The paper investigates internationality as an academic virtue that is highly relevant for research biographies. The discursive trajectory of this virtue is assessed by comparing ascriptions of internationality in 216 academic obituaries from the US, UK and Germany, from physics, sociology and history, and from the 1960s, 1980s and 2000s. Our…

In this paper, we critically analyze institutional mission statements as discursive texts replete with symbolic meaning, as we believe these texts reveal a great deal about the ways in which higher education remains increasingly stratified. We argue that beneath the generalized rhetoric of institutional mission statements, lie powerful messages…

Academic writing, particularly writing research articles, is an indispensable part of every major in higher education. Hyland (2004) argued that a valuable means of exploring academic writing, and comparing the rhetorical features and preferences of different discourse communities, is through the metadiscourse analysis of the text. The present…

The university prospectus is supposed to be a forceful and pioneering text in promoting and marketing higher education. The present research will deal with the disparities in the frequencies of first and second person pronouns in online prospectuses in cross-cultural linguistics from marketing point of view. The research question is to which…

The University of Helsinki established a Teachers' Academy to reward excellence in teaching. This study focuses on teachers' significant networks and their meaningful conversations about teaching and learning before the establishment of the Teachers' Academy. The research data consisted of answers to open-ended questions, and were examined using…

This study uses Corpus Linguistic (CL) techniques to explore multiple turn openings in conjunction with comparative measures of turn-initial priming (the proportion of occurrences of a form that are turn-initial). Using a benchmark corpus of casual conversation as a point of comparison, six frequent items which have a particularly strong affinity…

The increase in online course delivery in higher education has implications for students and instructors. In fall 2002, 1.6 million students took at least one online course and this number increased by the fall of 2012 to 6.7 million. The increase in the rate of enrollment in online courses in higher education provides an opportunity to examine…

Looks at a group of politically knowledgeable college students and assesses changes in perceptions to the messages of Ford and Carter during the course of the 1976 Presidential pre-election debates. Notes statistically significant differences between pre-debate, post-debate, and delayed post-debate ratings on sets of semantic differential-like…

Discusses the use of the WORDS computer program in scoring writing assignments. Explains that computerized analysis has identified factors in experienced writers' essays that graders favor but has failed to distinguish clearly between basic and average writers' works. Concludes that holistic scoring can work effectively for student placement, but…

Many consider rich argumentation to be the core of quality discussions and view it as a vehicle to solving problems and clarifying content. This study examined the influence of a discussion leader intervention on the quality of online argumentation and interactivity. Subjects were 44 undergraduate students who participated in online discussions on…

This book provides theoretically informed guidance to practicing the key research methods for investigating society and culture. It is a text in both methods and methodology, in which the importance of understanding the historical, theoretical and institutional context in which particular methods have developed is stressed. The contributors of the…

A study analyzed the second-language essays of seven anglophone and one French-speaking Quebec university students enrolled in a literature course by using a cognitive-metacognitive framework developed for mathematical problem-solving and a think-aloud protocol. Results indicate the framework, with some adjustments, is a reliable tool for…

This exploratory study examines the efficacy of Focus on Form (i.e., brief instruction on linguistic forms while learners engage in meaning) at the pragmatic level. Specifically, comparing Focus on FormS (interactions followed by explicit debriefing on pragmatic forms) and Focus on Form (interactions followed by debriefing on meaning), the…

This study of academic feminism uses cultural and critical theory, feminist poststructuralism, and oral history to examine the transformative role of feminist scholarship in higher education. Nine feminist scholars were selected as participants using four sampling criteria: primary discipline (predominatly from the humanities and social sciences);…