occlusion is extended here to refer to the features of academic texts which are not ordinarily

rights reserved.

* Tel.: +46 21 151702.E-mail address: Diane.Pecorari@mdh.se.

www.elsevier.com/locate/esp

English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429

ENGLISH FORSPECIFICPURPOSES0889-4906/$30.00 2005 The American University. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Allvisible to the reader. One important area of occlusion is citation and, specically, the relation-ship between a reference to a source and the source itself. This article reports the ndings of aninvestigation into three visible and occluded features of postgraduate second-language writing.The novice writers in this study were found to respond to their disciplines expectations interms of the visible aspects of source use, but with regard to the occluded features their writingdiverged considerably from received disciplinary norms. The ndings also suggest that, withrespect to disciplinary norms, a gap may exist between what is prescribed and what ispracticed. 2005 The American University. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Visible and occluded citation featuresin postgraduate second-language writing

Diane Pecorari *

Department of Humanities, Malardalen University, 72123 Vasteras, Sweden

Abstract

As novice members of their academic discourse communities, postgraduates face the chal-lenge of learning to write in ways which will be judged as appropriate by those communities.Two resources in this eort are students own observations of the features of published texts intheir disciplines, and feedback on their texts from teachers and advisors. These resourcesdepend, though, on the extent to which textual features can be observed. Swales [Swales, J.M. (1996). Occluded genres in the academy: The case of the submission letter. In E. Ventola& A. Mauranen (Eds.). Academic writing: intercultural and textual issues (pp. 4558). Amster-dam: John Benjamins.] has noted the existence of occluded academic genres. The notion ofdoi:10.1016/j.esp.2005.04.004

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D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429 5dentadvisor pairs, the only relationship which could be described as an unqualiedsuccess was one which was characterized by a high degree of collaborative involve-ment between the student and the advisor in the activities of thesis research.

Other accounts of postgraduateadvisor interaction (e.g., Acker, Hill, & Black,1994; Luebs, Fredrickson, Hyon, & Samraj, 1998; Prior, 1998) illustrate an aspectof the relationship which may easily be taken for granted: its ad hoc nature. Whileclassroom-based learning is generally driven by a syllabus or set of learning objec-tives which more or less systematically address the areas the teacher believes to beimportant, a common mode of interaction between students and thesis advisors isfor the student to present his or her recent eorts (reports on research, proposals,draft chapters, etc.) for the advisors feedback. In this pattern of interaction, it is

the sttermed legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) (by, e.g., Belcher, 1994; Becherowler, 2001; Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995; Prior, 1998; Swales, 1998). LPP iscterized by novices involvement in the authentic tasks of a community of prac-hile in close contact with an established member of that community, so thatilled practitioner can observe and assess the novices performance, and the nov-n observe and learn from the practitioners. While Lave and Wengers model ofing is, as Swales rightly notes, a rather idealized one (Swales, 1998, p. 203), theal engagement, active participation and observation which feature prominentlymodel are likely to be benecial. In Belchers (1994) study of three Ph.D. stu-1. Introduction

Writing is a key academic activity, and a crucial one for postgraduates, for whomwriting is simultaneously the most prominent learning activity and the normal mech-anism by which they are assessed and awarded admission to their disciplinary dis-course communities. Learning to write appropriate texts is, therefore, an essentialcomponent of academic success. What constitutes an appropriate text, however, isdetermined not only by general standards of good writing, but by the specic de-mands and constraints of the writers disciplinary community. Thus, learning towrite entails becoming an individual suciently versed in the ways of the academiccommunity to understand what makes a text appropriate. Or as Hyland puts it:

Learning to write academic genres. . . does, of course, involve students contend-ing with issues of form and structure, and with public contexts for writing. Tobe successful, however, it must also involve them in acquiring a metacognitiveawareness of these forms and contexts and a familiarity with the discoursalstrategies they need to perform roles, engage in interactions, and accomplishgoals in the target community. In sum, it requires that students gain an aware-ness of the disciplines symbolic resources for getting things done by routinelyconnecting purposes with features of texts (Hyland, 2000, p. 145).

How novice academic writers gain this awareness has been the subject of consider-able discussion and investigation, and two suggestive themes have emerged from ac-counts of studentadvisor relationships. First, parallels with apprenticeship havebeen drawn, and in particular with the mode of learning Lave and Wenger (1991)udents work which triggers comments from the advisor and therefore to some

6 D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429extent sets the agenda for feedback. This, naturally enough, means that the advisorresponds to those positive and negative features of the text which are seen to meritcomment.

However, not all components of a text, nor all texts, are equally conspicuous.Swales (1996) has noted the existence of genres, such as job applications or lettersaccompanying an article submission, which are typically hidden, out of sight oroccluded from the public gaze (p. 46). These genres are especially likely to be oc-cluded for a novice researcher, who typically has fewer opportunities to perform theactivities which render them visible (e.g., editing a scholarly journal, reviewing appli-cations). At the same time, novices frequently need to produce such texts, often aspart of genre chains (Swales, 2004, pp. 1819). For example, publishing a researcharticle (a public genre) involves producing ancillary texts such as a submission letterand responses to reviewers comments (occluded genres).

