Discipline and methodological paradigm

Abstract

In contemporary academia, multilingual scholars using English as an additional language (EAL) are actively engaged in knowledge construction producing more research texts in English than native speakers (Hyland, 2016). Having a more general purpose to gain insights into the factors that influence multilingual scholars’ research writing practices in English, this case study seeks to explore how EAL users perceive disciplinary norms of epistemic stance expression in political science. It is based on interviews with 5 Russian political scientists and on the analysis of their research texts. The findings suggest that the participants do not seem to have a shared understanding of disciplinary norms regarding epistemic stance expression; however, their narratives highlight the importance of the methodological paradigm the texts belong to for their writing practices. The study is a contribution to the discussion of the role of the discipline in EAL scholars’ research writing practices and linguistic and rhetorical variability of research texts within one discipline. The results of this study have pedagogical implications for ERPP course designers and practitioners.

“There’s No Discrimination, These Are Just the Rules of the Game”: Russian Scholars’ Perception of the Research Writing and Publication Process in English

“…This paper is part of a larger study of research writing practices in English of multilingual scholars representing a broad domain of disciplines in social sciences and humanities [72]. To select the participants for the study, the following criteria were applied: the L1 of the participant, departmental affiliation, the number of publications in English, and the career stage.…”

“…At the initial stage, a case study with representatives from the political science department was conducted [72]. Then, I refined the interview protocol and invited representatives from other departments to participate.…”