Constructing an effective “voice” in academic discussion writing: an appraisal theory perspective

Traditional approaches in the pedagogic literature to interpersonal meaning in academic writing tend to emphasise the respect of norms such as self-effacement, caution, and impersonality, to the detriment of the development of effective discussion skills. The chapter questions the usefulness of this approach in contexts where essay questions which often require evaluation and persuasive discussion are common. It first presents a quantitative and qualitative appraisal theory analysis for attitude and engagement resources of two undergraduate non-native speaker discussion essays, one successful and one less successful. From this it emerges that the two essays are similar in terms of attitude resources, but that the more successful essay draws on a wider range of resources from the engagement system. This, and closer analysis of how the resources are used in sequence suggests that engagement resources play an important role in successful discussion writing. The implications of this and of using the ‘dialogistic’ approach underpinning appraisal theory for teaching academic discussion writing, are discussed.