Do Academics Really Write This Way? A Corpus Investigation of Moves and Templates in "They Say / I Say"

Headnote

Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein's writing textbook, "They Say / I Say," has triggered important debates among writing professionals. Not included within these debates, however, is the empirical question of whether the textbook's templates reflect patterns of language use in actual academic discourses. This article uses corpus-based discourse analysis to examine how two particular "moves" discussed in the textbook are realized in three large corpora of professional and student academic writing. The analysis reveals important differences between the textbook's wordings and those preferred by student and professional writers. It also uncovers differences in use of "interpersonal" functions of language by experienced and less experienced writers. In offering this detailed analysis of academic prose, I aim to extend calls to recenter language in writing research and instruction. I conclude with implications for discussing academic argumentation with students.

Since its first edition, Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein's writing textbook, "They Say / I Say": The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing (henceforth TSIS), has inspired familiar debates among writing professionals. Recurring lines of questioning have included the following: whether it is possible to teach academic discourse in first-year writing and, if so, whether it is efficacious or ethical to do so; whether there is such a thing as (an) academic discourse in the first place and, if so, whether an explicit or implicit instructional approach to teaching discourse conventions or strategies is preferable; and, stepping just a bit into Sapir-Whorf territory, whether or not explicitly teaching wordings, specifically in the form of templates, can assist students to develop new lines of reasoning or "complexity" in thinking (e.g., Benay; Birkenstein and Graff; Edlund).

For readers unfamiliar with TSIS, its stated purpose is "to demystify academic writing by isolating its basic moves" (Graff and Birkenstein xvi). Examples of moves the authors explore are entertaining objections and making concessions while still standing your ground, to name just two. Such moves are positioned by the authors as useful concepts for acquainting student writers with a view of academic argumentation as social and dialogic. Students are encouraged to move toward and defend their stances ("I Say") after first carefully reviewing others' views (" They Say"). More controversially, the authors also offer sentence-level formulas, or templates, for realizing the moves. For instance,...