SocioCultural Context of Writing
VOICES OF REVIEWERS: EXPRESSION OF EVALUATION IN ENGLISH AND LITHUANIAN
Birute Ryvityte
Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania
Academic writing programmes in tertiary education aim to encourage students to think critically and externalize their values verbally. Though it has long been known that the systems of values expressed by different cultures through their particular languages differ, the study of the evaluative function of language has become the focus of linguistics only in the 21st century (Hunston & Thompson 2000, Hyland & Diani 2009, Thompson & AlbaJuez 2014). The purpose of this presentation is to discuss crosscultural differences of one evaluative genre, i.e. the book review genre, in English and Lithuanian. The corpus analysed consists of 60 English and Lithuanian reviews of books on linguistics published in academic journals in 20082014. The study reveals that English reviewers tended to express their general positive evaluation of the book as early as possible, while their Lithuanian counterparts displayed greater reservation. An additional step was identified in Lithuanian reviews employed to express the reviewers’ wishes concerning the author’s future work. Both English and Lithuanian reviewers were aware of the interpersonal effects of the review and maintained solidarity with the authors reviewed through the mitigation of criticism, however, Lithuanian reviewers were more cautious in expressing their critical remarks. The findings of this research suggest that, in order to enable students to produce critical literature reviews as part of their academic theses in English, nonnative students should be made aware of the existing crosscultural differences in evaluative language rather than expected to transfer evaluative moves from the familiar genres in their native language.
References
Hunston, S. & G. Thompson (eds.) (2000) Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. Oxford University Press. Hyland, K. & G. Diani (eds.) (2009) Academic Evaluation: Review Genres in University Settings. Palgrave Macmillan. Thompson, G. & L. AlbaJuez (eds.) (2014) Evaluation in Context. John Benjamins Publishing Company.