Taiwan International ESP Journal, Vol.

1: 1, 5-22, 2009

Writing in the disciplines:

Research evidence for specificity
Ken Hyland
Centre for Applied English Studies
University of Hong Kong

Abstract
Academic writing, much like any other kind of writing, is only effective when writers use
conventions that other members of their community find familiar and convincing. Essentially the
process of writing involves creating a text that we assume the reader will recognise and expect, and
the process of reading involves drawing on assumptions about what the writer is trying to do. It is
this writer-reader coordination which enables the co-construction of coherence from a text. Scholars
and students alike must therefore attempt to use conventions that other members of their discipline,
whether journal editors and reviewers or subject specialist teachers and examiners, will recognise and
accept. Because of this discourse analysis has become a central tool for identifying the specific
language features of target groups. In this paper I draw on my own work, conducted over several
years into research and student genres, to show how some familiar conventions of academic writing
are used in different disciplines and what these differences can tell us about the work in the disciplines
themselves.
Keywords: academic writing, conventions, discourse analysis, genres

1. Introduction
Specificity is perhaps the most central concept in language teaching and discourse
analysis today and represents a key way in which we understand and practice English
for Academic and Specific Purposes. Our understanding of specificity, and how
language varies in different contexts, has been greatly assisted in the last twenty years

Ken Hyland

by research in discourse analysis, which has become an invaluable tool for scholars and
teachers, highlighting typical patterning and salient features of academic writing.
Where once intuition and impression guided teaching, we now have evidence for
language variation across disciplines, genres, modes, and languages which is increasingly
informing classroom materials and practice. In this paper I want to explore something
of the contribution that discourse analysis research has made to the study of academic
texts, drawing largely on my own research, to examine the idea of specificity. In
particular I will focus on the importance of disciplinary specific language use and give
some examples of this.

2. Discourse analysis and academic specificity

Discourse analytic studies show considerable variation in academic language use
across a range of dimensions. Halliday (1989), for example, found greater nominalization,
impersonalisation and lexical density in written compared with spoken texts. There is
also a high degree of specificity in the kinds of writing that students are asked to do, so
that even students in fairly similar fields, such as nursing and midwifery, are given very
different writing assignments (Gimenez, 2009). Research on vocabulary shows that
terminology varies enormously across disciplines and even that the same words have
different frequencies, collocations and often different meanings in different fields
(Hyland & Tse, 2007). Similarly, research in contrastive rhetoric (e.g. Hinkel, 2002) has
pointed to cultural specificity in rhetorical preferences, so that students first language
and prior learning is seen to influence ways of organising ideas and structuring
arguments when writing in English at university.
Perhaps most research into specificity has attended to genre, where particular
purposes and audiences lead writers to employ very different choices (e.g. Hyland,
2009). Table 1, for example, compares frequencies for different features in a corpus of
240 research articles and 56 textbooks.

TIESPJ, Vol. 1: 1, 2009

Table 1 Selected features in research articles and textbooks per 1000 words (Hyland,
2005)
Genre
Research Articles
University Textbooks

Hedges

Self-mention

Citation

Transitions

15.1

3.9

6.9

12.8

8.1

1.6

1.7

24.9

We can see considerable variation in these features across the two genres. The
greater use of hedging underlines the need for caution and opening up arguments in the
research papers compared with the authorized certainties of the textbook, while the
removal of citation in textbooks shows how statements are presented as facts rather than
claims grounded in the literature. The greater use of self-mention in articles points to the
personal stake that writers invest in their arguments and their desire to gain credit for
claims, while the higher frequency of transitions, which are conjunctions and other
linking signals, in the textbooks is a result of the fact that writers need to make connections
far more explicit for readers with less topic knowledge.
Overwhelmingly, however, it is disciplinary variation which underlies most
specificity and this is what I want to focus on here. Research into differences in
academic practices and the texts that these produce is relatively new, partly because the
notion of discipline, and its underlying reliance on the idea of community, has been
difficult to pin down, and partly because of our fixation with genre in recent years.
While genre has provided a significant way of understanding situated language use, its
power to harness generalisations has led us to over-emphasize resemblances between
texts at the expense of variation. But, as Swales made clear in 1990, we need to see
community and genre together to offer a framework of how meanings are socially
constructed by forces outside the individual. Research on language variation across the
disciplines is rapidly becoming one of the dominant paradigms in EAP (e.g. Hyland,
2004; Flttum et al., 2006; Hyland & Bondi, 2006).
Specificity here refers to what I hope is a fairly uncontroversial idea: that we
communicate as members of social groups and that different groups use language to
conduct their business, define their boundaries, and manage their interactions in particular

Ken Hyland

ways. For EAP teachers this means focusing on communicating, and learning to
communicate, as a disciplinary insider.