The realization that novice writers need to produce texts of a type they rarely seemodeled has sparked a growing awareness that the occluded academic genres shouldbe taught explicitly (Belcher, 2004, pp. 168169; Swales, 1997, pp. 380381), an eortwhich is facilitated by increasing attention to these genres in textbooks (Swales &Feak, 2000, 2004) and the research literature (e.g., Aguilar, 2004; Gosden, 2003;Hyon & Chen, 2004).

However, less attention has been given to the fact that within visible, public genresthere exist features which are occluded (Pecorari, 2003). One example of occludedfeatures can be found in citations. While citations themselves are quite visible, someaspects of what they signal are less so. For example, the reader of a new text cannot,merely by reading the citing text, ordinarily know whether an idea, fact, etc. attrib-uted to the earlier text is reported accurately. The relationship between the two textsis, therefore occluded.

Because citation involves a referenceand often a minimal oneto somethingexternal to the citing text, it is especially susceptible to occlusion. Indeed, the accep-tance of some occlusion is implicit in the existence of conventions for citation. Theact of citing an earlier source creates a relationship between the citing and the citedtexts. The writer cannot, however, assume a reader with a suciently detailed knowl-edge of all the cited texts to be able to diagnose the nature of that relationship. Theconventional signals for source reporting are needed, therefore, to allow the writer toreveal as much of the relationship as she or he thinks the reader needs to know. Atthe same time the writer makes a tacit promise that the relationship is one which isappropriate in the discourse community. Quotation marks, for example, not onlysignal words repeated from a prior text, they promise the reader that the wordsare repeated accurately, that they have not been taken out of context, that they comefrom the work of the author who is named, and so on.

Whether this promise is kept depends on the writers skill (i.e., the ability to carryout the rhetorical task of reporting sources transparently), on the writers integrity,and on the writers expertise as a judge of what is acceptable within the discoursecommunity. In the case of postgraduates, however, expertise cannot be taken forgranted. By virtue of their status as students, it is accepted that their skills are in

a developmental state (hence the need for advisors to evaluate and guide their work).

If that evaluation occurs on an ad hoc basis, though, there is reason to wonderwhether the occluded features will receive the attention they deserve.1

The conjunction of occluded textual features and ad hoc advising raises a numberof questions: as novice academic writers learn to write in their disciplinary discoursecommunities, do they perform as satisfactorily on occluded textual features as on vis-ible ones? Is feedback from supervisors directed where it is needed, or primarily atthe visible features of a text? And, most importantly, do novice writers gain sucientskill in, and knowledge about, how they should perform academic writing in their

samples (in the case of the supervisors) in this project. So that the interviews couldbe conducted during the period of active writing, the masters students were asked to

D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429 7supply drafts of material which they anticipated would later be included in their dis-sertations.2 All complied, except for the two engineering students, who wrote no pre-liminary drafts prior to completing and submitting their dissertations. Although itcannot be known how representative this relatively small number of students canbe said to be of postgraduate second-language writers, there is no reason to believe

1 Swales (1996) posits the relationship between novice status and occlusion as a loose one; access to theoccluded genres is likely to come with greater experience. In addition, the distinction between novice andexpert (or Junior and Senior Researchers, in Swales terms) is not a binary one but rather one of degree(Swales, 2004, pp. 5657). This paper does not aim to explore fully the concept of occlusion (a pervasivefeature of language use which is by no means restricted to novices participation in a discoursecommunity), but rather examines occlusion in one site.2 The terms thesis and dissertation are used dierently around the world. Here, the usage of the

students institutions will be adopted: the masters students wrote dissertations and the Ph.D. studentsdisciplines, during their postgraduate apprenticeships? The investigation reportedhere addressed these questions through an analysis of the source use in the writingof 17 postgraduate students in four academic disciplines. The texts were found tobe quite successful with regard to visible aspects of source use; however, the picturethat emerged of the occluded features was rather dierent.

2. Methods

The texts that made up the research corpus were written by nine masters studentsand 8 Ph.D. students at three British universities, all of whom were non-nativespeakers of English (NNSEs). To balance the competing needs of providing as muchcontext as possible for the writing samples and protecting the writers privacy, thetwo subcorpora were gathered in dierent ways. In the case of the masters subcor-pus, lecturers were contacted to ask whether they and their students would be willingto take part in what was described in general terms as a study of academic writing.This resulted in nine students completing the study: two each in biology, civil engi-neering, and education, and three in linguistics. None of the students or the super-visors were known to me before I solicited their involvement in the project. Thenine students and their supervisors agreed to take part in interviews, and to theuse of their writing (in the case of the students) or their comments on the writingwrote theses. Supervisor and advisor will be used interchangeably.

