Disciplinary Discourses : Social Interactions in Academic Writing

This book presents a series of innovative studies to explore the cultures of academic communities - considering how academics use language to organise their professional lives, carry out intellectual tasks and reach agreement on what will count as knowledge.

Applied Linguistics and Language Study

General Editor: Christopher N. Candlin,
Chair Professor of Applied Linguistics,
Centre for English Language Education & Communication Research
Department of English
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

Since it was first established in the 1970's the Applied Linguistics and Language Study series has become a major force in the study of practical problems in human communication and language education. Drawing extensively on empirical research and theoretical work in linguistics, sociology, psychology and education, the series explores key issues in language acquisition and language use.


Disciplinary Discourses: Social Interactions in Academic Writing presents a series of innovative studies focusing on eight disciplines and a variety of key genres to examine the relationships between the cultures of academic communities and their discoursal practices. It proposes a framework to account for the interactions between writers and their readers in published academic writing, draws clear teaching suggestions, and offers detailed methodological principles and suggestions to support further research.

Drawing on discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, and the voices of professional insiders, Ken Hyland explores how academics use language to organise their professional lives, carry out intellectual tasks and reach agreement on what will count as knowledge. Through its focus on the features of key genres, this book shows what close textual analyses can reveal about the social practices and institutional ideologies of different academic communities, and at the same time provides a clear basis for further research. The theoretical and descriptive accounts have strong practical implications for the understanding of academic writing and disciplinary communities. It will therefore be of great interest to teachers and students of academic writing, English for Specific Purposes, and discourse analysis more generally.

Ken Hyland is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, City University of Hong Kong.