Dialogic Relationships and Double-voiced Discourse in the Working Activity of the Proofreader in Academic Thesis: Tensions and/in Meaning Making

Abstract

This paper is based on the study of the concepts of dialogic relationships and double-voiced discourse to analyze discursive interactions between a proofreader and a doctoral student during different stages of proofreading an academic thesis. The research material are discourses from: i) e-mails exchanges between the proofreader and the doctoral student regarding their understanding of the work the proofreader performs and ii) an excerpt of the thesis during the proofreading process with the proofreader’s and the doctoral student’s comments in the text. The analysis of these discourses allows us to see the tense dialogic relationships that constitute the proofreader’s work, to observe the clues on the various stages of the writing process, as well as to discuss the double-voiced discourse that constitutes the work with proofreading based on the proofreader’s words resounded in the doctoral student's final version of the revised text.