evaluation and promotion across languages

Evaluation and promotion across languages

Philip Shaw*

Engelska Institutionen, Stockholms Universitet, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden

Abstract

Many academics write both in their mother tongue and in English. Their rhetoric is influ-

enced by the general national culture, the culture of their national scientific community, theirperception of their audience, and, in English, by their language proficiency. This studyexamines rhetoric, and specifically evaluation, in three sets of published economics articles:

one set in Danish, the second by the same authors in English, and a third by internationalauthors from the same journals as the second. Despite the many similarities among all three,there are Danish norms in terms of use of the Gap move, use of personal pronouns, and other

features, some of which the Danes carry over into their writing in English. However, the fea-tures carried over are within the norms of writing in English and are probably not perceptibleto international readers: Danish writers in international journals merely tend to cluster at theless promotional end of the spectrum.

# 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Economics; Genre; Academic writing; Danish; Contrastive

1. Introduction

1.1. Evaluation

Studies of the differences in the rhetoric and style of academic articles in differentcultures and languages have focused on a variety of linguistic and rhetorical featuressuch as the use of metalanguage (Mauranen, 1993), the role and realisation of thevarious moves in the introduction (Taylor & Chen, 1991; Burgess, 2002), the use of‘boosting’ language (Lindeberg, 1997), and first-person pronouns (Vassileva, 2000).Most of the features used have in common that they are not basic disciplinary

content or relations (Moreno, 1998), but overt expressions of evaluation in the senseof Hunston (2000). In her model, evaluation may be on the interactive plane, con-

Journal of English for Academic Purposes

2 (2003) 343–357

www.elsevier.com/locate/jeap

1475-1585/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/S1475-1585(03)00050-X

* Tel.: +46-8-164304.

E-mail address: [email protected]

http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jeap/a4.3d

mailto:[email protected]

cerned with the evaluation of propositions or ‘discourse-entities’ (Thetela, 1997) orthe autonomous, concerned with evaluation of ‘world-entities’. In It may be true thatthe moon is made of cheese, it may be true evaluates on the interactive plane, and inThe moon is an important source of cheese, important does so on the autonomousplane. On either plane evaluation ascribes a status and a value, (although the ana-lysis below does not attempt to distinguish these systematically). The status of pro-position as averred fact, an averred assessment, or an assumption is indicated byadjectives, projecting clauses etc, in the text segment that expresses it and each typeof status has the potential for a particular set of values, positive or negative, one ofwhich may be ascribed by a later text segment. Thus a recommendation may beascribed positive value by showing what good consequences may come from it, and ahypothesis may be ascribed negative value by citing counter-evidence. On the auton-omous plane a ‘world-entity’ can be given a particular status by its lexicalisation—torefer to something as a sect or as propaganda is to evaluate it—and this status can begiven value as important, valuable, effective, etc. by subsequent text segments.Myers (1991) distinguishes between a ‘narrative of nature’, typical of popularisa-

tion, and ‘narrative of science’, typical of research-reporting articles. In discussionsof evaluation this corresponds to a distinction made by Thetela (1997), dividingentities and value-ascription on both Hunston planes into research-oriented andtopic-oriented categories. Thus one will have research-oriented entities such as aninvestigation by Brie and topic-oriented ones like the composition of the moon. Onecan ascribe topic-oriented value (importance) to one’s topic by saying that it threa-tens to cause problems for the world economy, for example, or one can ascriberesearch-oriented value to it by saying that there has been a lot of research on it.Similarly one can ascribe topic-oriented status by attributing a statement to a real-world actor, and one can ascribe research-oriented status by attributing it to aresearcher. Table 1 illustrates this.

1.2. Types of difference

Academic texts from different countries and languages differ systematically, oftenin terms of evaluation. Several factors have been identified which may account forthis. The first is what Okamura (2000) calls ‘national culture’—our expectation thatmembers of different cultures have learned different ways of expressing themselvesgenerally and that these affect academic writing in the same way as other registers orgenres. Keeping to European examples, this is the implication when Mauranen(1993) shows that Finnish scientists have a somewhat more writer-oriented style in

