Dr. Lakoff's Definition of Metaphor

     According to Dr. Lakoff, his definition of metaphor is to describe the concept of specific field using the concept of another field that was acquired by everyday life in childhood. For example, he suggested “cold or warm person” and “prices are going through the roof”. These concepts, such as “cold or warm” and “go through the roof”, are learned from repeated experiences in childhood. These repeated experiences, which often connect with the concept of another field, make metaphor. These repeated experiences activate the circuit of the brain which connects physical experience with another concept.

Citation Theories

     There are many theories about citations. In my opinion, those are generally categorized into two groups. One is the group, which focuses on the intellectual property right of authors. The other is the group, which focuses on the previous achievement.

     The former theories, which are more widely accepted than the latter, propose that citations are used to recognize and acknowledge the intellectual property rights of authors. They are a matter of ethics and a defense against plagiarism. For example, Ravetz (1971) states that citations operate as a kind of mutual reward system rather than pay other authors money for their contributions.

     The latter theories, which are well-established in scientific fields, propose that citations are used to show respect to previous scholars. They recognize the history of the field by acknowledging previous achievements. These theories may include the idea that citation is used as “authority” because “authority” is built up of many previous studies. For instance, Gilbert (1977) states that citations are tools of persuasion; writers use citations to give their statements greater authority.  Similarly, Bavelas (1978) mentions that citations are used to supply evidence that the author qualifies as a member of the chosen scholarly community; citations are used to demonstrate familiarity with the field. Moreover, previous achievements inspire new idea of research because previous studies often have some flaws and provide some questions about topics. Swales (1990) suggests that citations are used to create a research space for the citing author. By describing what has been done, citations point the way to what has not been done so prepare a space for new research.

Short Summary

Hartley et al. analyzed the Abstracts, Introductions and Discussions of 80 journal articles in educational psychology (Every article was taken from Journal of Educational Psychology) to evaluate those readabilities. The computer-based style programs (the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program and Microsoft’s Office 97) were used to evaluate the overall readability of the text as well as of sentence lengths, difficult and unique words, articles, prepositions and pronouns. They adopted the Flesch Reading Ease score (R. E. score) which measures of readability, or text difficulty (R. E. Score 90-100: Very easy 10 years, 60-69: Standard 13-14 years, 0-29: Very difficult Graduate students). This score is calculated based on the lengths of the sentences and words. However, it couldn’t include readers’ motivation and appreciation of the genre which makes academic text readable. Many studies have shown that the R. E. score can be useful despite these defects.

The results showed that the Abstract (mean R. E. score 18.1) scored worst on most of these measures of readability, the Introductions (mean R. E. score 20.5) came next, and the Discussions (mean R. E. score 22.7) did best of all. However, although the mean scores between the sections differed, the authors wrote in stylistically consistent ways across the sections. Thus, readability was variable across the sections but consistent within the authors. They suggest that Abstracts are difficult to write because dense and complex material has to be fitted within a tight word limit. On the other hand, Discussion section requires authors only to comment on what they found and reported in Results section. However, this research is restricted to the data source. Further research is required on the single and multiple authoring in variety of disciplines.

The literature review of Dahl

1.    What’s the broad area of the literature being discussed?

       The broad area of the literature being discussed is Linguistics.

2.    What are some of the sub-topics within this broad area?

       The sub-topics with broad area are Knowledge claims, Academic discourse and Economics.

3.    What are some key issues?

       Key issues are to identify knowledge claims in the introduction section of research articles in economics and linguistics, and to reveal the linguistic differences in the two disciplines’ research article texts.

Do these key issues involve descriptive problems or cause and effect relationships?

 Yes.

4.    Does Dahl discuss theory and/or methodology?

       Yes, she does.

      She mentions two previous studies (Myers 1992, Bloor and Bloor 1993) which proposed each theory. She adapts 50 research articles, 25 from each of the two disciplines, from KIAP Corpus based on three criteria.

5.   What verbs are used to report what others have said?
        state, suggest, imply, indicate, show, claim, propose, argue and describe

6.   What are some of the outstanding questions?
        What is the difference of knowledge claim in Introduction section between linguistics and economics?

7.    What do researchers still disagree about?
     She argues against Myer’s claim that stereotypical statements of kind The purpose of this paper is to mark the main claim of the article.

