Absent doctors, shy economists and polemic linguists? Writer manifestation in academic texts

Abstract

The work reported here is part of a project funded by the Norwegian Research Council, for the period 2002-2004. Professor Kjersti Fløttum from the University of Bergen is project leader. The project title is Kulturell Identitet i Akademisk Prosa (KIAP) and has as its main aim to focus on the concept of cultural identity. We investigate whether this phenomenon is primarily linked to the language and thereby the national culture the academic writer belongs in, or whether this writer rather is formed by the disciplinary culture he or she works with. The project is doubly contrastive in that we study texts in three languages - English, French and Norwegian, and three disciplines - economics, linguistics and medicine. The texts we have chosen to look at are research articles, which represent the main channel of distribution for researchers to publish their results. The texts are clearly LSP texts in that they are written by experts and are intended for an expert audience.