So what is the problem this book addresses? : Interactions in academic book reviews*

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1 0 Abstract So what is the problem this book addresses? : Interactions in academic book reviews* POLLY TSE and KEN HYLAND Metadiscourse is the term used for self-reflective linguistic expressions that refer to the evolving text, to the writer, and to the imagined readers of that text. It is based on a view of writing as social engagement and in academic contexts reveals the ways writers project themselves into their discourse to signal their attitudes and commitments to matters in the text and to their disciplinary communities. This paper examines the frequencies and pragmatic purposes of metadiscourse in the relatively neglected academic genre of the book review. On the basis of a corpus of reviews from three contrasting disciplines and interviews with journal editors and reviewers, we describe the ways these writers use metadiscourse to o er a credible representation of themselves and their work in di erent fields. The analysis shows how metadiscourse use can be seen as pragmatic strategies through which writers shape their social purposes to the formal constraints of the genre and the preferred practices of their disciplines. It therefore suggests how this genre not only draws on readers familiarity with disciplinary knowledge of the field, but also an interpretive framework that includes appropriate social interactions. Keywords:. Introduction metadiscourse; academic texts; book reviews; text interactions. Interest in the interactive and rhetorical character of academic writing has been one of the most significant and productive developments in applied linguistics in the last decade. By looking beyond the ideational dimension of texts to the ways they function interpersonally, we have come to see that academic writers do not simply discuss social or natural realities, but use language to acknowledge, construct, and negotiate social relations. In 0 /0/00 0 Text & Talk (00), pp. 0 Online 0 DOI./TEXT.00.0 Walter de Gruyter (AutoPDF V //0 :) WDG (mm) TimesM J- TEXT, : PMU: H(R) /0/00 pp. 0 _-_0 (p. )

2 Polly Tse and Ken Hyland 0 discussing ideas, writers simultaneously seek to claim solidarity with readers, evaluate material, and acknowledge alternative views, so that controlling the level of personality in a text becomes central to maintaining interaction with readers and building a convincing argument. This is perhaps most apparent in what is one of the most interpersonally loaded genres of the academy: the academic book review. In this paper, we intend to shed some light on both this neglected genre and the ways writers negotiate its interpersonal demands using a new model of metadiscourse (Hyland 00; Hyland and Tse 00). This analysis, together with interviews with journal editors, review writers, and readers, helps to reveal the ways writers project themselves into their writing to signal their attitudes toward both their content and their readers. We will first briefly discuss the concept of metadiscourse before exploring its role in book reviews in three contrasting disciplines.. The concept of metadiscourse Metadiscourse refers to the interpersonal resources used to organize a discourse or the writer s stance toward either its content or the reader (Hyland 000: ). It includes an heterogeneous array of linguistic features that writers use to shape their arguments to the needs and expectations of their target readers, relating a text to its context by assisting readers to connect, organize, and interpret material in a way preferred by the writer and with regard to the understandings and values of a particular discourse community (Hyland a). Metadiscourse has made a significant contribution to recent work in text analysis and appears to be a characteristic of a range of languages and genres. It has informed studies investigating rhetorical di erences in the texts written by di erent first language groups (Mauranen ; Crismore et al. ), by good ESL and native speaker students (Intraprawat and Ste ensen ; Cheng and Ste ensen ), and of various persuasive and argumentative discourses (Bunton ; Crismore and Farnsworth ; Hyland b, 000). Several classification schemes of metadiscourse have been proposed (e.g., Crismore et al. ; Nash ; Vande Kopple ), but in this study we adopt Hyland and Tse s (00) approach. This model builds on previous frameworks to o er a more theoretically robust and empirically grounded classification, representing a major reconceptualization of metadiscourse theory. Essentially, Hyland and Tse s (00) notion of metadiscourse is based on the idea that while the total meaning of a text is a result of the interplay of its component parts, it is helpful to distinguish its ideational (AutoPDF V //0 :) WDG (mm) TimesM J- TEXT, : PMU: H(R) /0/00 pp. 0 _-_0 (p. )

3 Interactions in book reviews 0 content from material that organizes this content and conveys the writer s beliefs and attitudes toward it. Although it might be unwise to push this distinction too far in terms of textual instantiations, separating out what writers have to say from the ways they choose to say it can reveal something of how they expect their message will be received by a particular audience. This is because the explicit signaling of both text organization and writer attitude is motivated by the writer s awareness of self and of the reader when writing. Through this signaling, the writer indicates his or her sensitivity to the context of discourse and makes predictions about the audience s knowledge and potential responses ( Hyland 00; Hyland and Tse 00). Metadiscourse is therefore concerned with embodying interpersonal relations in a text, expressing the ways that writers convey their attitudes to the ideas in a text and to others who hold views on those ideas. On the basis of this understanding of metadiscourse as an interpersonal phenomenon, we include only those features that express relations that are internal to the text, concerned with (i) making connections between propositions in the text and the organization of discourse as an argument and (ii) the roles and perspectives of text participants (e.g., Martin ). In other words, individual features function as metadiscourse if they relate statements to each other and to the writer or reader, as the item thus is doing in Example () below, rather than if they connect activities and situations outside the text in the real world, as the same word is doing in Example (): () (Philosophy) There may well be a right thing to do under those circumstances, though we wouldn t say that this sort of action is characteristic of a perfectly virtuous person at all. Thus, it doesn t warrant a lack of approval, or positive assessment. () (Philosophy) This time, however, Vinci realizes that it would be anachronistic to apply the account of the Principles to the Meditations, and thus applies it only to the proof of the external world in Principles :. These metadiscoursal functions can be expressed in a variety of di erent ways, ranging from punctuation such as scare quotes ( Example []), to phrases (Example []), and even sequences of several sentences ( Example []): () (Sociology) Hence there is a kind of naturalization, but it is naturalization at the level of material practices... (AutoPDF V //0 :) WDG (mm) TimesM J- TEXT, : PMU: H(R) /0/00 pp. 0 _-_0 (p. )

