Genre and Disciplinarity: The Challenge of Grant Writing for New Non-Anglophone Scientists

Chapter
First Online:

Abstract

This chapter examines the challenges of grant writing faced by new non-Anglophone academics who have taken positions in English North American universities. Drawing on a case study, which includes a discourse analysis of proposal drafts and interviews with a new non-Anglophone scientist, the chapter illustrates how the academic practice of grant writing in the “fiercely competitive” Anglophone academia (Hyland 2007) may be challenging for non-Anglophone scholars to master. The chapter explains how discursive practices of different national academic systems shape and require different scholarly identities. The chapter concludes by providing possible ways in which new non-Anglophone academics can be assisted in understanding the genre system of the grant proposal.

Keywords

Funding Agency Disciplinary Knowledge Grant Proposal Personal Correspondence Tenure Track Faculty 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

References

  1. Bazerman, C., & Prior, P. (2005). Participating in emergent socio-literate worlds: Genre, disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity. [Electronic Version]. http://www.education.ucsb.edu/bazerman/chapters/chapters1.html#2005. Accessed March 2007.
  2. Becher, T., & Trowler, P. (2001). Academic tribes and territories: Intellectual enquiry and the culture of disciplines. Milton Keyes: The Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press.Google Scholar
  3. Belcher, D. (2007). Seeking acceptance in an English-only research world. Journal of Second Language Writing, 16(1), 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  4. Blakeslee, A. (2001). Interacting with audiences: Social influences on the production of scientific writing. Mahwah: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
  5. Canagarajah, S. (2002). A geopolitics of academic writing. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
  6. Chapin, P. G. (2004). Research projects and research proposals: A guide for scientists seeking funding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  7. Čmejrková, S., & Daneš, F. (1997). Academic writing and cultural identity: The case of Czech academic writing. In A. Duszak (Ed.), Culture and styles of academic discourse (pp. 1–28). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
  8. Connor, U. (2000). Variation in rhetorical moves in grant proposals of U.S. humanists and scientists. Text, 20, 1–28.Google Scholar
  9. Connor, U., & Mauranen, A. (1999). Linguistic analysis of grant proposals: European Union research grants. English for Specific Purposes, 18, 47–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  10. Dezhina, I., & Graham, L. R. (2005). Science foundations: A novelty in Russian science. Science Magazine, 310(5755), 1772–1773.Google Scholar
  11. Ding, H. (2008). The use of cognitive and social apprenticeship to teach a disciplinary genre: Initiation of graduate students into NIH grant writing. Written Communication, 25, 3–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  12. Fallows, J. (2010, January–February). How America can rise again. The Atlantic, 2010(January–February), 38–55.Google Scholar
  13. Fedotov, G. P. (1991). The destiny and sins of Russia: Selected articles on the philosophy of Russian history and culture [Sud’ba i griekhi Rossii: izbrannye stat’i po filosofii russkoĭ istorii i kul’tury]. Sankt-Petersburg: Izdatelstvo Sofia.Google Scholar
  14. Feng, H. (2008). A genre-based study of research grant proposals in China. In U. Connor, E. Nagelhout, & W. Rozycki, (Eds.), Contrastive rhetoric: Reaching to intercultural rhetoric (pp. 63–86). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
  15. Flowerdew, J. (2001). Attitudes of journal editors to non-native contributions. TESOL Quarterly, 35, 121–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  16. Flowerdew, J. (2007). The non-Anglophone scholar at the periphery of scientific communication. AILA Review, 20, 14–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  17. Freedman, A., & Medway, P. (Eds.). (1994a). Genre and the new rhetoric. London: Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
  18. Freedman, A., & Medway, P. (1994b). Introduction: New views of genre and their implications for education. In A. Freedman & P. Medway (Eds.), Learning and teaching genre (pp. 1–24). Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook.Google Scholar
  19. Gerber, T. P., & Yarsike Ball, D. (2009). Scientists in a changed institutional environment: Subjective adaptation and social responsibility norms in Russia. Social Studies of Science, 39, 529–567.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  20. Gould, E. (2003). The university in a corporate culture. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
  21. Heppner, F. (2009). On the bottom line, good teaching tops good research. The Chronicle of Higher Education [Electronic version]. http://www.physics.emory.edu/~weeks/journal/chron-aug09.pdf. Accessed January 2010.
  22. Hyland, K. (2004). Disciplinary discourses: Social interactions in academic writing. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
  23. Hyland, K. (2005). Metadiscourse. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
  24. Hyland, K. (2007). Writing in the academy—reputation, education and knowledge. Institute of Education, University of London. http://www.ioe.ac.uk/publications. [Electronic version]. http://ctl.stanford.edu/Tomprof/postings.html. Accessed February 2008.
  25. Hyland, K., & Tse, P. (2005). Hooking the reader: A corpus study of evaluative that in abstracts. English for Specific Purposes, 24, 123–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  26. Irvine, J., Martin, B. R., & Isard, P. (1990). Investing in the future: An international comparison of government funding of academic and related research. Hants: Edward Elgar.Google Scholar
  27. Kourilova, M. (1998). Communicative characteristics of reviews of scientific papers written by non-native speakers of English. Endocrine Regulations, 37, 107–114.Google Scholar
  28. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  29. Marvasti, A. (2005). U.S. academic institutions and perceived effectiveness of foreign-born faculty. Journal of Economic Issues, 39(1), 151–176.Google Scholar
  30. Mauranen, A. (1993). Cultural differences in academic rhetoric: A text-linguistic study. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
  31. McDaniel, T. (1998). The agony of the Russian idea. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
  32. Mehlenbacher, B. (1992). Rhetorical moves in scientific proposal writing: A case study from biochemical engineering. Unpublished Dissertation, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.Google Scholar
  33. Mehlenbacher, B. (1994). The Rhetorical nature of academic research funding. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 37(3), 157–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  34. Mikelonis, V., Betsinger, S., & Kampf, C. (2004). Grant seeking in an electronic age. New York: Pearson Longman.Google Scholar
  35. Mukerji, C. (1989). A fragile power: Scientists and the state. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
  36. Myers, G. (1990). Writing biology. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
  37. Nicholson, P., Davies, G., & Kaspi, V. (2008). Report of the International Review Committee on the Discovery Grants Program. Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.Google Scholar
  38. Olsen, K. L., & Tornow, J. (2007). Impact of proposal and award management mechanisms: Final report to the National Science Board. http://www.nsf.gov/od/ipamm/ipamm.jsp. Accessed November 2009.
  39. Petrić, B. (2005). Contrastive rhetoric in the writing classroom: A case study. English for Specific Purposes, 24(2), 213–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  40. Pisanski-Peterlin, A. (2005). Text-organising metatext in research articles: An English–Slovene contrastive analysis. English for Specific Purposes, 24(3), 307–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  41. Russia: The National Research Funding System. (2004). Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG—German Research Foundation).Google Scholar
  42. Salager-Meyer, F. (2008). Scientific publishing in developing countries: Challenges for the future. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 121–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  43. Schryer, C., Chen, J., DeHaan, C., Devitt, R., Fuchs, J., Rogers, E., et al. (2004). Strategies in use in successful SSHRC applications (http://www.research.uwaterloo.ca/grants/grantsmanship.html). University of Waterloo: Office of Research.
  44. Skachkova, P. (2007). Academic careers of immigrant women professors in the U.S. Higher Education, 53, 697–738.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  45. Statistics Canada. (2006). Census: Canada, Provinces, Territories, Census Metropolitan Areas and Census Agglomerations. University professors (E111).Google Scholar
  46. Sullivan, D. L. (1996). Displaying disciplinarity. Written Communication, 13(2), 221–250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  47. Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  48. Tardy, C. (2003). A genre system view of the funding of academic research. Written Communication, 20(1), 7–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  49. The Economist. (2010, January 23). Spending on education: Investing in brains. Print edition, 394(8666), 57–58.Google Scholar
  50. U.S. General Accounting Office (2003). University research: Most federal agencies need to better protect against financial conflicts of interest. Report to the Honorable Richard C. Shelby, U.S. Senate. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0431.pdf. Accessed January 2010.
  51. Writing in the Disciplines (2010). The postdoctoral fellowships in scientific writing. Call for applications. Princeton University. http://web.princeton.edu/sites/writing/wse/postdoc/WDWSEPostdocContent.htm. Accessed February 2010.
  52. Yakhontova, T. (2002). ‘Selling’ or ‘telling’? The issue of intercultural variation in research genres. In J. Flowerdew (Ed.), Academic discourse (pp. 216–232). Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar

Further Reading

  1. Bhatia, V. K. (1993). Analysing genre: Language use in professional settings. London: Longman.Google Scholar
  2. Bizzell, P. (1982). Cognition, convention, certainty: What we need to know about writing. Reprinted in V. Villanueva (Ed.) (2003), Cross-talk in comp theory: A reader. Urbana: NCTE.Google Scholar
  3. Canagarajah, S. (2003). Somewhat legitimate and very peripheral participation. In C. Casanave & S. Vandrick (Eds.), Writing for scholarly publication: Behind the scenes in language education (pp. 197–210). Mahwah: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
  4. Clyne, M. (1987). Cultural differences in the organization of academic texts: English and German. Journal of Pragmatics, 11, 211–247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  5. Fedotov, G. P. (1946). The Russian religious mind. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
  6. Flowerdew, J. (2008). What can Goffman’s Stigma tell us about scholarly writers who use English as an additional language? Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7(2), 77–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  7. Huckin, T. (1987, March). Surprise value in scientific discourse. Paper presented at the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), Atlanta, USA.Google Scholar
  8. Ivanic, R. (1998). Writing and identity: The discoursal construction of identity in academic writing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
  9. Neuilep, J. (2003). Intercultural communication: A contextual approach. Thousand Oaks: Sage.Google Scholar
  10. Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. (2001). Intercultural communication: A discourse approach. Malden: Blackwell.Google Scholar
  11. Swales, J. M. (2004). Research genres: Exploration and applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  12. Uzuner, S. (2008). Multilingual scholars’ participation in core/global academic communities: A literature review. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7(4), 250–263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Netherlands 2011

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.McGill UniversityMontrealCanada

Personalised recommendations