Prof. HU Guangwei, Department of English and Communication

Cross-disciplinary Differences in Academic Discourse. The Symposium on Language, Digital Technology, and Society cum the 2025 Young Scholars Forum, the Sichuan Foreign Language Literature Research Center, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang, China (Online), 22 November 2025.

Abstract
Members of a disciplinary community share deep-seated epistemological assumptions that underlie and motivate their discursive practices. This talk outlines, in broad terms, the relationship between disciplinarity and academic discourse. Drawing on Basil Bernstein’s work on knowledge structures in disciplinary inquiry and Karl Maton’s realist sociology of knowledge-making, the talk discusses how dominant knowledge-knower structures operating in different disciplines may shape the rhetorical and discourse strategies used by members of these disciplines in academic communication. It then presents findings from the speaker’s research on cross-disciplinary differences in academic discourse and relates these findings to discipline-specific knowledge-making practices. To conclude, the talk discusses the pedagogical implications of the presented research for English for Academic/Specific Purposes (EAP/ESP) programs and courses, and proposes strategies for socializing students into the academic discourse of their disciplinary communities.