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Confrontation in Academic
Communication
Irena Vassileva
Confrontation in Academic Communication
Irena Vassileva
Confrontation in
Academic
Communication
Irena Vassileva
Foreign Languages and Cultures
New Bulgarian University
Sofia, Bulgaria
ISBN 978-3-031-32735-3 ISBN 978-3-031-32736-0 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32736-0
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2023
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Acknowledgments
My thanks are due, first and foremost, to the Bulgarian National Science
Fund, whose generous financial support gave me the unique opportunity
to conduct research on the present project in the Federal Republic of
Germany. I am deeply indebted to my host professor, Prof. Dr. Heinrich
P. Kelz†, from the Institute of Linguistics, Media, and Communication
Sciences, University of Bonn, for his encouragement, helpful suggestions,
and immense patience, as well as to all colleagues at the institute, whose
kindness and support were immeasurable.
I am also extremely grateful to all my Bulgarian colleagues, as well as to
the two anonymous reviewers of Palgrave Macmillan, for their valuable
constructive criticism.
Last but not least, special thanks to my family for their understanding
and moral support during the realization of this project.
The responsibility for any shortcomings, errors, and omissions rests
with me alone.
v
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Aim and Methodology of the Study 7
3 Confrontation
in Academic Communication: Theoretical
Background 15
4 The Academic Book Review 33
5 The ‘Academic War’: A Case Study 71
6 Confrontation
and the Academic Discourse Community
Revisited105
Appendix109
Index113
vii
About the Author
Irena Vassileva is Professor of English and German Linguistics at the

New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds the academic degree
of Dr. Phil. Habil. from the Philological Faculty of the University of
Leipzig, Germany. Vassileva is author of Author-Audience Interaction. A
Cross-Cultural Perspective (2006), Academic Discourse Rhetoric and the
Bulgarian – English Interlanguage (2002), Who Is the author? (A Contrastive
Analysis of Authorial Presence in English, German, French, Russian and
Bulgarian Academic Discourse (2000), as well as of a number of articles
in international peer-reviewed journals. She is co-editor of The Digital
Scholar: Academic Communication in Multimedia Environment (Forum
für Fachsprachen-Forschung, vol. 153) (2020). Irena Vassileva’s international
experience includes: two Research Group Linkage Programme group proj-
ects financed by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany (“Text
Plagiarism in the Social Sciences vis-à-vis Ethical Aspects and Common
Practices”—2017–2018, and “Academic Communication in Multimedia
Environments”—2013–2016), several research fellowships from the same
foundation (2016, 2012, 2001–2003, 1998–2000), as well as research fel-
lowships from the Open Society Fund (2000–2003, 1996–1998), from the
Canadian government (2009), Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Diesnt
(German Academic Exchange Service) (DAAD) (1997), and European
Economic Area (EEA) (2010, 2012). She also worked as a senior research
fellow, Research Project “Digital Dictionary of German Collocations,” at the
Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, Berlin, Germany (2003–2004).
Vassileva has taught on various programs at two Bulgarian universities, at the
University of Bonn, Germany, as well as at six UK universities.
ix
List of Graphs
Graph 4.1 Content- and form-based premises in German 57

Graph 4.2 Content- and form-based premises in English 57
Graph 4.3 Topoi in German book reviews 59
Graph 4.4 Topoi in English book reviews 59
Graph 5.1 Distribution of the premises 78
Graph 5.2 Frequency of the topoi 79
Graph 5.3 Types of argumentation schemes 85
xi
List of Tables
Table 5.1 Overall length of articles 77

Table 5.2 Length of articles per author in chronological order 77
Table 5.3 Number of critical argumentation schemes for each author in
chronological order 84
xiii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Abstract Most of the existing studies assume that, owing to the predomi-
nantly evolutionary nature of the development of science, collaborative
rhetoric is intrinsic to academic discourse and criticism is an exception
rather than the rule. This is most probably the reason why there is rela-
tively little research done on the topic. At the same time, the issue has
become extremely relevant and worth exploring in the era of globalization
and the ensuing constantly increasing competition and struggle for power
and high esteem among scholars from all over the world, whose number is
not only greater than ever, but they also represent countries and academic
cultures that have remained hitherto isolated from the mainstream
(Western) academia.
The question has been approached from disciplinary, cross-disciplinary,
cross-cultural as well as historical perspectives, but practically all
investigations have been based on socio-pragmatic theories and discuss the
problems within speech act and politeness strategies frameworks. The
expression of criticism may take various forms and may be based on
different premises—theoretical assumptions, methodological failures,
relevance of data, practical application of research results, terminological
problems, etc. With the development of a long-lasting conflict, however,
the argumentation strategies and, respectively, the language used, tend to
sharpen and to change their orientation from purely content-centred to
personality-centred and to move away from truly scientific debates.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
I. Vassileva, Confrontation in Academic Communication,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32736-0_1
2 I. VASSILEVA
Keywords Academic communication • Academic criticism •

Confrontation • Book review
Although nobody would deny that academic criticism and confrontation

are inherent features of academic communication, most of the existing
studies assume that, owing to the predominantly evolutionary nature of
the development of science, collaborative rhetoric is intrinsic to academic
discourse and criticism is an exception rather than the rule. This is most
probably the reason why there is relatively little research done on the
topic. At the same time, the issue has become extremely relevant and
worth exploring in the era of globalization and the ensuing constantly
increasing competition and struggle for power and high esteem among
scholars from all over the world, whose number is not only greater than
ever, but they also represent countries and academic cultures that have
remained hitherto isolated from the mainstream (Western) academia.
The question has been approached from disciplinary, cross-disciplinary,
cross-cultural as well as historical perspectives, but practically all
investigations have been based on socio-pragmatic theories and discuss the
problems within speech act and politeness strategies frameworks. Thus,
linguists have tried to find out what linguistic means are used in order to
exercise or avoid criticism—vague language, hedging, boosting, among
others (i.e., Knapp-Potthoff, 1992; Pagano, 1994; Pätzold, 1984; Hyland,
2004, 2005, 2008; Hunston, 2005; Hyland & Diani, 2009; Tse &
Hyland, 2009; Wang & Nelson, 2012). Sociologists, on the other hand,
regard academic criticism mainly as an expression of the ever-increasing
competitiveness for professional recognition in the modern world (Hutz,
2001; Wiegand, 1983).
Basically, there exist two contradictory views on the role of academic
confrontation, which I would like to dwell on here in short without siding
with any of them:
Firstly, confrontation in academic communication is considered to be
dangerous and unproductive:
Ventola (1998, p. 290), in one of the first contrastive studies on the
issue, criticizes viciously the employment of dismissive rhetorical strategies:
“Confrontative strategies are dangerous games, just as wars are. This kind
of dialogue is as destructive as bombs.” Further in the same article (ibid.,
p. 292) she also maintains that:
1 INTRODUCTION 3
Often we hear the claim that it is the issues, not the people that are in con-
frontative positions in academic writing. In my view, however, it appears that
in our writing at least we very frequently seem to forget this, and our writing
about the theories of others often becomes extremely personal and attacking.
Another strong proponent of this view, Tannen (2002, p. 1655), claims

that disagreement in academic discourse is supported by certain standard
requirements of modern scientific communication: “A common framework
for academic papers […] prescribes that authors position their work in
opposition to someone else’s, which they then prove wrong” and further
explains that the ideology behind this requirement is ‘critical thinking’
that, in spite of its much wider scope, tends to be interpreted as a necessity
to resort to “exclusively negative criticism” (p. 1658).
Her position is:
There is much wrong with the metaphorical assignment of research to war-

ring camps. It obscures the aspects of disparate work that overlap and can
learn from each other. It obscures the complexity of research. […] Most
scholars are not wrong in what they assert but in what they deny.
(Ibid., p. 1661)
Secondly, confrontation in academic communication is regarded as

providing impetuses for advance and further development:
Following Wunderlich (1972, p. 318), confrontation and collisions
should not be viewed as exclusively negative communication strategies on
the part of authors aiming only at playing down the achievements of others
in order to gain more power and prestige, but should also be treated as a
necessary prerequisite for the evolutionary development of science.
Besides, Knapp-Potthoff (1992, p. 203) points out that in international
scientific communication “more so than in other types of communication,
face-threatening acts and their redress do not operate on the inter-
individual level alone, but – by process of attribution and stereotyping –
tend to have consequences for higher levels of social organization as well.”
As will be seen later in this study, the latter statement holds true for
whole groups of scholars or ‘schools’ consisting of followers united by
their adherence to the same theoretical and/or methodological framework,
who form subject-related discourse communities, so that if one scholar is
attacked, the others feel themselves threatened as well and react
immediately in defence of the ‘victim,’ which on its part provokes a
4 I. VASSILEVA
‘counter-attack’ from the other party. In some cases, such confrontative

exchanges go on for decades and eventually turn into ‘a static battle of
attrition’ where ‘victory’ seems to be equally unapproachable for both
parties involved.
The expression of criticism may take various forms and may be based on
different premises— theoretical assumptions, methodological failures, rele-
vance of data, practical application of research results, terminological prob-
lems, etc. With the development of a long-lasting conflict, however, the
argumentation strategies and, respectively, the language used, tend to
sharpen and to change their orientation from purely content-centred to per-
sonality-centred and to move away from truly scientific debates (see Chap. 5).
All these features have brought about the necessity to make use of mili-
tary terminology in order to best describe the state of affairs, of course, in
metaphorical terms.
It has to be pointed out here that confrontation in academia is not a
new phenomenon at all; it used to be even more pronounced at the onset
of modern science sometime in the seventeenth century. Without going
into details, I should note, however, that the type of confrontation to be
discussed in the present study is basically typical of the soft disciplines
where, in contrast to the hard ones, argumentation is predominantly of
verbal character, since experiences and phenomena are rarely strictly
measurable, and their analysis is thus of a much more interpretive nature.
Therefore, as Hyland (2005, p. 188) puts it,
Writers are far less able to rely on general understandings and on the accep-
tance of proven quantitative methods to establish their claims and this
increases the need for more explicit evaluation and engagement. Personal
credibility, and explicitly getting behind arguments, play a far greater part in
creating a convincing discourse for these writers.
Hence, soft disciplines scholars are forced to rely much more on lan-
guage and rhetoric than on other (for instance visual) semiotic means con-
taining data, respectively evidence, such as graphs, tables, charts, etc., for
the presentation of their results, views, and convictions, which on its part
leads to exploitation of rhetorical resources that may sometimes go beyond
the generally accepted boundaries of what is considered to be ‘ethical’ in
academic communication.
This is the main reason why I opted to take a closer look at the lan-
guage of linguists who are, moreover, expected to be fully aware of the
1 INTRODUCTION 5
effects of their writing and argumentation strategies on their discourse

