Polly Tse

Discipline and Gender: Constructing Rhetorical Identity in Book Reviews

In review genres the control of evaluative resources is central to both effective writing and authorial identity. The ways in which writers judge others’ work and express these judgements in their texts not only signals what they think, but also who they are, displaying both their status as disciplinary insiders and their individual competences and values. In other words, and in an important sense, we are what we write, and what we write in review texts is a discursive construction of self through evaluation. In this chapter we explore the role of gender and discipline in the performance of such an academic identity by examining a corpus of reviews, written by men and women, in the contrasting fields of philosophy and biology.

`The leading journal in its field': evaluation in journal descriptions

Evaluation, as the expression of a writer’s attitudes, opinions and values, has become a key term in discourse studies in recent years and has proved to be a particularly fruitful way of analysing academic texts. But while studies have shown the importance of evaluation in research genres, its role in seemingly more promotional academic genres has been largely neglected. This article examines the journal description (JD), a brief but ubiquitous feature of all journals, whether online or in print. Situated at the academic—commercial interface, the JD provides information for prospective readers and authors while endorsing a particular view of the field and positioning the journal in the academic community. Drawing on a corpus of 200 JDs in four contrasting disciplines, we show how evaluation is a key feature of this genre, influencing both lexical choices and rhetorical structure. The analysis contributes both to our understanding of a neglected academic genre and the evaluative resources of language.

‘She has received many honours’: Identity construction in article bio statements

Abstract In contrast to the prescribed anonymity of the research article, the bio which accompanies it is perhaps the most explicit assertion of self-representation in scholarly life. Here is a rhetorical space where, in 50–100 words, authors are able to craft a narrative of expertise for themselves. It is a key opening for academics, both novice and experienced, to manage a public image through the careful recounting of achievement. Yet despite the current interest in identity, the bio has largely escaped attention. In this paper we address this neglect through analysis of 600 bios across three disciplines, exploring the importance of discipline, status and gender in mediating the ways writers claim an identity. Our argument is that, despite its brevity, the bio is an important means of representing an academic self through the recognition of collective values and membership.

Stance in Academic Bios

This chapter examines the genre of academic bio which, as a common practice in scholarly publishing, accompanies a research article to provide information about the author. As such, academic bio is an extended form of auto/biographical practices where a person is called upon to provide a narrative about themselves, or in Goffman’s words, to engage in the ‘presentation of self’ (Goffman, 1959). This explicit self-representation in academic bio sits in stark contrast to the prescribed anonymity of the article itself, for whereas too much personal exposure is conventionally discouraged in the objective report of research findings, in academic bios authors are invited to unmask their presence and compose a narrative of their scholarly self and professional credentials. While such self-portrait is typically restricted to a little space of 50-100 words, its brevity and self-reflexive nature may render it a periphery status compared with other academic genres. At first glance, its relevance to the key academic goals of establishing claims and knowledge seems minimal and its condensed and relatively unvarying form does not seem to invite in-depth linguistic exploration. But as I shall demon-strate in this chapter, authors are able to manipulate this limited space to manage a public voice and claim a specialist position in their communities.