Language Analyze from EAP-506-P01
Introduction
This is a language analysis about “Basic Income, Full Employment, and Social Provisioning: Some Polanyian/ Keynesian Insights (Seccareccia 2015)”. I analyzed Seccareccia(2015) from personal pronoun, language form, adverb position and tense.Analyzing other scholar’s academic paper could help me improve my own language using skills and find some fundamental regulations that I need to meet when writing an academic paper in International Commerce and Policy field.
Language Analysis
Language is an important component of a professional academic writing in every discipline. Using appropriate language will make the articles become more formal and straightforward. There is no doubt that through analyzing a specialized article in our field could help us to learn some language using skills. So I want to analyze the language of the article- Basic Income, Full Employment, and Social Provisioning: Some Polanyian/ Keynesian Insights (Seccareccia 2015) in the following paragraphs. The purpose of this language analysis is to find some fundamental regulations that we need to meet when writing an academic paper in International Commerce and Policy field.
First of all, Seccareccia (2015) did not use any first-person pronoun, contraction and vague expression in his paper. As Swales and Feak (2012) mentioned in their book- Academic Writing for Graduate Students, we need to avoid using those expressions in an official paper to make our writing looked more professional.
Secondly, Seccareccia (2015, 401) used “For instance, the fact that during the British Industrial Revolution the flow of relief (made available to both Speenhamland and non-Speenhamland counties in England) moved in tandem with the business cycle would hardly constitute a proof against the Polanyian mechanism at work, just because both regions were seeing similarly increased expenditures” instead of the flow of relief moved in tandem with the business cycle would not constitute a proof. It is a kind of academic negative form that Swales and Feak (2012) wrote in their book. What is more Seccareccia (2015, 401) also used brackets to mark a brief explanation of official background knowledge. Readers could clearly understand the context in this paper through the explanation. They avoid using too many words to express one point (Swales and Feak 2012). He also introduced some definition of special vocabulary in this article. Such as “The Great Transformation”. It is an important criticism of guaranteed income system raised by Polanyi ([1944] 2001). Because it never been raised before, so it called “The Great Transformation”.
In addition, some direct questions exist in Seccareccia (2015). For example, he mentioned “would employment not be stimulated as neoclassical theory predicts?” (Seccarecci 2015,402). Although direct question looks less formal than declarative sentence, this question still has the value of existence. Using this direct question is to imply that after raising this question the author cited several explanations of the question from different scholars. Because, direct question often can lead discussion (Virtanen 1998).
What is more, in Seccareccia’s article (2015), adverb is always in mid-position (Swales and Feak 2012). For example, he said that “The income transfers in themselves, as emphasized by Polanyi Levitt (2013,114), could potentially have the position effect of supporting workers’ consumption and thus spur on aggregate demand”. Placing adverb in mid-position also could make article become more formal (Swales and Feak 2012).
Finally, Seccareccia (2015) used different tenses in different part. In the Abstract part, he mostly used past tense to introduce some earlier research results. For example, he mentioned that “Karl Polanyi ([1944] 2001) offered an important criticism of GI program.” In the Introduction part, he used present tense and past tense. He wanted to describe some widely known knowledge in his field when he used present tense. In the Literature Review part, at which he mentioned some earlier studies not very important, he used past tense. Because this article is a literature review, all the relevant studies that the author analyzed in his paper are valuable. He mostly used present tense in Literature Review part to emphasize all the relevant study. In the Result part, he used past tense to conclude the research results and used present tense to discuss and explain it.
Because of this article is a typical literature review, Seccareccia (2015) showed all three ciatation patterns (Swales and Feak 2012) in his article and emphasized many relevant study in his article. In the Abstract part, he used citation pattern one once to introduce Polanyi’s research about “The Great Transformation”. In the Introduction part, he did not mention any relevant study but using his own words to introduce some information in his study field. In Relevant study part, Seccareccia (2015) used citation pattern one nine times and citation pattern thirteen times. For example, “Kari Polanyi Levitt (2013, 114) states that ‘a share in the social product as a citizen right would have won Karl Polanyi’s support, both as a means of decommodifying access to economic livelihood and grounds of moral justice’”. It is easy to see that this is citation pattern one. Because it emphasized the researcher’s name and also mentioned the result of his research. In addition, he also mentioned that “This system secured a ready supply of labor as agrarian capitalism spread in rural England, characterized especially by strong seasonal patterns of employment (Boyer 1986, 119)”. This is typical citation pattern three. Because, it is highlighted the research result but did not mention researcher’s name. In this part, author did not use citation pattern two. Because, this article is a literature review, author was required to explain relevant study in detail especially the research result. He can not mention earlier studies generally. Finally, he used citation pattern one fourth and three fifth in Results part. Such as “The income transfers in themselves, as emphasized by Polanyi Levitt (2013, 144), could potentially have the positive effect of supporting works’ consumption and thus spur on aggregate demand”. Although it is different from general citation pattern one, we still could be classified as pattern one. Because it emphasized the author’s name and his research result. He also mentioned that “For some, this was perhaps partly based on some rigid philosophical principle that income should be something earned, and thus ought to be derived from work rather than transfers under a GI system (Widerquist 1998)”. It is easy to see that this is citation pattern three. Because it only highlighted the research but not researcher. He also did not use citation pattern two in this part due to the reason that I mentioned before.
After analyzing Seccareccia’s article, it is easy to conclude that language used in a professional literature review needs to obey some rules and the language is approachable for people with a bit of experience in this field.
Reference
Mario Seccareccia(2015), “Basic Income, Full Employment, and Social Provisioning:Some Polanyian/Keynesian Insights”. Journal of Economic Issues 49:2(2015), 397-404.
Swales & Feak (2012). Academic Writing for Graduate Students. 22-27. ISBN-13: 978-0472034758
Virtanen. T (1998). Direct questions in argumentative student writing. Learner English on computer. ED. S. Grangerd. London: Add on Weasley Longman