community and on the further development of the field as a whole.
Following this short introduction, I shall briefly summarize the struc-
ture of the book.
Chapter 2 explicates the aim and methodology of the study, namely, to
elucidate the argumentation strategies employed by linguists in voicing
criticism, to look for some explanations for confrontation in academic
discourse, and to evaluate the positive and/or negative effects it has on
international academic communication. Issues such as the role of
intertextuality, cross-cultural variations, the notion of ‘academic discourse
community,’ among others, are also touched upon. Special attention is
paid in this chapter to the modern developments in contrastive rhetoric
studies, as well as to the controversial issue of the use of context-based
versus corpus-based methods.
Chapter 2 also describes the corpora the investigation is based on,
namely academic book reviews in English and German, and a series of
publications in English interrelated by the fact that they discuss a common
group of problems but from two fully confrontative points of view. They
illustrate what I have called an ‘academic war.’
Chapter 3 deals with some theoretical issues related to the areas of
interest of the study: the role of evaluation in academic communication,
the relationship among criticism, critique, negative evaluation, and
confrontation in academic communication, as well as the importance of
culture, discipline culture, and community of practice.
Chapter 4 uses the methodology of contrastive discourse analysis where
the languages envisaged are English and German. The methodological
apparatus for the analysis of academic book reviews in the two languages
is the classical Aristotelian theory of argumentation.
Chapter 5 focuses on the above-mentioned ‘academic war’ and deals
with review articles only in English. Here, the modern theory of
argumentation schemes is used, which makes both the results and the
applicability of the different approaches comparable with those in the
previous Chap. 4. The original idea of including German sources as well
could not be realized since no such ‘academic wars’ could be found in that
language and academic culture.
Chapter 6 servers as a conclusion and sums up the results of the study,
at the same time bringing up some theoretical issues and putting them in
new light in view of the obtained results.
6 I. VASSILEVA
References
Hunston, S. (2005). Conflict and consensus: Construing opposition in applied
linguistics. In E. Tognini-Bonelli & G. del Lungo Camiciotti (Eds.), Strategies
in academic discourse (pp. 1–15). John Benjamins.
Hutz, M. (2001). “Insgesamt muss ich leider zu einem ungünstigen Urteil kom-
men.” Zur Kulturspezifik wissenschaftlicher Rezensionen im Deutschen und
Englischen. In U. Fix, et al. (Eds.), Zur Kulturspezifik von Textsorten
(pp. 109–130). Stauffenburg Verlag.
Hyland, K. (2004). Disciplinary discourses, Michigan classics ed.: Social interactions
in academic writing. University of Michigan Press.
Hyland, K. (2005). Stance and engagement: A model of interaction in academic
discourse. Discourse Studies, 7(2), 173–192. SAGE Publications.
Hyland, K. (2008). Academic clusters: Text patterning in published and post-
graduate writing. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 18(1), 41–62.
Hyland, K., & Diani, G. (2009). Academic evaluation. Review genres in university
settings. Palgrave Macmillan.
Knapp-Potthoff, A. (1992). Secondhand politeness. In R. J. Watts et al. (Eds.),
Politeness in language (pp. 203–220). Mouton de Gruyter.
Pagano, A. (1994). Negatives in written texts. In M. Coulthard (Ed.), Advances in
written text analysis (pp. 250–265). Routledge.
Pätzold, J. (1984). Beschreibung und Erwerb von Handlungsmustern. Beispiel:
Rezensionen wissenschaftlicher Publikationen. Akademie der Wissenschaften der
DDR. Reihe A. Arbeitsberichte 138.
Tannen, D. (2002). Agonism in academic discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 34,
1651–1669.
Tse, P., & Hyland, K. (2009). Discipline and gender: Constructing rhetorical
identity in book reviews. In K. Hyland & G. Diani (Eds.), Academic evaluation:
Review genres in university settings (pp. 105–121). Palgrave Macmillan.
Ventola, E. (1998). Meaningful choices in academic communities. Ideological
issues. In R. Schulze (Ed.), Making meaningful choices in English (pp. 277–294).
Gunter Narr.
Wang, Y., & Nelson, M. (2012). Discursive construction of authorial voice in
English book reviews: A contrastive analysis. Hong Kong Journal of Applied
Linguistics, 14(1), 1–24.
Wiegand, H. E. (1983). Nachdenken über wissenschaftliche Rezensionen.
Deutsche Sprache, 11, 122–137.
Wunderlich, D. (1972). Zur Konventionalität von Sprechhandlungen. In
D. Wunderlich (Ed.), Linguistische Pragmatik (pp. 11–58). Athenäum.
CHAPTER 2
Aim and Methodology of the Study
Abstract This chapter explicates the aim and methodology of the study,
namely, to elucidate the argumentation strategies employed by linguists in
voicing criticism, to look for some explanations for confrontation in aca-
demic discourse and to evaluate the positive and/or negative effects it has
on international academic communication. Issues such as the role of inter-
textuality, cross-cultural variations, the notion of ‘academic discourse
community,’ among others, are also touched upon. Special attention is
paid in this chapter to the modern developments in contrastive rhetoric
studies, as well as to the controversial issue of the use of context-based
versus corpus-based methods. It also describes the corpora the investiga-
tion is based on, namely academic book reviews in English and German
(10 in each language), and a series of publications in English (12 – 70,771
running words) interrelated by the fact that they discuss a common group
of problems but from two fully confrontative viewpoints. They illustrate
what I have metaphorically called an ‘academic war.’
Keywords Aim and methodology • Contrastive rhetoric • Context-

based versus corpus-based methods • Corpora

Switzerland AG 2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32736-0_2
8 I. VASSILEVA
2.1 Aim of the Study

The project is designed as a follow-up of my previous research on the
rhetoric of cross-cultural academic communication (Vassileva, 2000,
2002, 2006, among others). The study aims to elucidate:
• The argumentation strategies and their surface linguistic expression

used by English- and German-speaking scholars in voicing criticism.
• The degree to which this criticism is based on objective logic and/or
on subjective personal evaluation
• The preference for certain argumentation schemes and topoi
• Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural differences
• Points of conflict and misunderstandings that may result from the
established differences
• Explanations of the reasons for confrontation in academia
• The role of intertextuality in confrontative academic exchange
• Considerations of the positive, as well as the negative effects of con-
frontation for the advance of scientific thought
• A re-definition of the notion of ‘academic discourse community’ in
view of its constant expansion and the ever-increasing multiplication
of voices within it due to the present-day process of globalization
and the dominant role of English as a lingua franca
I shall argue that the predominantly pragmatic phenomena enumerated

above find their surface realization in language, but explanations should
be pursued by resorting to at least several extra-linguistic spheres, as well
as by considering their intricate interplay and interdependence, namely:
• Dominant ideologies
• General attitudes to knowledge and understandings of its role
in society
• Differences between the respective educational systems, for example,
focus on content versus focus on form, written versus oral means of
instruction and evaluation, etc.
• Understanding of the relationship between the individual (author)
and society (academic community/audience)
• Rhetorical and stylistic traditions
• Cross-cultural influences and their historical dynamics
• Intra-cultural social, political, and economic developments
2 AIM AND METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY 9
The factors enumerated above do not, of course, constitute an exhaus-

tive list, but even those are enough to demonstrate that studies in prag-
matics should draw on research in philosophy, psychology (individual and
social), political sciences, educational sciences, cultural studies, etc. What
is more, the results of such studies, more often than not, boil down to
issues such as language policy, linguistic and cultural imperialism, the use
of language as an instrument for exercising power, and thus have direct
impact on decision-making processes concerning current and future social
practices.
The results of the study could further be used to sensitize scholars’
awareness of the functions and consequences of confrontation, as well as
for the creation of teaching materials for scholars—non-native speakers of
the two languages involved, who use them for international communication.
2.2 Methodological Approaches
Since the investigation has a primarily contrastive character, first I shall
dwell upon some recent issues and new developments in the field of
contrastive rhetoric.
2.2.1 Contrastive Rhetoric: “Beyond Texts”

After her seminal study on “Contrastive Rhetoric” dating back to 1996,
Ulla Connor (2004, p. 293) offers a comprehensive overview of the latest
developments in intercultural rhetoric research. She emphasizes some
changes in the paradigm and, respectively, the goals of contrastive studies,
that have been “affected by two major developments, namely the expansion
of genres under consideration and a [striving] to emphasize context of
writing.” Regarding the latter point, she stresses the role of discourse
communities in forming the disciplinary norms and expectancies of
audiences in view of specific social situations. Therefore, she concludes that:
Social construction of meaning as dynamic, socio-cognitive activities is a

term used to describe this approach to texts. Instead of analyzing what texts
mean, we want to understand how they construct meaning.
Besides, Connor (2004, p. 294) maintains that “contrastive rhetoric is

not a specific method, but […] employs various methods. These methods
include text analysis, genre analysis, corpus linguistics, and ethnographic
approaches.”
10 I. VASSILEVA
Concerning the establishment of tertia comparationis in contrastive

investigations based on genre theory, she warns against a frequently
occurring failure, namely: “in establishing tertia comparationes, we are
often forced to find prototype genres, essentialize discourse communities,
and belittle individual variation in the production and reception of the
genres studied” (ibid., p. 298).
Canagarajah (2002a, b, p. 69) claims that genre analysis contrasts with
intercultural rhetoric by searching for universal generic structures while
contrastive rhetoric research “adopts the relativistic orientation that writers
from different cultures relate to form variously and/or that form in the
same genres is realized differently in different cultures.”
Swales (2004, p. 245), on the other hand,
believe[s] that the weight of current evidence, at least within the circum-
scribed realm of research genres, leans toward a sociological rather than
cultural explanations. Rather than looking for essentializing traditions such
as […], we might do better to focus on writer-audience considerations.
This point of view relates closely to Connor’s (2004, p. 292) suggestion

that: “Instead of focusing on products, intercultural research needs to
change its focus to the processes that lead to the products.”
I could not but agree with the proposal that it is necessary to concen-
trate on the process of knowledge creation and representation but the
question arising here is: Is it possible to look only at the process and ignore
the product? I believe that the two ‘ends’ of the route to the completion
of the scientific product need not and should not be kept apart but rather
studied simultaneously.
2.2.2 Context-Based Versus Corpus-Based Methods

Commenting on the two major approaches to contrastive analysis, Connor
(2004, p. 292) warns that they both have to take into consideration the
variations in the definition of ‘culture,’ ranging between “static (referring
to ‘big,’ ethnic cultures) to […] dynamic (often referring to ‘small’
cultures, e.g. disciplinary, classroom, local).”
Swales (2004, p. 252) admits having been skeptical about the corpus-
based approaches to genre analysis mainly due to the “strong incidentalist
tendency in corpus work.” Later, however, he found out that corpora
“were excellent for validating or invalidating statements made by other

scholars about the English language, and for exemplifying patterns or
structures for pedagogical purposes” (ibid., p. 253).
One of the proponents and most active scholars investigating evalua-
tion by using a corpus-based approach is Ute Römer (2008, p. 116–117,
see also 2010), who claims that it is possible to investigate evaluative ele-
ments after having defined them. She admits, though, that such identifica-
tion is highly challenging for researchers.
Her approach is a lexico-phraseological one, where evaluative lexical
elements (mainly adjectives and their pre-modifiers) are pre-defined and
discussed in relation to their immediate co(n)text in the corpus.
Groom (2009, p. 127) finds this deductive methodology, which
“involves specifying objects for concordance analysis on an a priori basis,”
“entirely feasible […] for studying some linguistic phenomena.” However,
for other purposes he suggests “a more inductive, ‘corpus-driven’
approach, in which the initial process of selecting items for qualitative
concordance study is delegated to a computer algorithm” (ibid., p. 128).
Thus, he selects for the purpose of his 2009-study so-called ‘keywords
analysis’ that “centres on the qualitative concordance analysis of a set of
words which have been identified by a computational procedure as being
statistically significant, or ‘key’, in a specialized corpus, when compared
against a larger and more general reference corpus” (ibid., p. 128).
Hyland (2008, p. 18) employs a corpus-based analysis in order “to
explore the extent to which phraseology contributes to academic writing
by identifying the most frequent 4-word bundles in the key genres of four
disciplines” and finds out that there exist considerable differences among
the disciplines in this respect.
2.3 Methodology Employed in the Study

One of the initial goals of the present research was to check the feasibility
and applicability to contrastive studies of both methods briefly discussed
above. While Chap. 4 employs the context-based method by looking at
the similarities and differences in the expression of negative evaluation in
English and German academic book reviews from the point of view of the
Aristotelian argumentation theory, Chap. 5 represents a case study of an
‘academic war’ and is methodologically based on modern argumentation
theory (Walton et al., 2008).
12 I. VASSILEVA
After a summary of the history of topics from Aristotle (1954) to the

Amsterdam School, Walton et al. (2008, p. 307) come to the following
conclusion regarding the relationship between ancient rhetoric and
argumentation schemes theory:
Most argument schemes derive from the dialectal and rhetorical common
places, the loci. Some of them are based on logical-semantic properties and
are necessarily true; others are only plausible. […] Argument schemes stem
from both dialectal and rhetorical topics. They include not only semantic
inferences but also places from circumstances.
The detailed descriptions of each method are presented at the begin-

ning of the respective chapters in order to facilitate the understanding of
the analyses.
An attempt was also made to utilize a corpus-based method in order
to compare the linguistic means of conveying negative evaluation in
research articles in the two languages. However, as the examples in Chaps.
4 and 5 demonstrate, the surface expression of criticism takes various
forms and may span over whole paragraphs and even longer stretches of
discourse, which makes it impossible to identify key words or bundles that
lend themselves to a corpus-driven analysis. Therefore, it was concluded
that, at least for the time being, this approach is unable to cater for the
examination of such complex discourse structures.
2.4 Corpora
The investigation draws on data elicited from two types of corpora repre-
sentative for the language of linguistics:
1. Academic book reviews with a definite negative character in English

and German—ten for each language
2. Review articles and book reviews, including replies to reviews (12)
(70,771 running words) in English that are closely related to one
another topically and represent two mutually exclusive, in the
authors’ opinion, schools of linguistics, where outstanding
representatives of both schools ‘attack the enemies’ and ‘defend
their own positions’ by (sometimes at least) using razor-sharp
linguistic means of expression
The reviews are analyzed in their entirety. The primary selection criteria
were: (1) that the reviews are published in leading international journals
or collections of articles (see Appendix) and (2) have a negative outcome,
i.e., the reviewer concludes by not recommending the book to the readers.
The practical problem encountered in the choice of the texts was the
generally low number of reviews corresponding to the above criteria, as
well as the fact that they had to be located by hand, combing a bulk of
journals and the respective review sections, since an Internet search was
not possible.
The materials for illustrating and investigating an ‘academic war’ were
centered on one topic, namely the pro-CDA and anti-CDA debate, and
were analyzed in their order of publication.
References
Aristotle. (1954). Rhetoric (W. R. Roberts, Trans.). Random House.
Canagarajah, A. S. (2002a). Critical academic writing and multilingual students.
University of Michigan Press.
Canagarajah, A. S. (2002b). A geopolitics of academic writing. University of
Pittsburgh Press.
Connor, U. (1996). Contrastive rhetoric. Cross-cultural aspects of second-language
writing. Cambridge University Press.
Connor, U. (2004). Intercultural rhetoric research: Beyond texts. Journal of
English for Academic Purposes, 3(4), 291–304.
Groom, N. (2009). Phraseology and epistemology in academic book reviews: A
corpus-driven analysis of two humanities disciplines. In K. In Hyland &
G. Diani (Eds.), Academic evaluation. Review genres in university settings
(pp. 122–139). Palgrave Macmillan.
Hyland, K. (2008). Academic clusters: Text patterning in published and post-
graduate writing. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 18(1), 41–62.
Römer, U. (2008). Identification impossible? A corpus approach to realisations of
evaluative meaning in academic writing. Functions of Language,
XV(1), 115–130.
Römer, U. (2010). Establishing the phraseological profile of a text type. The con-
struction of meaning in academic book reviews. English Text Construction,
3(1), 95–119.
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14 I. VASSILEVA
Vassileva, I. (2002). Academic discourse rhetoric and the Bulgarian – English inter-
language. Tip-top Verlag.
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Walton, D., Reed, C., & Macagno, F. (2008). Argumentation schemes. Cambridge
University Press.
CHAPTER 3
Confrontation in Academic Communication:

