Chapter published in:
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 rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 08 August 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.79.11don
References
Bennett, Karen
2009 “English academic style manuals: A survey.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 8: 43–54.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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,CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Felber, Lynette
2002 “The Book Review: Scholarly and Editorial Responsibility.” Journal of Scholarly Publishing 33 (3): 166–172.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fløttum, Kjersti, Trine Gedde-Dahl and Torodd Kinn
2006 Academic Voices Across Languages and Disciplines. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Flowerdew, John
2000 “Discourse Community, Legitimate Peripheral Participation, and the Nonnative-English-speaking Scholar.” TESOL Quarterly 34 (1): 127–150. http://​www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/3588099.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2012 “Grammar and the Research Article.” In Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, ed. by Carol Chapelle, 2394–2399. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2009 “An Interview-based Study of the Functions of Citations in Academic Writing across Two Disciplines.” Journal of Pragmatics 41 (3): 497–518.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1999 “Academic Attribution: Citation and the Construction of Disciplinary Knowledge.” Applied Linguistics 20 (3): 341–367.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2002 “Authority and Invisibility: Authorial Identity in Academic Writing.” Journal of Pragmatics 34: 1091–1112.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hyland, Ken and Carmen Sancho Guinda
(eds.) (2012) Stance and Voice in Written Academic Genres. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Livnat, Zohar
2012 Dialogue, Science and Academic Writing. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Martin, James and Peter White
2005 The Language of Evaluation. Appraisal in English. London: Palgrave.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Petersen, Margrethe, and Philip Shaw
2002 “Language and Disciplinary Differences in a Biliterate Context.” World Englishes 21 (3): 357–374.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Thieme, Katja
2010 “Constitutive Rhetoric as an Aspect of Audience Design: The Public Texts of Canadian Suffragists.” Written Communication 27 (1): 36–56.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Geoff
2001 “Interaction in Academic Writing: Learning to Argue with the Reader.” Applied Linguistics 22 (1): 58–78.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Vassileva, Irena
1998 “Who Am I/Who Are We in Academic Writing?” International Journal of Applied Linguistics 8 (2): 163–192.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Dontcheva-Navratilova, Olga, Martin Adam, Renata Povolná & Radek Vogel
2020.  In Persuasion in Specialised Discourses, ► pp. 39 ff. Crossref 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. Crossref 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. Crossref logo
Povolná, Renata
2020.  In Persuasion in Specialised Discourses, ► pp. 229 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 april 2021. 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.