Cover not available
Part of
Intercultural Perspectives on Research Writing
Edited by Pilar Mur-Dueñas and Jolanta Šinkūnienė
[AILA Applied Linguistics Series 18] 2018
► pp. 83–103

Chapter 4
“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 this, anaphors, abstracts, intercultural analysis, French, English
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background issues on labeling nouns and the uses of this as an anaphoric determiner in academic discourse
    • 2.1Labeling nouns also known as general, signalling, shell, or metadiscursive nouns
    • 2.2This as a determiner
  • 3.Corpus and methodology
    • 3.1A comparable corpus of PhD abstracts written in English by writers in a French and an English context
    • 3.2Approach and method for corpus study
    • 3.3Approach and method for case studies
  • 4.Results and discussion of the corpus-based study
    • 4.1Definition and distribution of a functional typology of this as a determiner
    • 4.2Definition and distribution of a semantic typology of encapsulating this + LN
  • 5.Back to the text: Gains and losses
    • 5.1Case study 1: Building an effective argumentative flow
    • 5.2Case study 2: Failing to inscribe the research project in the disciplinary field
    • 5.3Case study 3: Assessing the rhetorical impact of interpretive encapsulating this
    • 5.4Gains and losses
  • 6.Final discussion and conclusion
    • 6.1Final discussion
    • 6.2Conclusion
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 December 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aals.18.04bor
References (30)
References
Amory, S. (2007). La diffusion des gènes de la période protohistorique à l'époque actuelle dans le complexe spatial Altaï-Baïkal. Anthropologie biologique. Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). Français. <tel-00136132>.Google Scholar
Aronowitz, S. (1988). Science as power: Discourse and ideology in modern society. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Benitez-Castro, M. A., & Thompson, P. (2015). Shell-nounhood in academic discourse: A critical state-of-the-art review. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 20(3), 378–404. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blanchy, S. (1988). La vie quotidienne à Mayotte (Comores): essai d'anthropologie compréhensive. Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie. Université de la Réunion.Google Scholar
Bhatia, V. K. (2002) Applied genre analysis; A multi-perspective model. Ibérica, 4, 3–19.Google Scholar
Bordet, G. (2015). Labeling discourse to build academic persona. Journal of Academic Writing, 5(1), 106–118. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Charles, M. (2003). ‘This mystery…’: A corpus-based study of the use of nouns to construct stance in theses from two contrasting disciplines. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2(4), 313–326. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Flowerdew, J. (2003). Signalling nouns in discourse. English for Specific Purposes, 22(4), 329–346. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Flowerdew, J., & Peacock, M. (2001). Research perspectives on English for academic purposes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Francis, G. (1994) Labelling discourse: an aspect of nominal-group lexical cohesion. In M. Coulthard (Ed.), Advances in written text analysis (pp. 83–101). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gray, B. (2010). On the use of demonstrative pronouns and determiners as cohesive devices: A focus on sentence-initial this/these in academic prose. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 9(3), 167–183. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. (2004). The language of science (Collected works of M.A.K. Halliday, Vol. 5). London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Henshall, A. C. (2015). Shell nouns: In a systemic functional linguistics perspective. Repositorio de Universidade de Lisboa. Available at: <[URL]>
Hertog, J. K. & D. M. McLeod (2001). A multiperspectival approach to framing analysis: A field guide. In S. D. Reese, O. H. Gandy & A. E. Grant. Framing public life: Perspectives on media and our understanding of the social world. Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: 139-161.Google Scholar
Hyland, K. (2004). Disciplinary discourses: Social interactions in academic writing. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press/ELT.Google Scholar
Hyland, K., & Salager‐Meyer, F. (2008). Scientific writing. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 42(1), 297–338. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ivanič, R. (1991). Nouns in search of a context: A study of nouns with both open-and closed-system characteristics. IRAL-International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 29(2), 93–114. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jiang, F. K., & Hyland, K. (2017). Metadiscursive nouns: Interaction and cohesion in abstract moves. English for Specific Purposes, 46, 1–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lorés Sanz, R. (2006). The referential function of metadiscourse: Thing(s) and idea(s) in academic lectures. In A. Hornero Corisco, M. J. Luzón Marco, & S. Murillo Ornat (Eds.), Corpus linguistics: Applications for the study of English (pp. 315–333). Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Moreno, A. I. (2003). The role of cohesive devices as textual constraints on relevance: A discourse-as-process view. IJES, International Journal of English Studies, 3(1), 111–166.Google Scholar
Moulard, S. (2008). “Senegal yewuleen!” Analyse anthropologique du rap à Dakar: liminarité, contestation et culture populaire. Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie. Université Victor Segalen - Bordeaux II.Google Scholar
Pérez-Llantada, C. (2012). Scientific discourse and the rhetoric of globalization: The impact of culture and language. London: A&C Black.Google Scholar
Schmid, H. (1995). Treetagger| a language independent part-of-speech tagger. Stuttgart: Institut für Maschinelle Sprachverarbeitung, Universität Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Schmid, H. J. (2000). English abstract nouns as conceptual shells: From corpus to cognition. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sinclair, J. (1993). Written discourse structure. In J. Sinclair, M. Hoey, & G. Fox (Eds.), Techniques of description: Spoken and written discourse (pp. 6–31). London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Swales, J. M., & Feak, C. B. (2009). Abstracts and the writing of abstracts. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Szelag, B. J., (2011) Growing up with HIV: Disease management among perinatally infected adolescents. Graduate Theses and Dissertations. [URL].Google Scholar
Testa, J. (2012). The Thomson Reuters journal selection process. Transnational Corporations Review, 1(4), 59–66. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Varga, Mirna
2019. Intercultural Perspectives on Research Writing, Pilar Mur-Dueñas, Jolanta Šinkūnienė, eds. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia (2018). Kalbotyra 72 ► pp. 107 ff. DOI logo
Murillo, Silvia
2018. Chapter 11. Not the same, but how different?. In Intercultural Perspectives on Research Writing [AILA Applied Linguistics Series, 18], ► pp. 237 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.