Governments the world over require scientific knowledge to inform policy makers' decision-making processes. The recontextualization of this information for nonscientific audiences has received much attention, though it has primarily focused on publicly available texts. Little is known about the discursive nature of how science is transformed and…

Too frequently, representations of disciplinary writing foreground static notions of knowledge creation and literate practice in science and engineering. Rooted in discourse community theory, such representations present normative tropes of scientific practice that background notions of disciplinarity and obscure people's lived experience and…

This study examines a social network site (SNS) where specific interlocutors communicate by combining aspects of academic American English (AE), digital language (DL), and African American Language (AAL)--creating a digital form of AAL or digital AAL (DAAL). This article describes the features of DAAL in the discursive, online context of MySpace,…

Thanks to the recent developments in the theory of academic discourse analysis, it is now increasingly accepted that negotiation of academic knowledge is intimately related to the social practices of academic communities. To underpin this position and to reveal some of the ways this is achieved, this article analyzes a relatively wide spectrum of…

This article tracks the socialization of a Chinese intern into a Hong Kong PR company and considers the factors that enabled her to move toward acquiring the discourse of the profession. Taking a case study approach, the research is based on a detailed daily journal written by the intern during her internship, and two interviews. Over the 3-month…

Recent research has emphasized the close connections between writing and the construction of an author's identity. While academic contexts privilege certain ways of making meanings and so restrict what resources participants can bring from their past experiences, we can also see these writing conventions as a repertoire of options that allow…

This article deals with how economists present their new knowledge claim in the genre of the research article. In the discipline of economics today, the claim is typically included not only in the obvious results/discussion section(s) but also in three other locations of the article: the abstract, the introduction, and the conclusion. The present…

This study reports about a yearlong study of the initiation of novice grant writers to the activity system of National Institutes of Health grant applications. It investigates the use of cognitive apprenticeship within writing classrooms and that of social apprenticeship in laboratories, programs, departments, and universities, which introduced…

Fahnestock and Secors "The Rhetoric of Literary Criticism" characterized literary criticism of the 1970s as conservative and self-celebratory. However, although literary theory has since undergone significant change, few rhetorical analyses of recent literary criticism as the preferred genre of a disciplinary discourse community have been…

Compares electronic support groups to electronic hobby groups to demonstrate the difference in terms of the rhetorical behavior of participants. Finds that some discourse characteristics and rhetorical features are common to all groups, others are unique to the special requirements of electronic support groups. (PA)

Studies the socialization processes of two writers new to an organization in terms of writing tasks, writers' social roles, and methods of socialization. Reveals 15 different writing roles depicting a continuum from novice to expert. Argues the implications of this study are relevant to current school-based approaches to writing instruction. (NH)

Investigates the discourse practices of the "affiliated professions" of software engineering design. Compares lists of design issues generated by students in computer science and computer communication to lists produced by experts associated with software engineering and by students entering an unaffiliated profession. Suggests that affiliated…

Recounts an earlier case analysis describing ethical differences in collectivist and individualistic rhetorics experienced by a writer in a literature seminar and a public relations office. Examines how this analysis is problemmatized by alternative interpretations demonstrating how collectivist rhetoric practiced by researchers involves the…

Presents a study of the grammatical subjects as used in scientific discourse. Provides evidence that the grammatical subjects in a sample of scientific discourse are markedly long. Identifies three pressures that operate on scientists to produce such markedly long grammatical subjects. (HB)

This article focuses on supervising professors' and master's degree students' understanding and experiences of supervision practices in a Norwegian university, with focus on differences in text cultures and text norms between and within three academic disciplines. The interview study shows that each discipline is a heterogeneous discourse…