Abstract
Contemporary international academic writing experts, influenced by Anglophone academic writing norms, assert that ‘good’ writing requires conciseness, staying on track and sticking to the topic and its main points. Digressions tend to be seen as undermining a writer’s authority. Through the exploration of the ways in which academic writers formulate and structure textual relational propositions, this chapter aims to add to the knowledge pertaining to differences in the manner writers from culturally different academic discourse communities set and reach their communicative goals. Its purpose is to illustrate how the cultural conditioning of texts written by scholars of English and Polish language backgrounds is reflected in their rhetorical structure and differences in the levels of textual communicative balance and ways of making meaning. It is hoped that this study will contribute to multilingual English-as-additional-language (EAL) students’ and scholars’ awareness of their own rhetorical patterns, and the way they vary from the generally accepted structure of academic texts in Anglo-American settings, as well as help to familiarise English-dominant higher educators, academics and publication gatekeepers with other forms of text structure in order to assist in their evaluation and acceptance of work produced by EAL students and academics, and to help them perceive other styles of discourse patterns as different rather than unacceptable.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Absalom, D., & Golebiowski, Z. (2002). Tertiary literacy on the cusp. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 25(2), 5–18.
Absalom, D., Golebiowski, Z., & Threadgold, T. (1997). What will count as Tertiary Literacy in year 200? In Z. Golebiowski (Ed.), Policy and practice of tertiary literacy (pp. 291–293). Melbourne: Victoria University of Technology.
Ammon, U. (1998). Ist Deutsch noch internationale Wissenschaftssprache? Berlin: De Gruyter.
Bazerman, C. (1988). Shaping written knowledge. Madison: University of Wisconsin.
Berkenkotter, C., & Huckin, T. (1995). Genre knowledge in disciplinary communication. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Clark, T. N., & Lipset, S. M. (1991). Are social classes dying? International Sociology, 6(4), 397–410.
Clyne, M. (1991). The sociocultural dimension: The dilemma of the German-speaking scholar. In H. Schröder (Ed.), Subject oriented texts. Language for special purposes and text theory. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Clyne, M. (1994). Intercultural communication at work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Clyne, M. (1987). Cultural differences in the organisation of academic texts. Journal of Pragmatics, 11, 211–247.
Čmejrková, S. (1997). Academic writing in Czech and English. In E. Ventola & A. Mauranen (Eds.), Academic writing (pp. 137–152). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Čmejrková, S. (2007). Intercultural dialogue and academic discourse. In M. Grein & E. Weigand (Eds.), Dialogue and culture (pp. 73–94). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Čmejrková, S., & Daneš, F. (1997). Academic writing and cultural identity. In A. Duszak (Ed.), Culture and styles of academic discourse (pp. 40–62). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Díaz, A. (2018). Challenging dominant epistemologies in higher education: The role of language in the geopolitics of knowledge (re)production. In I. Liyanage (Ed.), Multilingual education yearbook 2018: Internationalization, stakeholders & multilingual education contexts (pp. 21–36). New York: Springer.
Duszak, A. (1997a). Analysing digressiveness in Polish academic texts. In A. Duszak (Ed.), Culture and styles of academic discourse. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Duszak, A. (1997b). Cross-cultural academic communication: A discourse community view. In A. Duszak (Ed.), Culture and styles of academic discourse (pp. 11–39). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Duszak, A. (1998). Tekst, dyskurs, komunikacja międzykulturowa. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
Duszak, A. (2005). Between styles and values: an academic community in transition. In G. Cortese & A. Duszak (Eds.), Identity, community, discourse: English in intercultural settings (pp. 69–93). Berlin: Peter Lang.
Duszak, A., & Kowalski, G. (2015). Academic (inter)genres: Between texts, contexts and identities. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Eggington, W. G. (1987). Written academic discourse in Korean. In C. Connors & R. Kaplan (Eds.), Writing across languages: Analysis of L2 text (pp. 153–168). Reading: Addison-Wesley.
Fakhri, A. (2004). Rhetorical properties of Arabic research article introductions. Journal of Pragmatics, 36, 1119–1138.
Flowerdew, J. (2001). Attitudes of journal editors to nonnative speaker contributions. TESOL Quarterly, 35, 121–150.
Gajda, S. (1990). Współczesna polszczyzna naukowa. Język czy żargon?. Opole: Instytut Śląski.
Golebiowski, Z. (2005). Globalisation of academic communities and the style of research reporting. Transcultural Studies, 1, 57–72.
Golebiowski, Z. (2006). The distribution of discoursal salience in research papers: Relational hypotaxis and parataxis. Discourse Studies, 8(2), 259–278.
