Disciplinary Text in the transmission of specialized knowledge

Abstract

In this article, we describe an academic genre that has proved to be relevant in disciplinary knowledge construction at university level: Disciplinary Text. This genre has emerged as one of the most frequent means of written communication in the PUCV-2006 Academic Corpus, in three different university programs: Social Work, Psychology, and Construction Engineering. The analysis of 270 texts revealed the persuasive communicative purpose of the genre, which is realized by three macro-moves, eight rhetorical moves and eighteen steps. Results also showed relevant variations between Social Sciences and Humanities and Basic Sciences and Engineering in the rhetorical organization of the genre. One of the main implications is that this genre presents different ways of negotiating knowledge depending on the discipline in which it is used.