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

261“symbolic generalizations” (Kuhn, 1962:182) and “values” commonly used in each fieldwhen judging books. For Kuhn, commitment to such values provides a sense ofcommunity within the discipline (ibid.: 184).Also, differences were found in the way readers are provided with backgroundinformation related to the nature of the topic discussed in the book. The greater amountof detail and exemplification provided in linguistics (and less emphatically ineconomics) may indicate the reviewer’s awareness that the book and the BR will have aspecialized readership with which she shares a high level of knowledge, but stillconsiders necessary to call the reader’s attention to certain aspects of the discipline thatmay not be as readily available, i.e., not belonging to that portion of commonknowledge. A greater reliance on exemplification may result from the writer’s belief thatthe lower the audience level, the more it relies on examples for exposition (Nwogu,1990:178). Thus the reviewer assumes a didactic position in discussing the book,attempting to explain or clarify concepts that may be unfamiliar to the reader. Suchconcepts are referred to by the terms in parentheses or apposition.In comparison, chemistry reviewers tend to be more symmetrical in theirrelationship with the reader in that few dated references are provided and the conceptsand nomenclature used do not seem to demand further exemplification reflecting arecognition of the field as a cohesive culture.The ideal of persuasion in economics points toward an emphasis on mathematics(quantification) and method (theoretical principles and empirical evidences) in the study of