universidade federal de santa catarina pós-graduação em letras ...

123b) If there is such a variable portion of BRs, can it be argued that texts of a givendiscipline display similarities in their evaluative discourse as to set them apart from BRsin other disciplines?c) Can we connect these field-dependent rhetorical features identified in theanalysis of the texts to contextual features (e.g., are reviewers in chemistry more‘objective’ than in economics as can be expected based on the editors’ interviews?)If variations are identified in BRs across disciplinary fields, they can be valuableassets in the understanding of how we have to adapt academic writing pedagogies to thespecific needs of each field of study. At the same time, if similarities are found in thetexts across disciplines, they can be seen as evidence of the basic features of the genreand can be further used in teaching academic writing and reading.4.3.3 Linguistic clues and variationVariation in evaluative practices across disciplines is hypothesized to be determinedby each disciplinary culture as socially constructed sets of values and interests in terms ofobject of study and theories.As pointed out in Chapter 2 (Section 2.4.2), the term “disciplinary matrix” is used byKuhn ([1962] 1970:174-210) to refer to a disciplinary culture, i.e., to the generalavailability of epistemological resources to practitioners of a particular field. As the fieldattains the status of mature science, resources available consist in essence of fourelements: (1) “Symbolic Generalizations” (formal expressions generally accepted andemployed without dissent over their meaning by group members); (2) “Metaphysical