English academic style manuals: A survey

This paper presents the results of a survey of English Academic Style Manuals conducted between 2004 and 2007, designed to establish whether English Academic Discourse is sufficiently well-defined as a concept to be useful for translation research. Although, with the current emphasis on genre and disciplinary differences, it is fashionable today to speak of Academic Discourses in the plural, the survey revealed a remarkable consensus as regards general principles, methods of textual construction, and the kinds of grammatical and lexical features to be used. This suggests the existence of a common framework underlying all EAD, thereby supporting the claim made by Systemic Functional linguists that there is an ‘essential continuity between humanities and science as far as interpreting the world is concerned’ (Martin, J.R. (1993). Technicality and abstraction: language for the creation of specialized texts. In M.A.K. Halliday & J.R. Martin (Eds.), Writing science: Literacy and discursive power. (pp. 203–220) Pittsburgh & London: University of Pittsburgh Press).