4 0 Polly Tse and Ken Hyland 0 () (Philosophy) In other words, for a given IA type, a di erent analysis is needed for each sentence type that can be used to perform it. () (Philosophy) In this short review I can consider only two questions. First, does Aristotle introduce a new kind of priority, explanatory priority, in Metaphysics Book Z, chapter? Second, does form explain the central features of c- substances, a claim of strong compatibilism? These varied types of realization and the fact that the same items can function as metadiscourse in some parts of the text and not in others mean that there are no simple linguistic criteria for identifying metadiscourse. Consequently a focus on form is a fruitless starting point and metadiscourse studies begin with functional analyses of texts. These functions draw on both organizational and evaluative resources. On the one hand, they refer to the writer s management of the information flow to guide readers through the argument so they can recover an interpretation consistent with their disciplinary knowledge and community-specific expectations. On the other hand, they are concerned with the participants of the interaction, focusing on the writer s explicit interventions to assign speech roles to themselves and readers, and to comment on material. Here the writer makes choices to express a voice consistent with disciplinary norms by negotiating a suitable relationship to his or her data, arguments, and audience (Hyland a, 000). Together, these functions relate to writers attempts to present and negotiate propositional information in ways that are meaningful and appropriate to a particular disciplinary community. These broad interpersonal purposes are realized by a number of key linguistic and rhetorical features, or by what Thompson (00) refers to as interactive and interactional resources. Borrowing these terms, Hyland and Tse (00) provided a revised categorization of metadiscourse based on a detailed analysis of a corpus of postgraduate dissertations, which we describe below and which we employ in this paper: Interactive resources allow the writer to manage the information flow to explicitly establish his or her preferred interpretations. They are concerned with ways of organizing discourse to anticipate readers knowledge and reflect the writer s assessment of the reader s processing abilities, background resources, and intertextual experiences in order to decide what needs to be made explicit to constrain and guide what can be recovered from the text. There are five main categories of such resources, which we list here with a brief example from the corpus: (AutoPDF V //0 :) WDG (mm) TimesM J- TEXT, : PMU: H(R) /0/00 pp. 0 _-_0 (p. 0)

5 Interactions in book reviews 0 Transitions, mainly conjunctions, which are used to mark additive, contrastive, and consequential steps in the discourse, as opposed to events in the external world: () (Sociology) And while useful at the time of their dissemination, approaches which continue to assess tourism... In addition, the ethnocentric focus on particular kinds of tourist has further led to reified categorizations. Frame markers are references to text boundaries or elements of text structure, including items used to sequence, to label text stages, to announce discourse goals, and to indicate topic shifts. () (Biology) It advances two main themes. First, that human understanding of animal behaviour can be distorted.... Second, that the behavioural diversity of animals should be appreciated... Endophoric markers refer to other parts of the text to make additional material salient and available to the reader in recovering the writer s intentions. () (Sociology) As has been noted above, Fraser does acknowledge that identity remains important... Evidentials indicate the source of textual information that originates outside the current text. () (Sociology)... there are few suggestions about forms of consumption and commodification. For instance, Gabriel and Lang () have identified a range of forms of consumption... Code glosses signal the reformulation or exemplification of ideational information. () (Biology) We can believe that individual behaviour, such as picking up litter, rather than legislating regulations on corporate... Interactional resources focus on the participants of the interaction and seek to display a tenor consistent with the norms of the disciplinary community. Metadiscourse here concerns the writer s e orts to control the level of personality in a text and establish a suitable relationship to his or her data, arguments and audience, marking the degree of intimacy, (AutoPDF V //0 :) WDG (mm) TimesM J- TEXT, : PMU: H(R) /0/00 pp. 0 _-_0 (p. )

