An analysis of citations in written academic texts

Abstract

This article reports on a study of citations in academic writing from the perspective of citation analysis and genre analysis (Moravcsik & Murugesan, 1975; Swales, 1986, 1990, 2004; Bhatia, 2004). The study focuses on the use of citations by expert and novice members of the Linguistics community and presents a comparative analysis of nine research articles and thirteen student term papers in that area. The results show that the linguistic choices that guide the writing of citations are largely shared by the expert members (authors of the research articles) and the novice ones (graduate students authoring the papers) in that both tend to choose confirmative over negative citations. Unlike novices, however, expert members tend to use their own voices to confront other authors. The implications of this study reinforce the need for Language Teaching Education Programs to offer a genre-based approach to discourse aimed at developing students’ rhetorical consciousness about academic writing, and consequently about the use of citations in written texts, thereby enabling novices to build up an authorial positioning within their discourse community.