A genre-based investigation of applied linguistics book reviews in English and Brazilian Portuguese

• Applied linguistics book reviews in Brazilian Portuguese and English were analyzed.
• Move patterns found to be cyclical rather than linear in both corpora.
• The academic book review genre seems established in English but emerging in BP.
• Book reviews in Brazilian Portuguese were less critical than in English.

This genre-based study examined cross-cultural rhetorical patterns of academic applied linguistics book reviews in English and Brazilian Portuguese (BP). It explored how this genre is contextualized in a Brazilian and in an English-medium journal, following a move-analysis approach. The findings revealed that the academic book reviews largely followed the moves first identified by Motta-Roth (1998), with the exception of evaluative Move 3. This move, unlike the linear sequence previously proposed, was found to be predominantly cyclical. Further, the book reviews in English appeared to be more critical than the BP ones. The English book reviews recommended the books only after indicating potential shortcomings whereas the majority of book reviews in BP recommended the book without mentioning caveats. The BP book reviews also seem to point to an ‘avoidance of conflict’ found in other genres in BP, such as research articles. Finally, the BP book reviews displayed considerably more variation than the English counterparts, which may suggest that while this genre is well established in the discourse community in the English-medium journal, it might still be emerging in the Brazilian context. Explanations are offered to account for cross-cultural differences.