6 Polly Tse and Ken Hyland 0 the expression of attitude, the communication of commitments, and the extent of reader involvement. They include: Hedges, which signal the writer s reluctance to present propositional information categorically () (Biology) Perhaps the most provocative chapter discusses... Boosters, which express certainty and emphasize the force of propositions. () (Biology) It is certainly a thorough treatment of the evolutionary history, anthropology, and biology of motherhood and mothering behavior... Attitude markers, which express the writer s appraisal of propositional information, conveying surprise, obligation, agreement, importance, and so on. () (Biology) This criticism is certainly shared by many ecologists in the field and is a welcomed acknowledgment. Engagement markers, which explicitly address readers, either by selectively focusing their attention or by including them as participants in the text through second-person pronouns, imperatives, question forms, and asides ( Hyland 00). () (Philosophy) The answers are for the most part as you might expect in a liberal feminist view generally... Self-mentions, which suggest the extent of author presence through first-person pronouns and possessives. () (Sociology) The analysis of subtle aspects of team relations is the best I have read to date. In sum, metadiscourse is an important means of facilitating communication, supporting a writer s position, and building a relationship with an audience. Its significance lies in the role it plays in explicating a context for interpretation, and suggesting one way in which acts of communication define and maintain social groups. In the next sections, we outline our corpus and procedures, then go on to present and analyze our findings. (AutoPDF V //0 :) WDG (mm) TimesM J- TEXT, : PMU: H(R) /0/00 pp. 0 _-_0 (p. )

7 Interactions in book reviews 0. Corpus and methods The use of metadiscourse in academic book reviews was investigated through the textual analysis of authentic examples of the genre, as well as semistructured interviews with subject specialists. Our choice of book reviews for this study was partly influenced by their relative neglect by discourse analysts, but mainly because of their highly interactive and evaluative nature. Unlike research articles, book reviews do not simply respond to a general body of impersonal literature but o er a direct, public, and often critical encounter with a particular text and its author. Interactions here are a key element of the discourse, involving a careful balancing act that reflects both ideational and interpersonal orientations and that demonstrate the writer s relationship to his or her readers and their participation in the same disciplinary community. Negotiating social interactions therefore involves charting a perilous course between critique and collegiality, minimizing personal threat while simultaneously demonstrating an expert understanding of the issues. The academic book review is the public evaluations of research (Lindholm-Romantschuk ) and plays a significant role in scholarship, supporting both the manufacture of knowledge and the social cohesiveness of disciplinary communities ( Hyland 000). Reviews are highly visible and often carefully thought about. They contribute to the dissemination and evaluation of research while providing both junior and established academics a rhetorical platform where they can signal their allegiance to a particular orientation and proclaim a position without detailed argument or a protracted review process. Two of our informants stressed this importance: It is a bit of an honor to be asked by the editor of the journal to write a book review. You also feel you re helping your colleagues, because they don t want to buy a book and find it terrible. (Biologist interview) In philosophy a book review can go down as a serious contribution to research in the field and it will be cited because in that review it may be the first time a person has articulated an argument which other people have found persuasive. Philosophers really take book reviews seriously. They try very hard to say sometimes very smart. It s also like contributing to the knowledge in the field, both directly and indirectly. (Philosophy interview) Despite their relatively short length, reviews are interpersonally complex and represent a carefully crafted social accomplishment ( Hyland 000; Motta-Roth ). In most fields, a good review needs to not only o er a critical and insightful perspective, drawing on considerable knowledge of the field, but at the same time respond to the complex demands of a (AutoPDF V //0 :) WDG (mm) TimesM J- TEXT, : PMU: H(R) /0/00 pp. 0 _-_0 (p. )

8 Polly Tse and Ken Hyland 0 delicate interactional situation. Here we see the workings of the peer group in perhaps its most nakedly normative role, where it publicly sets out to establish standards, assess merit and, indirectly, to evaluate reputations. Our corpus consists of reviews of single-authored books from three disciplines, philosophy, sociology, and biology, roughly corresponding to the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, respectively, to capture a broad spectrum of academic knowledge. The choice of three disciplines, rather than two, allows comparison of features across contrasting fields as a third discipline may help to clarify the role of the same features in the other two fields (Motta Roth ). The actual choice of disciplines was guided by the availability of textual data and informants, and reviews were collected from international journals representative of these disciplines. Together, these texts amounted to,00 words, which we then computer searched for potential metadiscourse items based on prior studies of metadiscourse (e.g., the list in Hyland 000) supplemented by items suggested by grammars and work on cohesion (e.g., Biber et al. ; Halliday and Hasan ; Martin ), as well as items found from a close reading of the texts themselves. This produced a list of potential items. Given the highly contextual nature of metadiscourse and the fact that a particular form can be either propositional or metadiscoursal, every instance of a potential metadiscourse item was examined in its sentential co-text, using concordance software, to determine its actual function. The textual analyses were supplemented with interview data. Three reviewers and one editor from each discipline were interviewed following an in-depth, semistructured format guided by a general checklist of points but allowing subjects interests and responses to shape the discussion. A series of open-ended questions focusing on the expression and reception of evaluation and interaction in this genre were used as general guidelines. Taken together, the opinions of individual informants provided valuable insights into the negotiation of interactions in book reviews and helped to supplement the textual analyses.. Interactions in book reviews Analysis of the corpus indicates the importance of metadiscourse in academic book reviews with, cases, an average of per text or about one every words. It should be noted that because metadiscourse often has clausal or sentence-level expression, the representation in terms of a word count is to allow for the standardization of the raw figures to (AutoPDF V //0 :) WDG (mm) TimesM J- TEXT, : PMU: H(R) /0/00 pp. 0 _-_0 (p. )

