Academic writing: A comparison between Argentine and U.S. academic contexts (Escritura académica: Una comparación de los contextos argentino y estadounidense)

LAURA MARINA COLOMBO

Baltimore

Conferencia; 27th Annual Graduate Research Conference (Conferencia Anual de estudiantes de posgrado Universidad de Maryland Baltimore County y Universidad de Maryland Baltimore); 2005

University of Maryland Baltimore County & University of Maryland Baltimore

 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.