Theoretical Background
Abstract This chapter deals with some theoretical issues related to the
areas of interest of the study. First, the role of evaluation in academic com-
munication is discussed by looking at two contradictory, even mutually
exclusive assumptions as to the very existence of evaluation in language:
(1) ‘Every utterance is evaluative’ and (2) ‘Not all utterances are evalua-
tive.’ Various approaches to the investigation of evaluation have been criti-
cally examined. Second, in order to elucidate the essence and function of
confrontation in academic communication, some basic notions closely
related to it are clarified, namely: criticism, critique, negative evaluation,
and confrontation in academic communication, as well as the relationship
among them. Finally, the importance of culture, discipline culture, and
community of practice are addressed, and it is concluded that if one
remains committed to the traditional understanding of ‘discourse com-
munity,’ one should either recognize the existence of a very large number
of very small communities (of practice) or accept that the academic dis-
course community has disappeared. A more realistic point of view would
be to speak at present of fluctuating communities united by temporary
common goals.
Keywords Evaluation in academic communication • Criticism, critique,

negative evaluation, confrontation • Culture, discipline culture,
community of practice

Switzerland AG 2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32736-0_3
16 I. VASSILEVA
3.1 Evaluation in Academic Communication

Since the realization of confrontative strategies in academic communica-
tion is directly related to, and actually part of the realization of evaluation
in general, I shall start with a short overview of the various understandings
of this notion in recent linguistics literature. Without going into details
and recounting all publications dealing with evaluation, I should still
mention the fact that, like in many other cases in this ‘soft’ science, there
exist two contradictory, even mutually exclusive assumptions as to the very
existence of evaluation in language:
1. Every utterance is evaluative
Hyland and Diani (2009, p. 4) gives a succinct overview of the various

approaches and terminological apparatuses used in the study of evaluation
and concludes that:
The term ‘evaluation’ itself originates in the work of Hunston (1994;

Hunston and Thompson, 2000). Despite differences among these terms,
they all take up by Stubbs’ (1996, p. 197) point that ‘whenever speakers (or
writers) say anything, they encode their attitude towards it.’
Thompson and Hunston (2000, p. 5) define evaluation as a “broad

cover term for the expression of the speaker or writer’s attitude or stance
towards, viewpoint on, or feelings about the entities or propositions that
he or she is talking about.”
This belief, however, dates back at least to Vološinov (1973, p. 105):
“No utterance can be put together without value judgement. Every utter-
ance is above all an evaluative orientation. Therefore, each element in a
living utterance not only has a meaning but also has a value” [emphasis in
original].
2. Not all utterances are evaluative
In his investigation of academic book reviews Shaw (2004, p. 121)

states: “I am claiming that there are acts in book reviews which do not
evaluate the book on this dimension, but describe it.” Further on, he
maintains that there is a scale of explicitness for evaluation where it is not
always clear whether a term is used positively or negatively. The
interpretation is often based on “extratextual knowledge” (ibid., p. 128),
3 CONFRONTATION IN ACADEMIC COMMUNICATION: THEORETICAL… 17
as well as on the examination of a wider context/co-text. As an example,

Shaw (2004, p. 127) refers to “negated clauses or other constructions
with grammatically negative markers [that] imply contrast and hence
evaluation […], but this does not have to be negative evaluation […].”
However,
in practice negated structures often carry negative evaluation. This is because

grammatical negation is evaluatively asymmetrical, in that a negated sentence
is dialogic […] and implies the possibility and absence of the positive
equivalent, but a positive one does not imply anything and can be taken as
purely descriptive. (ibid.)
Hyland and Diani (2009, p. 7) adheres to a similar position: “It is true,

however, that a great deal of research writing is characterized by the
absence of inscribed evaluation.” He attributes three central functions to
evaluation, namely: “it expresses the speaker’s opinion”; “it helps to
construct a dialogue and relations of solidarity between the writer and
reader; and finally, it helps structure a text in expected ways” (Hyland &
Diani, 2009, p. 5). In an earlier publication Hyland (2005, p. 175) dwells
in more detail on the use of evaluation:
Academic writers’ use of evaluative resources is influenced by different epis-

temological assumptions and permissible criteria of justification, and this
points to and reinforces specific cultural and institutional contexts. Writers’
evaluative choices, in other words, are not made from all the alternatives the
language makes available, but from a more restricted sub-set of options
which reveal how they understand their communities through the
assumptions these encode.
Hyland (2005, pp. 187–188) also introduces the terms ‘stance’ and
‘engagement’ to account for the way writers present themselves in their
writings and in relation to their readers, and relates these to disciplinarity,
where he makes remarkable observations that have provoked many
follow-up studies of interdisciplinary character. More specifically, he argues
that scholars in the humanities and social sciences demonstrate a higher
degree of personal involvement as compared to those in the hard sciences
due to the high degree of interpretability of the discourses, the strong
reliance on language for argumentation and the necessity to position their
claims at the background of previous research by complying with it,
refuting it, or by ‘establishing their niche.’ In the hard sciences, in contrast,
18 I. VASSILEVA
the background research and methodologies are clear and established, the
results are tangible, reproducible, and speak for themselves, so that the
expression of the researcher’s personality and attitudes are redundant and
the role of language, especially in view of the affordances of modern
technologies for visualization, is kept to a minimum.
Moreno and Suárez (2008, p. 765), on their part, focus on the neces-
sity to “define precisely what is meant by evaluation” in order to, among
other things, be able “to delineate clearly their criteria of comparison (i.e.,
their tertia comparationis) to ensure that they are comparing comparable
evaluation resources,” which is of vital importance in cross-linguistic
investigations.
3.2 Criticism: Critique–Negative
Evaluation—Confrontation
in Academic Communication
In order to elucidate the essence and function of confrontation in aca-

demic communication, it is necessary to first clarify some basic notions
closely related to it.
Starting with ‘criticism,’ the dictionary definitions point to two main
senses: (1) The act of criticizing, especially adversely. A critical comment
or judgment. (2) The practice of analyzing, classifying, interpreting, or
evaluating literary or other artistic works.
In the context of ‘critical thinking,’ however, “critical” connotes the
importance or centrality of the thinking to an issue, question or problem
of concern. “Critical” in this context does not mean “disapproved” or
“negative.”1
It “has been described as ‘purposeful reflective judgment concerning
what to believe or what to do.’” The list of core critical thinking skills
includes “interpretation, analysis, inference, evaluation, explanation and
meta-cognition” (ibid.) and thus comes much closer to the second sense
of ‘criticism’ listed above.
‘Critique’:
The term critique derives from the Greek term kritike ̄ (κριτική), meaning
“(the art of) discerning”, that is, discerning the value of persons or things.
Especially in philosophical contexts it is influenced by Kant’s use of the term
1
http://en_wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking
to mean a reflective examination of the validity and limits of a human

capacity or of a set of philosophical claims and has been extended in modern
philosophy to mean a systematic inquiry into the conditions and
consequences of a concept, theory, discipline, or approach and an attempt
to understand its limitations and validity. A critical perspective, in this sense,
is the opposite of a dogmatic one. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critique)
The online http://www.thefreedictionary.com/critique dictionary

remarks, however, that:
Critique has been used as a verb meaning “to review or discuss critically”
since the 18th century, but lately this usage has gained much wider currency,
in part because the verb criticize, once neutral between praise and censure,
is now mainly used in a negative sense.
In order to verify the statement above, I inspected 50 randomly selected

tokens of critique out of altogether 748 in the British National Corpus
(BNC-iWeb) consisting of more than 14 billion words. The word was in
truth used in a non-negative sense only a couple of times, exclusively in
philosophical texts referring to Emanuel Kant’s theory.
The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), the largest
freely available corpus of English containing more than one billion words,
shows 10,139 tokens of critique, almost two-thirds of which are found in
academic publications. Since the corpus claims to be balanced in terms of
textual sources, this fact demonstrates the highly limited usage of the term
that seems to be confined to the vocabulary of certain academic fields.
A search of the most frequently used adjectives pre-modifying critique
showed, among the first 100 tokens, that within the range of 2–37 possible
tokens, 30 adjectives were negative, accounting for 175 (out of 512) of
the usages. Both figures account for about 30 percent of the cases of use
of critique as a noun in a definitely negative meaning. As a verb, the term
is also used predominantly negatively, as even a cursory glance at the
immediate context of the tokens in both corpora shows.
Following from the above, the term critique is directly related to and
could be treated as a synonym of negative evaluation. Martin and White
(2005, pp. 11–121) discuss negative evaluation under the term ‘disclaim’
which is defined as: “meanings by which some dialogic alternative is
directly rejected or supplanted, or is represented as not applying” (p. 117).
They distinguish two sub-categories of disclaim: ‘denial’ or ‘negation’ that
20 I. VASSILEVA
is “a resource for introducing the alternative positive position into the

dialogue, and hence acknowledging it, so as to reject it” (p. 118), while
‘counter’ “includes formulations which represent the current proposition
as replacing or supplanting, and thereby ‘countering’, a proposition which
would have been expected in its place” (p. 120).
Modern argumentation theory goes much deeper into the various
aspects of negation and distinguishes among ‘attack,’ ‘opposition,’
‘rebuttal,’ and ‘refutation’ as different “fundamental logical notions basic
to critical argumentation” (Walton et al., 2008, p. 221). Since this theory,
however, will serve as a methodological basis for the analysis of ‘The
academic war’ in Chap. 5, it will be discussed in more detail there.
‘Confrontation’ on its part is understood in two senses: (1) The act of
confronting or challenging another, especially face-to-face; (2) A conflict
between armed forces. 2
The Merriam-Webster 3 online dictionary also adds the meaning of “the
clashing of forces or ideas” which seems to be the best one applicable to
the present discussion.
In relation to academic communication, Bourdieu (1999, p. 19)
asserted that:
As a system of objective relations between positions already won (in previ-

ous struggles), the scientific field is the locus of a competitive struggle, in
which the specific issue at stake is the monopoly of scientific authority, defined
inseparably as technical capacity and social power.
I would add to Bourdieu’s statement that nowadays, at the time of

ever-growing numbers of multidisciplinary studies, the struggle in question
has already spread not only within but also among various scientific fields.
Fröhlich (2003, p. 118) treats this state of affairs as a “Kampf um
wissenschaftliche Glaubwürdigkeit” [Fight for scientific credibility] that is
directly related to a symbolic capital accumulated during a scholar’s career.
This capital, following Bourdieu, consists of the capital of “strictly scien-
tific authority” and the capital of “social authority.” What is more,
Bourdieu maintains that scientific conflicts are driven by individual or
group interests and are realized by playing down the achievements of the
‘enemies,’ thus valorizing one’s own competence and success.
2
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/confrontation
3
http://mw2.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scholarly
Commenting on “Bourdieus Konzept im Lichte der

Wissenschaftsforschung” [Bourdieu’s concept in the light of science
research], Fröhlich (2003, p. 122) notes that:
Erstaunlicherweise weist Bourdieus Konzeption rationaler

