Lingua Inglese

Specialized discourse

Academic discourse is any kind of informal or formal exchange used within school/university as a kind of

specialized discourse. academic discourse is produced by native speakers and some parameters in any other

kind of context permits everything said is going to be effective. Specialized discourse is when specialist use

of language in contexts which are typical of a specialized community. In this discourse participants are

members of a community characterized by shared interests, duties/tasks, objectives in a given field; they use

very conventionalized, communicative practice and standard channels of intercommunication.

There is a sender that is an expert addressing to an audience and an audience that can consist of other experts

so we can use specialized discourse, not yet experts namely they don't know very well the specialized

discourse but they are learning it or non-experts are people completely outside of the discourse community

use of non specialized discourse. The content is the domain in which concepts and notions pertaining to a

restricted range of thematic areas, about which the participants develop a certain degree of expertise for

speculative purpose or practical purpose. Specialized discourse has:

pragmatic features that can be referential namely to convey information, persuasive namely to create

• consensus and normative namely to impose norms through speech acts of directive type.

textual features are the organization of semantic level of the text and they are based on coherence

• namely on structuring concepts that can be on micro-level so we use connectives to express logical

relationship or at macro-level so we use the IMRD model. The IMRD model is a structure made by an

introduction, a material of study, a methodology namely a criteria used to define something, results

and discussion that permits us to do a conclusion(usually when we cannot argue our position, we use

irony). Also cohesion is very important and it depends on linguistic elements like reference, textual

mapping adverbials and typographically distinguishable paragraphs.

syntactic features are based on conciseness, nominalization and a simplified verbal system with a

• predominance of present tense and passive voice.

lexical features related to the right use of a vocabulary in fact the most important thing is clarity

• namely a referential precision between term and concept(mono referentiality). We can't use generic

words , synonyms, euphemism, indirect expressions. also conservatism, transparency and conciseness

are very important to express in the best way a meaning.

Academic discourse

Academic discourse is used within members of the academic community and it presents a variety of subjects.

The distinction biases the way meaning is presented like hard knowledge sciences based on empirical truths

and soft knowledge sciences based on negotiable truths. The discourse can be develop on pragmatic, textual,

syntactic and lexical level. General norms of a community of practice that produce shared practices formed

by coherence to the community plus knowledge. These specific norms are based on social-cultural criteria of

adequacy namely to be recognized and accepted and acceptability namely ask questions that would sound

acceptable according to the context. There are two components at the basis of the notion of academic

worth/value the trustworthiness of the sender namely the personal integrity and honesty and the credibility of

the message. Academic discourse introduces novelty implying asymmetrical power relationship between

sender and recipient. Task oriented activity are advancement of knowledge, there is no possibility for

negotiation because academic discourse is in any case a one-way communication and market gate-keeping

function has a filtering function. Genres are classes of communicative events that are recognizable in terms of

form and function. Primary and secondary genres are made for publication to a wide audience and interstitial

genres are not primarily meant for publication but for a small group interlocutor. The structure is very

important because permits the organization of the informative material through recognizable patterns and it is

based on IMRD model in what each stage is prepared by the precedent one and prepares the following one.

The level of informativeness depends on the degree of explicitness or implicitness namely the quantity and

quality of information and on linearity of the presentation or digression/redundancy.

The level of solidarity and cooperation is made by inclusive strategies versus exclusive strategies and

defensive strategies versus assertive strategies. The text orientation is very important because can be

presented in three different ways: knowledge orientation make by argumentation, reader orientation is made

by the use of personalization that permits to involve readers and writer orientation in which the writer

represent the authority and the evaluation is expressed only by the author.

