Interpersonal Positioning Objectives for your academic writing
Be able to position yourself and your reader in a more impersonal or more familiar way, as appropriate (e.g. through use of self-mention and engagement markers)
Be able to make claims with an appropriate level of confidence/carefulness (e.g. by using hedges or boosters).
Be able to support your claims through accepted citation and referencing practices; and to use APA style in particular for this
As you know, writing, like any communication, involves interaction between people. Academic writing creates a virtual space in which the writer and reader interact with each other. The interactive focus in academic writing tends to be on academically valued ideas. Writers and readers invariably have to position themselves and each other in this social space of writing.
Interpersonal positioning refers to how writers position themselves, readers, and knowledge in the virtual social space of writing. By positioning, we mean negotiating the interaction between these participants involved in the communication. The interpersonal positioning of a piece of writing is consciously and unconsciously recognized by experienced readers in the writer’s use of the interactional resources of language. In other words, experienced readers will notice how writers position the reader and the writer, as well as how the writer anticipates, acknowledges, challenges, and suppresses (i.e. hides) alternative (possibly opposing) ideas.
There is one particular kind of reader that is especially important for writers in university. As very experienced readers, your course instructors will notice these aspects of your writing; in particular, they will notice the extent to which your language choices in these areas suit the requirements and expectations of the genres you will produce for your writing assignments. The interactional resources introduced in this unit can guide you to understand – and ask about – the specific requirements for your writing tasks. At the same time, when you read academic writing, they will help you understand how writers position themselves, their readers, and their knowledge claims.
ACADEMIC WRITING
Interpersonal Positioning
Organization
Content
LLED200 – SCIENCE & APPLIED SCIENCE 2015-2016
Unit 3
2
PRE-TASKS – COMPLETE BEFORE CLASS
Pre-Task: Getting a sense of interaction in writing Reflect on your own process of writing. In the space below, write some observations about your writing in relation to the following points. These could be simple descriptions of what you do but may also include your assessments of how well you handle these aspects of your writing. If possible, provide examples from your writing. a. How confidently or carefully do you present your opinions? Do you limit the claims (such as with “may” or “in some cases”) or present them as facts? ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ b. Do you boost your claims using words such as “obviously”, “of course” or “extremely” (as in “extremely important”). Why do you use these words? In other words, what role do they serve for you and the reader? ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ c. Do you refer to yourself (using “I” or “We”) and/or the reader (using “You,” “We” or by commanding the reader such as with “Consider the…”). Why do you use these words? What effect do you think they have on the interaction between you and the reader? ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________
IN CLASS TASKS
The reading and tasks below guide you to learn about how writers position themselves and their readers in academic writing using interactional resources. These resources show how academic writing is a site for social interaction; that is, writers have to position themselves in relation to their readers, their own knowledge claims, and the claims of other scholars. To illustrate these resources, we use a problem-solution text that includes a data commentary.
LLED200 – SCIENCE & APPLIED SCIENCE 2015-2016
Unit 3
3
Task 1: Interactional Resources in a Problem-Solution Text
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