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The use of critical speech acts in Psychology and Chemistry research papers

Year: 2004
Type: article
Abstract: Creating a research space has become increasingly important in today's competitive academic world,\nwhere the pressure to publish requires writers to justify publication of their research article (RA) in\norder present their new claims to the other members of the academic community. This mainly\nimplies the indication of a knowledge gap and/or the criticism of any weak point in the previously\npublished work by other researchers or the academic community itself. This "academic conflict"\n(AC) is expressed via a critical speech act whose rhetorical expression ranges from blunt criticism\nto the use of subtle hedging devices, aimed at an individual or the community in general. In this\nstudy we discuss the development of a taxonomy to describe the rhetorical choices writers use when\nmaking the critical speech act, and the application of this taxonomy to 50 RAs from two distinct\ndisciplines: Psychology, representing the social disciplines, and Chemistry, the natural disciplines.\nThe application of this taxonomy, which categorises AC according to directness, writer mediation,\nand the target of the criticism, has yielded the following results: AC was manifested far more\nfrequently in Psychology than in Chemistry, not only in total number of AC units, but also in the\nresearch articles themselves: it appears to be an essential rhetorical strategy for writers in the field\nof Psychology, but not so in Chemistry. The two disciplines showed a surprising degree of similarity\nwith respect to writer mediation, directness and personalization overall; however, when these\nvariables are combined, significant differences emerge: researchers in Psychology favour\nunmediated, direct and personal criticism, whereas those in Chemistry favour impersonal criticism
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2116483081
FWCI:
Cites: 49
Cited by: 19
Related to: 10