Table 1

Orientations and planes

Orientation

Plane
Research Topic=world/policy
Autonomous
A great deal of research A major policy debate
Interactive
Smith (1998) claims Politicians often claim
344 P. Shaw / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 2 (2003) 343–357

both English and Finnish than Anglos, and Vassileva (2001) shows that Bulgarianlinguists express their claims more directly than Anglos in both their mother-tongueand English. However, it is clear, as Burgess (2002: 209) has shown, that ‘variation indiscourse conventions is not solely the result of the language background of the writer’.The second is the local disciplinary culture or community—the conditions of

production of the texts in question (Melander, 1998). This is what Okamura (2000)calls ‘national science’ (vividly illustrated by Casanave, 1998). It has been suggested,for example that high levels of ‘boosting’ (Lindeberg, 1997) of one’s research con-tribution are a response to a more competitive research environment and that bycontrast less competitive environments produce less overt evaluation. Thus boostinghas been found to be less present—or less obvious—in some Scandinavian academicwriting than in English (Frederickson & Swales, 1994), and Yakhontova (2002)ascribes some of the differences between Anglo and Ukrainian abstracts to the morecollectivist tradition of Ukrainian research. ‘National science’ presumably leads topreference for certain rhetorical forms which may not be fully deliberate or con-scious. This level may also be deeply affected by physical conditions such as theavailability of books and materials (Canagarajah, 2002).The third is rather more specific—the audience for which the text is produced.

This may be conflated with the second factor (cf. Burgess, 2002), but it can be dis-tinguished, at least logically. If Ukrainians or Scandinavians always write in a cer-tain way they may do so because of some inherent feature of their scientific culture,but if they write in one way for a local academic audience in their own language andin another for an international they presumably do so because they perceive differ-ent rhetorics or styles as appropriate for the two audiences. We can distinguish twodimensions of audience difference: degree of localism and degree of specialisation.Many academics write for a local audience in one language and for an internationalone in another (often English). Simultaneously, at least in applied disciplines, manywrite sometimes for an audience of practitioners and sometimes for an audience ofacademics (Hemais, 2001). The use of different rhetoric for different audiences, if itoccurs, is likely to be a more or less conscious decision.Of course discipline is an important factor, and it may interact with national science.

Not only do style and rhetoric differ across disciplines (virologists do not write likelinguists (Hyland, 2000)), but also there are ‘national science’ or cultural differences inone discipline and not in another. Thus Melander, Swales, and Fredrickson (1997)examined abstracts by Americans writing English, Swedes writing Swedish, and Swedeswriting English across three disciplines, and showed that their rhetoric was uniform inplant pathology, different in medicine probably because the Swedish-language articlesaimed at a different audience, and different in linguistics because of national science.Finally, where writers have to write in a language which is not their mother tongue

they might write in a specific way because of limitations of language proficiency,perhaps including L1 transfer (articles in Granger, 1998 contain examples). Bothlimited proficiency and difference of rhetoric are cited by Deneire (2002) as restrict-ing the opportunities of researchers who are L2 speakers of English.Writers themselves are conscious of many of these factors. In a survey (cf.

Petersen & Shaw, 2002) of one group of bilingual academics—Danish applied

P. Shaw / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 2 (2003) 343–357 345

economists—respondents disagreed as to whether academic economics articles inEnglish written by Danes differed consistently from their equivalents written byAnglos. About half the 82 questionnaire respondents thought they did not, 40%thought they did, and 10% ‘didn’t know’. Suggested reasons for there being no dif-ference were: that internationalisation has meant that ‘Anglo rhetoric/style’ is notmeaningful; that the processes of reviewing and editing erase differences; that thefield uses mathematics and verbal formulae; and that all participants in the field areimmersed in the same style and register of English. Suggested reasons why theremight be a difference were: that limited language proficiency leads to ineffective‘style and flow’; that Danes have a different style or rhetoric due to a national habitof thought or expression; and, more generally, that there are differences in dis-ciplinary cultures among nations. The notion of audience difference also arose, indiscussions of the purpose of writing in Danish or English.Earlier work attempted merely to establish differences among sets of texts, but, as

shown above, writers have more recently become interested in the reasons for dif-ferences (Melander et al., 1997; Mauranen, 2001; Burgess, 2002). This involvesrather careful construction of corpora for comparison, so that disciplinary culture,audience, and language, for example are not confounded. If the research focuses onsets of texts without reference to their writers this is problematic. Thus Burgess(2002), Yakhontova (2002), and Vassileva (2001) all compare sets of texts in a givendiscipline written in a given language with articles by speakers of that languagewritten in English. In these circumstances we know we are dealing with differentaudiences, but not whether we are dealing with the same disciplinary culture. Do thepeople who write their articles and abstracts in English share the rhetorical values ofthose who write in the mother tongue? Since we are looking at averages, is it notquite likely that the average rhetorical values of the two groups are different?The purpose of this paper is to use a rather strictly controlled corpus to unravel

the various types of difference that can exist among texts by comparing evaluativelanguage in article introductions in applied economics in Danish, in English byDanes, and in English by others. Evaluative language is chosen not only becauseit has been so widely examined by related investigations, but also because a com-mon cultural stereotype (in Scandinavia) is that Scandinavians dislike showing offand therefore their academic writing makes less use of ‘boosting’ than Anglowriting.

