Cover not available
Part of
Persuasion in Public Discourse: Cognitive and functional perspectives
Edited by Jana Pelclová and Wei-lun Lu
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 79] 2018
► pp. 227–258

Chapter 10
Persuasion in academic discourse

Cross-cultural variation in Anglophone and Czech academic book reviews

This chapter studies persuasion in academic book reviews from a cross-cultural perspective. After discussing the rhetorical structure of book reviews, the study explores the strategic means used by the authors of reviews to represent themselves as expert members of the disciplinary community, show authorial involvement, and open a dialogic space for the negotiation of their opinions and views. The analysis of citation practices, personal structures, and evaluation acts is carried out on a corpus of book reviews published in the linguistics journals Journal of English for Academic Purposes and Slovo a Slovesnost. The findings indicate that while both Anglophone and Czech linguists exploit these linguistic means for persuasive purposes, there is cross-cultural variation in their rate of occurrence and rhetorical functions.
Keywords: persuasion, academic discourse, genre, book reviews, cross-cultural variation, evaluative acts, citations, personal pronouns, rhetorical moves
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The genre of academic book reviews
  • 3.Persuasion in book reviews
  • 4.Cross-cultural variation: The Czech and the Anglophone academic discourse traditions
  • 5.Data and methodology
  • 6.Findings and discussion
    • 6.1Rhetorical structure
    • 6.2Citation
    • 6.3Personal structures
    • 6.4Evaluative acts
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 8 August 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.79.11don
References (81)
References
Bennett, Karen. 2009. “English academic style manuals: A survey.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 8: 43–54. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bednárek, Monika. 2008. Evaluation in Media Discourse: Analysis of a Newspaper Corpus. London/New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Bhatia, Vijay K. 1993. Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. London: Longman.Google Scholar
2004. Worlds of Written Discourse. A Genre-Based View. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bülow-Møller. 2005. “Persuasion in business negotiation.” In Persuasion across Genres, ed. by Helena Halmari and Tuija Virtanen, 27–58. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chamonikolasová, Jana. 2005. “Comparing the Structures of Academic Texts Written in English and Czech.” In Slovak Studies in English 1, ed. by Maria Huttová, 77–84. Bratislava: Univerzita Komenského.Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert C. 1992. Arenas of Language Use. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Clyne, Michael. 1987. “Cultural Differences in the Organisation of Academic Texts.” Journal of Pragmatics 11: 211–247. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Čmejrková, Svetla. 1996. “Academic Writing in Czech and in English.” In Academic Writing, ed. by Eija Ventola, and Anna Mauranen, 137–152. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Čmejrková, Svetla, and František Daneš. 1997. “Academic Writing and Cultural Identity: The Case of Czech Academic Writing.” In Culture and Styles of Academic Discourse, ed. by Anna Duzsak, 40–62. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Diani, Giuliana. 2009. “Reporting and Evaluation in English Book Review Articles: A Cross-Disciplinary Study.” In Academic Evaluation: Review Genres in University Settings, ed. by Ken Hyland and Giuliana Diani, 87–104. Basingstoke: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dontcheva-Navrátilová, Olga. 2012. “Cross-cultural Differences in the Construal of Authorial Voice in the Genre of Diploma Theses.” In Insights into Academic Genres, ed. by Carol Berkenkotter, Vijay K. Bhatia, and Maurizio Gotti, 301–328. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
. 2013a. “Authorial Presence in Academic Discourse: Functions of Author-reference Pronouns.” Linguistica Pragensia 23 (1): 9–30.Google Scholar
. 2013b. “The Changing Face of Czech Academic Discourse.” In The Semiperiphery of Academic Writing, ed. by Karen Bennett, 39–61. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