Wissenschaftspraxis starke Ähnlichkeiten mit jener Karl Poppers auf. Popper
geht vom sozialen, öffentlichen und institutionellen Charakter der
wissenschaftlichen Methoden aus und hält “rücksichtslose” Kritik und
offene kognitive Konkurrenz für zentrale Definitionsmerkmale von
Wissenschaft. 4
For Bourdieu (1999) the scientific fields are not simply socially but also
economically dependent on the financial interests of the dominant class
that invests, naturally enough, in areas which are expected to have direct
application in production and thus bring about more profit. This is the
reason why Bourdieu (1999, p. 42) maintains that there are fields “which
have only false autonomy,” especially those belonging to the social
sciences, since
[…] the dominant class has no reason to expect anything from the social
sciences – beyond, at best, a particularly valuable contribution to the
legitimation of the established order and strengthening of the arsenal of
symbolic instruments of domination.
Therefore, the social sciences can never attain the degree of indepen-
dence natural sciences enjoy, the autonomy that would allow them to
achieve a state of possessing self-regulatory mechanisms to account for
and control internal struggles for power and prestige. Following Bourdieu
(1999, p. 43), then,
The idea of a neutral science is a fiction, an interested fiction which enables

its authors to present a version of the dominant representation of the social
world, neutralized and euphemized into a particularly misrecognizable and
symbolically, therefore, particularly effective form, and to call it scientific.
4
All translations in the text are mine.
“Astonishingly, Bourdieu’s conception of rational scientific practice shows strong similari-
ties with that of Karl Popper. Popper assumes the social, public, and institutional character of
scientific methods and considers “ruthless” criticism and open cognitive competition to be
central defining features of science.”
22 I. VASSILEVA
It is no wonder that Bourdieu’s influence on the progress of the socio-

logical and philosophical approaches to the study of the development of
science as a social and economic phenomenon has been very powerful
since, as the few quotations above demonstrate, he was able, back in the
1970s, to pinpoint and explain the roots of a gap between the natural and
the social sciences that has become much wider in the post-modern
globalized world—a gap that is due first and foremost to the
commercialization of research.
In contrast to Bourdieu, whose theory is mainly based on the impact of
economic and social factors on scientific development, Tannen (2002,
p. 1652) confirms the existence of academic conflicts (under the notion of
‘agonism’), but attributes it primarily to the structures and distributions of
power and to the moral and ethical understandings within the academic
communities themselves. She offers a very comprehensive overview of the
roots and historical development of agonism in academic discourse.
Borrowing the term from Ong (1981), she uses it
to refer not to conflict, disagreement, or disputes per se, but rather to ritual-
ized adversativeness. In academic discourse, this means conventionalized
oppositional formats that result from an underlying ideology by which
intellectual interchange is conceptualized as a metaphorical battle. [...]I
focus on exposing the destructive aspects of this ideology and its attendant
practices.
Tannen traces the roots of modern adversative discourse to the ancient

Greek tradition and refers in this connection to Moulton (1983), who
“points out that we think of the Adversary Method as the Socratic Method,
whereas the true Socratic method (use of counter-argument, elenchus;
from the Greek, elenchos) is designed to convince the other person, not to
show others that their views are wrong” (Tannen, 2002, p. 1657). Later,
in the medieval Christian academy, “students were taught not to search for
knowledge and understanding” but “to take a stand in favor of a thesis or
to attack a thesis that someone else defended” (Tannen, 2002, p. 1654).
In terms of cultural variation, Tannen (2002, p. 1655) points out that:
“It is a commonplace among American academics that many British,
German, and French counterparts are more given to vitriolic attacks and
sarcastic innuendo than are American-trained scholars.” This belief is in
tune with Galtung’s (1985) observations which, however, have not as yet
been empirically and statistically verified.
Tannen (2002, p. 1665) calls for “Restoring the person to scholarship”

since “The agonistic model of academic discourse is posited […] also on
the illusory assumption that the personal has no place in scholarship.”
However, a bulk of recent research in academic discourse analysis of late
has demonstrated unequivocally that there is a strong tendency toward
personalization (see Vassileva, 2000, 2006 and the references therein), so
that “one cannot separate the pursuit of knowledge from the community
of scholars engaged in that pursuit” Tannen (2002, p. 1665).
The issue of academic conflict as a pragmatic aspect of written academic
discourse has been addressed by the large number of studies (Belcher,
1995; Salager-Meyer, 1998, 1999, 2001a, b; Swales, 1990; Kourilova,
1996; Motta-Roth, 1998, among many others). Such studies have found
out that outright criticism is relatively rare in English academic articles, it
is perceived as threatening and therefore writers resort to various hedging
devices in order to avoid possible reprisal. Another facet of the phenomenon
that has received attention are the variations in the incidence and linguistic
expression of criticism in different academic genres (Kourilova, 1996,
Hunston, 1993, Motta-Roth, 1998, among others), where it was
concluded that book reviews and reviewers’ comments on manuscripts
submitted for publication contain much more criticism expressed in a
direct manner as compared to articles.
Salager-Meyer’s (1998, 1999) investigations have also demonstrated
the discipline-specific character of the rhetorical means of articulating
conflict. However, contrastive cross-cultural research only touches upon
issues of criticism within wider frameworks of politeness strategies, in
general, and there are hardly any publications focusing specifically on
downright criticism—a gap the present study hopes to start filling.
3.3 Culture: Disciplinary Culture—Community

of Practice
Scollon and Scollon (2000, 2001) distinguish among ‘cross-cultural com-

munication,’ ‘intercultural communication,’ and ‘interdiscourse commu-
nication,’ where in ‘cross-cultural communication’ is the assumption that
is of the existence of distinct cultural communities and the necessity to
compare their communicative practices. In ‘intercultural communication,’
cultural differences are also presupposed but the object of interest is the
interaction with each other.
24 I. VASSILEVA
Thus, in those two types of studies, cultural belonging is traditionally

taken for granted. This stance has been criticized for exhibiting
predominant essentialism that
makes Intercultural Communication studies an exception in the social sci-

ences, where social constructionist approaches have become the preferred
framework in studies of identity (...). The essentialist assumption that people
belong to a culture or have a culture […] has given Intercultural
Communication a somewhat old-fashioned, dowdy, not-quite-with-it, even
reactionary image. (Piller, 2007, p. 209)
Social constructionism, in contrast, maintains that social and linguistic

practices determine culture and identity (Burr, 2003) that traditional
views of culture as being based on ethnicity, nation, faith, etc., actually
deal with imagined communities (Anderson, 1991):
That means that members of a culture imagine themselves and are imagined
by others as group members. These groups are too large to be ‘real’ groups
(i.e. no group member will ever know all the other group members).
Therefore, they are best considered as discursive constructions. That means
that we do not have culture but that we construct culture discursively. (Piller,
2007, p. 211)
In the modern world, however, ‘culture,’ no matter how it is defined,

is in a constant state of flux and crossfertilization. The notion of
‘multiculturalism’ has not appeared incidentally and is especially applicable
to academia. Kramsch (1998, p. 82) describes “persons who belong to
various discourse communities, and who therefore have the linguistic
resources and social strategies to affiliate and identify with many different
cultures and ways of using language” as multicultural.
Besides, some essentialist approaches to culture may also result in ridic-
ulous claims, as is the case with Chaney and Martin (2004, p. 96) who
match ‘verbal style’ with ‘ethnic group’ and state the following about
‘Germans’: “In the German language, the verb often comes at the end of
the sentence. In oral communication, Germans do not immediately get to
the point.” Some discourses about cultural difference could thus lead to
distorted versions of pseudo-Whorfian explanations between language
and thought/culture.
Atkinson (2004) dwells in detail on three current views of culture that
seem to dominate modern research, namely “Received culture versus
postmodern culture versus cultural studies culture.” The first view could
also be called the traditional one, that is, culture is formed and transferred
through generations in large groupings of a political and/or ethnic
character. Connor (2002) pointed out that Contrastive Rhetoric has
largely assumed such a “received culture” perspective.
The second, postmodern views of culture (e.g. Appadurai, 1996;
Lyotard, 1984)
highlight radical change, disruption, discontinuity, inequality, movement,

hybridity, difference, and deterritorialization. In other words, they directly
address the relentless, chaotic mixing-and-matching that globalization,
world capitalism, neo-imperialism, and the diffusion of “Western” popular
culture through the media provide at the beginning of the 21st century.
(Atkinson, 2004)
Therefore, views of culture that pay no heed to these modern develop-

ments remain partial and incomplete, to say the least.
The new developments, however, should not be assessed only nega-
tively. Appadurai (1996), among other theorists, maintains that globaliza-
tion has also led to various positive and interesting cultural synergies and
combinations. For example, what is pertinent to the current discussion—
the internationalization of academics, although of course based on a highly
Westernized model (see Canagarajah, 2002).
The third view of culture described by Atkinson (2004) is cultural
studies,
a field which, despite its name, has taken a rather particular view of culture
since its beginnings in 1950s Britain. Heavily influenced by a Marxist view
of culture as “a contested and conflictual set of practices of representation
bound up with the processes of formation and re-formation of social groups”
(Frow & Morris, 1996, p. p. 356), […] its focus is still substantially on
viewing “contemporary culture” (During, 1992, p. 1) from an ideological
and hegemonic perspective, the underlying claim being that cultural beliefs
and practices are developed predominantly under the influence of exposure
to mass, popular culture in all its forms and all its power.
Conceptualizing culture as a process rather than a product has brought

about a number of studies on the postmodernist-influenced notion of
identity (e.g., Holland et al., 1999; Norton, 2000). The focus in these
studies falls on the
26 I. VASSILEVA
more or less postmodern, decentered, disunified individual who, at the same

time as she is subject to multiple (and often contradictory) sociocultural
influences, is also somehow able to creatively use these influences to shape
herself into something resembling an agentive actor. (Atkinson, 2004)
Refocusing from the society to the subject and from the product to the
process by itself does not solve the problem. In order to really understand
how those pairs function together and are influenced by each other, we
have to use unified synthetic models of society and culture such as Anthony
Giddens’ (1979) structuration model, which I am not going to dwell on
here in detail. In any case, the present study will try to look at both the
product and the process, both the community and the individual.
A relatively new branch of anthropology, cognitive anthropology, has
been involved in investigating culture mainly in the minds of individuals—
through schemas, cultural models, or more recently—connectionist
networks (e.g. Strauss & Quinn, 1997): “What people must know in order
to act as they do, make the things they make, and interpret their experience
in the distinctive way they do” (Quinn & Holland, 1987, p. 4).
Another comparatively recent line of research is to look at so-called
‘small cultures,’ that is, to break the analysis down into complexly
interacting small, medium-sized, and large cultures in order to get a much
more complex notion of the interactions of different cultural forces. This
approach is especially productive for the investigation of academic cultures
that are
the cultures connected with professional peer and reference groups, schools
of academic thought and practice, professional approach etc., generated by
professional associations, unions, university departments, publishers etc. It
is significant that these extend beyond the boundaries of the national
culture: […]. (Holliday, 1994, p. 29–30)
Community of Practice
Turning now to the notion of discourse community, I should introduce
here a definition that has been very influential, namely that of Swales
(1990) who claims that there are six defining criteria for discourse
community: common goals, participatory mechanisms, information
exchange, community specific genres, a highly specialised terminology, and a
high general level of expertise; genres are neither simply texts, nor discourse
communities simply groups of individuals who share attitudes, beliefs, and

expectations (for a critical discussion of this definition, see Vassileva, 2006).
However, the ever-growing number of interdisciplinary studies today,

provoked by the natural need to investigate objects and phenomena from
as many angles as possible, together with the rapid development of
technology, have blurred the boundaries among the traditional disciplines
well-known from the past and have consequently led to the establishment
of interdisciplinary teams of scholars whose work is task-based rather than
discipline-based. Therefore, the widely accepted notion of the existence of
the “academic discourse community” with its common theory,
terminology, scholarly and economic interests, etc., has become obsolete
and is not able to cover the whole variety of characteristic features of
up-to-date research groups in the most general sense of the notion.
If one remains committed to the traditional understanding of ‘discourse
community,’ one should either recognize the existence of a very large
number of very small communities or accept that the academic discourse
community has disappeared. A more realistic point of view would be to
speak at present of fluctuating communities united by temporary
common goals.
It is for this reason that a new term was suggested to account for those
new formations of scholars, namely that of “Community of Practice”
(CofP), introduced by Eckert & McConnell-Ginet (1992). Following
Lave and Wenger (1991), they defined a CofP as follows:
An aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in

an endeavor. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power
relations – in short, practices – emerge in the course of this mutual endeavor.
As a social construct, a CofP is different from the traditional community,
primarily because it is defined simultaneously by its membership and by the
practice in which that membership engages. (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet,
1992, p. 464)
Wenger (1998, p. 76) identifies three basic dimensions of a CofP:
(a) Mutual engagement