8 D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429that they diered substantially from their peers in any respect which might inuencethese ndings, apart from, perhaps, their willingness to participate in this study,which might tentatively be interpreted as speaking to a degree of commitment toand interest in writing well.

For the reasons detailed above, the masters writing samples were in draft form. Inorder to include some nal-draft writing in the corpus, the Ph.D. subcorpus was com-posed of samples from completed Ph.D. theses taken from the shelves of the studentsuniversity libraries. No contact was made with the students or their supervisors. Selec-

Table 1Composition of the corpus by eld and level of study

Writing sample Masters dissertations (draft) Ph.D. theses (completed)

Writer Length (number of words) Writer Length (number of words)

Science Ingrid 2136 Sci1 2871Erden 1373 Sci2 2805

Engineering Yves 2240 Eng1 3261Pierre 5025 Eng2 3237

Social science Graciela 4227 SS1 2314Maria 3651 SS2 2665

Humanities Roula 2430 H1 3439Kwan 2797 H2 3474Helen 3510

Total number of words 51,455

Average number of words per writing sample 3027tions of approximately equal length were selected from the early chapters of eight the-ses, two each from the four disciplines represented in the masters subcorpus. In all,the corpus contained over 51,000 words with each writing sample averaging just over3000. Table 1 gives details of the composition of the corpus. (To insure the anonymityof the writers, the names of the masters students have been changed and the names ofthe writers departments and universities are not given.)

The focus of this investigation was the visible and occluded use of sources andcitation in the student writing samples. Three aspects of source use proved to be rel-evant to the question of occlusion: (1) secondary citation; (2) the nature of thesources used and reported; and (3) language repeated from the source. Investigatingthese three areas involved rst establishing what the expectations of the writers dis-ciplinary discourse communities were likely to be; then examining the visible por-tions of the texts; and, nally, examining the occluded aspects.

2.1. Establishing disciplinary expectations

A range of sources was used to shed light on what appropriate means in thecontexts of the disciplines considered here. A large body of the literature has ad-dressed writing within academic disciplines (e.g., Becher & Trowler, 2001; Charles,

2003; Hyland, 2000; Shaw, 1992, 2003; Swales, 1990, 1998, among many others).Interviews with the writers and their supervisors, the observation of similaritiesand dierences within and across disciplines in the corpus itself, and widely acceptedprinciples of source use also informed the question of appropriateness.

Secondary citation refers to a report of a source based not on the source itself, butupon an account of it from another, later text. The MLA Style Manual and Guide to

D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429 9Scholarly Writing expresses a preference for avoiding this form of citation: When-ever you can, take material from the original source, not a secondhand one (Gibaldi,1998, p. 245). The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Associationconcurs that it is preferable to read and cite primary sources whenever possible(American Psychological Association, 2001, p. 245). Both manuals agree that whensources are used at second hand, the citation should make that clear, and on thatpoint there is likely to be widespread agreement.

The types of sources cited in an academic text are necessarily constrained by thetopic and therefore by the discipline in which the text is produced. Bechers usefulidentication of urban and rural elds helps explain the preference of certaindisciplines for certain types of sources. Urban elds resemble big-city life in that theyare characterized by a densely concentrated population[,] a generally busyocca-sionally freneticpace of life, a high level of collective activity, close competitionfor space and resources, and a rapid and heavily used information network whilethe opposite is generally true of a rural eld (Becher & Trowler, 2001, p. 106). Urbanelds tend to be in the sciences,3 while the soft disciplines and the hard, applied ones,are often rural in nature (Becher & Trowler, 2001, p. 108). The areas represented inthe present study bear this out; the scientists alone could be said to participate in anurban research environment.

Rural elds tend to favor book publications, while in urban elds the journal arti-cle dominates (Becher & Trowler, 2001, p. 110). Citing discussion by Whitley (1984)and by Grith and Small (1983), Becher and Trowler (2001) discuss this preferencelargely in terms of the extent to which topics require explanation and elaboration.Where detailed accounts of complex procedures and close reasoning are needed, ajournal article may not oer sucient space to address the topic.

