Dialogue, Science and Academic Writing

Zohar Livnat
Bar-Ilan University
This book investigates the dialogic nature of research articles from the perspective of discourse analysis, based on theories of dialogicity. It proposes a theoretical and applied framework for the understanding and exploration of scientific dialogicity.
Focusing on some dialogic components, among them citations, concession, inclusive we and interrogatives, a combined model of scientific dialogicity is proposed, that reflects the place and role of various linguistic structures against the background of various theoretical approaches to dialogicity.

Taking this combined model as a basis, the analysis demonstrates how scientific dialogicity is realized in an actual scientific dispute and how a scientific project is constructed step by step by means of a dialogue with its readers and discourse community. A number of different patterns of scientific dialogicity are offered, characterized by the different levels of the polemic held with the research world and other specific researchers – from the “classic”, moderate and polite dialogicity to a direct and personal confrontation between scientists.
[Dialogue Studies, 13]  2012.  vi, 216 pp.
Publishing status: Available
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ISBN 9789027210302 | EUR 90.00 | USD 135.00
 
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Table of Contents

1. Introduction
1–5
2. Approaches to dialogicity
7–20
3. Academic discourse as persuasion
21–45
4. The dialogic dimension of academic discourse
47–121
5. Scientific dialogicity in action
123–193
6. Conclusions
195–198
Bibliography
199–208
Appendix: Corpus of journal articles
209–211
Index

Quotes

“There is a longstanding tradition of regarding academic discourse as a way of disseminating "objective truth". In this sense ''Dialogue, Science and Academic Writing'' is a timely book: the author disspells a number of myths about academic discourse, including objectivity. Scientific writing is not as objective as it is usually assumed to be; rather, it is a competition among various points of view. In order to "win the competition" researchers employ conflicting dialogic strategies, and this tendency breaks another myth -- the myth of impartiality of academic writing.

Livnat's work also succeeds in integrating independent theories of dialogism. The author combines the strengths of various models of dialogicity to explain how dialogue is created and what strategies researchers use to position themselves in the existing system of knowledge.

Ksenia Shilikhina, Associate Professor of linguistics at Voronezh State University, Russia, on Linguist List 23.471 (11/11/2012)

Subjects

Benjamins Subject classification

Communication Studies

BIC Subject

CFG: Semantics, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis

BISAC Subject

LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics
U.S. Library of Congress Control Number:  2011040343
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