February 14, 2003

Homework 3: Jargon

Due in section the week of Feb. 24 2003

Find a piece of academic writing of a page in length: a textbook is OK, but a piece of scholarly text intended for specialists in the field is better.

Lexical features: list 5 or more words or phrases from the text which mark it as belonging to a particular academic discipline.

Orthographic features: give at least one example of the way the text is presented visually that is specific to the discipline or to academic writing generally (for instance, specific abbreviations, citation forms, cross-referencing, section numbering etc.)

Grammatical features: list at least two different grammatical features found in your text which are typical of academic style: passive (especially agentless passive), pronoun avoidance, nominalization, long and/or complex sentences and noun phrases etc. Give at least two examples of each.

Type the assignment and turn it in with your data in section.