(b) A joint negotiated enterprise
(c) A shared repertoire of negotiable resources accumulated over time
28 I. VASSILEVA
Mutual engagement usually involves regular interaction: It is the basis

for the relationships that make the CofP possible. Joint enterprise refers to
a process: The joint enterprise is not just a stated shared goal, but a
negotiated enterprise, involving the complex relationships of mutual
accountability that become part of the practice of the community (Wenger,
1998, p. 80). Shared repertoire: over time, the joint pursuit of an enterprise
results in a shared repertoire of joint resources for negotiating meaning
(Wenger, 1998, p. 85). This includes linguistic resources such as specialized
terminology and linguistic routines, but also resources such as pictures,
regular meals, and gestures that have become part of the community’s
practice.
Wenger (1998, pp. 130–31) suggests that the criterial characteristics of
a CofP are instantiated through a number of more specific features:
• Sustained mutual relationships—harmonious or conflictual

• Shared ways of engaging in doing things together
• The rapid flow of information and propagation of innovation
• Absence of introductory preambles, as if conversations and interac-
tions were merely the continuation of an ongoing process
• Very quick setup of a problem to be discussed
• Substantial overlap in participants’ descriptions of who belongs
• Knowing what others know, what they can do, and how they can
contribute to an enterprise
• Mutually defining identities
• The ability to assess the appropriateness of actions and products
• Specific tools, representations, and other artifacts
• Local lore, shared stories, inside jokes, knowing laughter
• Jargon and shortcuts to communication as well as the ease of pro-
ducing new ones
• Certain styles recognized as displaying membership
• A shared discourse that reflects a certain perspective on the world
To sum up, the study will attempt to check the degree of validity of the
methodological approaches and theoretical positions discussed above in
view of the rhetoric of negative book reviews.
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CHAPTER 4
The Academic Book Review
Abstract This chapter dwells on the features and functions of the aca-
demic book review and uses the methodology of contrastive discourse
analysis where the languages envisaged are English and German. The
methodological apparatus for the analysis of academic book reviews in
the two languages is the classical theory of argumentation. The results of
the analysis show that of the three types of argumentation depending
on the speaker’s purpose (epistemic, deontic, and ethical), epistemic argu-
mentation dominates the reviews. This is not surprising, since academic
discourse generally reflects the natural striving of science for the truth and
for explanations of phenomena. Deontic argumentation is observed in
recommendations where reviewers usually propose alternative, allegedly
better ways and means of solving a particular problem. In contrast to other
academic genres, deontic argumentation is relatively more frequent due
to the evaluative character of the reviews. The same holds for ethical
argumentation that presupposes the categorization of a claim on the scale
of ‘good–bad’. Although this kind of personalized evaluation clashes in
principle with the universal assumption of the objectivity of science, the
A shorter version of part of this chapter, including all graphs, has been published
in: Vassileva, Irena (2010) Critical Book Reviews in German. International
Journal of Applied Linguistics 20, N 3. 354–367.

Switzerland AG 2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32736-0_4
34 I. VASSILEVA
wide use of topoi from the person in reviews points once again to their
highly subjective character.
Especially prominent in this respect is the relatively frequent use of
‘personal attacks’ in English, realized in “scornful, contemptuous, and
sarcastic tones” (Tannen, J Pragmatics, 34:1664, 2002)—a fact that
contradicts Galtung’s (Struktur, Kultur und intellektueller Stil. Ein
vergleichender Essay über sachsonische, teutonische, gallische und
nipponische Wissenschaft. In Wierlacher A (ed) Das Fremde und das
EigeneJudicum-Verlag, pp 151–193, 1985) observation that the English-
speaking academic discourse community is more tolerant than the
German-speaking one. This new development is most probably due to the
function of English as the world lingua franca of research, the language
which is the medium of the ever-growing global competition in academia.
Keywords The academic book review • Dialogism • Addressivity •

Theory of argumentation • Premises in English and German • Topoi in
English and German book reviews
4.1 Introductory Remarks

Spink et al. (1998, p. 365) note: “Historically, scholarly book reviews have
been of primary interest to three groups: Publishers, librarians, and
scholars.” Since the interest of the first two groups is of primarily utilitarian
commercial character, the focus of this chapter shall fall on the scholars’
perspective.
Academic book reviews not only belong to the traditional, well-
established academic genres having existed “for almost 2000 years”
(Hyland, 2004, p. 42), but also possess a functionally determined, highly
evaluative character, thus being potential carriers of academic criticism.
They have, however, started receiving closer attention only in the last
decades. German linguists have indeed sporadically dealt with the problem
over the past 30 years, mainly focusing on: the description of the review
article as a text type (Textsorte) (Pätzold, 1984; Gläser, 1990); the reasons
for writing reviews from a sociocultural perspective and the expression of
evaluation (Wiegand, 1983); and the text structure and linguistic
realization of criticism with special emphasis on hedging devices (Wills,
1997; Hutz, 2001).
4 THE ACADEMIC BOOK REVIEW 35
It was only relatively recently that a special volume appeared (Hyland &
Diani, 2009) looking more closely at review genres and covering basic
issues of these text types, namely theoretical overviews of evaluation,
disciplinary variation, cross-linguistic variation (involving, however, only
English, Spanish and Italian), as well as some diachronic perspectives. This
collection of articles was provoked by previous research also in the above-
mentioned languages, namely Motta-Roth (1996), Shaw (2004), Salager-
Meyer (2001), Römer (2008), Hyland (2004), Giannoni (2006), Moreno
and Suárez (2008), to mention just a few of the most significant
publications.
Some of these studies deal with a genre very closely related to the aca-
demic book review —the academic review article. Swales (2004, p. 208)
points to the factors that necessitate the publication of such articles:
Even in a small field like applied linguistics, the need for review articles is
growing as a result of increasing specialization, the chronological lengthening
of many research strands in the field, the proliferation of publishing outlets,
the pressure to publish, and the consequent increasing numbers of active
participants.
Diani (2007, p. 38) distinguishes between a book review and a book

review article, where a book review usually consists in a summary of the
content and evaluative observations, whereas a book review article has a
“metadiscursive nature” and “authors of book review articles exploit the
evaluative dimension to construct argument and ongoing dialogue within
the discourse-disciplinary community, where the polyphony of voices is
traceable, i.e., their own voices or other textual voices like the reviewed
author’s voice [...].” This distinction will become especially clear in the
discussion of the material in Chap. 5.
4.2 Definitions and Basic Features

Academic book reviews belong to so-called review genres described by
Hyland and Diani (2009, p. 1) as “texts and part texts that are written
with the explicit purpose of evaluating the research, the texts and the
contributions of fellow academics and include book reviews book review
articles, review articles, book blurbs and literature reviews.” Referring to
Becher (1989) who claims that books are more typical of “rural research
areas” where competition is not so much related to timeliness of
36 I. VASSILEVA
publication, Hyland (2004, p. 43) duly notes that: “Because of this, book
reviews continue to play a significant role in the scholarship of the soft
disciplines […].” A couple of pages later, however, Hyland seems to
contradict his own statement by maintaining that: “The genre is, in a
sense, parasitic on the one it critiques; it offers no fresh evidence to the
community yet appeals for colleague’s attention, occupying precious pages
of space in academic journals.”
However, critical and especially negative reviews often offer “fresh evi-
dence” in the form of counterevidence to the results/assumptions/theo-
ries, etc. presented in the reviewed book, thus justifying the refutations
expressed.
Wikipedia, probably the most frequently quoted Internet resource and
therefore unavoidable even in the present discussion, suggests the
following definition:
Book reviews of scholarly books are checks upon the research books pub-
lished by scholars; unlike articles, book reviews tend to be solicited.
Journals typically have a separate book review editor determining which
new books to review and by whom. If an outside scholar accepts the book
review editor’s request for a book review, he or she generally receives a free
copy of the book from the journal in exchange for a timely review.
Publishers send books to book review editors in the hope that their books
will be reviewed. The length and depth of research book reviews varies
much from journal to journal, as does the extent of textbook and trade book
review. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_journal#Book_reviews)
In its essence, this definition focuses not so much on the content but
rather on the process of production of book reviews; in fact, it seems to
reflect the general public’s view of what a book review is about.
Wills (1997, p. 136) suggests perhaps the most concise and precise
definition of academic book reviews:
A person, as a rule an expert, expresses her/his opinion on a scientific work

with view to bringing about a (tacit) feedback between herself/ himself and
the respective author and to familiarizing a more or less expert leadership
with the achievements and failures of the work under review. The reviewer
produces, on the basis of his subjective text assessment, a metatext directly
related to a primary text.
What follows from this definition are the two basic features of the review:
4 THE ACADEMIC BOOK REVIEW 37
1. The discourse of the review is not independent and self-sufficient,

but is closely related ideationally to preceding texts and practices,
forming a wide and complex network of intertextual links.
2. The two basic communicative functions of the review are the infor-
mative and the evaluative. Thus, Spink et al. (1998, p. 364) note
that book reviews allow the audience “to keep abreast of new publi-
cations they may wish to acquire and provide a forum for the peer
review of new theories and ideas.”
From the point of view of systemic-functional grammar (Halliday,

1985), the first point above reflects the ideational and the (inter)textual
functions of language, while the second point focuses primarily on the
interpersonal function which, as discussed later in this chapter, is the
central one for the genre.
In fact, there exist two basic contradictory assumptions as to which
function is (or should be) dominant in book reviews—the purely
ideational/informative or the interpersonal/evaluative one. Shaw (2009,
p. 217) represents the first viewpoint and makes a distinction between
“interested” and “disinterested” evaluative genres, where “reviews adopt
a disinterested stance, clearly intending to give the reader an honest, if
personal, evaluation.” Indeed, referring to Bhatia (2004), further on Shaw
admits that “an individual review text may have any sort of private purpose,
but in the English-speaking academic world […] the genre is read as
disinterested, and a writer who is somehow involved with the book
reviewed is expected to declare an interest.”
To begin with, although this is supposed to be the official purpose of
the review, in reality these ‘ideal rules’ are very frequently violated, as the
present study is going to demonstrate.
Secondly, Shaw maintains that this kind of “honesty” and objectivity is
typical of the “English-speaking academic world.” However, evidence will
be provided in this study (see especially the chapter on “Academic war”)
that proves the opposite and demonstrates that some authors are ready to
go to extremes in their ways of expressing vicious criticism in order to
assert their claims through refuting the claims of their opponents.
I am therefore much more inclined to side with Lather (1999, p. 3),
among others, who maintains: “A review is gatekeeping, policing, and
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
groote oogen nu eens naar Van Brakel en dan weer naar het haar
bekende jonge mensch keek. [73]
„Mag ik u meneer Geerling voorstellen?” begon Van Brakel

eenigszins stotterend.
„Niet noodig, niet noodig!” viel deze in, met den hoed in de hand en
een sierlijke buiging. „Ik had reeds het genoegen mij aan mevrouw
en aan mejuffrouw haar nicht voor te stellen, U neemt het mij hoop ik
niet kwalijk, maar toen ik van avond hoorde, dat meneer Van Brakel
u voor zaken moest spreken, kon ik de gelegenheid niet laten
passeeren, maar verzocht dringend hem te mogen vergezellen. Ik
hoop, mevrouw Du Roy, dat u het mij ten goede zult houden. De
welwillende ontvangst, die mij in uw charmante woning ten deel
mocht vallen.… de aangename conversatie.… de lieflijke
persoonlijkheid van uw nichtje.… e n f i n mevrouw: m e v o i l à .
Nogmaals: duid het mij niet ten kwade.”
Zoo’n kwekkelaar! dacht ze, maar niettemin glimlachte ze, gaarne

gevleid als ze was.
„Komt binnen,” zei ze, hen voorgaand in de achtergalerij, waar de

hond van Van Brakel, die er thuis was, zich gemakkelijk op een
rotanstoel had uitgestrekt. „Wel, ik heb niets tegen uw bezoek,
meneer Geerling; alleen zult u het gezelschap moeten ontberen van
Ceciel, want die is er niet.”
„Helaas! zou daar niets aan te doen zijn?”
Verwonderd had Van Brakel stil geluisterd, terwijl hij zijn dienstpet op
zijn wandelstok zette en dezen in een hoek plaatste. Welk een
brutale vent was dat commensaaltje van hem! En dat scheen
waarachtig goed te gaan. Hij viel maar dadelijk met de deur in huis!
„Wel neen,” antwoordde mevrouw Du Roy. „Ik kan haar niet hier
tooveren.” [74]
Zij was aan ’t smalle eind gaan zitten van de groote eettafel en
Geerling had familiaar een stoel genomen en was aan het hoekje bij
haar komen zitten, met zijn ellebogen op de tafel en zijn beide
handen tegen elkaar voor zijn gezicht.
„Ik weet niet of u tooveren kunt.”
Zij lachte.
„Wel, wel, zie ik er dan uit als een toovenaarster?”
„Dat weet ik niet. Het is al naar ’t geen men daaronder verstaat. Een
betooverend mooie vrouw als u, moet ook kunnen tooveren.”
Van Brakel fronste de wenkbrauwen. Niet dat hij zoo verliefd was op
mevrouw Du Roy, maar hij vond toch dat Geerling wel wat ver ging.
Zij zag, dat het den ingenieur niet beviel; dat deed haar innig veel
pleizier.
„Kom,” zei deze tot het jonge mensch, „zeg nu maar waar het op
staat.”
„Dus er bestond een afspraak?”
„Dat nu niet. Maar hij is dol van Ceciel en nu is eigenlijk de heele

quastie, dat hij je wil vragen om haar nog ’n uurtje hier te laten
komen.”
„O zoo, is het dat!”
„Dat is het,” vervolgde Geerling spottend, „en u doet het, nietwaar?