1.3. Research questions

Currently, introductions to academic articles often conform more or less toSwales’ CARS model (1990) and therefore show the importance of the general topicand particular issue concerned, outline the gap to be filled, and make the articlepurpose explicit. This provides a framework for asking questions about evaluationat both the rhetorical and linguistic levelsI therefore ask first of all a general question:

� How are the categories of evaluation mapped onto the CARS moves?


Then two contrastive-rhetoric ones

� Are there differences between the sets in the realisation of any particularmove, particularly the gap, purpose, and outline steps discussed by previouswriters?

� Does evaluation focus on a narrative of research rather than on a narrative ofthe world/policy to the same extent in all three sets?

Then a contrastive-style one

� Do the sets of articles use the same evaluative vocabulary at the same points?

2. Materials

The texts examined are published articles in applied economics. One set is inDanish written by Danes who also publish in English, the second is in Englishwritten by the same set of Danish writers, and the third is in English written by whatI will call Anglo writers. These are researchers based in institutions in the US, Brit-ain, or New Zealand (as it happens) where at least one member of each authorialteam has an Anglo-Saxon name. Whether or not the third set constitutes ‘native-speaker’ writing it is probably not characterised by a specific non-Anglo culture inrhetorical terms. This kind of three-way comparison using Danish writers is possiblein principle because in Denmark an academic Danish-language economics journal—Nationaløkonomisk Tidsskrift—survives. Our interviewees agreed that publication inthis journal has some academic prestige, although it only reaches a local audience.The corpus for analysis was constructed by finding papers in the Nationaløkono-

misk Tidsskrift written as far as possible by scholars who had been interviewed forthe survey mentioned above (Petersen & Shaw, 2002), checking bibliographies forpublications in English by the same authors, and then checking the journals in which

Table 2

Sources and authorship of articles investigated

Codes for authors

in Nat Øk

Authorship of corresponding

English-language article

English-language journal of publication

(Danes and Anglos)=

QR
QR Labour
PQ
QS Oxford Economic Papers
K
K Environmental & Resource Econ’s
AG
AG Energy
J
J Energy Policy
BCDE
ACD Energy Policy
CDE
CDF Scandinavian Economic History
CD
ABD Journal of Consumer Politics
GH
XYZQR Scandinavian J of Economics
BCDE
A Energy Economics

these had appeared for Anglo publications (as defined above). This produced acorpus of ten articles by Danes in Danish (set DD), ten by the same set of Danes inEnglish (set DE), and ten Anglo articles in English from the same journals (set EE).All articles have comparable topics and disciplinary orientation, and broadly similarexpectations of reader expertise. DD and DE have similar author backgrounds anddiffer in language and audience. DE and EE have the same language and audiencesand differ in author background.Table 2 shows the journals from which the articles came. It also shows that many

articles had multiple authorship and so the paired English-language and Danish-language articles do not always have exactly the same authors. Nevertheless theauthors of DE and DD come from the same ‘discourse community’.

3. Results

These introductions have here been analysed, adapting Swales (1990), in terms ofsix units. To suit these texts I have re-analysed Swales’ ‘Move 1’ into ‘Topic’ and‘Issue’. The topic is the general area to be investigated. The issue is an area within itof particular importance or controversy. I have also limited ‘outlining purpose’ tothe initial statement and introduced ‘Expansion of purpose’ for whatever comesafter this statement, whether it discusses aims, dataset (as is often the case), orresults. Although some of these units are close to those of Samraj (2001), they arechosen merely to simplify discussion of evaluation and rhetorical contrasts, and notheoretical status is claimed for them. This is illustrated in Table 3.The gap unit, if present, is identified by a sentence (occasionally more) containing

an assertion that something is missing in the literature, preparing the way for orjustifying the purpose. It is one particular realisation of Move 2, one which Swalesdescribes as involving a strong knowledge claim and thus intense evaluation.In several cases the article began with Move 3 and in these and other cases there

was often a gap statement after the statement of purpose. Since Purpose and Gapare defined by their content (and not their position) this is unproblematic. However,a structure similar to a gap statement sometimes occurs as part of the issue unit,

Table 3

Analysis of article introductions

Move 1
Topic (‘Claiming centrality’?) ’Strategic trade policy through the last decades
has become increasingly incompatible with

international legislation

Issue (‘making topic generalisation’+

‘reviewing items of previous research’)

These issues are mainly analysed in the well-known

and powerful Brander-Spencer framework

Move 2
Establishing a niche (one realisation
of which is ‘indicating a gap’)

So far there has been no attempt to investigate. . .

