Investigating Interdisciplinary Research Discourse: the case of Global Environmental Change

调查跨学科研究话语：全球环境变化案例

• 批准号: ES/K007300/1
• 负责人: Paul Thompson
• 金额: $ 48.96万
• 依托单位: University of Birmingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2013 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FK007300%2F1
• 关键词: Investigating; Interdisciplinary; Research; Discourse; case

It is generally accepted now that many real-world problems are best addressed by a number of disciplines working together rather than by individual disciplines alone. In the UK, research councils promote interdisciplinary research activity and universities in turn encourage academics to collaborate with colleagues in other disciplines. It is not always easy, however, for researchers in different areas to cooperate, because each discipline has methods of working, expectations, value systems and ways of talking and writing that are special to that discipline and not easily shared. We believe that it is important for institutions, research councils and researchers to have a fuller understanding of what the distinctive features of discourse practices in interdisciplinary research are and of how they differ from discourse practices in conventional disciplines.As a step toward this goal we propose investigating the discourse of a successful journal in an interdisciplinary field: Environmental Change. We will study the extent to which this field operates as a unified whole, the extent to which journal authors in the field broaden their messages to a multidisciplinary audience, and the extent to which each discipline in the field maintains a discrete identity. In order to investigate the field we will analyse the journal 'Global Environmental Change'. We will include in our study every article published in the journal since its inception in 1990. The primary methodology we use is Corpus Linguistics, that is, using specialised software to analyse large quantities of written text. Many studies of individual disciplines, using corpus techniques, already exist, but these techniques have not yet been applied to an interdisciplinary field. We will use an approach to the description of the linguistic features of texts that will make it possible for us to cluster texts according to degrees of correlation in their linguistic profiles; this approach, developed by Douglas Biber, is called 'multidimensional analysis'. In addition, we will investigate the recurrent phraseologies of texts in this field and then cluster texts with similar phraseological profiles. Using both multidimensional and phraseological clusters, we will see whether the texts cluster following discipline boundaries. This is an innovative approach to corpus-based investigations of research discourse: instead of placing the texts into categories according to external criteria (for example, according to 'discipline'), we will group texts by text-internal features. We will also look at the citation practices (do authors tend to cite within their discipline?) and how writers and readers are represented in the texts (do writers address their readers as experts in their discipline, for example?).We will compare the results of our investigation of the discourse of interdisciplinary research in that journal by comparing it to samples of texts taken from other journals, five representing other interdisciplinary fields and five representing specific disciplines. This will allow us to determine whether interdisciplinary research discourse is distinct in its features, and also to to see how much variation in discourse practices there may be between interdisciplinary fields and within disciplines. We will look at this across time, to see whether discourse practices change as a field becomes more established and as an interdisciplinary community develops.To complement our analyses of texts, we will also conduct surveys and interviews of people involved in the journal publication process: editors, reviewers and authors. The data can help us to explain some of the phenomena that we observe in the texts; the influence of editorial policies, for example, or the ways that authors from different disciplines collaborate to write texts.The work will support the research infrastructure in the UK by increasing our understanding of interdisciplinary research discourse.

现在人们普遍认为，许多现实世界中的问题最好由许多学科共同解决，而不是单独的学科。在英国，研究委员会促进跨学科研究活动和大学反过来鼓励学者与其他学科的同事合作。但是，对于不同领域的研究人员来说，合作并不总是那么容易，因为每个学科都有工作，期望，价值系统和交谈和写作方式的方法，这些方法与该学科是特殊的，并且不容易共享。我们认为，对于机构，研究委员会和研究人员来说，对跨学科研究中话语实践的独特特征有更深入的了解以及它们与传统学科的话语实践有何不同，这一点很重要。我们提出，我们提出的一步迈出了这一目标。我们提出的一步研究了一个跨学科领域的成功期刊的话语：环境变化：环境变化。我们将研究该领域作为统一整体运作的程度，该领域的日记作者在多大程度上将其信息扩展到多学科受众，以及该领域中每个学科的程度都具有离散的身份。为了调查该领域，我们将分析“全球环境变化”期刊。自1990年成立以来，我们将在研究中包括在该期刊上发表的每篇文章。我们使用的主要方法是语料库语言学，也就是说，使用专业软件来分析大量书面文本。许多使用语料​​库技术的单个学科的研究已经存在，但是这些技术尚未应用于跨学科领域。我们将使用一种方法来描述文本的语言特征，这将使我们有可能根据其语言配置文件中的相关程度群集文本；道格拉斯·比伯（Douglas Biber）开发的这种方法称为“多维分析”。此外，我们将研究该字段中文本的复发性措辞，然后研究具有相似短语概况的群集文本。使用多维和短语簇，我们将看到遵循学科边界的文本是否聚类。这是对基于语料库的研究话语调查的创新方法：我们将根据文本内部功能将文本分为外部标准（例如，根据“学科”）将文本分为类别（例如，根据“学科”）。我们还将研究引用的做法（作者倾向于在他们的纪律中引用吗？），以及文本中的作者和读者如何代表（例如，作者是否在纪律中作为专家作为专家来称呼他们的读者？）。我们将比较我们对该期刊的五个杂志的研究的调查的结果进行比较，以比较其他文本的研究，这些杂志的其他文本和其他样品的序言是，这些杂志的其他案例却涉及其他案例。代表特定学科。这将使我们能够确定跨学科的研究话语在其特征上是否有明显的特征，并查看跨学科领域和学科之间可能存在多少差异。我们将在整个时间内研究这一点，以查看话语实践是否随着领域的成熟而发生变化，并且随着跨学科的社区的发展。为了补充我们对文本的分析，我们还将对参与期刊出版过程的人们进行调查和访谈：编辑，审阅者和作者。数据可以帮助我们解释文本中观察到的一些现象。例如，编辑政策的影响，或者来自不同学科的作者合作编写文本的方式。这项工作将通过增加我们对跨学科研究论述的理解来支持英国的研究基础设施。

项目成果

Interdisciplinary Research Discourse: Corpus Investigations into Environment Journals

跨学科研究话语：环境期刊的语料库调查

• 发表时间: 2019
• 作者: Thompson

'What is this corpus about?' Using topic modelling to explore a specialized corpus

“这个语料库是关于什么的？”

• 发表时间: 2017
• 期刊: Corpora
• 影响因子: 0.5
• 作者: Murakami, A

Multi-dimensional analysis, text constellations, and interdisciplinary discourse

多维分析、文本星座、跨学科论述

• 发表时间: 2017
• 期刊: International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
• 影响因子: 1
• 作者: Thompson, P.