Golebiowski, Z. (2007). What organising strategies do academic writers use? A Polish-English study. In J. Arabski (Ed.), On foreign language acquisition and effective learning (pp. 171–182). Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego.
Golebiowski, Z. (2009a). Prominent messages in education and applied linguistic abstracts: How do authors appeal to their prospective readers? Journal of Pragmatics, 41(4), 753–769.
Golebiowski, Z. (2009b). The use of contrastive strategies in a sociology research paper. In E. Suomela-Salmi & F. Dervin (Eds.), Cross-linguistic and cross–cultural perspectives on academic discourse (pp. 165–186). Frankfurt am Main: John Benjamins.
Golebiowski, Z. (2011). Scholarly criticism across discourse communities. In F. A. Salager-Meyer & B. A. Lewin (Eds.), Crossed words: Criticism in scholarly writing (pp. 203–224). Berlin: Peter Lang.
Golebiowski, Z. (2012). Concessivity in scholarly prose: An intercultural study. In B. Kryk-Kastovsky (Ed.), Intercultural communication past and present (pp. 15–32). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Golebiowski, Z. (2014). Elaborativeness in academic writing. In K. Burridge & R. Benczes (Eds.), Wrestling with words and meanings: Essays in honour of Keith Allan (pp. 236–261). Melbourne: Monash University Publishing.
Golebiowski, Z., & Liddicoat, A. (2002). The interaction of discipline and culture in academic writing. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 25(2), 59–71.
Grabe, W., & Kaplan, R. B. (1997). On the writing of science and the science of writing: Hedging in science text and elsewhere. In R. Markkanen & H. Schröder (Eds.), Hedging and discourse. Approaches to the analysis of a pragmatic phenomenon in academic texts (pp. 151–167). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Gurney, L. (2018). Academic English & EMI in the Asia Pacific: Complexities, opportunities & outcomes. In I. Liyanage (Ed.), Multilingual education yearbook 2018: Internationalization, stakeholders & multilingual education contexts (pp. 73–90). New York: Springer.
Hinds, J. (1990). Inductive, deductive, quasi-inductive: Expository writing in Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Thai. In U. Connor & A. Johns (Eds.), Coherence in writing (pp. 87–109). Alexandria: TESOL.
Hirano, E. (2009). Research article introductions in English for specific purposes: A comparison between Brazilian Portuguese and English. English for Specific Purposes, 28, 240–250.
Hyland, K. (2016). Academic publishing and the myth of linguistic injustice. Journal of Second Language Writing, 31, 58–69.
Kirkpatrick, A., & Xu, Z. (2012). Chinese rhetoric and writing: An introduction for language teachers. Anderson: Parlor Press.
Liddicoat, A. (1997). Texts of the culture and texts of the discourse community. In Z. Golebiowski & H. Borland (Eds.), Academic communication across disciplines and cultures (pp. 38–42). Melbourne: Victoria University of Technology.
Liyanage, I. (2018). Internationalization of higher education, mobility, and multilingualism In I. Liyanage (Ed.), Multilingual education yearbook 2018: Internationalization, stakeholders & multilingual education contexts (pp. 1–20). New York: Springer.
Loi, C. K., & Evans, M. S. (2011). Cultural differences in the organization of research article introductions from the field of educational psychology: English and Chinese. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(10), 2814–2825.
Mauranen, A. (1993). Contrastive ESP Rhetoric: Metatext in Finnish–English economic texts. English for Special Purposes, 12, 3–22.
Mauranen, A., Hynninen, N., & Ranta, E. (2010). English as an academic lingua franca: The ELFA project. English for Specific Purposes, 29, 183–190.
Pakulski, J. (1993). The dying of class or of Marxist class theory? International Sociology, 8(3), 279–292.
Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thompson, G. (2001). Interaction in academic writing. Applied Linguistics, 22(1), 58–78.
Walker, T. (2018). Internationalization and multilingualism: A mutual dependency of integrating and disintegrating. In I. Liyanage (Ed.), Multilingual education yearbook 2018: Internationalization, stakeholders & multilingual education contexts (pp. 139–158). New York: Springer.
Ziółkowski, M. (1994). The pragmatic shift in polish social consciousness. With or against the tide of rising postmaterialism? Polish Sociological Review, 4, 303–321.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Golebiowski, Z. (2018). Reshaping Academic Writing in Internationalised Higher Education: A Contribution from Contrastive Rhetoric. In: Liyanage, I. (eds) Multilingual Education Yearbook 2018. Multilingual Education Yearbook. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77655-2_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77655-2_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77654-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77655-2
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)