Authorial Presence in Undergraduate Project Reports in Nigeria Dr. Alexandra Esimaje, Charisa Dada & Paulette Omoye Benson Idahosa University, Nigeria Outline • Introduction: Defining key terms • Introduction: Defining concepts • Past work • Final year project report as genre • Aims of the study • Methods • Results • Conclusion • Next steps Defining terms 1 • Academic Discourse: Common Practices and Shared Epistemologies • Knowledge Construction: Collaborative and Cumulative process • Interactions: Evaluation (hedge, booster, attitude markers, self mention) &Engagement (reader pronoun, directives, questions, shared knowledge) • Labels: Evaluation (Hunston &Thompson, 2000); Stance (Hyland, 2005); Appraisal (Martin, 2000); Identity (Ivanic 1998); metadiscourse (Vande- Kopple, 1985) Defining Terms 2 • Academic Communities: Groups with shared Discursive Practices • Authorial Voice: Writer’s Distinctive Presence in Text • Voices: ‘Solipsistic’; ‘unaverred’; and ‘unattributed ’ (Groom 2000) . These are all difficulties in voicing • Stance: A Writer’s voice in text; shows his Position to Existing Knowledge Claims; his evaluation of …. • Stance Markers: Hedges, Boosters and …. • Research Spaces: The Writer versus Other Writers/Source versus Authors/ Readers Introduction 1 • Hyland (2009) defines academic discourse as the ways of thinking and using language in the academy. • Characteristics: impersonal, unassertive, politeness, minimisation of self, maximisation of other(s) but… • Genres: major and minor e.g. theses (BA, MA PHD), research articles; lectures, and seminars See Schmied (2014) for a comprehensive list. • Major functions: To construct knowledge; to construct social roles of academics and to create identities of self and group. Introduction 2 • The genres and registers of academic discourse pose significant challenges for many students. • They are expected to transit from a mono-vocal position to a multi-vocal position. • Students need to know the trade of argumentation and reasoning; know the art of negotiation of knowledge. • Often, this is daunting for many students who are unfamiliar with the resources of language required. Past Work • There is a substantial amount of research in this relatively new field of study. • Major players are many; K. Hyland; B. Douglas; S. Hunston; G. Thompson; S. Hood; J. Swales; R. Macintyre; J. Schmied; A. Mauranen; P. G.Meyer; J.Holmes; S. Conrad & D. Biber; M. Charles; W. L. Chaffe …. • And many more; this list only scratches the surface The Final Year Project • The final year project report is one of the undergraduate genres and the most ambitious of them all. • The purposes are “ to assess students’ abilities to apply theories and methods learned in their courses … (Hyland 2009). • Many cannot cope with the independent and systematic nature of writing the project. • The alternatives are: plagiarism and the use of ‘academic vendors’. Aims • To examine the linguistic devices that final year undergraduate students in Nigeria employ to negotiate meaning and establish their arguments in the project reports. • To identify similarities and differences in the methods used in establishing authorial presence across disciplinary boundaries and contexts. Method 1 • Undergraduate project reports between 2010 and 2014 in the academic fields of Biochemistry, Agriculture, Business Administration, Economics, English, Law, International Studies and Diplomacy, and Mass Communication. • So far, the sample consists of fourteen (14) individual project reports selected from all five faculties. And it contains a total of 92, 449 words.