No abstract

In experimental disciplinary fields such as medicine, the writing up of a research paper in English may represent a major hurdle, especially for inexperienced writers and users of EAL (English as an Additional Language), mainly due to a lack of familiarity with international discourse conventions. Despite the efforts of many EAP (English for Academic Purposes) researchers and practitioners to provide support for medical PhD students and novice scholars by carrying out studies on research writing, specific courses with an explicit pedagogical approach to the teaching of academic genres are still scarce. Moreover, it often happens that the only possibility of receiving training in writing skills is in the pre-clinical years, when the students are not yet experienced language users and when they lack both the genre conventions and the specialized subject knowledge for such a demanding task. In this article, we offer our view of a genre-driven pedagogy and its practical applications in an EMP (English for Medical Purposes) classroom with the ultimate aim of helping students to publish their medical papers in international (English-language) journals. Our genre-based teaching approach consists in a prior discussion with students about the socio-cultural context in which a particular academic genre occurs. This process of discovery of the social circumstances that surround a specific genre can help them understand more readily its communicative purpose. We believe that a second stage should be the explicit teaching of functions and language structures of archetypal academic texts, initially in a highly controlled fashion, and later on a freer basis, but always using reference papers for illustration and comparison. If learners are more aware of the rhetorical strategies preferred by the members of their disciplinary communities, they may feel more confident as EAL writers about the rhetorical options they can choose depending on the context and type of audience they are addressing.

Reaching an understanding of how scholarly writers manage linguistic recycling remains a focus of many studies in applied linguistics, bibliometrics, and the sociology of science. The value apportioned to citations in research assessment protocols is one factor in this sustained interest, the challenges that managing intertextuality present for novice scholars, another. Applied linguists such as Harwood (2009) and Hyland and Jiang (2017) alongside sociologists of science have studied citation practices largely from the point of view of writers’ reasons for citing (see Erikson & Erlandson, 2014 for a review) or readers’ understanding of the function of the citation (e.g., Willett, 2013). Linguistic recycling as direct quotation of previously published research has received less attention from applied linguists, a notable exception being Petrić’s (2012) examination of students’ quotation practices. Her study focuses on quoting writers’ intentions. We know less, however, about cited authors’ responses to quotations of their work. It is these responses that form the focus of our study. Taking our two most frequently cited publications, we compiled a corpus of direct quotations noting the quotation strategy and our responses to each instance of the reuse of our words. These responses ranged from pride and satisfaction through to annoyance at an instance of blatant misquotation. We then extended our corpus to include quotations from publications three scholars who have played a role in debate around a key controversy in the English for research publication purposes (ERPP) literature. We presented these scholars with a representative sample of quotations of their publications related to the controversy and asked them to indicate which instances they regarded as unwarranted. Analysis of these authors’ responses provides insights into the relationship of direct quotation to the rhetorical management of academic conflict. We suggest possible parallels with the expression of discrepancy in other domains.