Academic writing: A comparison between Argentine and U.S. academic contexts

LAURA MARINA COLOMBO

International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability

Common Ground

Año: 2006 vol. 1 p. 105 - 114

1832-2077

  Cultural standards determine how individuals are expected to express themselves in academic writing within their cultures. These contextual expectations are more frequently studied when individuals are introduced into a different culture and they have to adapt to a new context. In this work, I use a pragmatic framework to analyze the cultural differences between U.S. and Argentina´s contextual expectations regarding academic written texts. In order to achieve this, I first describe how each culture conceives the production and communication of scientific knowledge. Then, I apply pragmatic concepts as well as data found in previous research about Spanish and English writing styles to the relationship established between reader and writer in each context. I focus on the humanities and social sciences and provide examples extracted from published research papers in educational science journals. I chose published works because the texts have gone through selection mechanisms which guarantee that they are considered appropriate in their own academic communities.