Clearly the nature of a research project determines the amount of space needed todescribe it, as illustrated by the fact that articles in technical elds are frequently un-der ten pages in length, while in the social sciences they can easily be more than dou-ble that. However, speed is likely also to be a consideration, since the fast pace ofurban elds puts a premium on rapid publication. Journal publication lends itselfto speed, and some journals are especially responsive to the need to disseminate nd-ings quickly. For example, the Lancet is published weekly, and oers an accelerated

3 Naturally, these broad classications, like all generalizations, apply better to some members of thegroup than others. The scientists in the present study were in a branch of plant biology which greatlyresembles an urban eld as described above. On the other hand, for the botanists whose working practicesare described by Swales (1998) there are more research topics than researchers to do the work, and thelifetime of a project can extend beyond the lifetime of the researcher. Swales botanists are, therefore, at the

extreme end of the rural scale.

refereeing process which can result in an article appearing in print within four weeksof it being submitted. The prestigious Science4 publishes some papers electronicallybefore they appear in a paper edition. This dierential need for rapid publication isconrmed by the broad range in time from submission to publication, which can be

10 D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429as little as three months or as long as three years, depending on the eld (Becher &Trowler, 2001, p. 112). So while there is likely to be considerable overlap among thedisciplines with regard to type of source cited, the (urban) scientists would be ex-pected to show a preference for journal articles, especially newer ones, and the other(rural) elds to cite a wider range of sources, including books and older sources.

With regard to language repeated from sources, disciplinary dierences are moreclear cut. Quotationthe repetition of language from a source, made evident by theuse of quotation marks or another typographical devicecomprises a signicantminority of citations in the soft disciplines, but is vanishingly rare in hard elds.5

One of the biology supervisors conrmed this, commenting . . .it just wouldnt hap-pen in a masters or Ph.D. thesis, you just wouldnt expect to see it, and I dont thinkI ever have. This dierence may be dictated by the epistemological demands of hardand soft elds. If a knowledge claim is based on objective fact, any accurate render-ing of that fact is as good as any other. Where subjective claims are at stake (as theyoften are in soft elds) especially great care may be needed to give a nuanced render-ing, making claims neither stronger nor weaker than the original author intended.Explicit quotation can be one strategy for accomplishing this.

Regardless of discipline, language repeated from a source should appear withinquotation marks, or in narrower margins (in the case of longer quotations), orshould otherwise be marked as coming from another source. The principle that quo-tation, when it used, must be signaled, is thought to be widely accepted across dis-ciplines, and the fact that university disciplinary policies uniformly categorizeunsignaled repetition as plagiarism (Pecorari, 2001) suggests that no need is per-ceived to specify exceptions for particular disciplines.

It is noteworthy that arriving at the above description of best practice in sourceuse entails drawing on sources as disparate as prescriptive writing guides, descriptiveaccounts of academic texts, and reports from individual informants. This highlightsthe fact that expectations for writing within the disciplines have been codied un-evenly, leaving many lacunae. For example, the MLA and APA guides oer ne-grained descriptions of scholarly writing practices, and are widely accepted asauthoritative within the humanities and social sciences, respectively. However, writ-ers in the sciences and engineering lack a similarly detailed guide.

The scarcity of comprehensive standards has two practical implications for thepresent research. First, it enhances the role of existing texts as models. Second, thereis likely to be some disagreementperhaps considerable disagreementabout gen-eral principles and how to apply them in practice. From the point of view of the nov-

4 Information for authors on http://www.thelancet.com/info/info?n1=authorinfo&n2=fast+track andhttp://www.sciencemag.org/feature/contribinfo/prep/gen_info.shtml#express, respectively, both accessed9 August 2004.

5 Swales (2004, p. 139) notes that psychology and economics also make sparing use of quotation.

D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429 11ice attempting to enter the discourse community this is unfortunate, as the likely con-cern of such a writer will be not only to produce texts which are acceptable to inu-ential individual readers such as advisors and examiners, but also to the disciplinarydiscourse community generally.

2.2. Examining the visible features

Because of the highly conventional nature of citation in academic writing, identi-fying the visible manifestations of source use in the student writing samples wasstraightforward. Secondary citation was identied where it was signaled by meansof the conventional Smith, as cited in Jones, or by a similar device. For example,although Roulas citation in (1), is not in precisely the form advocated by writingmanuals, the mention of Hegel immediately followed by a citation to Cooper spellsout clearly that Hegel was not a primary source.

(1) Hegel regarded a dead metaphor as one that has lost its power to call up ideaswhich the words once expressed (Cooper, 1986, p. 24). [Roula 6:1e]

The type of publication cited, and the year in which it was published, were alsoevident in most cases from the citation and reference list (although 44, or nearly10%, of the sources cited could not reliably be classied according to type, most of-ten because entries in the reference list were missing or incomplete, particularlyamong the (draft) dissertation writing samples). Similarly, quotation could be iden-tied by the presence of quotation marks, the use of narrower margins for longerquotations or, rarely, some other explicit textual device.

2.3. Examining the occluded features

By contrast, the very nature of occluded features meant that identifying them wasmore complex and involved a certain amount of inference. Investigating the oc-cluded citation features entailed examining not only the 17 writing samples butthe sources they cited. Altogether the student texts used and/or referred to 481sources. Of these, 363, or three-quarters, were obtained. Portions of the student-writ-ten texts, accounting for nearly 31,000 words, or 60% of the corpus, were then com-pared to the sources to establish the relationship between each source and thewriters representation of it. Some parts of the student texts could not be compared,for one of a number of reasons, including the absence of a citation, presumably indi-cating that the passage in question was original to the writer, or the unavailability ofthe cited source.

