Title: Local disciplines, local cultures: praise and criticism in British and Spanish history book reviews
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2012, vol. 38, iss. 2, pp. [97]-116
Extent
[97]-116
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2012-2-6
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/126945
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
The use of a critical voice in book reviews seems to depend on factors rooted in the discipline community reviewers belong to and on the language and culture which hosts the review. Adopting a cross-cultural perspective, this study analyses 60 book reviews from British and Spanish history journals in terms of the entities and aspects evaluated and the polarity (positive/negative) of the evaluation. Divergences are found in the distribution of positive and negative evaluation, revealing that even if in both cultures positive evaluation is more frequent, in Spanish book reviews negative evaluation is almost nonexistent. Interviews with informants show that these divergences respond to the local character of the disciplinary communities which host the reviews and to a different understanding of what this evaluative genre implies.
References
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[30] Salager-Meyer, Francoise (1999) 'From "Mr. Guthrie is profoundly mistaken..." to "Our data do not seem to confirm the results of a previous study on...": A diachronic study of polemicity in academic writing (1810-1995)'. Ibérica 1, 5–28.
[31] Shaw, Philip (2003) 'Evaluation and promotion across languages'. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 2, 343–357. | DOI 10.1016/S1475-1585(03)00050-X
[32] Shaw, Philip (2004) 'How do we recognise implicit evaluation in academic book reviews'. In: Del Lungo Camiciotti, Gabriella and Elena Tognini-Bonelli (eds.) Academic Discourse – New Insights into Evaluation. Bern: Peter Lang, 121–140.
[33] Shaw, Philip (2009) 'The lexis and grammar of explicit evaluation in academic book reviews, 1913 and 1993'. In: Hyland, Ken and Giuliana Diani (eds.) Academic Evaluation. Review Genres in University Settings. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 217–235.
[34] Stotesbury, Hilkka (2003) 'Evaluation in research article abstracts in the narrative and hard sciences'. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 2, 327–341. | DOI 10.1016/S1475-1585(03)00049-3
[35] Suárez Tejerina, Lorena (2006) Mode of Evaluation and Rhetorical Patterns: A Contrastive Study of English and Spanish Book Reviews. Unpublished PhD thesis. León: Universidad de Léon.
[36] Suárez-Tejerina, Lorena (2005) 'Is evaluation structure-bound? An English-Spanish contrastive study of book reviews'. In: Tognini-Bonelli, Elena and Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti (eds.) Strategies in Academic Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 117–131.
[37] Thetela, Puleng (1997) 'Evaluated entities and parameters of value in academic research articles'. English for Specific Purposes 16 (2), 101–118. | DOI 10.1016/S0889-4906(96)00022-1
[38] Tognini-Bonelli, Elena (2001) Corpus Linguistics at Work. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
[39] Tse, Polly and Ken Hyland (2009) 'Discipline and gender: Constructing rhetorical identity in book reviews'. In: Hyland, Ken and Giuliana Diani (eds.) Academic Evaluation. Review Genres in University Settings. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 105–121.
[40] Vassileva, Irena (2010) 'Critical book reviews in German'. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 20 (3), 354–367. | DOI 10.1111/j.1473-4192.2009.00251.x
[2] Bellés-Fortuño, Begoña and Mercedes Querol-Julián (2010) 'Evaluation in research article abstracts: A cross-cultural study between Spanish and English medical discourse'. In: Lorés-Sanz, Rosa, Pilar Mur-Dueñas and Enrique Lafuente-Millán (eds.) Constructing Interpersonality: Multiple Perspectives on Written Academic Genres. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 83–98.
[3] Bondi, Marina. (2009) 'Historians at work: Reporting frameworks in English and Italian book review articles'. In: Hyland, Ken and Giuliana Diani (eds.) Academic Evaluation. Review Genres in University Settings. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 179–196.
[4] Burgess, Sally and Anna Fagan (2002) '(Kid) Gloves on or off? Academic conflict in research articles across the disciplines'. Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 22, 79–96.
