In Sections I and II of this book, we considered general issues regarding

Variation in disciplines
One of the most important variables that affects all aspects of academic 
discourse is the discipline. It is disciplines that structure both the work 
that academics perform and the courses that students follow. In their clas-
sic study of academic disciplines, Becher and Trowler (2001) describe 
them in terms of ‘academic tribes’ which have ‘territories’. This meta-
phor vividly captures the nature of disciplines as groupings that consist 
of people and networks of communication (the tribal aspect) as well as 
typical subject matters and ways of constructing knowledge (the territo-
rial aspect).
Individual disciplines can be categorized broadly according to subject 
matter as belonging to one of four domains: hard-pure (physics, chemistry), 
soft-pure (philosophy, sociology), hard-applied (clinical medicine, engineer-
ing) or soft-applied (business studies, education). Although the boundaries 
between the four domains cannot be precisely drawn and even within a sin-
gle subject area there can be considerable diversity of approach, it is possible 
to identify certain features that characterize each domain.
• Hard-pure fields tend to deal with universals and be impersonal and 
value-free; they construct knowledge cumulatively, with one person’s 
work building on that of another; work typically leads to outcomes of 
discovery and explanation.
• Soft-pure fields are more concerned with particular cases and are more 
personal and value-laden. The development of knowledge is predomi-
nantly recursive, i.e. the views of others are put forward in order to take 
up a position in relation to them; work tends to result in understanding 
and interpretation.
• Hard-applied disciplines are concerned with technological know-how 
and control over the physical environment. They have clear functional 
purposes; work tends to result in products and techniques.
• Soft-applied fields are also functional; they are concerned with improv-
ing professional practice and often take a case study approach; work 
tends to lead to the development of protocols and procedures.

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Academic discourse 95
These fundamental differences between disciplines lead to differences 
in discourse, as confirmed by many contrastive studies. The corpus-based 
work of Hyland has been particularly influential in providing linguistic data 
which support Becher and Trowler’s analysis. For example, in a large study 
of 240 RAs, Hyland (2001) showed that first person pronoun use was much 
lower in hard than soft fields, a finding which underscores the description 
of hard fields as dealing with universals in an impersonal and objective way.
Disciplinary differences, then, are an important variable which we need 
to take into account. In multidisciplinary contexts, it may not be possible 
to provide material in all relevant disciplines and even in single-discipline 
classes there may be field-specific variation with accompanying differences 
in discoursal features. In both cases, however, we can avoid making over-
generalizations and encourage students to examine the discourse of their 
own discipline individually.