8. What do researchers now know about the research question?
     Claim is both disciplines tend to be unhedged, but with slightly more hedging in linguistics than in economics. The reason for this is that economics is a more competitive field than linguistics, encouraging explicit signaling
    of new claims in order to attract the attention of the research community.

9. Based on the literature review, what do you think Dahl's study will do?
     I think that Dahl achieved her main goal in this study. Then, she is interested in the different hedging behavior by individual authors. Some authors are more authoritative to use a term from economics in their writing than others.

Citation on introduction in academic writing

Citation 1
Database Name: CSA Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts
Title: Promotional Strategies In Research Article Introductions: An Interlinguistic And Cross-Disciplinary Genre Analysis
Author: Martin Martin, Pedro; Leon Perez, Isabel K
Source: Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 2009, 59, Nov, 73-87
Descriptors: *Academic Writing (00072); *Discourse/Text Genres (19280); *Genre Analysis (27610); *Writing Strategies (98780); *Cultural Differences (16400); *Rhetoric (73300); *Stylistics (84950); *English (21900); *Spanish (81800)
Abstract:
     Publishing research unavoidably involves an adequate use of promotional strategies in order to meet the expectations of the members of particular scientific communities, which may vary both across cultures and disciplines. In this paper, we examine comparatively the presence of rhetorical promotion in the Introduction section of 80 research articles written in English and Spanish in the two related subdisciplines of Clinical and Health Psychology, and Dermatology. The results revealed that, overall, the English texts present a higher degree of rhetorical promotion in both fields, although some degree of cross-disciplinary variation was also found. This indicates that, in shaping the promotional features of the genre, when professional and national cultural factors interact simultaneously, cultural factors tend to override the influence of disciplinary context.


Citation 2
Database Name: CSA Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts
Title: The Significance of Thematic Structure in the Scientific Journal Article, 1700-1980
Author: Banks, David
Source: Odense Working Papers in Language and Communication, 2008, 29, 1-29
Descriptors: *Academic Writing (00072); *Scientific Technical Language (75350); *English (21900); *Text Structure (89200); *Language History (42600); *Theme (89350); *Journals (Academic) (39875); *Natural Sciences (56606)
Abstract:
     This article is a diachronic study of the development of thematic structure in the scientific journal article from 1700 to 1980, based on a corpus taken from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Half of the corpus is derived from the physical sciences, and half from the biological. The grammatical functions of topical Themes are considered, as well as the incidence of textual and interpersonal Themes. Study of the thematic progression confirms that linear progression is more common than constant progression in this genre. The features which are selected as topical Theme are analysed in terms of 14 categories. It is shown that those which are related to the ongoing study are by far the most frequent, accounting for well over half of the topical Themes in most cases. A notable finding is the introduction of a significant number of mathematical Themes in the physical sector from the late nineteenth century onwards. This is related to a change in the interests of the physical scientists which move from an interest in experimentation as such to the mathematical modelling of physical phenomena. Study of the use of the passive voice leads to the conclusion that use of the passive derives from choices in thematic structure, so that thematic choice is one of the driving forces of the construction of this type of text. The general picture given by the study is one whereby the physical sciences are experimental from the beginning of the period under study, but the biological sciences remain observational until the mid-nineteenth century, when experiment begins to be introduced. A move from experiment to mathematical modelling occurs in the physical sector towards the end of the nineteenth century but has not affected the biological sector by the end of the period under study.

Comparison of Academic and Informal Writing

Audience
     Azuma’s article aimed novice or prospective graduate students, especially students who major in computer science, as audience. Their concerns are how to survive the severe graduate school life for getting Ph.D. They already know that completing Ph.D. is a long and hard road. But, Ph.D. is rewardable for some kinds of students despite its difficulty. So, they expect to comprehend its demerits and merits from this article, obtaining useful information so as to achieve success in graduate school without wasting time. The author mentions the indicate audience by himself in the introduction of the article.
     On the other hand, Dahl’s article aimed people who relate to academic field, especially economics, linguistics and education, as audience although she doesn’t refer to that in the article. Aware of the general notion of knowledge claims, these readers are more concered wth the differences between the concept of knowledge claims in economics and linguistics. They already have general information of knowledge claim. So, they want to get the detailed information about knowledge claim.