U hebt wel medelijden met een armen jongen, die zijn hart heeft
verloren en zijn oog heeft laten vallen.…”
„Schei uit,” riep ze lachend. „Als je nog verder gaat, schiet er op ’t

laatst niets meer van je over.”
Ze vonden het alle drie aardig en lachten een trio.
„Nu, ik zal eens zien. Beloven dat ze komt, kan ik niet. [75]Het is de
vraag of de oudelui het willen hebben. Mijn zuster is soms heel lastig
van humeur.”
De zuster van mevrouw Du Roy en de moeder van Ceciel was

volstrekt niet lastig van humeur, en liet integendeel het meisje
volkomen doen wat ze wilde, gelijk zijzelve dat altijd had gedaan.
Toen het leitje van mevrouw Du Roy kwam, zaten moeder en

dochter te lezen; de vader, een gewezen scheepskapitein, was
reeds naar bed; de goede man had sedert vele jaren de vaste
gewoonte, om als te acht uren het diner was opgedaan, een bord
soep te eten, daarna op te staan, zijn vrouw en dochter een „goeden
nacht, samen” toe te wenschen, om vervolgens, zooals hij het
noemde, „onder zeil” te gaan.
De beide dames zaten te lezen.
„Het is voor jou,” zei mama, ’t leitje aan haar dochter overreikend.
„Van wie?”
„Van tante Nel.”
„Wat wil ze?”
„Ze vraagt of je komt.”
„Nu nog? ’t Is al zoo laat.”

„Er is visite. Ze schrijft, dat er een zekere Geerling ook is.”
Haastig greep Ceciel het leitje. Drommels, die was er vlug bij, vond
ze, en ze glimlachte met groote zelfvoldoening. Ze zou gaan, zeker;
zij was er het meisje niet naar om zulk een schoone gelegenheid
ongebruikt voorbij te laten gaan. Geerling was iemand van
fatsoenlijke familie en hij had geld. Persoonlijk was hij haar volmaakt
onverschillig. Zij was niet amoureus van aard, en hoezeer zij ook op
haar tante mocht [76]gelijken,—in dàt opzicht bestond tusschen die
twee een hemelsbreed verschil.
Het meisje sloeg een blik in het rond en zuchtte. Onder andere
levensomstandigheden zou zij zich de moeite niet hebben gegeven
een japon aan te trekken en tien huizen ver te loopen om een
jongmensch te ontmoeten, dat haar totaal onverschillig was. Doch
als ze zoo rondzag in de vierkante binnengalerij, waar ze met haar
moeder zat, dan voelde ze diep, dat ze niets onbeproefd mocht laten
om zich te ontrukken aan zulk een doodelijke omgeving. Buiten op
den onbestraten Indischen weg wierp een petroleum-lantaarn een
flauw schijnsel, zoo flauw dat de open vensters uit de helder
verlichte galerij gezien groote zwarte vlekken schenen. Geen rijtuig
reed voorbij; slechts nu en dan zwiepte een vervallen dogcar langs
het huis. Nijdige muskieten gonsden om haar ooren, of gingen op
hun kop staan en staken de angels door het weefsel der fijne kabaja
in haar blanke huid. Het licht der lampen schitterde in eentonige
verblindheid op de witte muren en de marmeren bladen der tafels,
en reflecteerde in de grijs geverfde zoldering, waarvan de breede,
zwarte naden tusschen de planken en de veel te talrijke, niet
meskant bezaagde balkjes van slordigen bouw getuigden; alles
dilettanten-werk! Rond den rotanmat op den vloer, kwam een breede
rand roode tegelsteenen uit, door de vocht gevlekt en dof gevlamd
en bij het lamplicht in één toon uitloopende met den geteerden rand
onder aan den muur, waarboven zich in vuilgeel en vaalgroen allerlei
fantastische figuren van uitgeslagen vochtigheid teekenden. Zij zag
dat alles nu niet in zijn onderdeden, maar ze kende het al jaren, en
ze [77]onderging den verschrikkelijken invloed der eentonigheid en
der doodelijke verveling van zulk een omgeving. Haar moeder zat
tegenover haar een roman te lezen en sprak geen woord. Zij was
een goede vrouw, maar des avonds na het eten las zij geregeld
elken avond in een roman en hoe ouderwetscher en hoe
aandoenlijker die was, hoe liever. Soms zag Ceciel een paar groote
tranen onder haar moeders bril uitvloeien en teekenden zich de
trekken van den leeftijd door het medelijden scherper af op het
gelaat; als dan het meisje spottend vroeg: of het zoo erg roerend
was, dan kreeg zij slechts een afwijzend gebaar tot antwoord, en las
mama ijverig voort over de verschrikkelijke lotgevallen eener
denkbeeldige, arme, ongelukkige, verleide, verlaten en verstooten
Clothilde of Amaranthe of van een miskenden en gepijnigden door
verdriet verterenden Eduard of Adolf.
Zij wilde weg uit zulk een archi-saaie omgeving. Daar mochten haar
vader en moeder, die een vroolijke jeugd achter den rug hadden,
genoegen mee nemen, zij bedankte er feestelijk voor; zij zou niets
onbeproefd laten om weg te komen, mits op een hoogst fatsoenlijke
manier. Dat het verbazend moeilijk zou zijn, begreep ze. Bij haar
ouders kwam nooit iemand aan huis, zoodat er geen gelegenheid
was met anderen kennis te maken, en van de eigenaardigheden van
tante Du Roy was zij niet gediend; als ze niet van haar had moeten
erven, zou ze er nooit aan huis gekomen zijn.
Ceciel was nu de twintig gepasseerd; ofschoon ze niet onbesproken

was gebleven, was ze toch in waarheid een fatsoenlijk meisje. En
dat verkoos ze te blijven, want het was haar ernstig verlangen een
behoorlijk huwelijk te doen. Ze had zooveel [78]modder zien
dwarrelen in haar familie, dat zij er een diepen afkeer van gevoelde.
Trouwen wilde ze met een man van fatsoenlijke familie; met iemand,
die, als hij in Europa kwam, zijn vrouw in nette kringen kon brengen,
waar men fashionabel en comfortabel leefde. Het kon haar niet
schelen of hij jong zou zijn of reeds van gevorderden leeftijd, mooi of
leelijk, rijk of niet bemiddeld, bruin of blond,—als hij voor zichzelf
maar een goeden naam had en zijn familie in Europa net en
fatsoenlijk was. Tot nog toe was het haar niet gelukt, en de vrees
voor het lot van den kieskeurigen reiger, die eerst niet wou kiezen uit
den plas, omdat de vischsoorten hem te ordinair waren, maar die
zich ten slotte moest behelpen met een vorsch, sloeg haar wel eens
om het hart.
Want er was dikwijls genoeg aanzoek gedaan om haar hand, zooals

te begrepen was van een mooi meisje met geld. Maar ze bedankte
voor een man, aan wiens naam een verchristelijkt inlandsch geurtje
was, of voor een p u r s a n g met een Amsterdamschen of anderen
plaatselijken tongval, of voor een Indischen jongen met een
omgekeerden naam. Van dat alles was Ceciel niet gediend. Zij wist
precies wat ze wilde; alleen was het haar nog niet gelukt den waren
Jozef te bemachtigen.
Geerling kon uitstekend in aanmerking komen. Zoowel in Europa,

dat wist ze, als in Indië was zijn familie in deftige burgerkringen
geacht. Bovendien had hij alles vóór: zijn fortuin, zijn jeugd, zijn
uiterlijk, zelfs ondanks wat geaffecteerdheid en dansmeesterachtige
pedanterie.
Dat hij bij tante Du Roy kwam, en nog wel in den avond, was een
veeg teeken. Zij begreep wel, hoe hij daar was gekomen en dat was
zoo goed als een half mislukken harer [79]plannen. Maar zij mocht,
vond ze, de gelegenheid niet laten voorbijgaan, te minder daar ze
zelf volstrekt geen gevaar liep er eer of deugd ook maar voor een
greintje bij in te schieten. Zij was een flink meisje met een helder
verstand; er waren een half dozijn jongelui op de plaats, waarvan de
eerste de beste zou geaccepteerd zijn, wanneer hij zich als ernstig
pretendent had aangemeld, en onder hen was ook Geerling. Maar zij
vreesde geen t ê t e - à - t ê t e met een hunner. Volstrekt niet! Ze was
er zelfs zeker van, dat geen hunner zich ongepaste vrijheden zou
veroorloven.
Ceciel had een mooie lichte japon aangetrokken, een bloem in ’t

haar gestoken en was in een half uur bij mevrouw Du Roy, waar ze
met een vriendelijk gezicht binnenkwam, haar tante kuste, Geerling
glimlachend de hand reikte en Van Brakel, met een blik vol
minachting, die hem hoogst onaangenaam trof, in de gelegenheid
stelde haar vingertoppen aan te raken.
Geerling ijlde naar een stoel, en zette dien klaar voor Ceciel; dadelijk
schoof hij er naast en ving een druk discours aan, waarvan ’t hem
echter spoedig zwaar viel de kosten alleen te dragen.
Mevrouw Du Roy maakte voor de heeren een grog en veroorloofde

zich daarbij als in het voorbijgaan allerlei a c t e s d e
p o s s e s s i o n tegenover Van Brakel, nu eens door op zijn
schouder te leunen, dan weer door hem bij den voornaam te
noemen. De ingenieur, nog in zijn leerjaren, keek dan telkens
onwillekeurig naar Geerling, alsof hij vreesde, dat die het zien en
hooren zou; maar deze lette alleen op de mooie Ceciel, terwijl hij
zich uitputte in aardigheden, en met gulzigen [80]blik de som
opmaakte van haar bekende en vermoedelijke bekoorlijkheden. Zij
was vriendelijk en glimlachte hem tegen; maar uit de plooi kwam ze
toch niet. De dubbelzinnigheden verdroeg ze stil, en zij deed alsof zij
niets daarvan bemerkte. Soms deed tante Du Roy er aan mee, maar
Ceciel sloeg er geen acht op.
Zoo zat men een uurtje bij elkaar; de vrouw des huizes begon de
ongelegen visite vervelend te vinden; Van Brakel vond ze ergerlijk;
Ceciel zat op heete kolen, en zelfs Geerling, hoe ook opgetogen van
bewondering, bespeurde dat er iets g ê n a n t s begon te komen in
het gezelschap.
„Kom,” zei het meisje opstaand, „’t loopt tegen elf uren, ik ga naar
huis.”
Mevrouw Du Roy loosde een stillen zucht van verlichting.
„Ja, kind,” zei ze, „anders krijgen we het met mama aan den stok.”
„Mag ik zoo vrij zijn?” vroeg Geerling zijn hoed nemend, alsof hij
vond, dat de vraag slechts voor den vorm was, en het antwoord niet
anders dan toestemmend kon wezen.
„Als het u genoegen doet,” antwoordde Ceciel. „Wat mij aangaat, is

het waarlijk de moeite niet waard. In vijf minuten ben ik thuis.”
Bij het heengaan groot betoon van hartelijkheid van den kant van
Geerling, met een blik aan Van Brakels adres, die duidelijk te kennen
gaf, dat ze nu beiden eigenlijk pas e n b o n n e f o r t u n e kwamen;
van de zijde van Ceciel dezelfde onaangename teruggetrokkenheid
tegenover den ingenieur.
„Ik vind haar een onuitstaanbaar nest,” zei hij, toen de jongelui weg
waren. [81]
„Wel, ’t is mijn schuld niet, dat je haar hier hebt ontmoet! Waarom
bracht je dien jongen mee? Je wist vooraf dat ’t er hem alleen om te
doen was Ceciel te ontmoeten.”
„Het is gemakkelijk gezegd. Ik kon onmogelijk van hem afkomen.”
Mevrouw Du Roy keek vreemd op.
„Niet van hem afkomen?”

