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Review
Academic Discourse: English in a Global Context, Ken Hyland. Continuum, London and New York (2009). 215 pp., $39.95, ISBN: 978-0826498045 Ken Hylands Academic Discourse is another book-length contribution to the study of the written and spoken genres which orchestrate academic and university life. In this book, Ken Hyland, who has extensively published in this area, has convincingly demonstrated that the applied linguistic sub-eld of EAP-related linguistic research (Swales, 2001a, p. 42) has come of age and should therefore occupy its rightful position in our educational and curricular structures. This can be evidenced by the well considered theoretical approaches and concepts underlying the eld as well as by the methodological apparatus and terminological machinery it employs. Moreover, if textbooks, as Hyland himself maintains, are the concrete embodiment of the knowledge of the eld and the repositories of its codied knowledge and disciplinary base (p. 112), Academic Discourse can be considered as a good exemplar of this genre. The book is a carefully crafted collection of eight chapters plus an introduction. The introduction announces the value of disciplinary and corpus-based studies to the development of students academic communicative competence. The corpus on which the book is based comes from Hylands well-known collection of 240 research articles from eight academic disciplines, 56 textbooks, 240 dissertation and master theses, 240 acknowledgment sections, 64 nal-year library research papers plus insider interviews with disciplinary experts and novice research writers. The spoken data are extracted from the MICASE project (2003 release). Chapter 1 through chapter 3 discuss the conceptual and epistemological foundations of EAP. Chapter 1 denes academic discourse and demonstrates its importance for the education/socialization of neophytes, and the construction of knowledge, power and reputation. Drawing on James Paul Gees (1999) rich conception of discourse as involving more than language in use, Hyland denes academic discourse as the way that individuals collaborate and compete with others to create knowledge, to educate neophytes, to reveal learning and dene academic allegiances (p. 2). Underlying this conception is a broadly social constructionist view of discourse and a perspective on literacy as a form of social practice. Chapter 2 reviews and discusses the theoretical approaches which can be applied to the analysis of academic discourse. Hyland denes approach as the adoption of one or more ways of conducting analysis supported by an integrative theory or conception (p. 20). These approaches extend over a continuum spanning the textual, the contextual, and the critical. Textual approaches include genre analysis, corpus analysis, and multimodal analysis. Contextual approaches encompass the sociology of science/knowledge, sociohistorical, and ethnographic approaches. CDA and academic literacies occupy the second end of the continuum. Underlying this review is the conviction that no approach will oer a best method (p. 44) for analyzing academic discourse. How much context to include in our analyses will mostly depend on our research questions, goals, choices and our assumptions about language and how it is used in academic and public settings. Chapter 3 presents a critical review of the often contested and unsettled concept of discourse community. What I found particularly interesting in this chapter is Hylands heightened consciousness to strike a balance between the utility of this concept for academic discourse studies and the need to sharpen its analytical edges by facing the critiques which have been leveled against it. These critiques include such issues as power relationships, identity construction, discursive change and the tension exercised by global homogenizing forces and local hybrid academic practices. As Hyland states, the emphasis that is often given to the consensual, static aspects of discourse communities is perhaps a consequence of taking an exclusively discoursal perspective at the expense of the wider interactions, activities and practices which sustain them (p. 57). The author
doi:10.1016/j.esp.2009.08.003

