英语论文网

Journal of English for Academic Purposes 3 (2004) 341–359
留学生论文网Academic journalese for the Internet:
a study of native English-speaking editors’
changes to texts written by Danish
and Finnish professionals
Hilkka Yli-Jokipii a,, Poul Erik Flyvholm Jorgensen ba Department of English Translation Studies, University of Turku, 20014 Turun yilopisto, Finlandb Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus, Denmark
Abstract
The purpose of the present study is to investigate, within the textual framework of academicjournalese, what happens to Danish and Finnish writers’ English texts when edited bynative English-speaking editors for publication on the World Wide Web.We use the termacademic journalese to describe texts written by researchers or professionals with a backgroundin research that are easily available to large audiences outside the academic world.By using rhetorical, text linguistic, and editorial concepts in the analysis, we have traced andidentified the types of changes to which a number of texts have been subjected during editingto make them compatible with editorial requirements for the genre and standards for UKEnglish.Comparisons between the edited and unedited versions of our corpus documentsshow that adjustments occur in both directions along the explicitnessimplicitness dimensionand are frequent in both Finnish and Danish texts.The results further suggest that certain
features that have in previous studies emerged as typical of nativeFinnish writers’ Englishtexts, are shared by native Danish writers as well.# 2004 Elsevier Ltd.All rights reserved.
Keywords: EAP; Academic journalese; Non-native writers; Native editors; Explicitness; Implicitness;
Cohesive devices
Corresponding author.Current address: University of Helsinki, PL1. Introduction
This study is about the qualities of academic journalese produced by Finnishand Danish writers, and subsequently edited professionally by native Englishspeakers.The term academic journalese is here employed to describe the relativelyrecent type of texts written by researchers or professionals with a background inresearch that is easily available to large audiences outside the academic world.Inparticular, we refer to texts that are freely available on the Internet, because they
are accessible to any reader with or without an academic affiliation, including seekersof specific information and even the odd ‘‘surfer.’’ Nevertheless, such textshave typically been designed to address particular groups or bodies of decisionmakers whose professional duty and interest is to remain updated on what happens
in the research world.These groups cover a wide spectrum of interests, including business and finance, government, public administration, and insider interestgroups such as labour and employer unions.
Academic journalese differs from conventional English for academic purposes(EAP) writing both in content and design.For example, texts belonging to thegenre of academic journalese do not make reference to theoretical frameworks,methodologies, principles of analysis, results or enunciated conclusions.Inste ad,these texts tend to be short, with undocumented arguments and few or no references.
Academ ic journalese thus represents a hybrid between EAP and journalisticwriting, a blending of the established characteristics of different genres that Bhatia(1993, 2000) aptly describes as mixing genres.In terms of text types (Werlich,1976), these texts contain narrative and