Bulgarian ‘we’ and audience involvement
in academic writing
The present paper examines the functions of the audience-involving pronoun ‘we’ in Bulgarian academic writing, more specifically in reviews of linguistics books. The analysis is based on a modified version of speech-act theory combined with discourse production strategies. A comparison is also made with the use and functions of the academic ‘we’ in the genre of the research article. Special attention is paid to the various linguistic means of expressing reference to the first person plural which are available in Bulgarian as a pro-drop language. The conclusions deal with some issues of review authors’ motivation for writing (or not writing) reviews, as well as with the academic standards concerning the choice of evaluation – positive or negative.
References (50)
References
Austin, John. 1962.
How to Do Things with Words
. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Austin, John. 1973. “Speech acts.” In
Readings for Applied Linguistics
, J.P.B. Allen and Pit S. Corder(eds), The Edinburgh Course in Applied Linguistics, vol.1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bakhtin, Mihail. 1986. “The problem of speech genres and the problem of the text in linguistics, philology and the human sciences: An experiment in philosophical analysis.” In
Speech Genres and Other Late Essays
(trans.V. McGee), Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist(eds), 250–317. Austin: University of Texas Press.
de Beaugrande, Robert and Dressler, Wolfgang.1981.
Introduction to Text Linguistics
. London: Longman.
Bondi, Marina and Silver, Mark S.2004. “Textual voices: A cross-disciplinary study of attribution in academic discourse.” In
Evaluation in Spoken and Written Academic Discourse
, Laurie Anderson and Julie Bamford(eds), 121–141. Roma: Officiana.
Cappelen, Herman. 2011. “Against Assertion.” In
Assertion
, Jessica Brown and Herman Cappelen(eds), 21–48. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Van Dijk, Teun and Walter Kintsch. 1983.
Strategies of Discourse Comprehension
. London: Academic Press.
Eßer, Ruth.1997.
Kulturelle Geprägtheit Wissenschaftlicher Textproduktion und ihre Konsequenzen für den Universitären Unterricht von Deutsch als Fremdsprache
. München: iudicium Verlag.
Ferrara, Alesandro. 1985. “Pragmatics.” In
Handbook of Discourse Analysis, vol.2, Dimensions of Discourse
, Teun van Dijk(ed.), 137–158. London: Academic Press.
Fröhlich, Gerhard.2003. “Kontrolle durch Konkurrenz und Kritik? Das ‘wissenschaftliche Feld’ bei Pierre Bourdieu.” In
Pierre Bourdieus Theorie des Sozialen
, Boike Rehbein, Gernot Saalmann and Hermann Schwengel(eds), 117–129. Konstanz: UVK.
Gea-valor, Maria-Lluisa. 2010. “The emergence of the author’s voice in book reviewing: A contrastive study of academic vs. non-academic discourse.” In
Constructing Interpersonality: Multiple Perspectives on Written Academic Genres
, Rosa Lores-Sanz, Pilar Mur-Duenas and Enrique Lafuente-Millan(eds), 117–135. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Giannoni, Davide Simone.2007. “Metatextual evaluation in journal editorial.”
Textus
XX: 57–82.
Graefen, Gabriele. 1997.
Der Wissenschaftliche Artikel – Textart und Textorganisation
. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang.
Halliday, M.A.K. 1985.
Introduction to Functional Grammar
. London: Edward Arnold.
Halliday, M.A.K. and Hasan, Ruqaiya.1976.
Cohesion in English
. London: Longman.
Haverkate, Henk. 1983. “Strategies in Linguistic Action.”
Journal of Pragmatics
7: 637–656.
Hoffmann, Lothar. 1985.
Kommunikationsmittel Fachsprache
. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.
Hyland, Ken. 2004.
Disciplinary Discourses: Social Interactions in Academic Writing
. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press.
Hyland, Ken and Diani, Giuliana.2009.
Academic Evaluation: Review Genres in University Settings
. Palgrave Macmillan.
James, Carl. 1980.
Contrastive Analysis
. London: Longman.
Korhonen, Riitta and Kusch, Martin.1989. “The rhetorical function of the first person in philo-sophical texts – the influence of intellectual style, paradigm and language.” In
Text. Interpretation. Argumentation
, Martin Kusch and Hartmut Schröder(eds), 61–76. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.