3. Disciplinary specificity
The idea of discipline has become important in EAP as we have become more
sensitive to the ways genres are written and responded to by individuals acting as members
of social groups. Essentially, we can see disciplines as language using communities and
the term helps us join writers, texts and readers together. Communities provide the
context within which we learn to communicate and to interpret each others talk,
gradually acquiring the specialized discourse competencies to participate as group
members. So we can see disciplines as particular ways of doing things-particularly of
using language to engage with others in certain recognised and familiar ways.
Academic texts are about persuasion and this involves making choices to argue in ways
which fit the communitys assumptions, methods, and knowledge. This is how Wells
(1992: 290) sees matters:
Each subject discipline constitutes a way of making sense of human experience
that has evolved over generations and each is dependent on its own particular
practices: its instrumental procedures, its criteria for judging relevance and
validity, and its conventions of acceptable forms of argument. In a word each
has developed its own modes of discourse.
To work in a discipline, then, we need to be able to engage in these practices and, in
particular, in its discourses.
So disciplines structure the work we do within wider frameworks of beliefs and
provide the conventions and expectations that make texts meaningful. We can see this
if we picture the disciplines as spread along a cline (See Figure 1), with the hard
sciences at one end and the softer humanities at the other.

TIESPJ, Vol. 1: 1, 2009

SCIENCES

SOCIAL SCIENCES

HUMANITIES

Empirical and objective

Explicitly interpretive

Linear and cumulative growth of knowledge

Dispersed knowledge

Experimental methods

Discursive argument

Quantitative methods

Qualitative methods

More concentrated readership

More varied readership

Highly structured genres

More fluid discourses

Figure 1 Continuum of academic knowledge (after Coffin et al., 2003)

In the sciences new knowledge is accepted by experimental proof. Science writing
reinforces this by highlighting a gap in knowledge, presenting a hypothesis related to
this gap, and then reporting experimental findings to support this in a standard
Introduction-Methods-Results-Discussion format. The humanities such as literature,
history and philosophy, on the other hand, largely rely on case studies and narratives
while claims are accepted on strength of argument. The social sciences fall between
these extremes. Disciplines such as Sociology, Economics and Applied Linguistics have
partly adopted methods of the sciences, but in applying these to human data they have
to give far more attention to explicit interpretation than those fields. In other words,
academic discourse helps to give identity to a discipline. This means that we need to
understand the distinctive ways they have of asking questions, addressing a literature,
criticizing ideas, and presenting arguments, so we can help students participate
effectively in their learning.

4. Some example differences

I want to turn now to these disciplinary differences and look at a series of studies
I have conducted over the past decade or so into the features of a 1.5 million word
corpus of research articles in 8 disciplines and 4 million words of student dissertations
together with interviews with 30 academics. I will briefly highlight a few of the

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Ken Hyland

disciplinary differences in these corpora, focusing on citation, reporting verbs, hedges,

self-mention, directives, and lexical bundles.

4.1 Citation practices

One of the most striking differences in disciplinary uses of language is in citation
practices. The inclusion of references to the work of other authors is obviously central
to academic persuasion. This is because it not only helps establish a persuasive
framework for the acceptance of arguments by showing how a text depends on previous
work in a discipline, but also as it displays the writers credibility and status as an
insider. It helps align him or her with a particular community or orientation and
confirms that this is someone who is aware of, and is knowledgeable about, the topics,
approaches, and issues which currently interest and inform the field. But because
discourse communities see the world in different ways they also write about it in different
ways, with Table 2 showing that two thirds of all the citations in the article corpus in the
philosophy, sociology, marketing and applied linguistics papers, twice as many as in the
science disciplines (Hyland, 1999).
Table 2 Rank order of citations by discipline per 1,000 words
Soft Disciplines

per 1000 words

Hard Disciplines

per 1000 words

Sociology

12.5

Biology

15.5

Philosophy

10.8

Electrical Engineering

8.4

Applied Linguistics

10.8

Mechanical Engineering

7.3

Marketing

10.1

Physics

7.4

Basically, the differences reflect the extent writers can assume a shared context
with readers. In Kuhns (1962) normal science model, natural scientists produce
public knowledge through cumulative growth. Problems tend to emerge on the back of
earlier problems as results throw up further questions to be followed up with further
research so writers do not need to report research with extensive referencing. The

