by
Miblo
@ Wednesday, 06. Aug, 2008 - 02:53:38
Why might 'academic' English need to be taught?
Entering into academia involves joining a discourse community in which ideas are shared, arguments are discussed, and knowledge is developed. Within the realm of academia are a large variety of disciplines, each, in the words of the educational researcher Gordon Wells, being 'dependent on its own particular practices ... [and each having] developed its own modes of discourse'. He explains that 'to work in a discipline, therefore, it is necessary to be able to engage in these practices and, in particular, to participate in the discourse of that community' (Wells, 1992, p. 290, cited in Hewings, Lillis and Mayor, 2007, p. 229). In this assignment I will attempt to present such 'modes of discourse' or linguistic features which have been found to exist in academic discourse generally and how these features vary in proportion across various disciplines, reasons for teaching these features, and possible results of teaching people how to understand and create 'academic' English.
Linguist Michael Halliday (1994, cited in Hewings et al. 2007, p. 229) suggested that the creation of a specialised lexis is a common feature of academic disciplines. New words are devised 'for referring to newly discovered or specially defined objects, processes, relationships and so on', so we may find such terms as cerebral atrophy in medicine, debenture in accountancy, and atonality in music. As to the proportion of such specialised lexis across different disciplines, the examples of academic writing on pages 230 and 231 of Learning English (Hewings et al. 2007) provide some clues. Example 1 (from Martlew and Sorsby, 1995, p. 1), which is in the linguistic field of children's literacy development, contains seemingly few specialised lexical items, as does the example from Clare (1995, p. 1) in the field of published literary texts. Hewings et al. comment (p. 231) that 'even if someone is not a 'full' member of the relevant research community, a reader of a book on the English language [will more likely be able to make] sense of an article on some aspect of literacy that for understanding the contents of the Journal of Chemical Thermodynamics', from where the third example is taken (Pikkarainen, quoted in Bhatia, 1993, p. 89). This last example contains a higher proportion of technical terms than the previous two, and I would suppose that without having been taught the meanings of such terms as 'viscosities', 'binary' and 'solvents' the text would be more or less incomprehensible. At best the reader will be unlikely to fully understand the text. The text is further complicated by its use of specialised English morphology (employing numbers and dashes in 'propon-2-ol') and syntax (with its use of plus signs in '+ butan-1-ol'). It can be deduced from the text that these latter two terms are components known as 'aliphatic alcohols', but this is meaningless until it is known what an 'aliphatic alcohol' specifically is. However, features such as this specialised lexis form a large part of many disciplines – particularly sciences – and without the teaching of them, the discipline could barely exist – at least not to a particularly advanced stage – and so these terms are widely taught.
The main difference between the three examples just mentioned is the type of discipline whence they came. Tony Becher divides up academia into the following four broad disciplinary groupings:
| Pure sciences |
(e.g. physics) |
hard-pure |
| Humanities |
(e.g. history) |
soft-pure |
| and pure social sciences |
(e.g. anthropology) |
| Technologies |
(e.g. mechanical engineering) |
hard-applied |
| Applied social sciences |
(e.g. education) |
soft-applied |
| |
| (Hewings et al. 2007, p. 232, adapted from Becher, 1994, p. 154) |
'Hard and 'soft' distinguishing between more objective and subjective disciplines respectively; with 'applied' referring to practically orientated fields (another example being computer programming), and 'pure' fields dealing with abstract concepts (such as the study of music, although performance may be regarded as serving more practical purposes). The first two examples from the previous paragraph both come from 'soft' fields, with the third belonging to a 'hard' field, and this may go some way to explaining the differing proportion of specialised lexis found in the texts.
Ken Hyland produced an article describing inter-disciplinary difference with regard to directives, and it is to this I will now turn.
