Pecorari "Visible and occluded citation features in postgraduate second-language writing " English for Specific Purposes 25(1): 4-29, 2006

[Eugene Garfield]

Diane Pecorari : E-mail Addresses: Diane.Pecorari at mdh.se


Title: Visible and occluded citation features in postgraduate second-
language writing

Author(s): Pecorari D

Source: ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES 25 (1): 4-29 2006

Document Type: Article
Language: English
Cited References: 53      Times Cited: 0

Abstract:
As novice members of their academic discourse communities, postgraduates
face the challenge of learning to write in ways which will be judged as
appropriate by those communities. Two resources in this effort are
students' own observations of the features of published texts in their
disciplines, and feedback on their texts from teachers and advisors. These
resources depend, though, on the extent to which textual features can be
observed. Swales [Swales, J. M. (1996). Occluded genres in the academy: The
case of the submission letter. In E. Ventola & A. Mauranen (Eds.). Academic
writing: intercultural and textual issues (pp. 45-58). Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.] has noted the existence of occluded academic genres. The notion
of occlusion is extended here to refer to the features of academic texts
which are not ordinarily visible to the reader. One important area of
occlusion is citation and, specifically, the relationship between a
reference to a source and the source itself. This article reports the
findings of an investigation into three visible and occluded features of
postgraduate second-language writing. The novice writers in this study were
found to respond to their disciplines' expectations in terms of the visible
aspects of source use, but with regard to the occluded features their
writing diverged considerably from received disciplinary norms. The
findings also suggest that, with respect to disciplinary norms, a gap may
exist between what is prescribed and what is practiced. (c) 2005 The
American University. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Addresses: Pecorari D (reprint author), Malardalen Univ, Dept Humanities,
Vasteras, S-72123 Sweden
Malardalen Univ, Dept Humanities, Vasteras, S-72123 Sweden

E-mail Addresses: Diane.Pecorari at mdh.se

Publisher: PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD, THE BOULEVARD, LANGFORD LANE,
KIDLINGTON, OXFORD OX5 1GB, ENGLAND
Subject Category: APPLIED LINGUISTICS
IDS Number: 005FO

ISSN: 0889-4906


EXCERPT FROM PAPER :
DETAILS OF THE SOURCES:
Given the preference of urban scholars to publish quickly and in journals,
the expectation was that the biologists would cite more journal articles,
and more recent ones, than the other writers.  This expectation was met;
the average age of the sources cited by the scientists was 9 years, but
more than double that, ranging from 19 to 22 years, for the other fields
(see Fig. 3). Research articles made up 85% of the sources cited by the
biologists, but not more than 24% of those in the other fields (see
Fig.4).determined actually to have been used.  As Fig.3 shows, when the
sources actually used are considered, the picture changes somewhat.  The
proportion of RAs among the scientists' sources is slightly lower - 80%.
The sources used are also somewhat younger for all groups since, clearly,
secondary sources have later publication dates than the primary sources
they report.  In (8a), for example, Ingrid cites a 1994 study by Kennard et
al., but the similarity with Ferreira et al.'s slightly later paper (8b)
suggests that Ingrid based her account on the latter.


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