Evaluation in Academic English

Abstract

The level of technicality and abstraction associated with representations of academic knowledge can often present challenges for those who are novices in the register. While this is to some extent at least acknowledged and accounted for in the pedagogic design of learning of the content in a field, there is another area of challenge that is typically less overtly addressed, that of managing what we can refer to as the ‘subjective’ or interpersonal meanings of academic discourse, that is, how we position ourselves in interaction with knowledge. Where explicit guidance is given in the management of interpersonal meaning in academic writing, it is often to discourage overtly subjective positioning. A writer may be advised, for example, to avoid explicit subjective projection of ideas as in ‘I think/in my opinion the causes lie elsewhere’, perhaps to be replaced with more objective expressions of modality as in “it is likely that the causes lie elsewhere”, or with bald factual claims. Writers may also be encouraged to depersonalise by avoiding the use of first person pronouns in self-reference, or to edit out lexical intrusions from more informal spoken registers, as in ‘they did the research in Hong Kong’ or “Actually there appears to be a discrepancy”. The control of objectivity by such means is frequently taken as an indication of competence in the register.