Voice and Stance across Disciplines in Academic Discourse

This chapter addresses the question of disciplinary variation by focusing on a few of the ways voice operates in academic discourse. In it I take the position that while all academic discourse actively endeavors to convey knowledge persuasively, such conveyance often differs considerably across disciplines. Attempting to ascertain what these differences may be and how they work to create what disciplinary communities ‘know’ is anything but a merely formal question of stylistics. It tells us something about how knowledge is created and disseminated in and around academia and how beliefs are justified within these socially and culturally defined contexts.