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

288field, in a concise text. BRs are also a valuable tool to help non-expert library staffchoose among reference books for institutional purchase. Overall, a BR must combinean evaluative component that is expressed throughout the text in the form of qualifyingexpressions (terms of praise and blame) and a descriptive component that objectivelydefines such items as the subdivisions of the book or the intended audience. UsingSwales' operational definition of genre (1990:10), this can be said to constitute anacademic genre whose exemplars serve the purpose of providing the reader with either ageneral evaluation of the book in terms of its content and form, or a discussion ofspecific parts of the book felt to be most relevant for the readership. The reviewer’ssecondary intention is to convince readers that she has read the book attentively and hasenough experience in the field to have her evaluation receive credit. Such evaluationresponds to the common public goal of the academic community evaluating advances inthe scientific field through the mechanisms of intercommunication available to itsmembers in the form of journals. People that read BRs in specific academic areas areprofessionals/students that want to get acquainted with newly published texts but do nothave the time/money to read/buy all the books available. Thus the genre functions as aparticipatory mechanism which primarily provides information and feedback in thecommunicative furtherance of disciplinary aims regarding knowledge production.Differences in BRs in the areas studied here suggest that disciplinary matrices havediverse modes of proposing knowledge. Variation in how reviewers choose amongrhetorical sub-functions, cite previous literature and refer to accorded concepts indicatethat BRs are less evaluative in chemistry than in economics and linguistics. In chemistry,