Move 3
Outlining purpose The purpose of this paper is to. . .
Expansion of purpose
These data enable us to
Indicating RA structure
In Section x we present. . .

introducing what is in fact Swales’ ‘reviewing items of previous research’, a summaryof the literature, and I have called this a pseudo-gap. Thus one can find a proposi-tion like Little has been written on this field followed by This article therefore pro-poses to . . .—a true gap because it functions as Move 2, but the same propositioncan be followed by Schmidt 1995 has shown that’ and in this case it is treated as apseudo-gap. It would be possible to regard the ‘pseudo-gap’ as introducing Move 2 (and thus having repeated gap moves as in Samraj, 2001); this is not done herebecause sequences pseudo-gap+literature+gap+purpose occur, and the aim is tofocus on the gap which ‘promotes’ the purpose.In this results section I discuss selected features of these units and show in which

areas there were differences among the three sets. Table 4 shows that fewer of thearticles from National Økonomisk Tidsskrift (DD) began with a sentence oriented toresearch than of the other two sets. This reflects a rhetorical choice, not the contentof the articles, for similar numbers in all three sets eventually focused on a narrativeof research in the topic section.The topic was typically ascribed value on the autonomous plane. Table 5 shows

the explicit devices that were judged to do this. It shows that a majority of the topicmoves in each set of articles did contain overt evaluative language and that broadlysimilar categories were used throughout.The issue unit often shows evaluation on both the interactive and the autonomous

plane. As with the topic, the various sets of articles used comparable autonomous-plane evaluative vocabulary. Table 6 lists interactive-plane devices judged to func-tion evaluatively (normally to discuss a debate either in the research world or in thereal world of policy) and shows that there are no major differences among the sets

Table 4

Orientation of content of first sentence of the article

First sentence orientation
DD DE EE
To research There is now a large body of empirical work indicating that. . .
1 4 5
To policy/debate Energy efficiency and economic efficiency are both in vogue internationally
5 3 1
To world Consumers around the world are collecting air miles
4 3 4
Eventual orientation to research in introduction
5 5 6
Table 5

Types of autonomous-plane vocabulary used in ’topic ’unit

DD
DE EE
Importance one of the main recent environmental concerns
2 3 1
Change increased very fast
1 4 3
Much discussed publicly intensified debate ona
2 2 3
Much researched most widely used model
1 2
Others in vogue, surprising, complicated
6 0 3
Total containing explicit evaluative items
7 9 7
a Example translated from Danish.


here either. It is possible that the Danes are more inclined to use evaluative adjec-tives than the international writers and the use of direct questions (How thenshould. . .?) might be a Danish preference.An interactive-plane evaluative feature occurring principally in the issue and gap

units is citation. Table 7 gives selected details of the 111 citation points in the 30introductions and shows that the three sets had comparable numbers of citations,but somewhat different distribution among the possible forms. The major differencewas that a majority of the Danish citations were of the type see Schmidt 1986 or cf.Schmidt 1986, while very few of the Anglo ones were of this type. By contrast amajority of the Anglo citations were non-integral citations as in The moon is made ofcheese (Brie, 1995) and this form was much less common in the Danish articles. TheDE set was distributed much more evenly among form categories and thus wasintermediate between the other two.Move 2 can be realised by several alternative steps, of which the ‘Indicating the

Gap’ is the one in which evaluation is most concentrated. Table 8 shows that theAnglo set has more examples of gap moves and suggests that the Danes made lessuse of the move in either language. In at least one case the gap seems to have beendeliberately downplayed: in an article in Scandinavian Economic History by a Danethere is a footnote which reads To our knowledge there are no studies analysing postwar convergence in regional income in Nordic countries. By contrast, its randomly-

Table 6

Types of interactive plane vocabulary used to highlight issue

DD
DE EE
Modals: may, could
2 1 2
Reporting verbs: argue, claim find
4 6 5
Metalinguistic nouns: claim, theory, finding, result
3 3 2
Adversatives: however, although,nevertheless
6 4 4
Modal adverbs: probably
2 1 0
Attitude disjuncts: certainly,surprisingly
0 0 2
Evaluative adjectives: striking, surprising, sceptical,
5 4 1
Addition markers: furthermore
1 1 1
Direct questions
2 1 0
Total containing explicit evaluative items
7 9 7
Table 7

