27.4153, Review: Discourse Analysis; Pragmatics: Lakić, Živković, Vuković (2015)

Mon Oct 17 14:39:23 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-4153. Mon Oct 17 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.4153, Review: Discourse Analysis; Pragmatics: Lakić, Živković, Vuković (2015)

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Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2016 10:39:08
From: Sibo Chen [siboc at sfu.ca]
Subject: Academic Discourse across Cultures

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-323.html

EDITOR: Igor  Lakić
EDITOR: Branka  Živković
EDITOR: Milica  Vuković
TITLE: Academic Discourse across Cultures
PUBLISHER: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Sibo Chen, Simon Fraser University

Reviews Editor: Robert A. Cote

English is widely recognized as a lingua franca for scholarly communication
today. As more and more leading academic journals are published in English,
authors who use English as an additional language (EAL) are experiencing
mounting pressure to adjust their writing styles accordingly to adopt the
Anglo-Saxon academic writing norms. Following this trend, intercultural
variations in academic discourse have become a prominent research field in
discourse analysis. The current volume, “Academic discourse across cultures”
edited by Igor Lakić, Branka Živković and Milica Vuković, explores the
intercultural differences in academic writing norms, especially the
differences in academic discourse between international journals and
Montenegrin/Serbian journals. According to the editors, the overarching goal
of this volume is to raise awareness among EAL writers regarding potential
linguistic obstacles for publishing in international journals, thereby
providing them with knowledge of delivering their research to the
international academic community.

The chapters in this volume are divided in three parts. Part I “Rhetorical
Structure of Research Articles across Cultures” deals with structural
variations found in abstracts, introductions, and conclusions. This part
begins with Chapter 1’s comparative analysis between abstracts written by
English and Serbian academics, in which the author Savka Blagojević
demonstrates that EAL writers still tend to adhere to their national writing
norms when producing articles for international audience. Similarly, Chapter 2
by Milena Dževerdanović-Pejović explores linguistic abstracts in international
journals and Montenegrin national journals and come to the conclusion that
compared with English abstracts, Montenegro abstracts are less organized on
the macro-structure level due to its focus on rhetorical and persuasive
effect. Chapters 3 and 4  address (by Igor Lakić and Ana Šćepanović
respectively) how a genre’s structure is bounded by disciplinary conventions.
Through the exploration of economic and civil engineering introductions, both
chapters validate Swales’ (1990) previous analysis of research introductions
and identify new moves and steps that are discipline-specific. Chapter 5 by
Milica Vuković and Vesna Bratić concludes Part I by comparing conclusions in
Montenegrin national journals and those in international journals, which shows
the noticeable differences between Anglo-Saxon and Montenegrin academic
writing conventions.

Part II “Hedging and Cohesion in Academic Discourse across Cultures” focuses
on intercultural differences in the use of hedging and cohesion devices in
academic discourse. This part consists of three chapters. Chapter 6 by Milica
Vuković follows the comparative framework built in previous chapters and
discusses how articles published in international journals tend to use
significantly more hedging than those published in Montenegro national
journals. As Vuković argues, such difference is mainly caused by authors’
consideration of international journals’ wide readership. Next, Chapter 7 by
Nataša Milivojević and Stanka Radojičić shifts the analytical focus from
journal articles to text books. By analyzing the presence of hedging devices
in course texts for university EAL learners, the chapter comes to the
conclusion that it is necessary to provide EAL learners with basic knowledge
on discourse markers given their abundance in academic texts. Chapter 8 by
Miloš D. Đurić addresses the semantics-pragmatics interface within spoken
academic discourse. It highlights the important role of discourse markers in
generating conceptual and communicative relevance in academic lectures. 

Part III “Semantic and Syntactic Features of Academic Discourse across
Cultures” addresses academic discourse on the syntactic, semantic, and lexical
levels. Chapter 9 by Branka Živković continues the previous chapter’s
discussion on academic lectures and examines how the introduction sections
English and Montenegrin lectures are organized. The analysis suggests that
contrary to common assumption, lecture introductions in both English and
Montenegrin feature a degree of planned structure. Chapter 10 by Gordana
Dimković-Telebaković examines whether the interpretations of English and
Serbian adverbs in academic writing are influenced by their respective
positions in sentences. The chapter confirms that there is a strict
correlation between the readings of English and Serbian adverbs and their
positions in different syntactic structures. Finally, Chapter 11 by Miodarka
Tepavčević concludes the whole volume with an overview of key syntactic and
semantic features found in English scientific texts. 

EVALUATION

This volume’s main strength lies in its focus on the discursive practices of
Serbian and Montenegrin academics, whose writing norms have been rarely
addressed in previous research. Arguing from an intercultural perspective, the
book offers several insightful observations on the interfaces between national
and international academic cultures, which presents a timely contribution to
the growing body of research on academic genres. Another merit of the volume
comes from its comprehensive perspectives, with both macro and micro aspects
of academic discourse being thoroughly examined. 

Despite the above merits, however, the volume suffers from two noticeable
shortcomings. Its exclusive focus on Serbian and Montenegrin academics has led
to a narrow analytic perspective, which makes the book’s title “Academic
Discourse across Cultures” somewhat misleading. In addition, most chapters
within the book are descriptive and filled with linguistic terms, offering
very few pedagogical implications and practical suggestions on academic
writing. As such, the volume would not be a good reference for academics who
want to familiarize them with the writing norms of international journals.
Overall, although the volume can be of particular interest to discourse and
genre scholars, its appeal to the academic community at large is quite
limited, which requires readers’ special attention. 

REFERENCES

Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Sibo Chen is SSHRC Vanier Scholar in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser
University. His major research interests are language and communication,
critical discourse analysis, and genre theories.

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