Sign Language as Academic Language

The study of academic language often involves researchers from different disciplines, including, but not limited to, education, psychology, sociolinguistics, and anthropology. Much has been written about the study of language associated with academic fields. There are certain sets of expectations about acceptable grammar and word choices in academic subjects such as science, literature, and math. Throughout students’ lives, their teachers grade them on their ability to discuss information in particular disciplines.

Academic language use is often present in educational settings such as schools and universities because teachers and professors require evidence of competence in academic discourse. However, academic discourse is not necessarily constrained by physical settings—academic discourse can be found at conferences, meetings, and even picnics or bars. In written modalities, evidence of academic discourse can be seen in publications, books, electronic mailing lists, e-mails, and even text messaging as well as on the Internet. The setting in which discourse occurs has some influence in how people choose their words and phrase their sentences and overall discourse.

The context of the discourse is also a major contributor in influencing people’s decisions on how to express themselves. Context may include the topic of the conversation. For instance, conversations about the theory of relativity may more likely include academic phrases than conversations about house training a dog. Other contextual influences may come from the status and positions of people involved in the conversation. For instance, a conversation with a scholar or political figure is more likely to elicit a high degree of cognitive involvement in language decisions than a conversation among childhood best friends.

Contextual influences on our language decisions are best described within the language variation field as a language register (or, more broadly, language style). In a classic 1961 study, Martin Joos described five different types of language registers: frozen, formal, consultative, casual, and intimate. Halliday argued that register variation is much more complex, including factors such as whether the language is spontaneous, memorized, monologic, or dialogic. Another main factor in academic language decisions is the type of genre, be it an interview, a conversation, or a lecture that shapes the language decisions taken by the speaker.

Empirical findings regarding patterns, restrictions, or parameters for academic English are widely disputed. Some findings that have been challenged include Biber’s analysis of more than 1 million English words in spoken and written materials from everyday conversations to academic prose, which showed significant differences in word choices and marked linguistic features such as prepositions and passive sentences that seem to be linked to academic language use, and Corson’s finding that academic English employed more Greco-Latin words and that conversational English used more words from Anglo-Saxon roots. Solomon and Rhodes surveyed hundreds of English as a second language (ESL) teachers and learned they defined academic language mainly in vocabulary choices, grammatical phrases, and applying the correct function of language (e.g., comparing and contrasting, categorizing, sequencing events, and more). Solomon and Rhodes also sat in classes observing the same ESL teachers, and they found classroom interaction showed a high degree of variation in word choices and sentence structure depending on the subject, differing from the answers elicited from ESL teachers. In 1971, Bernstein studied the number of words, number of syllables, articulation rate, number of words prior to a pause, pauses between words, and length of words and discovered a distinction between middle-class and working-class speakers in their ability to utilize academic forms associated with academic English register.

...