Percentages of citations which have a certain form

DD
DE EE
Total number of citation points in this set (N)
31 43 37
Percentage (rounded to whole numbers) of N with the given form

non-integral: (Schmidt, 1985)
6 26 76
subject: Schmidt (1986) found
16 21 5
non-subject: it is argued by Schmidt that, see Schmidt (1986)
61 23 14
Others: a Nash-Cournot equilibrium, Blau’s approach (1992)
16 31 6

chosen Anglo counterpart from Sc. Ec. Hist. contains an elaborate gap paragraphprominently placed before the issue unit, which includes phrases like surprisinglylittle economic literature, This confounds x with y and wrongly suggests that. . .; thesedeficiencies in the economics literature. . .Table 9 shows that the three groups use linguistically similar types of value

ascription devices if they have gap sections. The gap is often pre-announced by astatement that there is a lot of literature on something, which sets up the classic butsurprisingly little on something else.In Move 3 (purpose and outline) the feature examined was the use of the first-

person pronouns I, my, we, us, our. There were no examples of ‘editorial we’; indi-vidual writers used I/me if they used a first-person pronoun. Most instances of wewere exclusive, referring to the writers rather than both writer and reader. Table 10shows that only one case of we occurred in the introductions before the Purposemove, and this was an inclusive one—. . .even if we believe X we should not Y. In thePurpose section there were sharp differences among the three sets of articles, withfirst-person pronouns little used in Danish, a minority feature among Danes writingin English, and present in a majority of the Anglo articles. The single use in Danishillustrates why one might take first-person pronoun use as ascribing value: a clausetranslatable as Furthermore we will introduce a data series which. . . contrasts theinferior data used by previous writers with ‘our’ superior material. Many cases listedunder ‘expansion’ represent contrasts of what ‘we’ shall do with what ‘they’ didbefore. The outline sections of the Anglo and Danish-language sets show a sharpcontrast. Danish-language outline sections normally use a construction to be trans-

Table 8

Gap realisation

DD
DE EE
Explicit gap precedes purpose (so that purpose appears to evaluate gap)
2 1 6
Explicit gap after purpose (so that gap appears to evaluate purpose)
1 2 1
Pre-gap introduces review (with or without a real gap later)
2 1 1
No explicit gap in introduction
6 6a 3
a One of these has a gap in a footnote!

Table 9

Evaluative devices in the gap (number of articles showing one of this type)

Category
DD DE EE
Pre-gap: ‘many’, a large number
2 1 2
Negative or quasi-negative quantifiers: few, little, no
2 3 4
Lexical negation: lack of, deficits, ignored
1 2
‘To date’: so far, earlier studies
2 3
Negation in the verb phrase: does not recognise
1 1
Adversative: however, although
1 1 3

lated ‘. . ..is given/presented/discussed etc. in Section x’ where the original uses arather handy inflected passive, while the international writers use an active voicewith the author or the text as agent. Danes writing in English adopt the text-as-agent form more than the author-as-agent form, but also make use of the transla-tion-equivalent of the Danish form.

4. Discussion

A number of similarities among the articles in the three sets were found, whichshow how the categories of evaluative language can be reliably used to identify theunits of an introduction:

� The topic is typically assigned value by autonomous-plane evaluation—it isimportant, for example. The three sets of introductions did this with similarfrequency and used a similar vocabulary.

� The issue can be distinguished from the topic by the appearance, alongsideautonomous-plane evaluation, of interactive-plane evaluation, eitherresearch-oriented (A large number of studies suggest. . .) or topic-oriented(throughout the years, some politicians have claimed that. . .). Again, the threesets of introductions did this with similar frequency and used a similarvocabulary.

� Citations occurred with comparable frequency in all three sets.� Wherever the gap was present it was expressed in similar (and similarly

forthright) language.

To answer the first research question, these results tend to suggest that Hunston’sevaluative categories can be predictably mapped onto Swales’ CARS model forintroductions. Of course, every proposition has status by definition, and presumablyso does every entity. However many propositions have relatively unmarked status as

Table 10

Purpose and outline: number of texts showing particular uses of first-person pronouns and text agency

Location
Example DD DE EE
Before Purpose
Even if we believe X we should not Y 0 1 0
Purpose
I/we in initial purpose statement in this
study we examine. . .

