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Article published In:
Journal of English for Research Publication Purposes
Vol. 1:2 (2020) ► pp.92–119
Full length Papers

Discipline and methodological paradigm

A case study of EAL scholars’ perceptions of research writing in political science

| National Research University Higher School of Economics | University of Helsinki

In contemporary academia, multilingual scholars using English as an additional language (EAL) are actively engaged in knowledge construction producing more research texts in English than native speakers (Hyland, 2016). Having a more general purpose to gain insights into the factors that influence multilingual scholars’ research writing practices in English, this case study seeks to explore how EAL users perceive disciplinary norms of epistemic stance expression in political science. It is based on interviews with 5 Russian political scientists and on the analysis of their research texts. The findings suggest that the participants do not seem to have a shared understanding of disciplinary norms regarding epistemic stance expression; however, their narratives highlight the importance of the methodological paradigm the texts belong to for their writing practices. The study is a contribution to the discussion of the role of the discipline in EAL scholars’ research writing practices and linguistic and rhetorical variability of research texts within one discipline. The results of this study have pedagogical implications for ERPP course designers and practitioners.

Keywords: research writing, multilingual scholars, EAL, disciplinary norms, methodological paradigm, epistemic stance
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Participants and settings
  • 3.Data and methods
    • 3.1Text analysis
    • 3.2Interviews
    • 3.3Analysis of the interviews
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Participants’ perceptions of disciplinary norms of epistemic stance expression
    • 4.2Epistemic stance expression in interviewees’ texts
    • 4.3Factors other than discipline influencing writers’ epistemic stance expression
      • 4.3.1Methodological paradigm
      • 4.3.2The influence of writers’ educational, teaching, and research experience
      • 4.3.3L1 influence
  • 5.Discussion and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 November 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jerpp.20004.shc
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