In order to assess whether occlusion was involved in the rst two areassecond-ary citation and the nature of the source usedit was necessary to determinewhether the source cited was the one actually used at a given point in the studenttext. This was done primarily on the basis of a degree of similarity between a portionof the student writing sample and another text which indicated that the latter was

likely to be the source for the former, as in example (2).

Example (2a) comes from a student writing sample, (b) comes from Berg (1987), asource cited elsewhere by the student but not in this section of the text, and (c) comesfrom Deese (1984), the source cited by the student (here and elsewhere, the origin ofexamples is given in square brackets and italics, underlining indicates language incommon between the student text and its source, and bold type indicates languagein common between two sources).

(2a) Deese 1984 does not nd a single example of a genuine spoonerism in his tape-

12 D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429recorded English corpus and thinks that exchange is rarer than commonly sup-posed (p. 17). [H1 26:2g]

(2b) In his tape-recorded English corpus, Deese 1984 does not nd a single exampleof a genuine spoonerism and concludes that this error category is much rarerthan we commonly suppose (Deese, 1984, p. 118). [(Berg, 1987, pp. 2829)]

(2c) Notice that there are, with one possible exception, no completed spoonerisms.Neighboring speech sounds (with, as Lashley and others have observed, antic-ipation being the norm) are often the source of mispronounced words, but Isuspect that the complete reversals for spoonerisms are much rarer than wecommonly suppose. [Deese, 1984, p. 118]

The strong similarity between (2a) and (2b) forms the basis for the conclusion thatH1 has cited Deese at second hand, through Berg. The H1 passage can be subdividedinto three strings, (1) Deese (1984) does not nd a single example of a genuine spoo-nerism; (2) in his tape-recorded English corpus; and (3) thinks that exchange is rarerthan commonly supposed (p. 17). The rst two strings appear in identical form inBerg, although reversed. The third string is not identical but shows great similarityto Berg, as Table 2 illustrates.

The third string diers from Berg in six respects: (1) the choice of reporting verb;(2) exchange in place of this error category (exchange was the error categoryintended by Berg); (3) Berg retains much in the quotation from Deese, while H1omits it; (4) Berg retains we suppose from Deese, while the student gives it inthe passive; (5) Berg signals six words as quotation, while H1 does not, perhaps be-cause of the last two changes; and (6) in the nal citation, Berg repeats Deese 1984as well as the page number, while H1 gives only the page number (note the discrep-ancy; Bergs reference is correct). In spite of these dierences, the underlying similar-ity of structure suggests that H1s string can be viewed as a modied version ofBergs.

Table 2Partial comparison of H1 and Berg (note that Bergs commonly appears out of order for ease ofcomparison)

H1 and thinks that exchange is rarer than commonly supposed (p. 17)Berg and concludes that this error

categoryis much rarer than commonly we suppose (Deese 1984,

p. 118)

This interpretation is supported by the fact that the similarity between H1 andBerg is greater than the similarity of either passage to Deese. Apart from the stringin Table 2, only the word spoonerism occurs in all three passages. The dierencesbetween (2a/b) and (2c) fall into two categories. First, Berg and H1 are more concisethan Deese: the qualication with one possible exception is omitted, as is the dis-cussion of interactions with neighboring speech sounds. These two omissions arehardly conclusive, since both involve propositions ancillary to Deeses main point;

D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429 13they are, therefore, precisely the sort of detail that would tend to be left out of a ref-erence to this point in Deeses book. More signicant is the reference in (2a) and (2b)to the absence of genuine spoonerisms; Deese has completed spoonerisms, contrastingthem with aborted spoonerisms (Deese, 1984, pp. 118119), in which speakers be-gin exchange errors and then interrupt and correct themselves. Genuine is not anobvious paraphrasing choice; its presence in both H1 and Berg is yet another simi-larity which, taken with those described above, suggests that the H1 and Berg word-ings indicate unacknowledged secondary citation.

Two caveats should be noted, though. First, however likely it is that Berg was thesource of H1s account of Deeseand I have argued that it is likely indeedit re-mains an inference. The theoretical possibility can never be entirely eliminated thatthe similarity is a result of coincidence, regardless of the degree of similarity betweentwo texts.6 Second, the conclusion that H1 reported Deeses work through Bergs ac-count of it does not preclude the possibility that H1 also read Deese. That would not,however, mitigate the potential consequences of adding an additional link to thechain of reporting. Those consequences will be illustrated below.

Establishing occludedi.e., unsignaledrepetition of language involved compar-ing passages from the student texts with their sources. The conventions used for iden-tifying shared words included the following: words were counted if they were spelleddierently as a result of typographical error or dierent spelling conventions, or ifthey were inected dierently for tense or number, but not if they appeared in twotexts as dierent word classes. Thus (invented examples), (3a) and (3b) are consideredto share dramatic, change(s), have/has, been and reali(z/s)ed, but not recent/recently.