[5] Connor, Ulla and Ana I. Moreno (2005) 'Tertium Comparationis: A vital component in contrastive research methodology'. In: Bruthiaux, Paul, Dwight Atkinson, William Eggington, William Grabe and Vaidehi Ramanathan (eds.) Directions in Applied Linguistics: Essays in Honor of Robert B. Kaplan. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters, 153–164.
[6] Gea Valor, María Lluïsa (2000-2001) 'The pragmatics of positive politeness in the book reviews'. RESLA 14, 145–159.
[7] Giannoni, Davide S. (2006) 'Expressing praise and criticism in Economic discourse: A comparative analysis of English and Italian book reviews'. In: Del Lungo Camiciotti, Gabriella, Marina Dossena and Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli (eds.) Variation in Business and Economics Discourse. Diachronic and Genre Perspectives. Roma: Officina Edizioni, 126–138.
[8] Greene, Robert J. and Charles D. Spornick (1995) 'Favorable and Unfavorable Book Reviews: A Quantitative Study'. Journal of Academic Librianrianship 21 (6), 449–453. | DOI 10.1016/0099-1333(95)90088-8
[9] Groom, Nicholas (2009) 'Phraseology and epistemology in academic book reviews: A corpus-driven analysis of two humanities disciplines'. In: Hyland, Ken and Giuliana Diani (eds.) Academic Evaluation. Review Genres in University Settings. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 122–139.
[10] Holliday, Adrian (1999) 'Small Cultures'. Applied Linguistics 20 (2), 237–264. | DOI 10.1093/applin/20.2.237
[11] Hunston, Susan (1993) 'Evaluation and ideology in scientific writing'. In: Ghadessy, Moshen (ed.) Register analysis: Theory and Practice. London: Pinter Publishers, 57–73.
[12] Hunston, Susan (1994) 'Evaluation and organization in a sample of written academic discourse'. In: Coulthard, Malcolm (ed.) Advances in Written Text Analysis. London: Routledge, 191–218.
[13] Hunston, Susan and Geoff Thompson (2000) Evaluation in Text. Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. Oxford: OUP.
[14] Hyland, Ken (2000) Disciplinary Discourses. Social Interactions in Academic Writing. London: Longman.
[15] Lorés-Sanz, Rosa (2009) '(Non-)critical voices in the reviewing of history discourse: A cross-cultural study of evaluation'. In: Hyland, Ken and Giuliana Diani (eds.) Academic Evaluation. Review Genres in University Settings. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 143–160.
[16] Martín Martín, Pedro and Sally Burgess (2004) 'The rhetorical management of academic criticism in research article abstracts'. Text 24 (2), 171–195. | DOI 10.1515/text.2004.007
[17] Mauranen, Anna (2004) 'Where next? A summary of the round table discussion'. In: Del Lungo Camiciotti, Gabriella and Elena Tognini-Bonelli (eds.) Academic Discourse – New Insights into Evaluation. Bern: Peter Lang, 203–216.
[18] Moreno, Ana I. (2008) 'The importance of comparable corpora in cross-cultural studies'. In: Connor, Ulla, Ed Nagelhout and William Rozycki (eds.) Contrastive Rhetoric: Reaching to Intercultural Rhetoric. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 25–41.
[19] Moreno, Ana I. and Lorena Suárez (2008a) 'A framework for comparing evaluation resources across academic texts'. Text & Talk 28 (4), 501–521.
[20] Moreno, Ana I. and Lorena Suárez (2008b) 'A study of critical attitude across English and Spanish academic book reviews'. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 7, 15–26. | DOI 10.1016/j.jeap.2008.02.009
[21] Moreno, Ana I. and Lorena Suárez (2009) 'Academic book reviews in English and Spanish: Critical comments and rhetorical structure'. In: Hyland, Ken and Giuliana Diani (eds.) Academic Evaluation. Review Genres in University Settings. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 161–178.
[22] Moreno, Ana I. and Lorena Suárez (2010) 'Academic book reviews in English and Spanish: Is 'giving reasons for critical comments' a universal politeness strategy?' In: Lorés-Sanz, Rosa, Pilar Mur-Dueñas and Enrique Lafuente-Millán (eds.) Constructing Interpersonality: Multiple Perspectives on Written Academic Genres. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 137–160.