9 Interactions in book reviews Table. Interactive metadiscourse in academic book reviews 0 Category Items per,000 words Percentage of total Transition markers.. Evidentials.. Code glosses.. Frame markers.. Endophorics Interactive 0.. Table. Interactional metadiscourse in academic book reviews Category Items per,000 words Percentage of total Engagement markers.. Hedges.. Attitude markers..0 Boosters.. Self-mentions.. Interactional.. compare the occurrence, rather than the length, of metadiscourse in disciplinary corpora of unequal sizes. Tables and show that reviewers used twice as many interactional as interactive features, with transition markers, engagement markers, and hedges representing the most frequent devices overall. This predominance of interactional features underlines the importance of explicit persuasion through the visible presence of the writer and the reader in this discourse. While research articles (Hyland a), textbooks (Hyland 000), and postgraduate dissertations (Hyland 00; Hyland and Tse 00) all tend to contain higher frequencies of interactive uses, the preference for interactional forms in reviews supports an interpretation that the genre is perhaps unique in its interpersonal negotiations with readers. While all academic writing is evaluative, book reviews are most explicitly so, which means that interpersonal considerations are crucial as appropriate control of rhetorical and evaluative resources carries significant implications for the writer. This is particularly evident, for example, in the prevalence of engagement markers and hedges. Engagement features work to express the reviewer s appeal to scholarly solidarity and to evoke communal understanding (Example []), while hedges may help to tone down intrusiveness as reviewers claim an expert status in o ering an evaluation of the book (Example []): (AutoPDF V //0 :) WDG (mm) TimesM J- TEXT, : PMU: H(R) /0/00 pp. 0 _-_0 (p. )

10 Polly Tse and Ken Hyland 0 () a. (Sociology) If the next round of studies highlights gains as well as costs and is as rigorous and insightful as Barker s, we will be well on our way to achieving continuous improvement in organizational studies with James Baker as our team facilitator. () b. (Biology) If you have been dousing your garden with insecticides, Eric Grissell, a gardener and wasp systematist, wants you to stop. He would prefer that you turn o your electric bug killers and get rid of your Japanese beetle traps, too. () a. ( Philosophy) I would, however, note that her approach is sometimes a little underpowered, one might even say lacking in thumos. Perhaps this is not necessarily a vice... () b. (Biology) In summary, I felt that the book attempted to cover too much ground. It may have worked better as two volumes. The use of interactive metadiscourse, on the other hand, was less frequent, probably because the review tends to be a short genre, thus reducing the need for writers to provide an overall structure of the text, preview their purposes, and aid the recovery of their meanings. This helps to explain the relatively low frequencies of frame markers and endophoric markers, for instance, as these features signal text boundaries or schematic structure and point readers to other parts of the text. These functions are far more useful in long texts, such as doctoral dissertations where frame markers are over twice as common and endophorics more than 0 times more common (Hyland and Tse 00). But while interactive forms tended to be less common overall, transition markers were actually the most frequent subcategory, representing a fifth of all metadiscourse in the corpus. This reflects the importance writers give to the ways they describe and evaluate the book. This not only allows a reader to recover the writer s reasoning unambiguously, but also means that any praise and criticism can be seen as the result of a logically presented argument rather than unsubstantiated opinion: () a. (Biology) Although the author introduces new terms and concepts without assuming that they are familiar to readers, the text requires a reasonable familiarity with ecology, geology, and their associated jargon. Consequently, the book will be useful for an upper-division undergraduate or graduate class in desert ecology... (AutoPDF V //0 :) WDG (mm) TimesM J- TEXT, : PMU: H(R) /0/00 pp. 0 _-_0 (p. )

11 Interactions in book reviews 0 () b. ( Philosophy) Hurley s is a di cult book to work through partly because of its length and the complexity of its arguments, but also because each of the ten essays of which it is composed has a rather di erent starting point and focus, and because few of her arguments achieve real closure. In the next section, we look at these features more closely by exploring the distributions across the three disciplines and by drawing on the interviews with informants.. The use of metadiscourse across disciplines The findings show far higher frequencies in the philosophy texts, which were generally longer than the others and so necessitated both more textual signals and more reader engagement. We can also see that there were broad similarities in metadiscourse subcategories within disciplines, although biology contained a higher proportion of interactional features than interactive ( Table ). Generally, interactive features are more common in science and engineering writing. In genres such as research articles ( Hyland a) and dissertations (Hyland and Tse 00), for instance, writers in the humanities and social sciences take far more explicitly involved and personal positions than those in the sciences, producing rhetorical patterns that coincide with our intuition that scientists tend to create more impersonal, or at least less reader inclusive, texts. Here, however, scientists are not arguing from the same assured evidence of empirical demonstration or trusted quantitative methods as they do in research articles. Their arguments are essentially more personal and involve direct evaluation of ideas and interpretation of texts, and these require building a more explicit relationship with readers, often arguing from a similar perspective to those in soft knowledge fields. We will take up these points further below... Interactive metadiscourse Table compares the use of interactive features across the three disciplines, with transition markers being the most common in each field, Table. Main metadiscourse categories across disciplines per,000 words Category Philosophy Sociology Biology Interactive. (.%). (.%). (.%) Interactional. (.%). (.%). (.%) Total. (0%) 0. (0%). (0%) (AutoPDF V //0 :) WDG (mm) TimesM J- TEXT, : PMU: H(R) /0/00 pp. 0 _-_0 (p. )