(3a) In recent years, dramatic changes have been realized.(3b) Recently, a dramatic change has been realised.

Important to note is that this comparison did not count all the words shared byentire texts, but only those in contextually related sections. So, for example, spooner-ism in (2a), is counted as being present in both texts, not only because the word occurs

6 Nor could the writer settle the question conclusively, since a writers memory, awareness of the writingprocess and candour would always be open to question. Coincidence, though, is an implausibleexplanation for cases like example 2. The shorter of the two strings shared by H1 and Berg is in his tape-recorded English corpus. Corpus alone turns up 6,450,000 hits on Google, while the phrase Englishcorpus turns up 23,800, and no hits are generated for tape-recorded English corpus. This hints at thescope of the coincidence involved in the longer of the two strings being re-created independently of Berg,

and then all three strings co-occurring.

blin, 1981, cited in Megahy, 1998, p. 28). [Graciela 3:4b]

14 D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429However, the comparison of the student texts with their sources shows that thissupercial appearance of compliance with common practice is misleading. A muchlarger number of citations appear to have been included through a secondary source,without acknowledgement, as in example (5). Although the student text in (5a) refersonly to Bjerrum at this point, a source acknowledged elsewhere in the writing samplereports the same point from Bjerrum, in similar language, suggesting that studentin both but because it occurs in the repeated phrase does not nd a single example ofa genuine spoonerism, and because (2a) and (2b) address the same topic in a similarway. Finally, all sources used for comparison were included in reference lists or other-wise identied by the writers, although not always in proximity to the part of the textunder comparison. It is possible that entirely uncited texts may have been used insome or all of the writing samples.

3. Visible and occluded source use in the writing samples

The preceding section described conventional and expected features of source usein four disciplines. The extent to which the texts in this corpus match the abovedescription can be taken as an indication of the writers success both in understand-ing what their disciplines expect of them, and in meeting those expectations. Withrespect to the visible features, the writers performance was very much in line withexpectations; the use of acknowledged secondary citation, the nature of the sourcescited, and the signaling of quotation, fell within the bounds described. However,when the occluded elements were examined, a dierent picture emerged.

3.1. Secondary citation

Secondary citation, as noted above, is generally less desirable than a reference tothe primary source, and should be signaled clearly when used. An examination of thecitations in this corpus indicate limited use of secondary citation. Altogether 858 in-stances of a source being mentioned occur in the corpus. (To arrive at this gure,repeated mentions of the same source were counted separately, as were multipleworks referred to in a single citation.) As Fig. 1 shows, only 17 of the 858 sourcementions involve acknowledged secondary citation, with no such citations occurringin biology, one in engineering and eight in each of the other two elds. In no eld isthis feature as common as once per 1000 words. One of the few examples of acknowl-edged secondary citation is shown in (4).

(4) Despite the commitment and involvement of those who held pastoral roles, . . .(teachers) were largely ineective because their eorts were unbacked by astructured programme of skills-based guidance for success. They saw them-selves as solely concerned with the provision of emotional rst aid. . . (Ham-based this account of Bjerrum on Brenner et al.s.

D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429 15(5a) The eect of the weathering process on both the shear strength and compress-ibility of clay has been explained by Bjerrum (1967) in the manner illustrated inFigure (2.9). [Eng2 28:2]

(5b) The eect of weathering on strength and compressibility has been explained by

Secondary Citation

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

SCI ENG HUM SS

Oc

cu

rre

nc

esAcknowledged

Unacknowledged

Fig. 1. Frequency of secondary citation.Bjerrum (1967) in the manner illustrated in Fig. 2.37. [Brenner, Nutalaya, Chi-lingarian, and Robertson, 1981, p. 205]

Similarly, in (6a), the student refers to Fischer et al. (1982) and Lombardi et al.(1985).

(6a) Mannan which is a major constituent of the cell wall in C. albicans, inhibits aCandida antigen-induced in vitro proliferation of normal lymphocytes and alsoblocks the antigen-presenting ability of macrophages (Fischer et al., 1982).//Inaddition, the polysaccharide fractions from C. albicans stimulate T-cells to pro-duce a suppressor factor, which inhibits interleukin 1 and interleukin 2 produc-tion (Lombardi et al., 1985). [Sci2 26:1c]

(6b) Manna, a major constituent of the cell wall in C. albicans, was detected in theserum of some patients with mucocutaneous candidiasis (Fischer et al., 1978).Mannan inhibited a Candida antigen-induced in vitro proliferation of normallymphocytes and also blocked the antigen-presenting ability of macrophages(Fischer et al., 1982).//In another study, polysaccharide fractions (containingmostly mannose and glucose residues) from C. albicans stimulated the T-cellsto produce a suppressor factor, which in turn inhibited interleukin 1 and inter-leukin 2 production (Lombardi et al., 1985). [(Datta, Ganesan, & Natarajan,1989, p. 70)]

16 D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429Datta et al. (1989) refer to the same two sources, and in virtually identical wording,leading to the nearly inescapable conclusion that this report of the two sources wasbased on Datta et al.s secondary account of them, although the citation does notreect that. A further misleading impression is that it was the student who identiedrelevant research articles and was able not only to describe their ndings, but torelate them to each other and show how each contributes to informing a wider topic.In (6b) we see that that eort was not the students but Datta et al.s.

