English and French journal abstracts in the language sciences: Three exploratory studies

Bonn, Sarah Van; Swales, John M.

doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2007.04.001

Cited by 102 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 15 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The findings of the present study have also shown that the humble acknowledgment section is genre-determined in the sense that its frequency and length are much greater in research papers (with their strong associated networks among researchers) than in review articles and case reports. Audience size has been held responsible for certain aspects of intercultural variability (e.g., Burgess 2002;Moreno 2008;Van Bonn and Swales 2007). In view of the fact that the frequency and length of the acknowledgment paratext has always been greater, as we just said, in the Anglo-American academic community, we could speculate that the size of the scientific community and that of the audience/readership have a bearing on the frequency and length of ''backstage solidarity'' (Goffman 1959, p. 17;cited in Cronin andFranks 2006, p. 1915) statements, the Anglo-American academic community and audience being much wider than their French, Spanish and Venezuelan counterparts.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scholarly gratitude in five geographical contexts: a diachronic and cross-generic approach of the acknowledgment paratext in medical discourse (1950–2010)

et al. 2010

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scholarly gratitude in five geographical contexts: a diachronic and cross-generic approach of the acknowledgment paratext in medical discourse (1950–2010)

et al. 2010

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Reckoning with the findings of several rhetorical studies (Vihla 1999, Varttala 2001, Chien 2002, Oliver del Olmo 2004, Martín-Martín 2005, Feng 2006, Van Bonn and Swales 2007, and Feak and Swales 2007) of academic and scientific genres, the advantages are not presented cautiously. On the contrary, present tense is used to increase reality without intensifying and promoting ambiguity.…”

Section: Extra-and Intra-textual Study: Data and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Become a Patent Translator: Tricks and Tips – Notions of Text Genre and Ceremony to the Rescue

Lumeras

2010

meta

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Avant d’entreprendre la traduction de brevets et d’abrégés de brevets, les traducteurs, qui ne peuvent se dire experts d’un domaine spécifique, doivent tenir compte du contexte de production des genres textuels ainsi que des intentions communicatives, afin de s’assurer que le sens est rendu de façon acceptable (compte tenu de la cérémonie), de façon à ne choquer personne ni dénaturer l’objectif de l’auteur. Le présent article fait état des résultats d’une étude dans laquelle ont été analysées les séquences rhétoriques (moves) des abrégés de brevets dans quatre langues (chinois, espagnol, français et anglais) et dans quatre domaines (médecine, chimie, télécommunications et informatique), ainsi que la valeur rhétorique des choix linguistiques (par ex. : modalité, temps verbaux, voix passive, adverbes et adjectifs). La méthodologie déployée est double : qualitative, pour expliquer le contexte de production des textes selon certains paramètres en rapport avec le genre et offrir une interprétation des résultats quantitatifs ; quantitative, pour appliquer l’analyse linguistique aux abrégés de brevets. L’échantillonnage de textes se fonde sur des critères de date de publication, de langue originale et de discipline, et a permis de constituer un corpus de 200 textes. Les résultats semblent indiquer, d’une part, que la discipline ne joue pas un rôle considérable dans les choix linguistiques des rédacteurs et, d’autre part, que l’intensification et l’atténuation sont toutes deux des procédés rhétoriques visant à combiner intentions privées et finalités collectives, afin de satisfaire les exigences institutionnelles et les attentes des destinataires.Before starting to translate patents and patent abstracts, translators – who are not discipline experts – need to be aware of the context of text genre production and the communicative purposes and intentions to make sure they are conveying the intended meaning in the accepted manner (of the typical ceremony) in order not to shock the recipient and distort the author’s original intent. This article aims to present the results of a study that analyzes both the moves of original patent abstracts in four languages (Chinese, Spanish, French and English) and four disciplines (medicine, chemistry, telecommunications, and IT) and the rhetorical value of linguistic choices (i.e., modality, verb tense, passive voice, adverbs and adjectives). The methodology used is twofold: qualitative so as to explain the text production context according to certain parameters related to text genre and give a better interpretation to the quantitative results, and quantitative so as to conduct a linguistic analysis of the patent abstracts. Text samples were chosen according to date of publication, original language and discipline, and form a corpus of 200 texts. The results appear to show that discipline does not play a major role in the linguistic choices made by the abstractors, and that boosting and hedging are both rhetorical ways to combine private intentions and collective purposes, while satisfyin...

show abstract

“…Following these two pioneering works on RA abstracts, quite a few studies have been made to investigate RA abstracts not only in terms of their discourse patterning (e.g., Bhatia, 1993;Cross & Oppenheim, 2006;Hardjanto, 1997;Hyland, 2000;Lorés, 2004;Pho, 2013;Santos, 1996) but also in terms of their linguistic characteristics (e.g., Busch-Lauer, 1995;Pho, 2008;Van Bonn, & Swales, 2007). Santos (1996), for example, examined both the macro textual organization and the micro linguistic characteristics of RA abstracts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Common Discourse Patterns of Cross-diciplinary Research Article Abstracts in English

Hardjanto

2017

Jur, Hum

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Because of its important role in the advancement of science, attempts have been made to investigate research article abstracts in terms of both their discourse patterning and their linguistic characteristics. This research is an attempt to examine their rhetorical patterning. More specifically, it addresses the questions what common discourse patterns research article abstracts have and whether abstracts from different disciplines show different patterns. The research corpus contained 50 research article abstracts collected from five international journals published in the fields of biology, engineering, linguistics, medicine and physics. The data were analyzed using a four-move abstract structure developed by Hardjanto (1997). The results showed that Moves 1, 3 and 4 were found in most abstracts, and were, therefore, considered as obligatory moves in the abstracts. The most common pattern was found to be a pattern containing all the four moves in the order of 1-2-3-4, especially in abstracts from medicine and linguistics. Another common pattern was a 1-3-4 pattern, found especially in abstracts from biology and physics, whereas abstracts from engineering did not show any preference for a specific pattern even though 40% of them had a 1-2-3-4 pattern. These results suggest that there is a significant disciplinary variation in English research article abstract patterning.

show abstract

English and French journal abstracts in the language sciences: Three exploratory studies

Cited by 102 publications

References 15 publications

Scholarly gratitude in five geographical contexts: a diachronic and cross-generic approach of the acknowledgment paratext in medical discourse (1950–2010)

Scholarly gratitude in five geographical contexts: a diachronic and cross-generic approach of the acknowledgment paratext in medical discourse (1950–2010)

How to Become a Patent Translator: Tricks and Tips – Notions of Text Genre and Ceremony to the Rescue

Common Discourse Patterns of Cross-diciplinary Research Article Abstracts in English

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About