12 Polly Tse and Ken Hyland Table. Interactive metadiscourse across disciplines per,000 words 0 Category Philosophy Sociology Biology Transition markers... Evidentials... Code glosses... Frame markers Endophoric markers Interactive... although twice as frequent in philosophy as biology. Evidentials and code glosses comprised the majority of the remaining features, although, again, with considerable disciplinary variations. These features played a more prominent role in the philosophy texts, as their greater length required writers to take greater care in setting out arguments and clarifying discourse stages for readers. The shorter biology reviews, on the other hand, meant writers could create less structurally complex texts and use a smaller number of frame markers. The greater discursiveness of philosophy, and to a lesser extent sociology, also helps to explain the distributions in Table, reflecting the position of these fields along a continuum of interpersonality (Co n et al. 00; Hyland 000). The more linear development of scientific research tends to mean that readers are often familiar with prior texts and findings, so that writers are able to rely more on shared background and proven methods. A strong interpersonal element is not so necessary in their writing. This helps reinforce a view of science as an impersonal, inductive enterprise and makes it seem that scientific knowledge resides outside the text. The rhetorical work of a scientist then becomes one of merely reporting observations rather than, as in the humanities, arguing for the acceptance of an interpretive position. These distinctive processes of knowledge creation seem to impact on what book reviewers choose to evaluate in these di erent fields. Our impression is that reviewers in biology and sociology tend to evaluate the more readily observable aspects of reviewed texts, such as matters of style, clarity, diagrams, references, and publishing features, or the writer s experience and reputation. It is far less common for them to argue for or against a position, perhaps because this normally involves them in conducting experiments or engaging in fieldwork to provide empirical support for their views. They may list what is in it and they may give their opinions on whether it is nice or representative, but they won t really argue about the knowledge. They are (AutoPDF V //0 :) WDG (mm) TimesM J- TEXT, : PMU: H(R) /0/00 pp. 0 _-_0 (p. )

13 Interactions in book reviews 0 evaluating really the quality of the publishing, I think, the clarity of the photographs and diagrams. (Biology interview) We are like scientists. We rely on statistics, for example. Our interpretations need to be substantiated by evidence. Like to do interviews, questionnaires or whatever to support our claims. But in book reviews, I wouldn t send out questionnaires to ask people what they think about certain ideas to support my evaluations of the book, and I expect scientists wouldn t do an experiment to reject certain claims made in the book. We just express our opinions based on what we already known or what we can see. (Sociology interview) In contrast, the greater emphasis given to personal reflection, observation, and explicit argument in philosophy encourages reviewers to go beyond the obvious observable aspects of the book and to vigorously engage with the perspectives that are presented in it: Writing a book review in philosophy always involves talking about its author, its background, its relation to the field, your own observations. Writing a book review is very much like doing a meta-analysis of the field and involves bringing in di erent perspectives. (Philosophy interview) Writers spell out their arguments in more discursive detail, work harder to establish their credibility, and take greater care to create an understanding with readers. As a result, intertextuality plays a greater role in these philosophy book reviews and helps to explain why they contained the highest usage of evidentials in our corpus, bringing in other voices to support or critique a position in the review. One of our informants explained that book reviews in philosophy can actually function like research papers in this argumentative role: A book review can turn out to be like a discussion paper... when you discuss the issues represented in the book, you must relate it to other existing perspectives... such discussions are very similar to those in a research paper. (Philosophy interview) Elaborating an argument also entails a greater need to make the logical reasoning and discourse relations explicit. While this is again partly a consequence of the longer texts in philosophy compared with biology, interweaving di erent viewpoints and setting out arguments into a logical, coherent, and reader-friendly text contributes to the remarkably high use of transition markers in philosophy: () ( Philosophy) De Duve s philosophical claim is to have discovered in the archeological space of modernism a specifically Kantian antinomy. Yet consider what would be at stake in making good on this claim... Moreover, the very (AutoPDF V //0 :) WDG (mm) TimesM J- TEXT, : PMU: H(R) /0/00 pp. 0 _-_0 (p. )