Scholarly values and affiliation

The role of scholars within the academic community depends on the combination of four different functions:

research function namely the creation of knowledge, educational function namely the transmission of

knowledge, service function namely the application of knowledge and institutional function namely the

university or department management. Scientific values are related to the research function and they are the

objectivity namely the absence of any bias or ideological influence, replicability namely allow the replication

of its methodology and procedures under the same conditions, collegiality namely the collaborative nature of

the academic knowledge, the impact namely impression made by a research project on the community,

innovativeness namely degree of originality and novelty, interdisciplinarity namely the application from

different fields and disciplines, relevance perceived utility and weightiness of the research and

authoritativeness namely degree of knowledge. Personal values reflect the scholar's moral qualities like

integrity, creativity, humilty, generosity and autonomy but also the personal sphere is very important with

values like status, recognition and compensation. Institutional values are the utilitarian and promotional

aspects attached to a research project in relation to the parent institution. Accountability is the conformity of

the research to the requirements of the institution. Loyalty is the affiliation and collaboration with colleagues.

Expandability is the practical utility of sponsorship and support. Performance is the productivity and

achievements. Popularity is the impact of the research on the non-academic public. Visibility is the impact on

the media. Textual values are the linguistic quality of a research project; a text has to have clarity, cohesion,

coherence, depth, politeness and style. The contextual purpose of an academic work may influence

considerably the hierarchy of values displayed in the text which can be realized explicitly in the parts of the

text where scholars make an overt reference to themselves or implicitly when authors represent the subject as

being relevant. Affiliation is a cognitive phenomenon which represents the personal integrity. It is the

awareness of individual and corporate identities underpins the construction of academic worth. To be

perceived as reliable, "scholar" authors are expected to appear as experts and with a use of predictable

linguistically manner. The construction of affiliation can be institutional when you recognize your

relationship as a member of an institution(UniBG), disciplinary(esoteric community) when being members of

an institution is not enough(UniBG - English) and school of thought is the sub-disciplinary(UniBG - English

– Literature). Text-external or pre-textual resources are ways of the author to introduce themselves to the

readers. Author's profile framing the writer and permits to the reader to understand on behalf of whom the

author is talking. It may contain institutional, extra-biographical and contact information. Novice benefits

more from articulated profile because other people would understand who you are. There is no standard

template in fact you are free to provide the amount/type of information that authors consider useful to

enhance their credibility. The sense of authoritativeness comes from affiliation; acknowledgments are short

texts separated from the rest of the text aimed at giving credits. Acknowledgments are used to thank

organizations and individuals for assistance. Target are usually members of the academic world and members

of the author's private world. Assistance is the inspiration, the support, the guidance, the advice, the

encouragement and the patience. Acknowledgments template have a standard form and they are made by

three moves. Move one is establishing ancestry namely explain the background that inspire you. Move two is

giving credits namely to express gratitude and also claiming responsibility for errors and omissions. Move

three is anticipating future interest namely editorial developments and also the contact in case the readers

need more information. Text-internal resources in when the author use explicit text internal resources like

citations and bibliographic references to give credibility to the text and implicit linguistic strategies like

metadiscursive, mitigation and evaluation to refer to existing knowledge. Citations are when the author

quotes relevant members to take consensus from academic world(collegiality). These strategies reinforce the

writer's academic credibility and also to mitigate the threat of not being taken seriously. Citations can be

grouped according to rhetorical representation in direct citations namely to reproduce the exact words of the

original author in quotation marks and in reported citations namely synthesize or paraphrase the meaning of

the original claim; also according to syntactic aspect in integral quotations namely self standing statements ,

integrated quotations namely fragments of original texts integrated in the reporting writer's claim to complete

its propositional meaning and parenthetical citations namely sentences separated from the text used to

reinforcing the validity of the already expressed meaning. Bibliographical references are mentions of

published texts relevant, usually dispersed and indexed at the end; they strengthen the credibility.

Metadiscourse

Persuasion in academic context is based on observation of concrete evidence, interpretations and

explanation/exposition; these three parameters are used to strengthen it and they are called metadiscoursive.

It is a set of resources used by writer to"refer to the text, to the writer or to the reader". There are a lot of

metadiscoursive strategies like interactional strategies with meant to involve the reader into the text; the

reader has the impression the text was targeted directly to him and interactive strategies meant to guide the

reader through the text used to let the reader know in which part of the argumentation he is stemming from

awareness of a participating audience. Metadiscourse say something that sounds unmarked but that hides its