„Neen. Hij woont bij mij in ’t paviljoentje.”
„Och, zoo.… en?”
„En hij vertelde me heel kalm, dat hij wist waar ik heen ging.”
Zij barstte los in toorn. Nog nooit had ze zoo’n gemeen babbelnest
gezien! Geen vinger kon men in de asch steken of Jan-en-alleman
had er ’t zijne over te zeggen. Het was een schandaal! Het was
beter, dat iedereen zich maar bemoeide met zijn eigen zaken, dan
had hij genoeg te doen. Maar ze roerden liever bij een ander het vuil,
opdat men den stank van het hunne niet ruiken zou.—Op dat
chapiter was ze volmaakt thuis en eenmaal aan den gang, openden
zich de sluizen harer welsprekendheid en stortte zij in een
eindeloozen woordenstroom de fiolen van haar toorn over de plaats
harer inwoning uit.
Van Brakel knikte nu en dan toestemmend, en sprak, waar hij er

kans toezag, een enkel hartig woordje mee. Zij had groot gelijk, vond
hij; het waren precies zijn ideeën; vroeger had hij nooit geloofd, dat
er zooveel kwaadsprekerij in de wereld bestond, maar nu was hij tot
de overtuiging geraakt, dat het zoo was.
„Maak je er niet zoo kwaad om,” zei hij vriendelijk tot [82]mevrouw Du
Roy, die bleek zag van woede, wat haar volstrekt niet leelijker
maakte. „Het v o l k is het wezenlijk niet waard.”
„Dat is het ook niet,” stemde zij toe, de lampen in de achtergalerij

uitdraaiend, „maar ik kan mij er toch woedend om maken.”
„Het is een heerlijke avond,” zei Geerling toen hij met Ceciel het erf
afliep. „Een mooie donkerblauwe sterrenlucht. Hoe zoudt u er over
denken, als we eens een half uurtje gingen toeren?”
„U hebt niet eens een wagen.”
„Och, daar is gemakkelijk aan te komen, hier op den hoek bij den
rijtuigverhuurder.”
„Dank u. Ik ga regelrecht naar huis.”
„Toch niet.”
„Zeer zeker. Het spijt me, dat u tante hebt overgehaald, mij dat leitje
te schrijven.”
„Spijt u dat wezenlijk zoo erg?” vroeg hij verwonderd en

teleurgesteld.
„Ja. Niet omdat ik u ontmoet heb, maar omdat ik daardoor in

gezelschap ben gebracht met dien Van Brakel.”
„Hij is toch zoo kwaad niet!”
„Ik weet niet in welk opzicht hij goed is, maar het is verschrikkelijk
voor ons; wij zijn gedwongen wèl te blijven met tante Du Roy, maar
het is ten koste van zóóveel, dat het mij ten minste te zwaar wordt.”
Deze plotselinge wending van het gesprek sloeg Geerling geheel uit
het veld; maar de vertrouwelijke toon, waarop zij [83]sprak,
boezemde hem belangstelling in. Hij wist niet wat te antwoorden.
„Zij is altijd zóó geweest,” ging Ceciel voort, in dienzelfden toon en

dicht bij Geerling voortschrijdend. „Reeds als jong meisje speelde zij
zoo’n rol. Later, toen ze met oom Du Roy trouwde, dacht de familie,
dat het beter zou gaan, maar ze bedroog hem ook, en na zijn
dood.… nu, dat ziet ge,” eindigde zij zuchtend. „Maar zij is rijk, en
dat zijn wij niet. Pa en ma hebben verplichting aan haar; dáárom
moeten wij zulke vernederingen ondergaan; daarom kwam ik van
avond bij haar, terwijl ik wist, dat er die gemeene Van Brakel was.”
Er waren tranen in haar stem, en, naar de beweging, welke zij met
haar zakdoek maakte, ook in haar oogen.
Het was, vond Geerling, uiterst moeilijk en zeer onverwacht. Hij had
alles eer verwacht, dan zulk een deugdzame métamorphose. ’t Viel
hem om den drommel niet mee! Zoo spraakzaam en vroolijk hij was,
waar hij meende dat steken los waren aan het kleed der braafheid,
zoo onbeholpen was hij, nu plotseling bleek, dat er geen torntje te
vinden was. Want de ongereptheid scheen hem onbetwistbaar. Aan
een dom te kennen gegeven eerbaarheid had hij geen geloof
geslagen, maar de correcte en toch eenvoudige wijze, waarop
Ceciel hem met half bedwongen smart, de familie-verhouding had
uiteengezet, liet, naar zijn opvatting, geen twijfel aan de waarheid
toe. A d i e u p l a i s i r s ! dacht hij met een zucht. Dat Indië was me
toch ook een land! Men sprak van avonturen! Hij wilde dan wel eens
weten, waar die te zoeken waren. Nu ja, Van Brakel bij die weduwe
van veertig jaar. Maar anders? Hij, Geerling, had tot nog toe niet veel
[84]anders ontmoet dan Indische dames, die hem erg geblaseerd
toeschenen, en Europeesche, die zich erg in acht schenen te
nemen. Trouwens, er was, naar zijn opinie, al bitter weinig
gelegenheid in een land, waar de huizen bijna geheel open waren,
zoodat het was alsof de menschen op straat leefden, en waar men
ten overvloede altijd een of meer bedienden in het oog liep. En dan
de warmte!
Terwijl hij zwijgend voortwandelde naast het mooie meisje, dat zich
bitter beklaagde over haar tante Du Roy, ging dat alles den
teleurgestelden jonkman door het hoofd. Neen, heilig dan Holland!
Daar kon men toch anders pret hebben! Hoe heerlijk leenden zich
Amsterdam en Den Haag voor allerlei genoegens, stille zoowel als
luidruchtige. En hoe welwillend waren er de burgermeisjes voor nette
jongelui, die trakteeren konden op mooie cadeautjes en lekkere
snoeperij! Hij had daar ook gewoond op gemeubileerde kamers.
Maar wat was dat gezellig! De jonge dochters van zijn hospes
brachten hem ’s morgens zelf het ontbijt op zijn kamer. Het hinderde
immers niemand! Meestal trouwden ze toch naderhand met iemand
uit hun stand, zonder dat onbescheiden hanen naar vroeger gekakel
kraaiden. Hier in Indië kreeg men des morgens zijn eigen
ongewasschen huisjongen te zien, en als men een conquête wilde
maken, dan was dat heel gemakkelijk, mits men zich wilde bepalen
tot de „kleine vrouw” en men de hulp inriep van den zilveren
standaard; het bi-metallisme kwam dan vanzelf!
„Ik begrijp het nu,” zei Geerling met een zucht. „Maar u houdt mij ten
goede, dat ik het te voren niet begreep.”
„Och, ik neem het u niet kwalijk. De meeste menschen verdenken

mij, omdat ik het ongeluk heb een tante te bezitten, [85]die zoo
raar.… is. Het is heel ongelukkig, maar het is niet anders.”
Geerling kreeg medelijden. Wat drommel, a l s ze een fatsoenlijk

meisje was—en daaraan twijfelde hij nu niet meer—dan was het
toch ook vervloekt hard.
„Het i s onaangenaam,” gaf hij toe, „doch u moet het u niet

aantrekken. Er is nu eenmaal niets aan te veranderen.”
„Helaas, neen!”
„Welnu, zet u dan er over heen. U bent veel te jong en te mooi om

over zulke dingen verdriet te hebben.”
„Het is juist dàt wat het erger maakt; indien ik oud was en leelijk.…”
„Neen, dat is waar!”

„U ziet bovendien aan uzelven, waartoe het leidt.”
Verlegen zweeg hij, en beet op zijn kneveltje.
„Of wilt u soms beweren, dat uw handelwijze van hedenavond voor

mij een vereerend blijk van vertrouwen was?”
„Drommels, neen, juffrouw Ceciel,” zei hij in verwarring. „U hebt

gelijk. Neem het mij niet kwalijk.… Als ik vooruit had geweten.…
Maar u zult mij moeten toegeven, dat men niet alles te voren weten
kan. De schijn.…”
Ze lei haar hand vertrouwelijk op zijn arm.
„Ge behoeft u niet te verontschuldigen, meneer Geerling. Ik weet het

immers wel, en ik neem het u niet kwalijk.”
Ze stonden voor de deur harer woning, die open was; er brandde

nog licht, schoon mama reeds naar bed was en alleen een bediende
de wacht hield.
Hij zag haar fraai gevormde blanke hand op zijn arm en hij zag ook
haar mooi gezichtje in het zachte licht. Heer in [86]Den Haag, wat
was het toch eeuwig jammer, dat het nu dáárop moest uitloopen! ’t
Was een beeldje, vond hij.
„Ik zal toch,” zei hij, „het genoegen hebben u nog wel eens te zien?”
„Och waarom?”
„Wel.… wel.…” het was satansch moeilijk er een behoorlijk antwoord

op te geven. „Wel, ik vind u zoo beminnelijk .… zulk een engel.”
Wat was het toch lastig tegenover zoo’n „fatsoenlijk” meisje geen
mal figuur te maken!
„Een engel,” zei ze glimlachend. „Een engel en.… te degradeeren.”
„Neen, waarachtig niet. In ernst juffrouw Ceciel, ik denk aan zoo iets
niet. Ik hoop dat u gelooft.…”
„Ik weet het niet, ik weet niet of ik u k a n gelooven.”
„Gerust. Laat mij u ’n visite komen maken bij uw oudelui.”
Ze scheen te aarzelen.
„S o e d a , ik zeg ja noch neen, a d i e u .”
Zij stak hem de hand toe.
Heel graag had hij haar een kus gegeven, iets, vond hij, dat zelfs
was overeen te brengen met het fatsoen, doch hij deed er zelfs geen
poging toe.
In haar kamer zat Ceciel nog lang te p i k i r e n . Zij was over

zichzelve tevreden. Als hij nu kwam, zou ze wel verder zien; kwam
hij niet, dan had zij zich in geen geval gecompromitteerd en kon hij
niets dan goeds van haar zeggen. Hij was haar meegevallen. Ze had
wel eens meer van die ontmoetingen gehad, en dan hadden de
teleurgestelden altijd getracht de vrije liefde te verdedigen, die voor
te stellen als [87]de onschuldigste zaak ter wereld, en, ondanks al
haar redeneeren, allerlei pogingen aangewend om hun doel te
bereiken. En als ze het vruchtelooze van hun praatjes ten slotte
inzagen, dan waren ze na de plechtigste verzekeringen hunner
liefde, heengegaan en nimmer teruggekomen.
Geerling had zich fatsoenlijker gedragen, dat stond vast. Of h i j zou