. 2015. “Cross-cultural Variation in Citation Practices: A Comparative Analysis of Citations in Czech English-medium and International English-medium Linguistics Journals.” In English as a Scientific and Research Language, ed. by Ramon Plo Alastrué, and Carmen Pérez-Llantada, 185–205. Berlin/Boston: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Duszak, Anna. 1997. “Cross-cultural Academic Communication: A Discourse Community View.” In Culture and Styles of Academic Discourse, ed. by Anna Duzsak, 11–39. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Felber, Lynette. 2002. “The Book Review: Scholarly and Editorial Responsibility.” Journal of Scholarly Publishing 33 (3): 166–172. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fløttum, Kjersti, Trine Gedde-Dahl and Torodd Kinn. 2006. Academic Voices Across Languages and Disciplines. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Flowerdew, John. 2000. “Discourse Community, Legitimate Peripheral Participation, and the Nonnative-English-speaking Scholar.” TESOL Quarterly 34 (1): 127–150. [URL]. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Flowerdew, Lynne. 2004. “The Argument for Using English Specialized Corpora to Understand Academic and Professional Language.” In Discourse in the Professions, ed. by Ulla Connor, and Thomas Upton, 11–33. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. “Grammar and the Research Article.” In Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, ed. by Carol Chapelle, 2394–2399. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gea Valor, Luisa M. 2000. A Pragmatic Approach to Politeness and Modality in the Book Review Articles. SELL Monograph. Valencia. Universitat de Valencia.Google Scholar
Giannoni, Davide S. 2009. “Negotiating Research Values across Review Genres: A Case Study in Applied Linguistics.” In Academic Evaluation: Review Genres in University Settings, ed. by Ken Hyland and Giuliana Diani, 17–33. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1967. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face to Face Behavior. Garden City: New York.Google Scholar
Gosden, Hugh. 1993. “Discourse Functions of Subject in Scientific Research Articles.” Applied Linguistics 14: 56–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gotti, Maurizio. 2009. “Introduction.” In Communality and Individuality in Academic Discourse, ed. by Maurizion Gotti, 9–21. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K. 1985. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Harwood, Nigel. 2005. “‘We Do Not Seem to Have a Theory … The Theory I Present Here Attempts to Fill This Gap’: Inclusive and Exclusive Pronouns in Academic Writing.” Applied Linguistics 26: 343–375. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2009. “An Interview-based Study of the Functions of Citations in Academic Writing across Two Disciplines.” Journal of Pragmatics 41 (3): 497–518. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hewings, Ann, Theresa Lillis, and Dimitra Vladimirou. 2010. “Who’s Citing Whose Writings? A Corpus Based Study of Citations as Interpersonal Resource in English Medium National and English Medium International Journals.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 9: 102–115. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hogan, Michael. 2013. “Persuasion in the Rhetorical Tradition.” In The SAGE Handbook of Persuasion: Developments in Theory and Practice, ed. by James Price Dillard and Lijiang Shen, 2–19. Thousand Oaks: Sage.Google Scholar
Hunston, Susan and Geoff Thompson (eds). 1999. Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hyland, Ken. 1998. Hedging in Scientific Research Articles. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1999. “Academic Attribution: Citation and the Construction of Disciplinary Knowledge.” Applied Linguistics 20 (3): 341–367. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2000. Disciplinary Discourses: Social Interactions in Academic Writing. Harlow, England: London/New York: Pearson Education.Google Scholar
. 2001. “Humble Servants of the Discipline? Self-mention in Research Articles.” English for Specific Purposes 18: 207–226. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2002. “Authority and Invisibility: Authorial Identity in Academic Writing.” Journal of Pragmatics 34: 1091–1112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2004a. “A Convincing Argument: Corpus Analysis and Academic Persuasion.” In Discourse in the Professions, ed. by Ulla Connor and Thomas A. Upton, 87–112. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2004b. Disciplinary Discourses. Michigan: University of Michigan.Google Scholar
. 2005. “Stance and Engagement: A Model of Interaction in Academic Discourse.” Discourse Studies 7 (2): 173–192. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. “Persuasion, Interaction and the Construction of Knowledge: Representing Self and Others in Research Writing.” International Journal of English Studies 8 (2): 1–23.Google Scholar
Hyland, Ken and Giuliana Diani (eds). 2009. Academic Evaluation: Review Genres in University Settings. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hyland, Ken and Carmen Sancho Guinda (eds.) (2012) Stance and Voice in Written Academic Genres. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jucker, Andreas. 1997. “Persuasion by Inference: Analysis of a Party Political Broadcast.” In Political Linguistics, Special issue of Belgian Journal of Linguistics 11, ed. by Jan Blummaert, and Chris Bulcaen, 121–137.Google Scholar