[23] Oakey, David (2005) 'Academic vocabulary in academic discourse: The phraseological behaviour of Evaluation in Economics research articles'. In: Tognini-Bonelli, Elena and Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti (eds.) Strategies in Academic Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 169–183.
[24] Okamura, Akiko (2000) The roles of culture, sub-culture and language in scientific research articles. Unpublished PhD thesis, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
[25] Römer, Ute (2005) 'This seems somewhat counterintuitive, though...: Negative evaluation in linguistic book reviews by male and female authors'. In: Tognini-Bonelli, Elena and Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti (eds.) Strategies in Academic Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 97–115.
[26] Römer, Ute (2008) 'Identification impossible? A corpus approach to realisations of evaluative meaning in academic writing'. Functions of Language 15 (1), 115–130. | DOI 10.1075/fol.15.1.07rom
[27] Salager-Meyer, Francoise and María Ángeles Alcaraz Ariza (2003) 'Academic criticism in Spanish medical discourse: a cross-generic approach'. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 13 (1), 96–114. | DOI 10.1111/1473-4192.00039
[28] Salager-Meyer, Francoise, María Angeles Alcaraz Ariza and Maryelis Pabón (2005) 'The prosecutor and the defendant: Contrasting Critical Voices in French- and English-Written Academic Book Reviews'. In: Flottum, Kjerstin (ed.) Language and Discipline Perspectives on Academic Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 109–127.
[29] Salager-Meyer, Francoise, María Angeles Alcaraz Ariza and Nahirana Zambrano (2003) 'The scimitar, the dagger and the glove: intercultural differences in the rhetoric of criticism in Spanish, French and English medical discourse (1930-1995)'. English for Specific Purposes 22 (3), 223–247.
[30] Salager-Meyer, Francoise (1999) 'From "Mr. Guthrie is profoundly mistaken..." to "Our data do not seem to confirm the results of a previous study on...": A diachronic study of polemicity in academic writing (1810-1995)'. Ibérica 1, 5–28.
[31] Shaw, Philip (2003) 'Evaluation and promotion across languages'. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 2, 343–357. | DOI 10.1016/S1475-1585(03)00050-X
[32] Shaw, Philip (2004) 'How do we recognise implicit evaluation in academic book reviews'. In: Del Lungo Camiciotti, Gabriella and Elena Tognini-Bonelli (eds.) Academic Discourse – New Insights into Evaluation. Bern: Peter Lang, 121–140.
[33] Shaw, Philip (2009) 'The lexis and grammar of explicit evaluation in academic book reviews, 1913 and 1993'. In: Hyland, Ken and Giuliana Diani (eds.) Academic Evaluation. Review Genres in University Settings. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 217–235.
[34] Stotesbury, Hilkka (2003) 'Evaluation in research article abstracts in the narrative and hard sciences'. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 2, 327–341. | DOI 10.1016/S1475-1585(03)00049-3
[35] Suárez Tejerina, Lorena (2006) Mode of Evaluation and Rhetorical Patterns: A Contrastive Study of English and Spanish Book Reviews. Unpublished PhD thesis. León: Universidad de Léon.
[36] Suárez-Tejerina, Lorena (2005) 'Is evaluation structure-bound? An English-Spanish contrastive study of book reviews'. In: Tognini-Bonelli, Elena and Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti (eds.) Strategies in Academic Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 117–131.
[37] Thetela, Puleng (1997) 'Evaluated entities and parameters of value in academic research articles'. English for Specific Purposes 16 (2), 101–118. | DOI 10.1016/S0889-4906(96)00022-1
[38] Tognini-Bonelli, Elena (2001) Corpus Linguistics at Work. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
[39] Tse, Polly and Ken Hyland (2009) 'Discipline and gender: Constructing rhetorical identity in book reviews'. In: Hyland, Ken and Giuliana Diani (eds.) Academic Evaluation. Review Genres in University Settings. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 105–121.
[40] Vassileva, Irena (2010) 'Critical book reviews in German'. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 20 (3), 354–367. | DOI 10.1111/j.1473-4192.2009.00251.x