14 0 Polly Tse and Ken Hyland 0 nature of an antinomy is that it admits of a Kantian solution... Indeed, the very role of antinomies of taste as they inform Kant s Critique of Judgment... Thus, for De Duve to argue his case for an antinomy of taste in the field of modernism is for him to show... In contrast, the brevity of this genre meant that endophoric markers, by which writers point to diagrams or other parts of the text, were significantly underused in the overall corpus and did not occur in biology at all. Interestingly, while philosophy contained the highest frequencies in all subcategories and biology the lowest, code glosses reversed this pattern. This initially surprised us, as code glosses often function to clarify interpretations or aid readers understandings of technical terms, but this is usually less necessary in the sciences, where readers tend to share a common knowledge base far more than in the soft fields (Hyland 000). The use of these features to gloss technical terms occurs in the corpus (Example [0]), presumably because reviews may be read by nonspecialists, but this use was rare. (0) a. (Biology) Perhaps the most provocative chapter discusses zoopharmacognosy medicinal uses of certain species by animals... (0) b. (Biology) The basic goal was to incorporate the functional outcome of lower-level processes (namely adaptive behavior) into higher-level population and community dynamics. Far more often, code glosses are used to reformulate and exemplify, providing support for the reviewer s interpretation (Example []) or to elaborate aspects of the book (Example []): () a. (Biology) I initially found this book rather repetitive, and Barlow s knowledge of evolutionary theory a little naive. For example, she thinks that the discipline of evolutionary ecology is akin to paleoecology. () b. (Biology) In this book, I found numerous fascinating facts regarding desert biology about which I was previously unaware. For example, Whitford describes quantitatively how the... () a. (Biology) Additional chapters include the history of medicinal botany; plant ecology and distribution; chemistry and taxonomy; and discoveries of specific species such as willow, curare, antibiotics, and psychotropics. (AutoPDF V //0 :) WDG (mm) TimesM J- TEXT, : PMU: H(R) /0/00 pp. 0 _-_0 (p. 0)

15 Interactions in book reviews 0 () b. (Biology) In her new book, Zuk addresses the relationship between feminism and behavioral ecology, particularly the study of sexual selection... Interactional metadiscourse Table shows that, as with interactive devices, most occurrences of interactional devices clustered in philosophy, with uses in sociology again falling between philosophy and biology. It is worth highlighting once more that biologists employed interactional features far more frequently in this book review sample than in other academic genres (e.g., Hyland 000, 00), underlining the greater interpersonal demands made on those biologists who engage in this type of writing. Engagement markers were the most commonly used features in both the philosophy and biology texts and represented a fifth of all interactional devices in these disciplines. The label refers to a diverse set of devices that function to discursively construct writer reader relations in a text and that, in academic writing, help to create a sense of disciplinary solidarity and shared endeavor. Given the constant tension between presenting an insightful critique, sponsoring personal views, and negotiating interpersonal relations, this is a key dimension of interactional metadiscourse in this genre. One example of the more frequent use of these features in book reviews is that of reader pronouns. You and your are the clearest way a writer can acknowledge the reader s presence in a text, but these tend to be seen as inappropriately personal in research articles and are rare in that genre (Crismore and Farnsworth ; Hyland 00). Writers, however, have fewer qualms about them in academic book reviews: I think you should be avoided in journal articles but it is ok to address the readers in book review because you re really doing the job for them or sharing your opinions with them. You need to see things from their perspectives. But more often I d prefer we instead because then we re more like equals and it Table. Interactional metadiscourse across disciplines per,000 words Category Philosophy Sociology Biology Engagement markers... Hedges... Attitude markers... Boosters... Self-mentions... Interactional... (AutoPDF V //0 :) WDG (mm) TimesM J- TEXT, : PMU: H(R) /0/00 pp. 0 _-_0 (p. )

16 Polly Tse and Ken Hyland 0 shows I m not forcing them into anything but suggesting this is what we as biologists may want. (Biology interview) The predominance of inclusive pronouns in the biology corpus, however, reflects a concern for the fine-tuning of nonreciprocal relations that is inherent in making judgments of others and their work. Reviewers therefore mainly use we and our in an attempt to address their readers as equals: informed scientists and colleagues who share similar understandings and concerns: () a. (Biology) Yet much of our understanding of the diversity of life, its ecology and the way organisms work (all central topics in modern biology) presupposes more than a little understanding of the invertebrates. () b. (Biology) As Low concludes: our work is set out for us yet we have only just begun. The strikingly high use of engagement markers in philosophy, however, represents more diversified realizations and motivations. Apart from a concern for establishing a shared interpretation or understanding of knowledge ( Example []), reviewers also seem to be attempting to form an alliance with their audience in evaluating the book and its author (Example []): () (Philosophy) We are so sure of how little we know about large scale reform; campaigns flatly seem to have the better claim. () a. ( Philosophy) This is disappointing since, of course, we would like to have an explanation of consciousness as such... () b. (Philosophy) The second half of the book is the more challenging, morally and practically, as Govier explores what we might call (but she does not) the limits of forgiveness. Writers attempts to construct both themselves and their readers as rational, critical, and inquisitive fellow professionals who share a similar curiosity about similar things is also achieved through the use of direct questions. These are, once more, particularly frequent in the philosophy corpus and accounted for % of all the engagement markers in that discipline. The use of questions corresponds to the tradition of skepticism in philosophy, as this informant reminded us: (AutoPDF V //0 :) WDG (mm) TimesM J- TEXT, : PMU: H(R) /0/00 pp. 0 _-_0 (p. )