TIESPJ, Vol. 1: 1, 2009

11

people who read those papers are often working on the same problems and are familiar
with the earlier work. They have a good idea about the procedures used, whether they
have been properly applied, and what results mean. In the humanities and social
sciences, on the other hand, the literature is more dispersed and the readership more
heterogeneous, so writers cannot presuppose a shared context but have to build one far
more through citation.
This rather neat explanation drawing on a hard-soft discipline dichotomy is spoilt
somewhat by the fact that biology has the highest citation count per 1000 words.
Interestingly, this is largely due to a very high proportion of self-citation with 13% of
all citations to the current author compared with about 6% overall among other disciplines
in the corpus. There does, in fact, seem to be a considerable emphasis given to
recognising the ownership of ideas in biology and showing how current research builds
on the work of others, which makes it unusual among the sciences (Hyland, 2004).

4.2 Reporting verbs

There are also major differences in the ways writers report others work, with
results suggesting that writers in different fields draw on very different sets of reporting
verbs to refer to their literature (Hyland, 1999). Among the higher frequency verbs,
almost all instances of say and 80% of think occurred in philosophy and 70% of use in
electronics. It turns out, in fact, that engineers show, philosophers argue, biologists find
and linguists suggest. The most common forms across the disciplines are shown in
Table 3.
Table 3 Most frequent reporting verbs.
Soft Disciplines

Hard Disciplines

Philosophy

say, suggest, argue, claim

Biology

describe, find, report, show

Sociology

argue, suggest, describe, discuss

Elec Eng.

show, propose, report, describe

Applied Ling.

suggest, argue, show, explain

Mech Eng.

show, report, describe, discuss

Marketing

suggest, argue, demonstrate, propose

Physics

develop, report, study

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Ken Hyland

These preferences seem to reflect broad disciplinary purposes. So, the soft fields
largely use verbs which refer to writing activities, like discuss, hypothesize, suggest,
argue. These involve the expression of arguments and allow writers to discursively
explore issues while carrying a more evaluative element in reporting others work:
(1) Lindesmiths (1965) classic work indicated the
Davidson defends this claim on the grounds that
Engineers and scientists, in contrast, prefer verbs which point to the research itself like
observe, discover, show, analyse, and calculate, which represent real world actions.
(2) Edson et al (1993) showed processes were induced .
... using (4) special process and design, or by adding (5), or removing (6) a mask.
This emphasis on real-world activities helps scientists represent knowledge as proceeding
from impersonal lab activities rather than from the interpretations of researchers. Two
scientist informants commented on this kind of use:
Of course, I make decisions about the findings I have, but it is more convincing
to tie them closely to the results.

(Physics interview)

You have to relate what you say to your colleagues and we dont encourage
people to go out and nail their colours to the mast as maybe they dont get it
published.

(Biology interview)

The conventions of impersonality in science articles thus play an important role in

reinforcing an objective ideology by portraying the legitimacy of hard science
knowledge as built on socially invariant criteria. Again, it removes the author from the
text to give priority to the unmediated voice of nature itself.

TIESPJ, Vol. 1: 1, 2009

13

4.3 Hedges
Devices like possible, might, likely, and so on, collectively known as hedges, also
diverge across fields. These function to withhold complete commitment to a proposition,
implying that a claim is based on plausible reasoning rather than certain knowledge.
They indicate the degree of confidence the writer thinks it might be wise to give a claim
while opening a discursive space for readers to dispute interpretations (Hyland, 1996).
Because they represent the writers direct involvement in a text, something that
scientists generally try to avoid, they are twice as common in humanities and social
science papers than in hard sciences. So, we tend to find more statements like this:
(3) The existence of such networks did not go unnoticed by contemporaries
(see, Rocke, 1989), and it seems sensible to assume the men concerned were
probably not unreflective about this patterned conduct either.

(Sociology)

With hindsight, we believe it might have been better to have presented the
questionnaire bilingually.

