The academic homepage is now a ubiquitous genre of scholarly life, but despite considerable interest in issues of identity and the ways individuals self-consciously manage the impression they give of themselves, it has been slow to attract the attention of ESP researchers. This may be because of the institutional control exercised by employing…

Despite his considerable influence on the development of ESP and all our professional lives, almost nothing has been written about John Swales' distinctive prose style. Based on a 340,000 word corpus comprising 14 single-authored papers and most chapters from his three main books, this paper sets out to identify the main features of this style.…

An important component of fluent linguistic production is control of the multi-word expressions referred to as clusters, chunks or bundles. These are extended collocations which appear more frequently than expected by chance, helping to shape meanings in specific contexts and contributing to our sense of coherence in a text. Bundles have begun to…

The linguistic resources used by academic writers to adopt a position and engage with readers, variously described as "evaluation," "stance" and "metadiscourse," have attracted increasing attention in the literature over the last 10 years and now form an important element of many ESP courses. A relatively overlooked interpersonal feature, however,…

Examines the generalist critique of the value and validity of English for special purposes and discusses why it remains compelling for many as an approach to research and pedagogy. Suggests that specificity is not only central to teaching and the ways the disciplines and professions are perceived but also to moving forward as a field of inquiry…

Examines hedging in textbooks by focusing on the coverage of lexical items as markers of uncertainty and tentativeness. Tentative language continues to be a source of pragmatic failure in the writing of second-language science students. Hence, it is suggested that pedagogic writing materials would benefit from revisions based on authentic data.…

The "Go for Gold" task-based English for Special Purposes course for second-year business students at the Papua New Guinea University of Technology is described. It is argued that a syllabus may have a process focus without being totally learner led. A sample list of student expectations and evaluation forms are appended. (31 references)…

Explores role of college textbooks in students' acquisition of special disciplinary literacy, focusing on use of metadiscourse as manifestation of writer's linguistic and rhetorical presence in a text. Features are compared from 21 textbook extracts in microbiology, marketing, and applied linguistics with similar corpus of research articles,…

Examines the view that research writing is a modest, self-effacing task that involves authors eradicating themselves from their texts to gain acceptance for their work. Focuses on use of self-citation and exclusive first person pronouns in a corpus of 240 research articles in eight disciplines. Through analysis of texts and interviews with…