-ing
adj.
passive form

Hoping to understand more about this, these people...
Unaware of ...., these people ....
Disgusted by the lack of government action, the citizens have ....

These people, unaware of the dangers of global warming, claim that
These students, hoping to understand more about...., came to the lecture...

Tone
     Azuma’s article uses easy and informal words or expressions in order to make young readers understand easily and encouraged. The tone of the article is private, optimistic and subjective because he discuss about school life and he mostly uses his or a few others’ experience as basis instead of his research. For example, the article starts like this: “In February 1995, on a beautiful sunny day with clear Carolina blue skies……..”, and ends like this way: “Good luck.”
     On the contrary, Dahl’s article uses many academic words and data which belong to both her and others. The tone of the article is official and objective. For instance, the article starts like this way:”Disciplines differ in what they see as constituting knowledge within their domain in how new knowledge is produced.”

Authority
     Azuma did dissertation work in interactive computer graphics in the Computer Science department of the University North Carolina. He got Ph.D. from UNC in 1995. Those are showed in Introduction of the article.
     Dahl is associate professor of English linguistics at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration in Bergen. Her current research interests include academic discourse, text linguistics, the language of economics and international communication. This information is added to the end of the paper.

Rhetorical Structure
     Azuma’s article is a kind of private essay which doesn’t have an academic structure while Dahl’s article is an academic paper which is consisted of Abstract, Introduction, Method, Findings, Discussion and Conclusion.

Argument
     Azuma made his opinion by his experiences which he got during his graduate school days. One experience is a kind of proof. However, it is the weakest evidence because it is only one example. On the other hand, Dahl made his opinion and discussion about topic using results of research. Well organized research provides us more accurate information that can be strong evidence for the argument. Azuma doesn’t position his argument with the previous discourses although Dahl exposes hers to some discourses such as computer science and biochemistry.

Scope
     Azuma’s article deals with a wider, more general topic whereas Dahl deals with more focused topic. The differences of main topic and research methods are responsible for the difference in scope.

Sentence Mechanics and Grammar
     Azuma’s article often uses the first person and the second person although Dahl’s article uses the third person. For example, Azuma often uses “you” and “I” while Dahl often uses “study” and “claim” as the subject.

Style
     Azuma’s article includes many colloquialisms and casual expressions. His article includes many interrogative sentences, exclamation marks and dialogues. For example, he wrote “Why get a Ph.D. ?” , and “Read on!”.

Reference to Others’ Ideas
     Azuma provides proverbs, words from big names and books which have tendency to be based on not research but their experiences. On the other hand, Dahl uses many more reliable resources such as papers and data which relates to her topic. Azuma uses the citations mainly to attract readers while Dahl uses citation to extract useful data to support her opinions and to evaluate her arguments objectively. Azuma merely extracts some sentences themselves from references although Dahl often interprets references and rewrite by her words.

Vocabulary
     Azuma uses nonacademic and informal vocabulary. In contrast, Dahl uses academic and formal vocabulary. Dahl uses linguistic technical term such as “lexical” and “corpus”.

Time Management

There are many tasks, such as papers, assignments, research, presentations and preparation for classes and exams, for graduate students.

Graduate students, as they perform daily tasks such as ..., often face difficulties related to the organization of these tasks. For students aiming to obtain a master's or doctoral degree, appropriate scheduling of tasks and assignments are crucial to their success. Unfortunately,

However, they don’t have enough time to struggle with all tasks slowly and carefully because they hold various tasks each class and each task has own deadline. Graduate students frequently are .... is usual that they couldn’t even start some of those tasks while some were already completed satisfactorily because they didn’t know how to spend time effectively.

To address this problem, they have to acquire time management skills. In fact, one of major concerns among graduate students is time management because organizing how to spend their time holds the key to the success in graduate school life. One of the best solutions for that is to make a detailed schedule such as time line. After prioritization tasks with careful consideration of the estimated time required for completing each task and its deadline, time line should be made. Prioritization is essential to make time management effective. Moreover, 1 or 2 hours should be kept as spare time each day in case of unexpected circumstances or events which often occurs.

If the schedule is performed properly and modified for circumstances, graduate student can get through the hard but fruitful graduate school life smartly.