17 Interactions in book reviews 0 I was taught every belief is in principle problematic, you can t question everything all at once, but everything is in principle questionable [... ] it is a kind of philosophical spirit in questioning in what you believe in and how you justify what you believe, and can you give good and su cient reasons, and if you can t, why do you believe it? (Philosophy interview) Such questions are, like those in research articles, textbooks, and student reports, typically rhetorical (Hyland 00a), eliciting their own response (Example []). In asking questions on behalf of readers, rather than of them, however, interrogatives also help structure an argument and guide readers toward a preferred interpretation of the examined text ( Example []): () ( Philosophy) So what is the problem this book addresses? McCulloch describes it as a problem within the philosophy of mind that concerns the place of mind in the general scheme of things. () a. ( Philosophy) Should one appeal to more of the old pride, or a di erent kind of pride? Rhetorical as well as pragmatic considerations come into play here. () b. ( Philosophy) Doesn t this seem to be a counterexample to P.? To accommodate tragic dilemmas Hursthouse modifies her account of right action. Here, though, she makes a rather odd move. Once again, we can see that, in philosophy, book reviews o er writers an opportunity to argue their corner and secure support for one perspective against others. The remarkably low frequencies of engagement markers in sociology texts, on the other hand, suggest a more measured and less rhetorical stance, as an informant suggested: It seems strange to address my readers directly using you, first I can t be sure who my readers are going to be. Secondly, in book review the focus should be on the book, not you or me or other people, but the book itself. We seems equally strange, as I said, I don t even know who my readers would be and we imply I m including somebody. Using we in expressing my opinion would o end the readers if they actually have di erent opinions from me. (Sociology interview) The fact that sociology represents a field with widely divergent approaches and positions (Parry ) means that it is critical to respect the boundaries of these positions: There are really too many subfields in sociology to be sure of my audience.... the safest way to play the game is to leave them alone and just set out your views. They won t bite you because you have a di erent interpretation, but they would if you misrepresent them. (Sociology interview) (AutoPDF V //0 :) WDG (mm) TimesM J- TEXT, : PMU: H(R) /0/00 pp. 0 _-_0 (p. )

18 Polly Tse and Ken Hyland 0 This not only seems to inhibit sociologists in appealing to a homogeneous audience, and so reduces the use of engagement features, but it may also help account for the emphasis they give to hedges, which represent the most frequent (.%) interactional devices in this discipline. Hedges not only tone down criticisms, but invite readers into a discursive arena where claims can be disputed and the possibility of alternatives implied. This can be an extremely useful function in circumstances where writers may need to acknowledge di erent perspectives because they are uncertain about what they can safely assume their colleagues will accept. The highest frequency of hedges, however, was found in philosophy. We suspect that this, in part at least, is a consequence of the fact that philosophical discourse does not seek to accomplish closure by reaching consensus on a particular issue but is more like a continuing conversation ( Hyland 00b). The desire of philosophers to widen an argumentative space through hedges, then, may help account for the tentativeness expressed in book reviews and reflect disciplinary traditions of open debate: Our philosophical training forbids us to be too extreme or certain about our views. I mean you can have a strong belief in something, but you can t prove other people are wrong. The whole thing about philosophy is to constantly question ourselves. So it may not be about acknowledging other people s perspectives, but that we can t be certain about our own. (Philosophy interview) Intriguingly, however, philosophy reviews also contained the highest instances of boosters, which often work in opposition to hedges by denying alternative voices and restricting opportunities for writer reader discussion. Boosters, however, perform an equally important role for philosophers by indicating involvement with the topic and solidarity with readers. Boosters therefore work to invoke a sense of mutual understanding and disciplinary communality, which can help create a shared inferential context: () a. ( Philosophy) Anyone who takes the history of philosophy seriously must be puzzled by contemporary claims that justice and virtue are opposed. () b. (Philosophy) As most of us know, it is often much easier to criticize one s opponents than to defend oneself. () c. ( Philosophy) Readers can expect to be seriously stimulated, if also, at times, seriously puzzled by this book. (AutoPDF V //0 :) WDG (mm) TimesM J- TEXT, : PMU: H(R) /0/00 pp. 0 _-_0 (p. )

