Academic Evaluation
Review Genres in University Settings

This book explores how academics publically evaluate each others' work. Focusing on blurbs, book reviews, review articles, and literature reviews, the international contributors to the volume show how writers manage to critically engage with others' ideas, argue their own viewpoints, and establish academic credibility.

Academic criticism can be highly fraught and threatening, potentially wounding to the reviewed author and disruptive to the discipline, but it occurs routinely in review genres. This book explores how academics publically evaluate each others' work. Focusing on blurbs, book reviews, review articles, and literature reviews, the international contributors to the volume show how writers manage to critically engage with others' ideas, argue their own viewpoints, and establish academic credibility while simultaneously navigating these risky interactions. The book comprises twelve chapters written by experts from eight countries and addresses the following topics:
* the role of evaluation and argument in reviews
* interpersonal aspects of review discourses
* the connections of evaluation to disciplinary cultures and language
* the expression of evaluation in different languages
* diachronic change in review discourses
* the role of power and interest in academic reviews
* the value of evaluation to both native English speaker and international student needs

Introduction: Academic Evaluation and Review Genres
K.Hyland&
G.Diani PART I: AN OVERVIEW OF REVIEW GENRES Negotiating Research Values across Review Genres: A Case Study in Applied Linguistics
D.S.Giannoni Reviewing Science in an Information-Overloaded World
J.Noguchi Literature Reviews in Applied PhD Theses: Evidence and Problems
P.Thompson Back Cover Blurbs: Puff Pieces and Windows on Cultural Values
H.Basturkmen PART II: DISCIPLINARY VARIATION Reporting and Evaluation in English Book Review Articles: A Cross-Disciplinary Study
G.Diani Discipline and Gender: Constructing Rhetorical Identity in Book Reviews
P.Tse&
K.Hyland Phraseology and Epistemology in Academic Book Reviews: A Corpus-Driven Analysis of Two Humanities Disciplines
N.Groom PART III: CROSS-LINGUISTIC VARIATION (Non-) Critical Voices in the Reviewing of History Discourse: A Cross-Cultural Study of Evaluation
R.Lores Sanz Academic Book Reviews in English and Spanish: Critical Comments and Rhetorical Structure
A.I.Moreno&
L.Suarez Historians at Work. Reporting Frameworks in English and Italian Book Review Articles
M.Bondi PART IV: DIACHRONIC VARIATION On the Dynamic Nature of Genre: A Diachronic Study of Blurbs
M-L.Gea-Valor&
M.Inigo Ros The Lexis and Grammar of Explicit Evaluation in Academic Book Reviews, 1913 and 1993
P.Shaw Index