0
2 3
Expansion of Purpose
I seek to identify 1 1 6
Outline
In the fifth section we briefly present. . . 0 2 5
Alternatives to I/We n the Outline movea
9 7 1
Passive+prep+section . . . are presented

in Section 4

Section as subject . . . the first part of the

paper presents

2
7 6
a This move was present in all the Danish-language articles, 9 out of 10 English-language/Danish-

author and 8 out of 10 Anglo.


factual averrals, and many entities are lexicalised in uncontroversial ways. Table 11is intended to suggest types of evaluation which are likely to be lexically marked inthe various moves of the CARS model.While the topic is normally ascribed value mainly on the autonomous plane in

terms of its popularity as a research field or its real-world importance the specificissue is often also highlighted by devices which ascribe status on the interactive plane(such as while some have suggested. . .) and evaluate this status. The niche is by defi-nition a research-oriented entity and it is typically evaluated in autonomous-planeterms of the need for more research, the existence of a gap, etc. The purpose, on theother hand, is a proposition which can be ascribed interactive-plane evaluation interms of writer commitment.The three sets of introductions are similar in generic and disciplinary terms.

Nevertheless there are some differences among them, which appear to be relatable tothe different factors discussed above.Two are on the rhetorical or discourse-structure level. First (to answer the second

research question), although the articles were remarkably uniform in containingPurpose and Outline moves, they differed in how the niche for the present researchwas created, with the Danish writers less inclined to use the ‘gap’ move, particularlywhen writing in Danish. On this parameter DD and DE seem to pattern together,with EE markedly more inclined to use a ‘gap’. Danes seem to be following the samerhetorical norm in both languages, and the international writers following anothernorm. In the Nationaløkonomisk Tidsskrift articles this might be ascribed to featuresof national science; perhaps Danish economists are likely to know their colleagueswell, and do not need to profile themselves in the same way. This can hardly applyto the articles from international journals, and application of this norm would seemto be based on transfer from a situation which justifies it to one which does not. Butof course there are Danes who present highly evaluative gaps1 and internationalwriters who do not realise the niche-creation move at all, so there is nothing parti-cularly odd about the DE articles. It is just that the Danes are more likely to alignthemselves with the minority of international writers in English who do not realise‘gap’ than with the majority who do, and I suggest that this is carried over fromtheir ‘home’ rhetorical environment.

1 Like this from the Journal of Consumer Policy: There is a large number of studies of. . .The bulk of this

research does not, however, explicitly recognise. . ..

Table 11

Introduction structure and evaluation

Swales move
Orientation, Prominent evaluation plane
1
Topic Topic/research Autonomous
Issue
Topic/research Interactive+autonomous
2
Niche Research Autonomous
3
Purpose Research Interactive

Second (to answer the third question), there was a difference in initial orientation.Articles may begin by discussing research, policy, or real-world trends. Fewer of thearticles in the Nationaløkonomisk Tidsskrift than of those in English began with a‘narrative of research’ even though a similar proportion eventually based theiraccount of the topic in a research narrative. This fairly clear difference distinguishesDD from both DE and EE in a dichotomous way.This must be due to the difference in audience. When we asked the writers why

they published in Nationaløkonomisk Tidsskrift, they said that it was a mediumwhich reached not only all economists in Denmark but also Treasury officials. Thatis, the audience includes practitioners who are likely to respond best to topics whoseimportance is based on real-world debates and consequences rather than researchissues. Hemais (2001) notes that articles in ‘practitioner journals’ like the HarvardBusiness Review tend to have more ‘phenomenal’ (real-world) grammatical subjectsthan article intended for an audience mainly including researchers.Three other differences appear to be on the style level. First, the Danes writing in

Danish very frequently introduced supporting references with the equivalents of seeor cf., while the international writers seemed generally to use non-integrated refer-ences for this function. The Danes writing in English seemed to use both these formsequally frequently. There is thus a cline here from DD to DE to EE.This is a minor point, with no particular rhetorical implications. The form with

see or cf. is unmarked in Danish but in international English usage it seems to beused to indicate a text with related information or a comparable approach,rather than simply the source of cited material. It seems likely that someDanish writers have simply not noticed any difference and taken over the Danish-language norm into English, so that here we have a simple transfer of languagenorm.Second, the Danes writing in Danish did not use first-person pronouns to ascribe

interpersonal status to a significant extent. The international writers quite often didthis, and the Danes writing in English occupied an intermediate position, withmarkedly less use of the strategy than the international writers. Again there issomething of a cline, although DE is not quite central.Both personal and impersonal expressions are of course completely grammatical