19 Interactions in book reviews 0. A final scrutiny: The use of self-mentions This final section looks briefly, but in more depth, at the patterns of selfmention in the corpus. Focusing on a single feature in this way allows us to explore aspects of author representation in greater detail and to highlight di erences in disciplinary practices and knowledge-making more clearly. At first blush the results are surprising. Authorial stance would seem to be a key aspect of book reviews as a way of presenting an individual perspective and gaining credit for a position, yet they occur less frequently here than in research articles ( Hyland 00), a supposedly faceless and impersonal genre. Particularly surprising is the infrequent use of self-mentions in sociology, a social-science discipline of typically high author visibility. Two possible explanations for this arose from our interview data. The first relates to the highly focused purpose of book reviews for sociologists that we mentioned above: In book reviews, I think we don t even use we or I. I think it is because the purpose is not the expression of oneself, but the expression of knowledge. This purpose is very clear in book reviews. We all understand what we are doing. (Sociology interview) The absence of critique and correspondingly greater focus on style and production values mean that these writers have little need for author pronouns and the connotations of individual intrusion that they carry. The second reason for an absence of personal stance may be related to the academic status of reviewers in sociology. In biology and philosophy, book reviewing tends to be an activity conducted largely by experienced scholars, especially in prestigious journals where reviews are usually solicited by editors. In sociology, on the other hand, this activity is typically more open to all community members, junior or established, and novices are frequently encouraged to write a review as a way of embarking on their academic career. This di erence can be seen in these interview extracts: It would be very unusual to have a student do it. By and large, you won t be asked to do book reviews until you re in the middle of your career and have established some sort of reputation. (Biology interview) Most reviewers are experienced scholars, it is mostly by invitation, if you are invited you may sort of feel honoured.... if it is a prestigious journal, then usually they would only invite established scholars. It is possible for students to submit a book review, but whether they would accept it is another matter. (Philosophy interview) (AutoPDF V //0 :) WDG (mm) TimesM J- TEXT, : PMU: H(R) /0/00 pp. 0 _-_0 (p. )

20 Polly Tse and Ken Hyland 0 It can be anyone in the field. I d recommend my PhD students to attempt a book review before they submit for a journal publication because it may be an easier way to start with. (Sociology interview) Students, however, are often uncertain about the kind of identities the use of self-mention conveys and the self-promotional persona it can project (Hyland 00). Passing judgments on the publications of experts in their field may give these novices even further pause for thought in using such forms. However, while philosophy and biology have similar overall frequencies of self-mention, this does not mean that they use them in identical ways. Concordance data reveal that biologists tended to collocate selfmention with comments on the book (Example []) and on relevant experiences and observations outside the text that they brought to bear on their comments (Example []): () a. (Biology) I found this book fascinating, and sometimes disturbing. I was amazed at times with the author s frankness, but... () b. (Biology) While reading, I kept thinking that it could have been so much more compelling had it been edited considerably. () a. (Biology) Recently, I was intrigued when I first noticed an obvious case of desert termite activity in the Great Basin Desert.... () b. (Biology) In the mid-s, as a new student of biological anthropology, I read Hardy s The Woman That Never Evolved. I found it a fascinating read, and it brought up a number of themes and questions that I explored over the next few years. These uses suggest that biologists, unable to evaluate claims in reviewed books through their usual procedures of experimental deduction and falsifiability, are forced to draw on personal reflection and individual opinion. These are unfamiliar and potentially perilous strategies that open the writer to personal exposure and criticism and carry possibly very direct threats to the face or public self-image of the book author. Self-mentions are therefore often linked to hedges in this corpus and help account for the focus on production and writing issues, rather than on theoretical ones, so downplaying the reviewer s role as an assessor and o ering a representation of the self as an ordinary reader responding to the book and to the book s evocation of the reader s experiences. (AutoPDF V //0 :) WDG (mm) TimesM J- TEXT, : PMU: H(R) /0/00 pp. 0 _-_0 (p. )

21 Interactions in book reviews 0 Matters are very di erent in philosophy, however, where reviewers choose to explicitly show their presence in announcing their discourse goals, probably because philosophy reviews were twice as long as the sociology texts and almost three times longer than those in biology. There is therefore a far more urgent need to set out purposes and o er an overview of the text: () a. ( Philosophy) I will focus on Clark s characterization of his theory s explanandum... () b. ( Philosophy) I shall here highlight one aspect of the positive view that strikes me as being distinctive and illuminating. I shall also voice a worry. More often, however, and more interestingly, philosophers used selfmention far more as a legitimate resource to express their opinions and argue for their positions, explicitly revealing their presence to convey a strong, and sometimes critical, viewpoint on the texts they reviewed: () a. ( Philosophy) My only quarrel with Baker s presentation of her material is that I find here and there a certain carelessness in her use of logical concepts. () b. ( Philosophy) While I believe Kennett s account of self-control runs into serious trouble, there is much along the way of considerable interest. Indeed, the philosophers not only used self-mentions confidently in their writing, but our informants showed considerable rhetorical sophistication in expressing their reasons for doing so. These are just two extracts from lengthy discussions where they explained the significance of these forms in making their discipline distinctive:... we are unlike other disciplines which never use I, it is almost like it has bitten them in graduate school and they learnt they must use the passive voice. But in philosophy, the self actually stands out... philosophers are more individualistic. (Philosophy interview) I think it is true that in philosophical writing we use a lot of personal pronouns like I and we. I think this is di erent from social or natural sciences where they emphasize the notion of an ideal observer who is disinterested and only focused on observable facts, but this idea of ideal observer is exactly what humanities set out to challenge... we encourage these kinds of personal values and beliefs... so the use of I highlights individual personality and perspectives, as well as creativity, in philosophical writing. (Philosophy interview) (AutoPDF V //0 :) WDG (mm) TimesM J- TEXT, : PMU: H(R) /0/00 pp. 0 _-_0 (p. )