Kress, Gunther. 1985. Linguistic Processes in Sociocultural Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kreutz, Heinz and Annette Harres. 1997. “Some Observations on the Distribution and Function of Hedging in German and English Academic Writing.” In Culture and Styles of Academic Discourse, ed. by Anna Duzsak, 181–201. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kuo, Chih-Hua. 1999. “The Use of Personal Pronouns: Role Relationships in Scientific Journal Articles.” English for Specific Purposes 18 (2): 121–138. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Livnat, Zohar. 2012. Dialogue, Science and Academic Writing. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lorés Sanz Rosa. 2009. “(Non-)critical Voices in the Reviewing of History Discourse: A Cross-cultural Study of Evaluation.” In Academic Evaluation: Review Genres in University Settings, ed. by Ken Hylandm and Giuliana Diani, 143–160. Basingstoke: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martin, James and Peter White. 2005 The Language of Evaluation. Appraisal in English. London: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martin, James R. 2000. “Beyond Exchange: Appraisal Systems in English.” In Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse, ed. by Susan Hunston and Geoff Thompson, 142–175. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mauranen, Anna. 1993. “Contrastive ESP Rhetoric: Metatext in Finnish-English Economic Texts.” English for Specific Purposes 12 (3): 3–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moreno, Anna I., and Lorena Suarez. 2008. “A Study of Critical Attitude across English and Spanish Academic Book Reviews.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 7 (1): 15–26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2009. “Academic Book Reviews in English and Spanish: Critical Comments and Rhetorical Structure.” In Academic Evaluation: Review Genres in University Settings, ed. by Ken Hyland, and Giuliana Diani, 161–178. Basingstoke: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Motta-Roth, Desirée. 1996. “Same Genre, Different Discipline: A Genre-based Study of Book-reviews in Academe.” The ESPecialist 17 (2): 99–131.Google Scholar
. 1998. “Discourse Analysis and Academic Book Reviews: A Study of Text and Disciplinary Cultures.” In Genre Studies in English for Academic Purposes, ed. by Immaculada Fortanet, Santiago Posteguillo, Juan C. Palmer, and Juan F. Coll, 29–58. Castello de la Plana: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I.Google Scholar
Mur-Dueňas, Pilar. 2007. “I/we Focus on …: A Cross-cultural Analysis of Self-mentions in Business Management Research Articles.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 6 (2): 143–162. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2009. “Citation in Business Management Research Articles.” In Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Academic Discourse, ed. by Eija Suomela-Salmi, and Fred Dervin, 49–60. Amsterdam/New York: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Petersen, Margrethe, and Philip Shaw. 2002. “Language and Disciplinary Differences in a Biliterate Context.” World Englishes 21 (3): 357–374. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Povolná, Renata. 2012. “Cross-cultural Variation in the Degree of Dialogicality in Research Articles: On Some Text-organizing Devices.” In Coherence and Cohesion in English Discourse, by Dontcheva-Navrátilová, Olga, Renata Jančaříková, Gabriela Miššíková, and Renata Povolná, 29–58. Brno: Masaryk University.Google Scholar
Salager-Mayer, Francoise, and María Angeles Alcaraz Ariza. 2007. “Negative Appraisals in Academic Book Reviews: A Cross-linguistic Approach.” In Intercultural Aspects of Specialized Communication, 2nd ed., ed. by Christopher N. Candlin, and Maurizio Gotti, 149–171. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Sancho Guinda, Carmen and Ken Hyland. 2014. Stance and Voice in Written Academic Genres. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Shaw, Peter. 2004. “How Do We Recognise Implicit Evaluation in Academic Book Reviews.” In Academic Discourse – New Insights into Evaluation, ed. by Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti, and Elena Tognini Bonelli, 121–140. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Shaw, Philip. 2006. “Evaluative Language in Evaluative and Promotional Genres.” In Variation in Business and Economic Discourse: Diachronic and Genre Perspactives, ed. by Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti, Marina Dosena, and Belinda Crawford, 152–165. Roma: Officina Edizioni.Google Scholar
