Gender, meta-discourse and stylistic appropriateness in English writing

Academic writing is important for writers to persuade readers on their claims, which is why the literature is full of studies aiming to improve academic writing and making suggestions regarding how the writing style should be. However, the missing point as to this important issue is that they largely investigate the issue of writing in terms of linguistic, and overlook the extralinguistic factors, or merely investigate a single issue without considering its ensuing ramifications; for example, gender effect on discourse. On the other hand, this study investigates gender effect together with its possible impact on the change of discourse and the style of writing which is crucial to have an impact on the audience. Also, this study aims to draw attention on extralinguistic factors affecting academic writing. This study showed that academic writing is not independent of the effect of gender because the discourse style of a female and male author seems to be different from each other. Furthermore, apart from the effect of gender, extralinguistic factors like social and intrapersonal parameters play an important role in determining the discourse of the author, and accordingly the writing style. This study calls further studies in order to reveal rhetoric differences and the effect of gender on more specific linguistic components.

Anahtar Kelimeler:

Gender, discourse, academic writing, style

Akademik yazımda cinsiyet, söylem ve tarz

Akademik yazım kabiliyeti, yazarın yazdıkları konusunda okuyucuları ikna etmede oldukça önemlidir. Bundan dolayı, literatür akademik yazımın nasıl geliştirilebileceği ve nasıl olması gerektiği konusunda çalışmalarla doludur. Oysaki çoğu çalışma akademik yazım konusunu dil bilgisel konuda ele almakta ve dil bilgisel olmayan diğer konuları göz ardı etmektedir ya da konuyu muhtemel etkilenebilecek diğer açıları düşünmeden tek bir açıdan ele almaktadır. Bu çalışma cinsiyetin söylem üzerindeki etkisini ve dolayısıyla yazma sitili nasıl değiştirebileceğini incelemekte ve dil bilgisel etkenler olmayan cinsiyet, sosyal ve kişilik faktörlerinin yazma sitili üzerindeki etkisini araştırmış ve bunların ne düzeyde etkili olduklarını ortaya çalışmıştır. Literatür, kadın ve erkek arasında söylem farklılıkları olduğunu ortaya koyduğun cinsiyetin yazımda söylem üzerinde etkili olduğunu söyleyebiliriz. Ayrıca, sosyal ve kişisel parametrelerin de yazarın söylem şeklini etkilediği anlaşılmaktadır. Retorik farklılıklarını cinsiyet kavramı üzerinden veya dil bilgisel olmayan etkenler üzerinden araştırmak isteyen yazarlar daha spesifik konuları incelemeleri faydalı olacaktır.

Keywords:

Cinsiyet, söylem, akademik yazım, tarz,

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