Why Do I Write This Way? Tracking the Stylistic Leap from Professional to Academic Writing

Abstract

Studies suggest that doctoral writing is often experienced by students as an alien culture with tacit values and expectations (Leitch, Qualitative Inquiry 12:1–12, 2006; French, Studies in Higher Education 45:1605–1617, 2020). Discourse analysis offers the opportunity to make these expectations transparent by unravelling the structures of disciplinary texts, such as moves in academic genres (Bazerman. Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1988) or the visibility of the author (Hyland, Journal of Pragmatics 34:1091–1112, 2002). Whilst discourse awareness provides rich opportunities for appreciating the mechanisms of doctoral text types, the impact of this new writing culture is less understood. This chapter asks how and with what benefits a discourse approach may enhance a student’s sense of self as a doctoral writer. It tracks an approach to writing development for nine cohorts of doctoral students at a post-1992 UK university between 2011 and 2019. Examples of learning activities are shared as well as student response to these from first entry to doctoral completion and publication. The chapter suggests that a scaffolded approach to discourse combined with reflection into personal writing voice can enable writers to acquire ownership of their target writing community.