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concludes, therefore, that the discourse forms of academic discourse communities should be viewed from the perspective of enduring stability and incremental change. The rest of the chapter nely illustrates the viability of this concept by considering the academic disciplines, specialisms and disciplinary domains as candidates of discourse communities. The next four chapters oer a ne application of the analytical and descriptive approaches and concepts adumbrated in the previous chapters. The analysis is based on Hylands well-established model of writerreader interaction in academic discourse, particularly that of stance and engagement (Hyland, 2005). Because it is based on a corpus from various sources, these chapters will be of interest both for EAP researchers and practitioners. Chapter 4 deals with what Hyland calls research discourses: the research article, the conference presentation, and other genres such scientic letters and book reviews. It focuses on disciplinary and even gender variations in the realization of such features as hedges, boosters, self-mention, references, rhetorical questions and appeals to shared knowledge. These features are often employed by writers to create a credible representation of themselves and their work by claiming solidarity with readers, evaluating their material and acknowledging alternative views in appropriate ways (p. 74). However, as John Swales (2001b, p. 495) remarks in relation to a similar review of Hylands work, the extent to which the acquisition and use of such features would contribute to the establishment of a successful research career or in improving the writing/speaking quality of novice students both in native and non-native English speaking academic contexts is an issue which requires investigation and validation from researchers in the two contexts. Chapter 5 focuses on instructional discourses such as university lectures, seminars and textbooks. These genres are concerned mostly with disseminating knowledge rather than constructing it (p. 96). Although these genres share certain features associated with research genres, they dier in the use of some rhetorical features and interactivity patterns; being more prone to use direct appeals and explicit connections as involvement strategies, less references to prior work, and more exemplications and denitions. These dierences can be attributed to the dierent communicative purposes (Swales, 1990) performed by these genres and the mode of interaction employed. Although Hyland oers an in-depth analysis of the linguistic qualities of these instructional discourses, the tone of this chapter remains descriptive rather than critical and evaluative. For example, there is little, if no, engagement with the question as to which structural or interactional patterns might be more conducive or eective in imparting learning and should therefore be employed by university lecturers and textbook writers. Chapter 6 examines undergraduate and postgraduate students discourses such as library research papers, theses, dissertation and dissertation defenses and acknowledgements. Drawing on interviews with students representing dierent levels, the writer vividly describes the tension, resistance and diculty experienced by students when they are engaged in writing these genres. Disciplinary writing is a new and dominant literacy, which often diers considerably from their previous experience (p. 151). The diculty becomes even more salient for L2 writers who bring with them dierent habits/styles of learning and literacy traditions. Although we still know a little about the kind of feedback and supervision patterns which are more likely to be facilitative of this socialization process, the author maintains a condent note about the ability of social constructionist and social literacy approaches to help novice students overcome the epistemological, ontological, social and discoursal (p. 151) challenges imposed by disciplinary discourses. Chapter 7 shifts the attention from the discourse genres produced by the scientic lab and the university to popularized accounts of science. Drawing on the well-known work of Myers (1990) and others, the author oers an updated review of the organizational, rhetorical and interactive changes undergone by professional scientic genres to accommodate interested audiences and the general public. The genres that make the subject of this chapter are TV documentaries, popular science books and scientic journalism. Particularly relevant is the distinction the author draws between celebrated science and mass science (p. 154, original emphasis). Celebrated science is often written in an essayist style by scientists themselves and oers a professional narrative of the events, models and theories which lead to scientic discoveries. Mass science (journalistic science,) on the other hand, is often written by journalists and oers a sensational and glorifying account of scientic developments. While popularized science is, perhaps, regarded as the only means of informing the public about scientic developments, the author maintains a critical outlook throughout the chapter by reminding us that these popular accounts are a key element of academic discourse (p. 173) and one of the essential means by which the cultural and ideological authority of scientic/academic discourse is maintained and preserved.

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The nal chapter entitled Wider Worlds relocates academic discourse into the wider ecosystem in which it participates and discusses the ethical issues raised by the globalization of English in the academic sphere and its impact on access to scientic knowledge by o-networked scholars. It shows that academic discourse is neither a disinterested nor a value-free enterprise. Because academics, particularly scientists, are increasingly relying on industry and commerce to garner funding for their research, academic discourse becomes entangled with the economic, political, ideological, and the lucrative orientations of todays hypercompetitive capitalist societies and industries. The case of the invasion of academic discourse, in English, by economic and political values remains to be shown, however, for other disciplines and scientic domains (cf. Swales, 1998) as well as for other national cultures both from the perspective of dominant and periphery/marginalized communities. Nevertheless, this chapter should be acclaimed for situating the discussion of academic discourse in the emerging, and quite inuential, critical theories in Applied Linguistics and EAP (e.g. Canagarajah, 2002). All in all, this volume should be a valuable resource for researchers and teachers of academic discourse in English for a number of reasons. The rst three chapters cover a variety of important and very well-considered topics central to the understanding of academic discourse and academic discourse analysis. The next ve chapters, which trace academic discourse from the prestigious peer-reviewed RA to the cable network TV, are very insightful in terms of their analysis and research conclusions. Moreover, the large corpora size and the insider interviews both from disciplinary experts and novices may allow generalizations across a number of disciplines and research settings. I have found the volume to very well written and organized. The chapters are balanced with helpful argument-capturing subheadings in each chapter. The only minor weaknesses were the copyediting errors found throughout the book. Despite these very minor drawbacks, this book is, perhaps, unique in its breadth of theoretical and analytical coverage and an indispensable read both for initiated and uninitiated readers to the eld of academic discourse analysis.

References
Canagarajah, A. (2002). Multilingual writers and the academic community: Towards a critical relationship. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 1, 2944. Gee, J. P. (1999). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. London and New York: Routledge. Hyland, K. (2005). Stance and engagement: A model of interaction in academic discourse. Discourse Studies, 7, 173191. Myers, G. (1990). Writing biology: Texts in the social construction of scientic knowledge. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. UK: Oxford University Press. Swales, J. M. (1998). Other oors. Other voices: A textography of a small university building. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Swales, J. M. (2001a). EAP-related linguistic research: An intellectual history. In J. Flowerdew & M. Peacock (Eds.), Research perspectives on English for academic purposes (pp. 4254). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Swales, J. M. (2001b). Book review of disciplinary discourses: Social interactions in academic writing. English for Specic Purposes, 20, 495498.

Fethi Helal Department of English University of Jendouba, Tunisia Tel.: +216 99239507; fax: +216 78 620200. E-mail address: fethi_helal@yahoo.fr