Chapter published in:
Intercultural Perspectives on Research Writing
Edited by Pilar Mur-Dueñas and Jolanta Šinkūnienė
[AILA Applied Linguistics Series 18] 2018
► pp. 83–104

“This dissonance”

Bolstering credibility in academic abstracts

| Paris Diderot University 7
Writing a convincing abstract requires the ability to demonstrate credibility through an adequate selection of keywords. A case in point is the selection of shell nouns determined by this. Based on a comparable interdisciplinary corpus of 400 PhD abstracts written in English by writers in an Anglophone and a Francophone context, the role of shell nouns determined by this is studied to (1) assess their impact on textual cohesion (2) evaluate the connection between the selected terms and the discipline’s epistemological values as perceived by newcomers (3) consider the influence of the writer’s linguistic origin on the handling of this device. This study aims to contribute to the assessment of the parameters which might undermine writers’ credibility in their scientific community.
Keywords: academic writing, EAP, labeling nouns determined by , anaphors, abstracts, intercultural analysis, French, English
Published online: 06 December 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/aals.18.04bor
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Cited by other publications

Murillo, Silvia
2018.  In Intercultural Perspectives on Research Writing [AILA Applied Linguistics Series, 18], ► pp. 237 ff. Crossref logo
Varga, Mirna
2019. Intercultural Perspectives on Research Writing, Pilar Mur-Dueñas, Jolanta Šinkūnienė, eds. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia (2018). Kalbotyra 72 ► pp. 107 ff. Crossref logo

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