Abstract
This paper investigates the nature of texts produced for assessment at the highest level of advanced academic literacy: PhD theses. Eight theses from within a single department (Agricultural Botany) at a British university are the subject of study, and the contexts in which these texts were written are investigated through interviews with the supervisors. The notion of a genre of the PhD thesis is problematized and it is argued that a genre-analytic approach can be highly generative. Finally, the ways that the writers manipulate focus and position within their texts is explored through an investigation of citation practices in the theses.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 307-323 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Journal of English for Academic Purposes |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Oct 2005 |
Keywords
- Advanced academic literacy
- Thesis citation practices
- position
- Disciplinary variation
- english for academic purposes
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Linguistics and Language