https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9186-5805
-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Yimin Zhang, Hang Su, Carmen Pérez-Llantada: RESEARCH GENRES ACROSS LANGUAGES: MULTILINGUAL COMMUNICATION ONLINE, Applied Linguistics, Volume 44, Issue 1, February 2023, Pages 179–182, https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amac004
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
Carmen Pérez-Llantada’s recent book Research Genres across Languages (RGaL hereafter) is a timely and important addition to the burgeoning field of genre analysis in the academic and research settings. Drawing on an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design with rich corpus and survey data, RGaL first offers an updated overview of the genre evolution and innovation in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine sciences (STEMM hereafter) in response to the new social exigences and technological affordances of Web 2.0. It then further explores the intersection of genre and language in the current science communication, critically reflecting on related issues such as multilingualism, translanguaging, and Academic Englishes. Essentially, the book shows the diversification of genres and the dynamics of language use that feature prominently in the construction and distribution of knowledge in the fast-changing digital era.
The book comprises seven chapters. Chapter 1 provides background information on the unprecedented technological transformation and the increased researcher mobility and international cooperation during the process of globalization, which bring forth enormous changes to genre and language use in the scientific communities. Chapter 2 revisits the definition of genre as a frame of social action and then reviews several key theories and concepts that pertain to the subsequent discussions on genre change and linguistic diversity from an ecological perspective. Chapter 3 depicts the rapid changes on the genre use by scientists in the STEMM communities, particularly the enhancement of traditional genres driven by Web 2.0 and open-access publishing, the emergence of new genres in response to new social exigencies, and the interdependence between them in jointly forming complex genre assemblages. Chapter 4 examines the diversity of ‘linguascapes’ in the contemporary academic and research world and explores the social, economic, and political conditions that drive the linguistic diversification and the researchers’ motivation in traversing multisemiotic modes for communicating science. Chapter 5 discusses the multiple literacies, i.e., various writing strategies and resources, which researchers need to acquire in order to compose a wide range of multimodal and digital genres in one or more sociolinguistic scenarios. Chapter 6 proposes a genre-based pedagogy characterized by a four-module ‘cycle of rhetorical consciousness-raising’ (p. 162), aiming to develop researchers’ writing skills and rhetorical awareness in and across genres and languages. Chapter 7 concludes the book with a recapitulation of the main theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical arguments made in the preceding chapters. More importantly, Pérez-Llantada calls for more systematic and robust methodologies in future enquires into research genres across languages, and points out several possible avenues for future research.
