In 1989, Tatsuo Motokawa, a prominent biologist, wrote in a scientific journal, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, concerning variations in scientific writing:
Despite the rapid development in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) research today, we have as yet found a practical and unproblematic way to manage âdifferencesâ in academic writing. Students from various backgrounds write differently, and minority students struggle to write the kind of essays that can result in good marks. Researchers around the globe likewise grapple. The struggle they experience may sometimes be the result of their genuinely immature research skills, but in other cases, it is simply that their writing conforms to a norm that is different from the dominant one. Not only cultures that emerge from different nations but also a wide range of ideological differences create different norms in writing. Religions, genders, beliefs and socio-economic backgrounds trigger individuals to âthink in different waysâ.I had always regarded science as a universal and believed there are no differences in science at all between countries. But I was wrong. People with different cultures think in different ways, and therefore their science also may well be different. (Motokawa 1989, p. 489)
This is an issue caused by inadequate approaches to differences. Although we have become aware of differences, we do not know how to deal with them. Finding a difference tends to lead to over-generalising based on the attribute of a group. This leads to an attempt to change minor attributes to major ones in order for minorities to succeed. Regrettably, this has been happening in English academic writing research and pedagogy and the research community has yet to provide an effective and appropriate solution to the situation.
This has been the case in structure analysis in academic writing research. Structure analysis has been one of the most fruitful and highly disputed areas of research in academic writing studies. Diverse norms have brought complexities to the structure analysis of academic writing. Discrepancies between theories and analytical frameworks have brought further complexities. These factors will be discussed in the subsequent sections by reviewing academic writing structure analytical approaches that are currently used in academic writing studies.
This chapter presents an overview of the primary aim of this book: to provide a new analytical model for academic writing structure that can solve the complexities. By stating this, I do not mean that I am creating something completely new, since the generic structure model this book presents depends firmly on well-established theories, which have been little considered within academic discourse analysis literature in the past. These include the prototype theory, originating with the psychology research of Eleanor Roche and further developed by semanticist/cognitive linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson, and the structuralist theories, represented by anthropologist Claude LĂ©vi-Strauss and folklorist/semiotician Algirdas Julien Greimas. These foundations from across the disciplines enable this book to approach academic writing structures in globalising, diverse, and complex academic settings in a way different from the past. The approach does not just indicate differences; it also finds overlaps and this enables analysing academic writing structures without over-generalising instances of genre and without assimilating minor instances into major ones.
To achieve this, this book draws on literature, theories, and frameworks that are not limited to one discipline but that range from linguistics, semiotics, anthropology, cognitive sciences, and so on. Therefore, it is a post-disciplinary attempt to study discourse and enables an integration of theories and approaches beyond disciplinary boundaries. This was difficult to do under the restriction of disciplinary walls that deemed the traditions outside of the wall irrelevant for the reason that they were outside. To provide an overview of this attempt, this introductory chapter will, first of all, present a concise history of academic writing research traditions, followed by a short summary of how this book will resolve the complexities that arise within the structure analysis in the academic writing research tradition, which is known as genre analysis.
1.1 Three Traditions of Genre Analysis
As Hyon (1996) identified, genre analysis in academic writing research is divided into roughly three traditions: English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and EAP, Sydney School of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), and New Rhetoric. Despite differences reviewed in the subsequent sections, all three traditions can be recognised as socio-pragmatic discourse analysis, as they consider text in relation to social practices and practical, purposeful mediators. I overview each tradition before presenting the proposed theoretical grounds for the new model. This is because the theoretical grounds of the new model are closely linked to the issues posed by the three traditions of genre analysis. The issues relate to the discrepancies between theory and analytical practices. More specifically, the issues have to do with the ambiguity of identifying generic structure components,1 in which the theory is incongruent with the identification criterion for generic structure components. This incongruity between genre theory and analytical practices directly relates to the unresolved issue, which was pointed out most notably by Paltridge, that despite the wealth of research, approaches to academic discourse structures are still not successful in integrating social and cognitive aspects of genre (Paltridge 1995).