in both languages. This seems to be a transfer of rhetorical norms. This is an areawhich is quite often discussed and the writers may well be conscious of it as a sty-listic issue. The cline would then arise from some Danes writing in English followingwhat they perceive as international or native-speaker-of-English norms, and othersticking to their own. It is tempting to speculate that the Danish norm is due to theinfluence on ‘national science’ of national culture, the janteloven which is said byScandinavians to prevent them putting themselves forward. But this would beincorrect. Vassileva (2000) shows that linguistics articles in English have, on average,some three times as many instances of I/we as corresponding articles in French,German, Russian and Bulgarian. In her data I was very much more common inEnglish than in any other language, and even editorial we was more frequent than inGerman and French. Thus it is international or native English that is out of stephere; the Danes are merely staying with the general rhetorical convention and there


is no need for an explanation other than that their national science supports a dif-ferent norm of impersonality.Third, in the ‘indicating RA structure’ step the Danes writing in Danish did not

ascribe agency to texts or text sections but used passives (In section 6 X is analysed).The international writers used actives, either with first person subjects (In section 6we analyse X) or giving agency to text segments (Section 6 analyses X). The Daneswriting in English used all three strategies, thus regularly using some passive struc-tures (In section 6 X is analysed) which were not common in the ‘international’ arti-cles. This can also be regarded as a cline from DD via DE to EE.This appears to be interaction between simple rules of the language and rhetoric.

It is said not to be good Danish to ascribe agency to text sections,2 and the use of thepassive (which is a single word) in this context is economical and elegant. It is notparticularly good English to use the passive where shorter and more economicalforms with the same function are available. Danish thus really only has one way ofexpressing this, while English has two, one personal and one impersonal. SomeDanes writing English adopt one or other of these, some of them perhaps avoidingthe personal, others translate the Danish phrase into something perfectly correct butnot very frequent.These similarities and differences are explicable in terms of the academic ‘com-

munity’ which produced the writing (described in more detail in Petersen & Shaw,2002). This is one in which the English and Danish languages are thoroughly inter-woven, in which a high proportion of disciplinary input comes through English andfrom the US, and yet in which most feedback and evaluation comes from fellow-nationals—working papers written in English are discussed with colleagues in Dan-ish, conferences held in English often have a high proportion of fellow-Scandina-vians as participants, etc. We thus have academics who use two languages in closeconnection with one another and constantly switch from one to another as theyswitch medium or audience. They probably internalise a good deal of their rhetoricfrom international publications in English, and are ultimately subject to sanctionsby international editors if they depart too far from the expected norms. Yet inpractice many of their interactions in either language are with fellow-Scandinavians.This bilingual environment, partly very open, partly somewhat closed, accounts

for the findings of the contrastive style/rhetoric investigation. In disciplinary terms,the writings of Danish business economists do not differ from those of their Anglopeers because they are part of a global research scene. On the level of rhetoric orstyle the situation is interesting. Because Danish writers do much of their writing, ineither language, for their own local colleagues and get much of their feedback fromthem, conditions exist which allow ‘Danish norms’ for features like first-person useand Move 2 realisation to apply to either language. But because the ultimate outletfor their work in English is international journals, these norms cannot conflict toomuch with the expectations of their editors. The ‘Danish norms’ that can survive arethose which fall within the fairly broad range of the international norms. Interna-tional readers and editors are after all attuned to their own reading, which includes

2 Though if this is true, English is beginning to influence usage here.


both (for example Danish) articles which do not use first-person pronouns and oth-ers that do. Even if see Schmidt 1989 is a relatively marked form in Anglo writing, itis not particularly difficult to find an example or two, and correspondingly even if Inthis section we discuss and This section discusses are normal in international writing,it is not difficult to find an article which uses In this section ....is discussed. In theseareas Danish norms and preferences can be maintained but are invisible to theinternational audience. Rhetorical or stylistic difference does not necessarily implydifficulty in communication or publication. For the world-wide English-readingdisciplinary ‘community’ as a whole, what matters is whether the feature frequenciesof a particular group lie inside or outside the range of the whole ‘community’.

5. Conclusion

Describing the CARS model in terms of different types of evaluation seemsrevealing. The boundaries between moves or steps often seem to be clearly markedby the onset of a new type of evaluation.This study confirms once again that academic writers from different countries

have different average frequencies of evaluative rhetorical and stylistic features.Above four factors were identified as possible explanations of such differences:audience, national science, language proficiency, and national culture. The patternof differences suggests that nearly all the factors mentioned in the literature are inoperation. It is clear that writers consciously adapt their rhetoric (and style) to theiraudience. National science, that is such factors as the degree of competition, pat-terns of communication, and the number of disciplinary writers in the country, butalso simply inherited conventions, gives writing in the mother tongue and for the localaudience particular characteristics. If these characteristics are within the fairly broadparameters of English-language publication they may well be transferred to writingfor a wider audience, even if they are no longer functional at that level. Purely lin-guistic or stylistic features of the first language can give rise to stylistic characteristicsof the second one. Possibly because Danish culture is not much different from Anglo,the factor that is least easy to identify in these results is national culture.

