Giuliana Diani

Introduction: Academic Evaluation and Review Genres

The expression of personal opinions and assessments is a ubiquitous feature of human interaction and, despite its apparently impersonal facade, central to academic writing. It could be argued, in fact, that among all the activities of the academy, what academics mainly do is evaluate. Their research and publishing is a continual round of comparing methods, assessing sources, weighing up outcomes, contrasting claims and considering data. They are constantly making judgements about whether samples are representative, findings are accurate and interpretations valid. The texts they produce while conducting these activities reflect this concern with evaluation and its expression pervades research articles, lectures, conference presentations, textbooks and student assignments.

Reporting and Evaluation in English Book Review Articles: A Cross-Disciplinary Study

This chapter explores a review genre — the book review article — that is something of a hybrid. It often appears in the book review section of academic journals yet differs from both book reviews and review articles. Its primary function is to evaluate the knowledge claims of other researchers in the context of their publications. This is clearly different from a book review which functions to evaluate a range of features of books (Hyland, 2000).