(Applied Linguistics)

One reason for this is there is less control of variables, more diversity of research
outcomes, and fewer clear bases for accepting claims than in the sciences. Writers
cannot report research with the same confidence of shared assumptions so papers rely
far more on recognizing alternative voices. Arguments have to be expressed more
cautiously by using more hedges.
In the hard sciences positivist epistemologies mean that the authority of the
individual is subordinated to the authority of the text and facts are meant to speak for
themselves. This means that writers often disguise their interpretative activities behind
linguistic objectivity. They downplay their personal role to suggest that results would
be the same whoever conducted the research. The less frequent use of hedges is one
way of minimising the researchers role, and so is the preference for modals over
cognitive verbs. This is because modal verbs can more easily combine with inanimate
subjects to downplay the person making the evaluation. So we are more likely to find
examples like (4) in the sciences and those with cognitive verbs in the soft discipline

14

Ken Hyland

fields (5):
(4) For V. trifidum, ANOVA showed a significant increase from L to L and
FI, which could be interpreted as reflecting the dynamics of fungal
colonization.

( Biology)

The deviations at high frequencies may have been caused by the

noise measurements.
(5) I think this would be a mistake.

(Electrical Engineering)
(Sociology)

We suspect that the product used in this study may have contributed to
the result.

(Marketing)

Scientists tend to be concerned with generalisations rather than individuals, so

greater weight is put on the methods, procedures and equipment used rather than the
argument. Modals, then, are one way of helping to reinforce a view of science as an
impersonal, inductive enterprise while allowing scientists to see themselves as
discovering truth rather than constructing it.

4.4 Self- mention

Self-mention is another important feature which varies across disciplines. This
concerns how far writers want to intrude into their texts through use of I or we, or to
use impersonal forms. Presenting a discoursal self is central to the writing process, and
we cannot avoid projecting an impression of ourselves and how we stand in relation to
our arguments, discipline, and readers. To some extent we have to see this as a personal
preference determined by seniority, experience, confidence, personality, and so on, but
the presence or absence of explicit author reference is a conscious choice by writers to
adopt a particular community-situated authorial identity. However, my 240 research
articles, once again, show broad disciplinary preferences with 2/3 of cases in the social
sciences & humanities papers (Hyland, 2001b). Table 4 presents the distribution of the
use of self-mention across the eight disciplines in my research article corpus.

TIESPJ, Vol. 1: 1, 2009

15

Table 4 Self-mention in research articles per 1,000 words

Soft disciplines

Hard disciplines

Philosophy

5.5

Physics

4.1

Sociology

4.3

Biology

3.4

Applied Linguistics

4.5

Mechanical Engineering

1.0

Marketing

5.5

Electrical Engineering

3.3

Average

5.0

2.9

Now it is clear that writers in different disciplines represent themselves, their work
and their readers in different ways, with those in the humanities and social sciences taking
far more personal positions than those in the sciences and engineering. The reason for
this is again that the strategic use of self-mention allows writers to claim authority by
expressing their convictions, emphasizing their contribution to the field, and seeking
recognition for their work (Hyland, 2001b; Kuo, 1999). It sends a clear indication to the
reader of the perspective from which statements should be interpreted and distinguishes
the writers own work from that of others. Successful communication in the soft fields
depends far more on the authors ability to invoke the sense of a real writer in the text,
emphasizing their own contribution to the field while seeking agreement for it.
(6) I argue that their treatment is superficial because, despite appearances, it
relies solely on a sociological, as opposed to an ethical, orientation to
develop a response.

(Sociology)

I bring to bear on the problem my own experience. This experience

contains ideas derived from reading I have done which might be relevant
to my puzzlement as well as my personal contacts with teaching contexts.
(Applied Linguistics)
So self-mention can help construct an intelligent, credible, and engaging colleague
by presenting a confident and authoritative authorial self.
In the hard sciences, as I noted earlier, researchers are generally seeking to

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Ken Hyland

downplay their personal role in the research to highlight the phenomena under study, the
replicability of research activities, and the generality of the findings. Scientists, then,
try to distance themselves from interpretations in ways that are familiar to most EAP
teachers. They accomplish this by either using the passive voice (7), dummy it
subjects (8), or by attributing agency to inanimate things (9):
(7) This suggestion was confirmed by the observation that only plants
carrying the pAG-I::GUS transgene showed a gain of GUS staining in
leaves of clf-2 plants.

