Discussion 2-2
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CommonRhetoricalStrategiesWhenWritingforAcademicAudiences.docxCommon Rhetorical Strategies (in Writing for Academic Audiences)
(Parker’s note: This document is designed as a supplement to the “Common Rhetorical Strategies” document posted to Bb.)
While the organizational, figurative, and other common rhetorical strategies covered in “Common Rhetorical Strategies” can certainly appear in writing for academic audiences, there are certain rhetorical approaches that those who write for expert audiences (particularly academic audiences) tend to employ.
Maybe it should not be a surprise that rhetoricians and writing instructors study this topic—after all, we examine something seemingly random like apologies, and I may decide to write that research paper tentatively titled “Sorry for Shuffling on Your Ankle: Apology Strategies at EDC Vegas, Mexico, and Japan”—but we do, and one person who has performed qualitative research on this issue is Teresa Thonney.
In her article “Teaching the Conventions of Academic Discourse,” Thonney conducts a qualitative analysis of rhetorical moves in articles published in six different academic periodicals, and her research revealed six common rhetorical strategies used in a majority of those texts. And, as someone who has read more than 10,000 texts published in academic periodicals (no joke), I can confirm her findings:
1. Writers respond to what others have said about their topic, as if they are joining a conversation on a specific issue.
2. Writers state the value of their work and announce the plan for their papers (and they regularly use metadiscourse to accomplish this).
3. Writers acknowledge that others might disagree with the position they’ve taken (and they might then respond to these anticipated opposing views).
4. Writers adopt a voice of authority (like using first-person pronouns and referring to previous research or outside sources).
5. Writers use academic and discipline-specific vocabulary (especially jargon).
6. Writers emphasize evidence, often in tables, graphs, and images.
Other specialists in my field have arrived at similar conclusions about rhetorical strategies that tend to differentiate writing for academic audiences from non-academic audiences. In their book They Say/ I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing, Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein essentially identify the same strategies listed above.
I mean, I could continue to provide additional examples rhetors who have performed research on this issue—like Nancy Wood, John Bean, and Richard Harris for starters—but most have agreed that writing for academic audiences is regularly characterized by the combined use of strategies listed above.
Sure, maybe this makes academic writing a little challenging to read with extreme vigor and interest, but then again, you do get texts like “Taco the Puppy Is Super Sick” that actually integrate some humor into the text through photographs and diction choices.
So what’s the upshot of all this?