Structure analysis in academic writing studies has developed rather independently from other traditions of structure analysis in other written genres, such as literary studies, in which the mainstream structure analysis has been developed under the influence of semiotics and structuralism. Genre analysis in academic writing, on the other hand, presents a formalistic appearance.
One type of structure analysis in academic writing studies is macro-structure analysis, which investigates sectional structure of research articles (RAs) or chapter structure in theses, namely introduction-method-results-discussion (IMRD) structure (macro-structure) (Swales 1990). Another type of structure analysis describes smaller components that structure sections of RAs or chapters of a thesis/book (micro-structure). The approach this book proposes does not distinguish between macro- and micro-structures; that is, it does not rely on formalistic structures of academic writing. This means that this new approach to academic writing structure is trans-structural; it can be applied throughout a text without relying on formal divisions, such as method, results and discussion sections. In this book, however, the majority of excerpts used for explaining how the new model works are from introductory sections/chapters. This is because, as will be shown, introduction parts tend to contain variations of research justifications, making them good sites for the structure analysis that aims to establish a model that can take into account diverse academic writing structural realisations.
1.1.1 ESP and EAP Traditions
The most widely applied genre analysis approach is arguably the one developed within the ESP and EAP traditions. Both ESP and EAP are quite pragmatic in their orientations, but EAP is more open to linguistic and ideological perspectives. Research in EAP is more relevant to this book since it emerged from ESP so that pedagogical orientations for the purpose of students/researchers can be highlighted. It has been famously formulated by Swales (1990, pp. 45â56) that genre orients communicative purpose. That is, the link between shared communicative purposes among the members of the discourse community and the formation of genre has been highlighted.
Swales also highlighted a feature of genre by drawing on Armstrong et al. (1983) integration of the notions of prototypicality (Rosch 1975) and family resemblance (Wittgenstein 1958). These concepts will be fully explained in Chap. 2. This integration, together with the deployment of the prototype theory, was, in my view, among the most innovative in genre analysis. This integration, however, was not fully explored in the identification of generic structure components. Although it was proposed that with this integration it would be theoretically possible to categorise not only typical but also peripheral instances of genre, in practice it was not. Although instances of genre could be identified with this integration theoretically, the integration was not applied to the analysis of components of genre that form structures, leaving a formalistic view to generic structure. This resulted in the inflexible formalistic models that are unable to analyse new instances of generic structure components.
The generic structure analytical framework represented by the Create-A-Research-Space (CARS) model (Swales 1990) has been widely applied as it well described the RA introductory structures written by Anglophone researchers. It has also been useful for minority students and researchers to learn to write like a mainstream researcher. However, presenting structures of RA as a fixed monolith, without reflecting the flexibility that the integration of the prototype and family resemblance may achieve, was inadequate. The CARS model, for example, is rather formalistic, being made up of three moves with metaphorically described content: Move 1 is âestablishing territoryâ, Move 2 is âestablishing a nicheâ, and Move 3 is âoccupying a nicheâ. The rhetorical function of Move 1 is to provide a background for research. Move 1 is made up of steps such as âclaiming centralityâ, âmaking topic generalization(s)â, and âreviewing items of previous researchâ. The rhetorical function of Move 2 is to point out a gap in research, made up of steps such as âcounter-claimingâ, âindicating gapâ, âquestion raisingâ, and âcontinuing a traditionâ. In Move 3, where research is presented, the steps include âquestioning purposeâ, âannouncing present researchâ, âannouncing principal findingsâ, and âindicating research article structureâ.
The apparently fixed generic structure of the model has caused complexities in actual analysis as well as at pedagogic settings. Studies (Lewin et al. 2001; LorĂ©s 2004; Paltridge 1994) pointed out a divide between theory and practice in this regard. That is, despite the theoretical assurance on genre categorisations, the infinite classifying of generic structure instances âwhich just donât seem to fit the generic descriptionsâ (Cope and Kalantzis 1993, p. 12) continues in practice. In real academic settings where students write for degrees or publications, these issues can be linked to real risks. This is acutely exemplified with the case of what Hodge (1995) called the postmodern turn in humanities theses, where he cautioned that new types of academic discourse represented by subjec...