(Biology)

(8) It was found that a larger stand-off height would give a smaller maximum
shear strain when subjected to thermal fatigue...
(Mechanical Engineering)
(9) The images demonstrate that the null point is once again well resolved and
that diffusion is symmetric.

(Physics)

By subordinating their voice to that of nature, scientists rely on the persuasive

force of lab procedures rather than the force of their writing. As this biologist told me:
I feel a paper is stronger if we are allowed to see what was done without we
did this and we think that. Of course we know there are researchers there,
making interpretations and so on, but this is just assumed. Its part of the
background. Im looking for something interesting in the study and it shouldnt
really matter who did what in any case. (...) In theory anyone should be able
to follow the same procedures and get the same results. (Biology interview)
In contrast, in the humanities and social sciences, the first person allows writers to
strongly identify with a particular argument and to gain credit for an individual
perspective:
Using I emphasizes what you have done. What is yours in any piece of

TIESPJ, Vol. 1: 1, 2009

17

research. I notice it in papers and use it a lot myself. (Sociology interview)

The personal pronoun I is very important in philosophy. It not only tells
people that it is your own unique point of view, but that you believe what you
are saying. It shows your colleagues where you stand in relation to the issues
and in relation to where they stand on them. It marks out the differences.
(Philosophy interview)
By marking your views with the first person, you leave readers in no doubt of your
stance while claiming credit for what you are saying. It is a powerful way of demonstrating
an individual contribution and establishing a claim for priority.

4.5 Directives
Another feature which supports the idea of disciplinary specificity is directives.
These are devices which instruct the reader to perform an action or to see things in a
way determined by the writer (Hyland, 2002). They are largely expressed through
imperatives (e.g. consider, note, imagine) and obligation modals (such as must, should,
and ought). Overall, they direct readers to three main kinds of activity: textual, physical
and cognitive acts.
Textual acts direct readers to another part of the text or to another text (e.g. see Smith
1999, refer to table 2)
Physical acts direct readers how to carry out some action in the real-world (e.g. open
the valve, heat the mixture).
Cognitive acts instruct readers how to interpret an argument, explicitly positioning
readers by encouraging them to note, concede or consider some argument or claim in
the text.
Generally, explicit engagement, where writers address readers directly in a text
(Hyland, 2001a) is a feature of the soft disciplines, where writers are less able to rely on
the explanatory value of accepted procedures. Directives, however, are a potentially

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Ken Hyland

risky way of seeking to build a connection with readers as they instruct them to act or
see things in a way determined by the writer (Hyland, 2002). They may therefore be
seen as assuming unwarranted authority and so encourage a hostile response and a
rejection of the claim being made. As a result, most directives in the soft fields are
textual, directing readers to a reference or table rather than telling them how they should
interpret an argument. So examples like these are common in the social sciences:
(10) see Steuer 1983 for a discussion of other contingencies effects.
(Marketing)
Look at Table 2 again for examples of behavioristic variables.

(Marketing)

For transcription conventions please refer to the Appendix.

(Applied Linguistics)
Two of my social science respondents noted this about their writing in their interviews:
I am very conscious of using words like must and consider and so on and
use them for a purpose. I want to say Right, stop here. This is important and
I want you to take notice of it. So I suppose I am trying to take control of the
reader and getting them to see things my way.

(Sociologist interview)

I am aware of the effect that an imperative can have so I tend to use the more
gentle ones. I dont want to bang them over the head with an argument I want
them to reflect on what Im saying. I use consider and lets look at this
rather than something stronger.

(Applied Linguist interview)

Argument in the hard knowledge fields, in contrast, is formulated in a highly

standardised code. Succinctness is valued by both editors and scientists, and directives
allow writers to cut directly to the heart of key issues in the text. Because of this we find
a high proportion of cognitive directives here which explicitly position readers by
leading them through an argument or emphasising what they should attend to:

TIESPJ, Vol. 1: 1, 2009

19

(11) What has to be recognized is that these issues.. (Mechanical Eng)

Consider the case where a very versatile milling machine of type M5...
(Electrical Eng)
A distinction must be made between cytogenetic and molecular resolution.
(Biology)
My informants noted this in their interviews:
I rarely give a lot of attention to the dressing, I look for the meat - the findings
- and if the argument is sound. If someone wants to save me time in getting
there then that is fine. No, Im not worried about imperatives leading me
through it.

