María Ángeles Alcaraz Ariza

The scimitar, the dagger and the glove: intercultural differences in the rhetoric of criticism in Spanish, French and English Medical Discourse (1930–1995)

Abstract “We should not fear diversity of views. On the contrary, progress in science demands it. The only way to frame the best answers possible in the face of incomplete knowledge is to allow differing views to be expressed” A.D. Sniderman, [The Lancet 357 (1999): p.328] The socio-pragmatic phenomenon of academic conflict (AC) is here addressed from a cross-cultural and diachronic perspective, and is examined by combining a quantitative approach and a qualitative discoursal analysis of its salient rhetorical features in a corpus of Spanish, French and English medical articles published between 1930 and 1995. The speech acts that conveyed AC were recorded in each paper and classified into two categories according to their level of commitment (direct author’s involvement) or detachment (hedginess and AC responsibility shifting). The quantitative results were analyzed by means of the Chi-square test. Our overall findings indicate that French and Spanish scientists tend to be not only more critical, but also more authoritarian and passionate in the formulation of their AC than their Anglo-Saxon counterparts. However, when analyzed diachronically, our results indicate that from the 1990s on, the rhetorical behavior of Spanish AC (though still somewhat blunt and personal) quite abruptly distinguishes itself from that of French and starts adopting the more veiled and “politically correct” tone of English AC. By contrast, the discursive pattern of French AC did not substantially change over time, although its indirectness slowly and continuously increased over the period studied. By placing the earlier results within their broader educational, political, historical and socio-economic context, it can be claimed that the behavioral changes observed in the framing of AC reflect the evolution of an increasingly promotional, competitive, professionalized, collegial and pragmatic end-of-twentieth-century scientific research which tends to compel scientists to progressively change their vision of science, although certain cultures seem to be more vulnerable to external penetration than others.

The Voice of Scholarly Dispute in Medical Book Reviews, 1890–2010

It is now generally accepted that synchronic studies can benefit from, be enhanced and informed by diachronic considerations which help us understand why specialized languages have come to be as they are. ‘History is who we are and why we are the way we are’, said the US ‘celebrity’ historian, David McCullough. In that sense, Bazerman (1988) claims that it is necessary to understand why certain forms of expression arise, why they evolve and why they disappear. He further stresses that it is only through the analysis of language as a historical phenomenon that one can understand the rhetoric of today’s scientific discourse. Along the same lines, Atkinson (1996: 334) forcefully remarks that ‘the study of scientists’ communicative practices across historical times is a crucial aspect in the study of science’. Hyland (2000) echoes these opinions by asserting that diachronic analyses of scientific discourse are an important way of looking at the constitutive relationship between writers and their texts in the sense that they show that language and communities are mutually entailed and constituted.