Selcuk Universitesi Edebiyat Fakultesi Dergisi, cilt.48, ss.53-72, 2022 (Hakemli Dergi)
A considerable amount of research has already established that
academic writing is an interactive accomplishment, the success of which
largely depends on appropriate writer‐reader relationship. Yet, the
nature of this relationship has been the subject of few studies. Also
scarce are the studies on how academic writers address the needs of
their readers and so, through elaboration, manage their interactions
with them. Drawing on a corpus of 68 research articles (RAs) from the
field of applied linguistics, this study explores how experienced writers
(EWs) and novice writers (NWs) elaborate their ideas in their RAs to
address their readers’ needs, and in so doing, manage their relations
with them. Analysis of the corpus revealed that reformulation and
exemplification, complex features of academic writing, serve important
rhetorical functions. The results also show that these two groups of
writers manage writer‐reader relationship differently, differing in the
type, number, (un)even distribution, and use of code glosses. These
results are discussed, and pedagogical implications are offered.