Kretzenbacher, Heinz. 1995. “Wie durchsichtig ist die Sprache der Wissenschaften?” In
Linguistik der Wissenschaftssprache
, Heinz Kretzenbacher, Harald Weinrich(eds), 15–39. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Leech, Geoffrey. 1983.
Principles of Pragmatics
. London: Longman.
Loffler-Laurian, Anne-Marie. 1980. “L’expression du locuteur dans les discours scientifiques.”
Revue de Linguistique Romane
44: 135–157.
Lores-Sanz, Rosa, Mur-Duenas, Pilar and Lafuente-Millan, Enrique(eds). 2010.
Constructing Interpersonality: Multiple Perspectives on Written Academic Genres
. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Myers, Greg. 1989. “The pragmatics of politeness in scientific articles.”
Applied Linguistics
10: 1–35.
Nicolova, Ruselina. 2008.
????????? ?????????: ??????????
. [Bulgarian grammar: morphology.] Sofia: University of Sofia Press.
Pashov, Pet?r. 2002.
????????? ?????????
. [Bulgarian grammar] Sofia: Hermes.
Poppi, Franca. 2009. “How stable is the construction of an author’s professional identity? Variations in five editions of P. A. Samuelson’s Economics.” In
Commonality and Individuality in Academic Discourse
, Maurizio Gotti(ed.), 215–232. Bern: Peter Lang.
Sanz, Rosa L.2009. “(Non-) Critical voices in the reviewing of history discourse: A cross-cultural study of evaluation.” In
Academic Evaluation: Review Genres in University Settings
, Ken Hyland and Giuliana Diani(eds), 143–160. Palgrave Macmillan.
Searle, John. 1969.
Speech Acts: An Essay the Philosophy of Language
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Spillner, Bernd. 1989. “Stilelemente im fachsprachlichen Diskurs.” In
Technische Sprache und Technolekte in der Romania
, Wolfgang Dahmen, Günter Holtus, Johannes Kramer and Michael Metzeltin(eds), 2–19. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
Swales, John M., Ahmad, Ummul K., Chang, Yu-Ying, Chavez, Daniel, Dressen, Dacia F. and Seymour, Ruth.1998. “Consider this: The role of imperatives in scholarly writing.”
Applied Linguistics
19(1): 97–121.
Tsohatzidis, Savas(ed.). 1994.
Foundations of Speech Act Theory
. London, New York: Routledge
Vassileva, Irena. 1998. “Who am I/who are we in academic writing?”
International Journal of Applied Linguistics
8(2): 163–190.
Vassileva, Irena. 2000.
Who is the Author? (A Contrastive Analysis of Authorial Presence in English, German, French, Russian and Bulgarian Academic Discourse)
. Sankt Augustin: Asgard Verlag.
Vassileva, Irena. 2002. “Speaker-audience interaction: The Case of Bulgarians Presenting in English.” In
The Language of Conferencing
, Eija Ventola, Celia Shalom and Susan Thompson(eds), 255–276. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Vassileva, Irena. 2006.
Author-Audience Interaction: A Cross-Cultural Perspective
. Sankt Augustin: Asgard Verlag.
Vassileva, Irena. 2010. “Critical book reviews in German.”
International Journal of Applied Linguistics
20(3): 354–367.
Ventola, Eija. 1998. “Meaningful choices in academic communities: Ideological issues.” In
Making Meaningful Choices in English
, Rainer Schulze(ed.), 277–294. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.
Weinrich, Harald. 1989. “Formen der Wissenschaftssprache.” In
Jahrbuch 1988 der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin
, 119–158.
Widdowson, Henry. 1979.
Explorations in Applied Linguistics
. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wills, Wolfram. 1997. “Hedges in Expert-Language Reviews.” In
Hedging and Discourse: Approaches to the Analysis of a Pragmatic Phenomenon in Academic Texts
, Raija Markkanen and Hartmut Schröder(eds), 134–147. Berlin/New York.
Wüest, Jakob.1988. “Textsorten kontrastiv betrachtet: Die Präsenz des Autors in linguistischen Publikationen.” In
Linguistische Studien: Studien zur Sprachkonfrontation
, Gerd Wotjak(ed.), 125–136. Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR.
Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
Kozubíková Šandová, Jana
2019.
Audience involvement in academic book review articles : an English and Czech comparative study.
Brno studies in English :2
► pp. [101] ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 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.