(Electrical Engineering interview)

Im very conscious of how I write and I am happy to use an imperative if it

puts my idea over clearly. Often we are trying to work to word limits anyway,
squeezing fairly complex arguments into a tight space.
(Mechanical Engineering interview)

4.6 Bundles
The final example of disciplinary specificity I want to mention is lexical bundles,
or frequently occurring word sequences. These are a key way of shaping text meanings
and contributing to our sense of distinctiveness and naturalness in a register. So
collocations like as a result of and it should be noted that, help identify a text as
belonging to an academic register while in pursuance of, and in accordance with mark
out a legal text. Using a corpus of 120 research articles and 120 post-graduate dissertations
in four disciplines I found that the most common bundles in this academic corpus of 3.5
million words were on the other hand, at the same time and in the case of, all of which
occurred over 100 times per million words (Hyland, 2008).
There are, however, some interesting disciplinary differences. The electrical

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Ken Hyland

engineering texts contained the greatest range of high frequency bundles and also the
highest proportion of words in 4-word bundles. Biology, on the other hand, had the
smallest range of bundles, the fewest examples, and the lowest proportion of texts
comprised of words in bundles. So the electrical engineering texts were most dependent
on prefabricated bundles and used many sequences not found in the other disciplines,
perhaps because of the fact that technical communication is relatively abstract and
graphical. This means that language constructs an argument by linking data or findings
in routinely patterned, formulaic ways with the same forms used repeatedly.
There are also considerable differences across disciplines in the 4-word bundles.
The top 20 most common ones are shown in their rank order within disciplines in Table
5 with items that occur in all four disciplines marked in bold and those in three disciplines
are shaded (Hyland, 2008).
Table 5 Most frequent 4-word bundles (bold = in 4 disciplines; shaded = in 3 disciplines)
Biology

Electrical Eng

Applied Ling

Business Studies

in the presence of

on the other hand

on the other hand

on the other hand

in the present study

as shown in figure

at the same time

in the case of

on the other hand

in the case of

in terms of the

at the same time

the end of the

is shown in figure

on the basis of

at the end of

is one of the

it can be seen

in relation to the

on the basis of

at the end of

as shown in fig

in the case of

as well as the

it was found that

is shown in fig

in the present study

the extent to which

at the beginning of

can be seen that

the end of the

the end of the

as well as the

can be used to

the nature of the

significantly different from zero

as a result of

the performance of the

in the form of

are more likely to

it is possible that

as a function of

as well as the

the relationship between the

are shown in figure

is based on the

at the end of

the results of the

was found to be

with respect to the

the fact that the

the hang seng index

be due to the

is given by equation

in the context of

the other hand the

in the case of

the effect of the

is one of the

in the context of

is shown in figure

the magnitude of the

in the process of

as a result of

the beginning of the

at the same time

the results of the

the performance of the

the nature of the

in this case the

in terms of their

hong kong stock market

the fact that the

it is found that

to the fact that

is positively related to

may be due to

the size of the

in the sense that

are significantly different from

TIESPJ, Vol. 1: 1, 2009

21

The table clearly shows the extent of disciplinary specificity with just two forms
in all four disciplines (on the other hand and in the case of) and a handful in three fields.
In fact, over half of all items in the top 50 bundles in each discipline do not occur in the
top 50 of any other discipline. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the greatest similarities are
between cognate fields, linking the soft disciplines together and the hard disciplines
together. Business studies and applied linguistics share 18 items in the top 50 with on
the basis of, in the context of, the relationship between the, and it is important to exclusive
to these two fields. Similarly, biology and electrical engineering have 16 bundles in
common, with it was found that, is shown in figure, as shown in figure, is due to the, and
the presence of the not found in the social science list at all.

5. Conclusion
Discourse studies reveal that the features I have presented here all occur and
behave in dissimilar ways in different disciplines. The fact that writers in different fields
draw on different resources to develop their arguments, establish their credibility and
persuade their readers means that EAP teachers need to take the disciplines of their
students, and the ways these disciplines create texts, into account in their classroom
practices. Such considerations, moreover, are not confined to student writing but
underlie the conventions which guide scholarly writing for academic publication. The
value of discourse analysis is not that it merely produces a list of the features of
disciplinary discourses, but that it can uncover more sophisticated understanding of
disciplinary communities. It provides a richer picture for academics and for teachers of
EAP and so helps us to improve the ways we prepare our students for their academic
studies.

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Ken Hyland

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