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

245reviewers may use Sub-function 4 more consistently because they conceive theirreadership as more controversy-bound, i.e., as belonging to a non-mature field. Asmentioned above, a field is said to lack the status of mature or ‘normal’ science when thereis no single generally accepted view about the nature of the problems subject to analysis sothat controversies about basic concepts are likely to arise. Therefore, in academic writtencommunication in non-mature fields, each writer feels compelled to build the field anewfrom its foundations (Kuhn, [1962]1970:12-13), thus using more topic generalizations(Sub-function 4) to establish common grounds with the readership than in economics andchemistry.Also, in linguistics, there seems to be an asymmetrical relationship between thereviewer, as an expert member, and the readership, as novice members of the field. Aless professionally informed readership would need more background to be able tounderstand the argumentation in the text.Again the continuum between chemistry and linguistics, with economics in the middle, reveals itself. Theresults in Table 6-3 indicate that Sub-function 4 is more frequent in linguistics (40%), then in economics(30%) and appears least frequently in chemistry (20%).6.3 Variation in evaluation practices across disciplinesBesides the already discussed rhetorical differences in the textual structure of thegenre, variation in evaluation practices in BRs seem to indicate additional differences inepisteme and culture across disciplines. Evaluation practices in BRs relate tocharacteristic ways of arguing in the discipline for the acceptance of new publications,taking into account what is considered to be desirable/undesirable orimportant/unimportant in the intellectual apparatus of the field (in this case, the book).