. 2009. “The Lexis and Grammar of Explicit Evaluation in Academic Book Reviews, 1913 and 1993.” In Academic Evaluation: Review Genres in University Settings, ed. by Ken Hyland, and Giuliana Diani, 217–235. Basingstoke: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shaw, Philip, and Irena Vassileva. 2009. “Co-evolving Ecademic Rhetoric across Culture: Britain, Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany in the 20th Century.” Journal of Pragmatics 4 (2): 290–305. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sperber, Dan, Fabrice Clément, Christophe Heintz, Olivier Mascaro, Hugo Mercier, Gloria Origgi, and Deirdre Wilson. 2010. “Epistemic Vigilance.” Mind and Language 25: 359–393. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stašková, Jaroslava. 2005. “Options of Identity: Authorial Presence in Research Articles Abstracts.” In Slovak Studies in English 1, ed. by Maria Huttová, 201–207. Bratislava: Univerzita Komenského.Google Scholar
Sudková, Marcela. 2012. “Vyjadřování interpersonální funkce v českých a anglických odborných textech. Kontrastivní studie.” [Expressing the interpersonal function in Czech and English academic texts. A contrastive study.] Časopis pro moderní filologie 2012 (1): 31–42.Google Scholar
Swales, John M. 1990. Genre Analysis. English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
2004. Research Genres. Exploration and Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tang, Ramona, and Suganthi John. 1999. “The ‘I’ in Identity: Exploring Writer Identity in Student Academic Writing through the First Person Pronoun.” English for Specific Purposes 18: 23–39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thieme, Katja. 2010. “Constitutive Rhetoric as an Aspect of Audience Design: The Public Texts of Canadian Suffragists.” Written Communication 27 (1): 36–56. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Geoff. 2001. “Interaction in Academic Writing: Learning to Argue with the Reader.” Applied Linguistics 22 (1): 58–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Geoff and Susan Hunston. 1999. “Evaluation: An introduction.” In Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse, ed. by Susan Hunston, and Geoff Thompson, 1–27. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Vanderbiesen, Jeroen. 2016. “Mixed Viewpoints and the Quotative-reportive Cline in German: Reported Speech and Reported Eventuality.” In Viewpoint and the Fabric of Meaning, ed. by Barbara Dancygier, Wei-lun Lu, and Arie Verhagen, 41–91. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vassileva, Irena. 1998. “Who Am I/Who Are We in Academic Writing?” International Journal of Applied Linguistics 8 (2): 163–192. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Verhagen, Arie. 2016. “Introduction: On tools for Weaving Meaning Out of Viewpoint Threads.” In Viewpoint and the Fabric of Meaning, ed. by Barbara Dancygier, Wei-lun Lu, and Arie Verhagen, 1–10. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Virtanen, Tuija, and Helena Halmari. 2005. “Persuasion across Genres: Emerging Perspectives.” In Persuasion across Genres, ed. Helena Halmari, and Tuija Virtanen, 3–24. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (7)

Cited by seven other publications

Yuan, Wen, Yue Jin & Yingli Yang
2024. The Influence of Disciplinary Variation and Speaker Characteristics on the Use of Hedges and Boosters in Zhihu Live Talks. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication 67:1 ► pp. 105 ff. DOI logo
Afful, Joseph Benjamin Archibald, Eugene Kwesi Hesse, Ebenezer Agbaglo & Emmanuel Mensah Bonsu
2023. Persuasive strategies in grant recommendation letters written by senior faculty in a Ghanaian university. ExELL 11:2 ► pp. 133 ff. DOI logo
YAKUT, İlyas & Fatma YUVAYAPAN
2022. LEXICAL BUNDLES ACROSS DISCIPLINES: THE CASE OF RESEARCH ARTICLES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES. İnönü University International Journal of Social Sciences (INIJOSS) DOI logo
Dontcheva-Navratilova, Olga, Martin Adam, Renata Povolná & Radek Vogel
2020. Persuasive Strategies Across the Academic, Business, Religious and Technical Discourses. In Persuasion in Specialised Discourses, ► pp. 39 ff. DOI logo
Povolná, Renata
2018. On some persuasive strategies in technical discourse: Cross-cultural analysis of directives in English and Czech technical manuals. Topics in Linguistics 19:2 ► pp. 72 ff. DOI logo
Povolná, Renata
2019. CROSS-CULTURAL VARIATION IN THE EXPRESSION OF PERSUASIVE POWER IN THE GENRE OF TECHNICAL MANUALS: THE CASE OF DIRECTIVES. Discourse and Interaction 12:1 ► pp. 47 ff. DOI logo
Povolná, Renata
2020. Persuasion in Technical Discourse: The Role of Interpersonal Metadiscourse Markers in User Manuals. In Persuasion in Specialised Discourses, ► pp. 229 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 july 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.