Directives perform the interpersonal functions of engaging the reader, positioning the reader, and they can allow the writer the ability to be succinct and precise. Through his study of a '2.5 million word corpus of texts collected across eight disciplines and comprising three different genres' (Hewings et al. 2007, p. 234), Hyland found that 'the hard knowledge fields not only contained far more directives, but these were also more likely to function as a means of guiding readers through a procedure and to the conclusions of the writer' (Hyland, K. 2002, pp. 230-9, reproduced as Reading A in Hewings et al. 2007, p. 258). These functions of directives seem to me to be quite complex and I am undecided as to whether or not it would be a good idea to teach students how to use them. On the one hand, teaching students about directives may empower them to 'see through' arguments, and to recognise what the author is trying to do; but the other argument is that, in teaching students how to use directives, their usage may become formulaic, and the students will expend so much concentration on such linguistic devices that the substance of their arguments decreases in quality and their works amount to little more than superficial clauses strung together with fancy directives.
This cannot be true of the ideational features discussed towards the beginning of the assignment because knowledge of a meaning-bearing word and displaying that knowledge can only be a sign of cognitive empowerment, but there are other interpersonal features of academic discourse the teaching of which may have similar possible outcomes to directives. Such features include hedges, reporting verbs of various flavours, identity and voice. It would, I imagine, be relatively straightforward to teach a student about hedges and their function, and the different types of hedges that can be created; similarly with the reporting verbs, be they of the factive kind ('Blofeld discovered...') or the more critical ('Agnew presumed...'); but I feel issues of identity and voice would be much more difficult to teach. However, if they could be taught, how beneficial or enchaining would it be for the student?
The question of what is (not just the linguistic features of) academia and what are its purposes is always a pertinent one, but way out of the scope of this assignment. However, I feel it is reasonable to say that the main purpose of academia is to further expand the knowledge of the human race as a whole. With this in mind I feel it would be unwise to risk enchaining students to a set of linguistic features tailored for writing academic texts. Of course, this bleak state of affairs may never materialise, and students tutored in the art of academic writing may turn out to far surpass their forebears in their achievements, but I don't feel that learning to produce academic texts will necessarily enhance a student's ability to reason and form knowledge. Arguments may be made more strongly, but this may have a detrimental effect of convincing a vast amount of people that a flimsy idea is a sound and good concept. But, on the other hand, if everybody is to be taught how to create these academic texts, then it is to be assumed that everyone will be equally equipped to deflect any advances of 'spin' and see straight to the heart of an argument. There is, indeed, the more optimistic view that by being taught these features of academic discourse, students are enabled to reflect on them, assess their worth, and then possibly form their own ideas about how academic discourse ought to written, with perhaps a more informed logic than someone untutored in the subject.
I don't think I've come to a conclusion as to 'why academic English might need to be taught', or indeed whether or not it should be taught, but I hope I've presented both sides of the argument, and demonstrated some knowledge of the problems involved.
(1360 words)
References
Becher, T. (1994) 'The significance of disciplinary difference', Studies in Higher Education, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 151-61.
Bhatia, V.K. (1993) Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings, London, Longman.
Clare, R. (1995) '“Who is it that can tell me who I am?” The theory of authorial revision between quarto and folio texts of King Lear', The Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Halliday, M.A.K. (1994) An Introduction to Functional Grammar (2nd edn), London, Edward Arnold.
Hewings, A., Lillis, T. and Mayor, B. (2007) 'Academic writing in English' in Mercer, N., Swann, J. and Mayor, B. (eds) Learning English, London, Routledge/ The Open University.
Hyland, K. (2002) 'Directives: argument and engagement in academic writing', Applied Linguistics, vol. 23, no.2, pp. 215-39.
Martlew, M. and Sorsby, A. (1995) 'The precursors of writing: graphic representation in preschool children', Learning and Instruction, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 1-19.
Wells, G. (1992) 'The centrality of talk in education' in Norman, K. (ed.) Thinking Voices: The Work of the National Oracy Project, London, Hodder & Stoughton.