References

Burgess, S. (2002). Packed houses and intimate gatherings: audience and rhetorical structure. In

J. Flowerdew (Ed.), Academic discourse (pp. 196–215). London: Longman.

Canagarajah, A. S. (2002). A geopolitics of academic writing. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press.

Casanave, C. P. (1998). Transitions: the balancing act of bilingual academics. Journal of Second Language

Writing, 7(2), 175–203.

Deneire, M. (2002). English and the politics of recognition. Paper presented at the ESSE Conference,

Strasbourg. August 2002.

Fredrickson, K., & Swales, J. (1994). Competition and discourse community: introductions from Nys-

venska studier. In B.-L. Gunnarsson, P. Linell, & B. Nordberg (Eds.), Text and talk in professional

contexts (pp. 9–22). Stockholm: ASLA.


Granger, S. (Ed.). (1998). Learner English on computer. London: Longman.

Hemais, B. (2001). The discourse of research and practice in marketing journals. English for Specifc

Purposes, 20(1), 39–59.

Hunston, S. (2000). Evaluation and the planes of discourse: status and value in persuasive texts. In

S. Hunston, & G. Thompson (Eds.), Evaluation in text: authorial stance and the construction of dis-

course. Oxford: OUP.

Hyland, K. (2000). Disciplinary discourses. London: Longman.

Lindeberg, A. -C. (1997). Promotional rhetorical steps and linguistic signalling in research articles in three

disciplines. In Proceedings of the 11th European Symposium on LSP, Copenhagen 18–22 August 1997.

Helsinki.

Mauranen, A. (2001). Descriptions or explanations? Some methodological issues in contrastive rhetoric.

In M. Hewings (Ed.), Academic writing in context (pp. 43–54). Birmingham: University of Birmingham

Press.

Mauranen, A. (1993). Contrastive ESP rhetoric: metatext in Finnish–English economics texts. English for

Specific Purposes, 12(1), 3–22.

Melander, B. (1998). Culture or genre? Issues in the interpretation of cross-cultural differences in scientific

English. In J. F. Coll, I. Fortanet, J. C. Palmer, & S. Posteguillo (Eds.), Genre studies in English for

academic purposes (pp. 211–226). Castello de la Plana: Universitat Jaume 1.

Melander, B., Swales, J., & Fredrickson, K. (1997). Journal abstracts from three academic fields in the US

and Sweden: national or disciplinary proclivities. In A. Duszak (Ed.), Culture and styles of academic

discourse (pp. 251–272). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Moreno, A. (1998). The explicit signaling of premise–conclusion sequences in research articles: a

contrastive framework. Text, 18(4), 545–585.

Myers, G. (1991). Lexical cohesion and specialised knowledge in science and popular science texts.

Discourse Processes, 14, 1–26.

Okamura, A. (2000). The roles of culture, sub-culture and language in scientific research articles. PhD

thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

Petersen, M., & Shaw, P. (2002). Disciplinary differences and language of publications in a biliterate

environment. World Englishes, 21/3, 357–374.

Samraj, B. (2001). Introductions in research articles: variations across disciplines. English for Specific

Purposes, 21(1), 1–17.

Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: CUP.

Taylor, G., & Chen, T. (1991). Linguistic, cultural, and subcultural issues in contrastive discourse analy-

sis: Anglo-American and Chinese scientific texts. Applied Linguistics, 12(3), 319–336.

Thetela, P. (1997). Evaluated entities and parameters of value in academic research articles. English for


Vassileva, I. (2000). Who is the Author? A contrastive analysis of authorial presence in English, German,

French, Russian and Bulgarian academic discourse. Sankt Augustin, Nordrhein-Westfalen: Asgard.

Vassileva, I. (2001). Commitment and detachment in English and Bulgarian academic writing. English for


Yakhontova, T. (2002). ‘Selling’ or ‘telling’: the issue of cultural variation in research genres. In

J. Flowerdew (Ed.), Academic discourse (pp. 216–232). London: Longman.

Philip Shaw is currently a Docent (senior lecturer) in the English Department of Stockholm University. He

wrote his doctoral thesis at Newcastle University, and has taught in Thailand, Germany, Britain and

Denmark. He has published on academic writing, genre, and cross-cultural issues and is co-author of

World Englishes: an Introduction (London: Nelson, 2003).


evaluation and promotion across languages

Documents