This is a substantive point, not merely a formal one, as (7a) and (7b) demonstrate.(Here and elsewhere, all typographical and grammatical errors were present in theoriginal, although, to avoid breaking up the example, the conventional sic isnot used.)

(7a) A major opponent of Shattuck-Hufnagel and Klatts conclusion is found inGoldstein (1980) and van den Broecke and Goldstein (1980). Glostein hasfound evidence for feature processing in 16-consonant confusion matricesinvolving speech errors, listening errors for CV and VC syllables in a noisyenvironment. Van den Broecke and Goldstein conclude that these robust cat-egorical features play a role in the representation of consonants during bothspeech production and perception. This analysis is supplemented by data fromGerman and Dutch, as is admitted by Shattuck-Hufnagel and Klatt (1979, p.53), represents the best currently available evidence for the processing of fea-tures during speech (van den Broeke and Goldstein also investigated Germanand Dutch data, in Fromkin, 1980). [H1 33:2]

(7b) A formal way to ask this question has recently been described by Goldstein(Note 1). He has found evidence for three features (voicing, continuant, andaspects of place of articulation) in 16-consonant confusion matrices involving(1) speech errors, (2) listening errors for CV syllables in noise, and (3) listeningerrors for VC syllables in noise. He concludes that these robust categoricalfeatures play a role in the representation of consonants during both speech pro-duction and perception. This analysis probably represents the best currentlyavailable evidence for the processing of features during speech productionand perception, but it is by no means conclusive. [Shattuck-Hufnagel andKlatt, 1979, p. 53]

In (7a), the writer presents two opposing points of view, one held by co-authorsShattuck-Hufnagel and Klatt and the other held by Goldstein, who is cited aloneand together with a co-author, van den Broecke. The passage begins with the writersassertion that the two views are in opposition and then outlines Goldsteins evidence,the conclusions reached by van den Broecke and Goldstein on the basis of that evi-dence, and nally reports Shattuck-Hufnagel and Klatts concession that that evi-dence has value. However, on examining Shattuck-Hufnagel and Klatt, it becomesevident that this account of work done by their major opponent was written bythem. It was not the (presumably neutral) writer who had assessed the relative meritsof these two bodies of work, and the reliability of the assessment is called into ques-

tion by the knowledge that it was drafted by a partisan in the conict.

D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429 17This, presumably, is one of the reasons for the widely accepted principle that sec-ondary citation should be acknowledged: so that the reader can judge whose inter-pretation is being put forward. Another reason may be simple accuracy, since themore links in the transmission of a message, the more inaccuracies can creep in.Nonetheless, unacknowledged secondary citation was prominent in this corpus,amounting to 137 source mentions, eight times the number that were acknowledged,

Secondary Citation / 1000 words

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5Oc

curr

ence

spe

r10

00w

ord

s

Acknowledged

Unacknowledged

SCI ENG HUM SS

Fig. 2. Secondary citation per 1000 words of text.so that 18% of all source mentions are at second hand (see Fig. 1). The reality con-icts, therefore, with the supercial appearance that secondary citation is a marginalfeature. As Fig. 2 shows, the presence of this feature averages just over 2 occurrencesper 1000 words in the corpus, and rises to over 4 per 1000 words in the science andhumanities sub-corpora. It is interesting to note that the scientists, the group whichacknowledged no secondary citation, nearly tie with the humanities writers as theheaviest users of it.

The 17 texts in this corpus thus presented the appearance of being in compliancewith conventions governing secondary references to sources. However, when this oc-cluded aspect of source use was examined more closely, the appearance of confor-mity was not maintained.

3.2. Details of the sources

Given the preference of urban scholars to publish quickly and in journals, theexpectation was that the biologists would cite more journal articles, and more recentones, than the other writers. This expectation was met: the average age of the sourcescited by the scientists was 9 years, but more than double that, ranging from 19 to 22years, for the other elds (see Fig. 3). Research articles made up 85% of the sourcescited by the biologists, but not more that 24% of those in the other elds (see Fig. 4).

18 D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429Source Age25

Age CitedThe biologists give the impression, therefore, of being sensitive to the need to con-textualize their work in the most recent research literature.

However, because of the presence of secondary citation, the group of sources citedin the writing samples was not precisely the same as the group of sources which were

0

5

10

15

20

SCI ENG HUM SS

Yea

rsAge Used

Fig. 3. Age of sources.