terugkomen was niet te zeggen, maar zoo er ooit iemand é p r i s
was geweest van haar, dan was het dit jonge mensch, meende zij.
Lucie sleet haar leven in een kalme eentonigheid, die haar echter
niet hinderde en waaraan ze gewoon was. In den laatsten tijd was
het met den berenstrijd zeer gunstig gesteld, en dat verheugde haar,
hoe licht zij overigens dien strijd ook tilde. Als ze geld te kort
kwamen, dan had ze maar te spreken, en Herman gaf het haar. Wat
zou ze meer verlangen? Ze behoefde tegenwoordig Geerling niet
meer lastig te vallen, en dat was te aangenamer, omdat hij van zijn
kant niet meer zoo erg voorkomend en gedienstig was. Hij bleef niet
meer napraten als het diner was afgeloopen, maar ging ook uit. Nu,
dat deed haar pleizier, want dan kon ze naar bed gaan. Maar toch
had het haar aandacht getrokken. En wat haar ook bevreemdde was
het gedrag van Herman. Niet het feit, dat hij tegenwoordig weleens
thuis kwam als het ochtendschot viel,—een uurtje vroeger of later in
den nacht hinderde haar niet. Aan zijn uithuizigheid was ze gewoon;
niet aan zijn ingetogenheid. Doch ook dáárover beklaagde zij zich
niet; haar natuur was passief van aard. Zij was een huismoedertje;
en daar zij die bestemming meer dan voldoende had bereikt,
[88]waren haar wenschen vervuld en vroeg zij ’t leven nog slechts om
een bescheiden deel van genot; veel zou haar niet eens hebben
gesmaakt.
Hoe Van Brakel aan geld kwam? Wel, ze dacht er nooit over na: het
waren zijn zaken; als zij maar kreeg wat ze noodig had, dan achtte
zij zich verder niet gerechtigd hem te vragen uit welke bronnen hij
putte.
En toch overviel haar op zekeren dag een geweldige vrees.
„Dat is een leelijk geval met den ingenieur Enne, hè?” zei Geerling
aan tafel.
„Ja,” antwoordde Van Brakel, „’t spijt me voor hem; hij was ’n beste
vent en uitstekend op de hoogte.”
„Dat hoor ik algemeen zeggen. Het is geen kleinigheid ook.”
„Neen, vijf en twintig mille is een mooie som.”
Verwonderd keek Lucie haar man aan.
„Waar heb je het over? Wat is er gebeurd met Enne?”
„Hij heeft een tekort in kas,” zei Van Brakel.
„Je hebt me er niets van verteld.”
„Ik had het vergeten.”
„Er moet nogal aardig gestolen zijn, meen ik zoo,” zei Geerling,
„want het heele werk was maar twee ton.”
„Twee en een halve,” verbeterde Van Brakel.
„Maar dat doet er niets toe: het is en blijft een even beroerde zaak.”
Zij praatten er op door, doch Lucie zei geen woord meer. Er was
haar plotseling een verschrikkelijk denkbeeld voor den geest
gekomen. Het gebeurde haar niet elken dag, dat ze een eigen idee
had, maar als dat voorviel, dan overrompelde het haar ook geheel.
Waarom had Herman haar dat [89]verzwegen, hij, die anders dadelijk
al dergelijke dingen aan zijn vrouw vertelde? Ver van het
vermoeden, dat dit verzuim was te wijten aan de omstandigheid, dat
zij niet meer zoo geheel en al zijn vrouw mocht heeten, zag zij een
mogelijk verband tusschen die achterhoudendheid en de ruimte van
geld in de laatste maanden. Zij kon niet eten; het was alsof ’t haar in
de keel bleef steken.
„Hoe is het,” vroeg Van Brakel, toen ze haar vork neerlei, „smaakt
het je niet vandaag?”
„Neen, ik heb niet veel eetlust.”
„Heeft het verhaal van Enne dien bedorven?” vroeg Geerling zonder
erg.
Zij trok de wenkbrauwen samen en zag den jongen man bijna

angstig aan.
„Waarom vraagt u dat?”
Hij was er verwonderd over.
„Och, zoo maar. Het is heel onpleizierig, als men zulke dingen
hoort.”
„Ja, het is verschrikkelijk!”
Van Brakel gevoelde zich niet op zijn gemak. Het was hem thans
duidelijk, dat zijn vrouw had nagedacht; hij verweet zich zijn
onvoorzichtigheid, het was verkeerd geweest zich zoo c o u l a n t te
toonen; maar hij had het gedaan uit goedheid, om haar in zekeren
zin schadeloos te stellen; het moest haar ten slotte toch
bevreemden, dat hij niet meer klaagde over geldgebrek, zijn
schulden betaalde enzoovoort. En nu vreesde zij, dat hij zich ook
had vergrepen aan ’s Lands gelden; dat ook hij de verleiding niet
had kunnen weerstaan. Hij wilde haar gerust stellen. Bovendien
[90]was het een fraaie gelegenheid om een kranig figuur te maken,
en die mocht hij niet ongebruikt voorbij laten gaan.
„Wat hadt je toch daar straks?” vroeg hij toen ze alleen waren.
„Niets.”
„Dat is maar gekheid. Er was wel iets. Iets dat je erg hinderde,
zoodat je er niet van eten kon.”
„Och neen, het was niets.”
„Wees nu niet kinderachtig en vertel het me.”
Ze keerde zich naar hem toe, bleek en met de oogen vol tranen,
sloeg haar armen om zijn hals en zei weenend:
„O Herman, het is niets!”
„Een mooie manier om te bewijzen dat het niets is,” zei hij lachend.
„Wil ik je wat zeggen?” En zijn mond bij haar oor brengend, fluisterde
hij: „Je bent bang, dat ik evenals Enne mijn kas heb nagezien.”
Ze kon het niet ontkennen, al begon zij zich reeds over het
vermoeden te schamen.
„Nu,” ging hij voort, terwijl hij haar eerlijk gezicht in beide handen
nam en haar in de betraande oogen zag: „maak jij je maar niet
ongerust, hoor Luus. Bij hetgeen wij uitgeven is geen cent gestolen
geld, noch van ’t Gouvernement, noch van iemand anders.”
„Goddank!” zei ze en toen hij heenging—het was zijn avond bij

mevrouw Du Roy—kuste ze hem als het ware met dankbaarheid. Ze
had niet verder gevraagd; ze had ook niets verder willen weten. Of
hij bij het spel had gewonnen, of misschien een cadeau in geld had
geaccepteerd van een aannemer, of op welke andere wijze hij aan
het geld kwam,[91]—zij bemoeide er zich niet mee. Als het dàt maar
niet was. Want het eerste was uitstekend, en dat was het laatste nu
wel niet, maar daar waren er zoo veel, die zich smeren lieten, zonder
dat het hun ooit in eenig opzicht nadeel had gedaan.
Terwijl Lucie zich gereed maakte om haar gewone nachtrust te

nemen, dacht ze zoo daarover na, en dribbelde van het eene vertrek
naar het andere. Zij nam één voor één de kleintjes eens op met een
zekere bedoeling, waaraan de slaapdronken kinderen als werktuiglijk
voldeden. Zij had nog honger, nu de brok van schrik uit haar keel
was verdwenen; ze ging nog even naar de achtergalerij, waar juist
een bediende zijn blaastalent aan het uitdooven der lampen wilde
wijden. Er was nog wel het een en ander in de kast, om de schade in
te halen.
Een paar minuten later deed zij zich gemoedelijk te goed aan een
miniatuur hutspot, toen de looper van het postkantoor de brieven
bracht. Als ze naar bed was, schoof hij ze gewoonlijk maar onder de
voordeur naar binnen, maar nu de man licht had gezien, bracht hij ze
achter. Hij lei ze met een „ Ta b e h n j o n j a , p o s n j o n j a ! ” op
de tafel en ging. Toen ze gegeten had, keek ze eens op de
adressen, of er geen brief van haar vader bij was. Doch dat was het
geval niet.
Toch zag ze er een aan haar adres van een fijne vrouwenhand. Het
poststempel was van de plaats. Wat kon dat wezen? Lucie opende
het couvert; met verbazing zag zij dat de brief geen aanhef had en
geen onderteekening droeg.
„Mevrouw L. Van Brakel-Drütlich wordt in haar belang en in dat van

haar man ten dringendste aangeraden hem van zijn nachtelijke
uitstapjes af te houden. Het is nooit veel [92]zaaks, wat mannen des
nachts buitenshuis doen, maar als mevrouw Van Brakel-Drütlich niet
oppast, dan zal zij vooral de grootste huiselijke onaangenaamheden
krijgen, ten gevolge van het uitloopen van haar man, die zich aan
een slecht levensgedrag schuldig maakt.”
Daar! dacht Lucie; daar kwamen waarlijk die ongelukkige

geldquaestie en de speelzucht van Herman weer in een anderen
vorm op het tapijt; de vrees voor finantiëele moeilijkheden was
nauwelijks de deur uit of ze kwam door ’t venster naar binnen.
Wat was het nu weer? Had hij weer veel verloren in de laatste dagen
en opnieuw schulden moeten maken?
Maar dan zou hij het haar toch wel gezegd hebben! Zij had hem
nooit aanmerkingen gemaakt. En bovendien: hij was tegenwoordig
volstrekt niet slecht bij kas. Hoe kon ze zich daarover ook bezorgd
maken! Het was lasterlijke verdachtmaking, anders niet. Wat ging
het een ander aan of hij wat laat in de soos bleef en daar gaarne een
partijtje maakte? Het was, vond zij, voor velen te wenschen, dat ze
waren zooals hij. Een oogenblik stond ze op het punt ’t briefje te
verscheuren, maar daartoe kwam ze toch niet. Zij nam het mee naar
haar kamer en lei het tusschen haar kabaja’s in haar kast. Meer en
meer drong zich de overtuiging bij haar op, dat het laster was, maar
toch kon ze er niet van slapen.
Toen ze evenwel den volgenden dag Van Brakel zag, zoo

kerngezond en vroolijk als altijd, verdween ’t laatste spoor van
bezorgdheid, en ze besloot hem ’t maar te vertellen.
„Het schijnt,” zei ze lachend, „dat jij tegenwoordig fraaie stukjes

uithaalt.” [93]
Hij stond verstomd en kreeg een kleur.
„Hoe.… bedoel je dat?”
„Ja, ja, je denkt maar dat ik van niets weet, omdat ik altijd thuis ben
en weinig menschen zie.”
„Wat bedoel je dan, Lucie?”
„Nu, houd je maar zoo onnoozel niet, ik weet het toch.”
Wanneer de klapperboomen op het erf een polka waren gaan

dansen of zijn paarden een lied van Schubert hadden aangeheven,

Confrontation in Academic Communication 1St Ed Edition Irena Vassileva Full Chapter

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Confrontation in Academic Communication 1St Ed Edition Irena Vassileva Full Chapter

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Confrontation in Academic

Communication 1st ed. Edition Irena

ISBN 978-3-031-32735-3 ISBN 978-3-031-32736-0 (eBook)

Cover pattern © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com

2 Aim and Methodology of the Study 7

4 The Academic Book Review  33

5 The ‘Academic War’: A Case Study  71

Irena Vassileva is Professor of English and German Linguistics at the

Graph 4.1 Content- and form-based premises in German 57

Table 5.1 Overall length of articles 77

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Keywords Academic communication • Academic criticism •

Although nobody would deny that academic criticism and confrontation

Another strong proponent of this view, Tannen (2002, p. 1655), claims

There is much wrong with the metaphorical assignment of research to war-

Secondly, confrontation in academic communication is regarded as

‘counter-attack’ from the other party. In some cases, such confrontative

effects of their writing and argumentation strategies on their discourse

Aim and Methodology of the Study

Keywords Aim and methodology • Contrastive rhetoric • Context-­

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 7

2.1 Aim of the Study

• The argumentation strategies and their surface linguistic expression

I shall argue that the predominantly pragmatic phenomena enumerated

The factors enumerated above do not, of course, constitute an exhaus-

2.2.1 Contrastive Rhetoric: “Beyond Texts”

Social construction of meaning as dynamic, socio-cognitive activities is a

Besides, Connor (2004, p. 294) maintains that “contrastive rhetoric is

Concerning the establishment of tertia comparationis in contrastive

This point of view relates closely to Connor’s (2004, p. 292) suggestion

2.2.2 Context-Based Versus Corpus-Based Methods

“were excellent for validating or invalidating statements made by other

2.3 Methodology Employed in the Study

After a summary of the history of topics from Aristotle (1954) to the

The detailed descriptions of each method are presented at the begin-

1. Academic book reviews with a definite negative character in English

Confrontation in Academic Communication:

Keywords Evaluation in academic communication • Criticism, critique,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 15

3.1 Evaluation in Academic Communication

1. Every utterance is evaluative

Hyland and Diani (2009, p. 4) gives a succinct overview of the various

The term ‘evaluation’ itself originates in the work of Hunston (1994;

Thompson and Hunston (2000, p. 5) define evaluation as a “broad

2. Not all utterances are evaluative

In his investigation of academic book reviews Shaw (2004, p. 121)

as well as on the examination of a wider context/co-text. As an example,

in practice negated structures often carry negative evaluation. This is because

Hyland and Diani (2009, p. 7) adheres to a similar position: “It is true,

Academic writers’ use of evaluative resources is influenced by different epis-

In order to elucidate the essence and function of confrontation in aca-

to mean a reflective examination of the validity and limits of a human

The online http://www.thefreedictionary.com/critique dictionary

In order to verify the statement above, I inspected 50 randomly selected

is “a resource for introducing the alternative positive position into the

As a system of objective relations between positions already won (in previ-

I would add to Bourdieu’s statement that nowadays, at the time of

Commenting on “Bourdieus Konzept im Lichte der

Erstaunlicherweise weist Bourdieus Konzeption rationaler

The idea of a neutral science is a fiction, an interested fiction which enables

It is no wonder that Bourdieu’s influence on the progress of the socio-

Tannen traces the roots of modern adversative discourse to the ancient

Tannen (2002, p. 1665) calls for “Restoring the person to scholarship”

2 Aim and Methodology of the Study 7

4 The Academic Book Review 33

5 The ‘Academic War’: A Case Study 71

Graph 4.1 Content- and form-based premises in German 57

Table 5.1 Overall length of articles 77

Keywords Aim and methodology • Contrastive rhetoric • Context-