the second version is not just an abridgement of the first, but is also characterised by several differences in rhetorical and interactional styles. Although the abridged version may use more direct language, as well as some degree of syntactical and lexical simplification, it also contains a reduced amount of metadiscourse. Thus, according to the research hypothesis, it is the long version, and not the abridged version as Marshall believed, that is actually more comprehensible due to the presence of more metadiscourse. As a preliminary phase of the experiment, three corresponding passages of Principles of Economics and Elements of Economics of Industry (hereinafter referred to as Principles and Elements, respectively) were selected and analysed from a metadiscursive perspective (cf. Appendix A). The extracts from Principles ranged from 190 to 254 words, while those

According to Groenenwegen (1995), Principles of Economics has had a major influence in the field of economic studies. It has been reprinted numerous times from its original publication and is still widely read by students of economics. It also continues to be a frequently cited text among economists.

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from Elements ranged from 120 to 148 words. The passages were selected from various corresponding parts of the two texts (Books I, IV and V) in order to achieve adequately representative samples. Since the three passages were extracted from the context of an entire chapter, minor adjustments were made to render them more suitable for reading as isolated paragraphs. In extracts η. 1 (Book I) the cohesive words next {Principles) and again {Elements) found at the beginning of the passages were eliminated. In extract n. 3 (Book V of Principles), I removed a lengthy note and further expansion on it before the corresponding final sentence of the passages. The following comparative analysis of the three corresponding extracts highlights the metadiscursive differences between them, based on Vande Kopple's revised taxonomy 2 (Vande Kopple 1997) and the previously mentioned analysis of the two Marshall texts by Del Lungo (in this volume). In particular, it illustrates the greater amount and variety of metadiscourse in the Principles extracts as compared to the Elements extracts. 2.1.1. Principles extract la begins with a sentence that acts as a framing device to introduce the topic. It includes an illocution marker ("we must take account of the fact...") and an interpersonal pronoun signalling the author's presence. On the contrary, in the corresponding Elements extract lb, there is neither an introductory framing device nor any use of the interpersonal voice. 2.1.2. Principles extract 2a is also introduced with an introductory framing device and continues with the text connective but and an illocution marker containing a preview phrase ("...and this and the following two chapters will be given to..."). A code gloss (".. .i.e. the growth of population....") also appears, which functions as further explanation to the reader about the term supply of labour. Moreover, the entire discussion beginning "On the one hand..." and continuing to the end of the passage might be considered a sort of code gloss to further explain the previously mentioned other influences. Instead, Elements extract 2b contains an illocution marker with a hedging verb (".. .it seems best to make at this stage some study..."), but with no preview. It presents neither an introductory framing device nor a code gloss to further illustrate the contextual meaning of influences, which are merely listed as "...forethought, self-control, prudence and a sense of duty".

2 The author identifies various functional categories of metadiscourse including illocution markers that signal a specific discourse action in the text, code glosses that help readers to better understand a particular text element, attitude and modality markers, author's commentary and text connectives.

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2.1.3. In Principles extract 3a, there is rather lengthy framing device containing two illocution markers ("The first difficulty to be cleared up..." and "It will be well to begin...") which explicitly indicate to the reader which discourse act is being performed. The latter might also be interpreted as author's commentary on how to best approach the topic. The text connective then is used to link the framing device to the following paragraph. Interpersonal pronouns are present throughout the passage. Finally, the concluding final sentence ("This illustration may serve to keep before us...") contains both an illocution marker and a modality marker which carries out a hedging function. In contrast, Elements extract 3b has no type of introduction to guide the reader, but starts out immediately with the author's exemplification of his argument. The passage begins with an illocution marker in the interpersonal voice ("Let us suppose...") without using a text connective. The concluding sentence ("This case illustrates the way ") also functions as an illocution marker, but without using the interpersonal voice or hedging modal verb.

2.2. Subjects The subjects of the experiment were two groups of 55 students randomly selected from those enrolled in two classes of the EAP course of the University of Florence Faculty of Economics. Group 1 read the three extracts from Principles and then took the reading comprehension test and completed the questionnaire. Group 2 instead read the three corresponding extracts from Elements and was given the same reading comprehension test and questionnaire. As the English course during the semester in which the experiment took place focused on reading strategies in preparation for a multiple-choice examination on economics texts, the students were already familiar with both the English vocabulary and linguistic structures used in the test, as well as the testing format itself. The two experimental treatments were administered during regular class periods with no time limit.

2.3. Measures 2.3.1. The reading comprehension test was designed specifically for these extracts (cf. Appendix B) and consisted of four multiple-choice questions, each with four options. The first question was of a general nature relating to all three extracts, while the remaining three addressed the extracts individually. Each question was weighted 1 point.

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2.3.2. A five-item post-reading questionnaire (cf. Appendix C) was also developed specifically for this study3. Two questions involved students' evaluation of the levels of difficulty and comprehension of the two texts, while the other three were designed to measure students' awareness of metadiscourse. Each item offered a closed response format with four options. Scores ranged from four points for the option indicating the highest level of understanding and awareness of metadiscourse to one point for the lowest.

2.4. Scoring The reading comprehension test mean scores were calculated both for the global scores (minimum 0/maximum 4) and for each individual question (based on 1 point for the correct response vs. 0 points for an incorrect response). It seemed useful to compare responses to individual questions also since they were not all of the same nature and the selected extracts contained varying types of metadiscourse. The mean score of each questionnaire item was also calculated. All the means were then compared by submitting them to a two-tailed t-test with a .05 level of significance required to reject the null hypothesis that there would be no statistically significant differences between the two treatment groups.

3. R e s u l t s

Tables 1 and 2 illustrate the results of the /-test analyses for the reading comprehension test and the post-reading questionnaire, respectively. As shown in Table 1, out of a maximum score of 4, the mean scores on the reading comprehension tests were 2.98 for the Principles group and 2.71 for the Elements group, indicating a generally high level of comprehension. Even if the Principles group scored higher, the difference between the two means was not statistically significant. Significant differences were found instead at the level of individual questions. In the Principles treatment group, students had significantly higher scores on question η. 1 (p = .01) that asked

3

Unlike the reading comprehension test, the questionnaire was instead formulated in Italian (the native language of the students) in an attempt to avoid any failure to understand or correctly interpret the questions.

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students to identify the main function of the three extracts and question n. 4 (p = .02) that asked students to determine the main point of extract n. 3. Table 1. Reading comprehension test: comparison of mean scores (both global and for individual items) assessed by means of the independent samples i-test Princ

Elem

Princ

Elem

Princ

Elem

Princ

Elem

Princ

Elem

global global

η. 1

η. 1

n. 2

n. 2

n. 3

n. 3

n. 4

n. 4

Mean score

2.98

2.71

0.90

0.72

0.75

0.81

0.65

0.72

0.65

0.43

Variance

0.79

0.95

0.08

0.20

0.19

0.15

0.23

0.20

0.23

0.25

Pooled variance

0.87

0.14

0.17

0.21

t-Stat

1.53

2.52

-0.92

-0.82

2.33

P(T