Citation of RAs

0

20

40

60

80

100

Nu

mbe

ro

fcite

dR

As

[%]

RAs cited

RAs used

SCI ENG HUM SS

Fig. 4. Research articles as a proportion of all sources cited and used.

D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429 19determined actually to have been used. As Fig. 3 shows, when the sources actuallyused are considered, the picture changes somewhat. The proportion of RAs amongthe scientists sources is slightly lower80%. The sources used are also somewhatyounger for all groups since, clearly, secondary sources have later publication datesthan the primary sources they report. In (8a), for example, Ingrid cites a 1994 studyby Kennard et al., but the similarity with Ferreira et al.s slightly later paper (8b) sug-gests that Ingrid based her account on the latter.

(8a) In B. oleracea, two marker loci associated with owering time showed signi-cant additive additive and additive dominant epistasis in a cross of cabbageand broccoli (Kennard et al.). [Ingrid 4:1]

(8b) Likewise, in B. oleracea, two marker loci associated with owering timeshowed signicant additive additive and additive dominant epistasis in across of cabbage and broccoli (Kennard et al., 1994). [Ferreira, Stagopan, Yan-dell, Williams, and Osborn, 1995, p. 731]

The relevance of giving a misleading impression about the age of sources dependson the discipline involved. For the urban biologists, citing and using recently pub-lished sources is positive. However, the fact that the sources used by the scientistswere more recent on average than those cited does not indicate that they were alsomore up-to-date, as (9) illustrates. The sources cited in (9a) are research articles,but as in example (5), the source appears to have been Datta et al. (1989), which isnot a research article but a review article of Current trends in Candida Albicans re-search. Thus, while the source used for this passage is in fact newer than those whichwere cited, it is simply a retelling of older ndings and not a report of newer ones.

(9a) True hyphal cells have perforated septa and the cell junctions are not con-stricted. Chlamydospores are thick walled asexual spores formed by the round-ing up of pre-existing cells (Odds et al., 1985; Torosantucci and Cassone, 1983).[Sci2 18:2bii]

(9b) True hyphal cells are longer than blastoconidia and have perforated septa; celljunctions are not constricted. Chlamydospores are thick-walled asexual sporesformed by the rounding up of pre-existing cells (Torosantucci and Cassone,1983; Odds, 1985). [Datta et al., 1989, pp. 5859]

By contrast, some research topics benet from a historical grounding, and refer-ence to some older sources speaks to the writer having taken an appropriately broadtime perspective. Such an impression given by Kwans discussion of educational eval-uation in (10a), in which she appears to trace the changing understanding of evalu-ation, citing Tyler as an example of the early 20th century view, Cronbach for the1960s and Popham on a change that had come about by the 1970s. From (10b) itis clear that the historical progression has been outlined by Popham. Kwans rolehas been to condense Pophams overview (the ellipses in the quotation from Pophamrepresent signicant amounts of omitted text), rather than to synthesize the original

sources.

20 D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429(10a) For centuries evaluation has been used by classroom teachers as an equivalentof testing. Later on in early 1900s evaluation was accorded by some research-ers a dierent function, i.e., appraisal of an educational programmes quality.(Tyler, for example.) Then in 1960s Cronbach argued in one of his articlesentitled Course Improvement Through Evaluation for the necessity of focus-sing educational evaluation on the development process of a programme(1963). In the early 1970s, evaluation was seen as a facilitator for decision-making in educational programmes. As Popham puts it In the early 1970s,however, there was a pervasive belief that well-conducted educational evalu-ations could, and should, constitute the single most important factor in therendering of educational decisions. (1988:5). [Kwan 2:3]

(10b) For centuries the term evaluation has been used by classroom teachers. . . Formost educators, indeed, the idea of evaluation was essentially equivalent tothe idea of testing. . . In 1932 Ralph W. Tyler. . . came to view evaluationnot as the appraisal of students, but rather as the appraisal of an educationalprograms quality. . . In a 1963 article entitled Course Improvement throughEvaluation,. . . Cronbach argued that if educational evaluation were to be ofassistance to curriculum developers, it had to be focused on the decisionsfaced by curriculum specialists during the process of their developmenteorts. . . In the early 1970s, however, there was a pervasive belief that well-conducted educational evaluations could, and should, constitute the singlemost important factor in the rendering of educational decisions. [Popham,1988, pp. 12]

Thus, with regard to the types of sources cited and used, the writers again can beseen to have conformed supercially to disciplinary expectations. The urban biolo-gists cited much more recent ndings, and a high proportion of research articles,compared with the writers in the other three elds. These tendencies were, however,less marked in the actual source use.

3.3. Imported language

It was expected that the science and engineering writers would avoid explicit quo-tation, and that those in the humanities and social sciences would use it as a minoritystrategy, and this proved to be the case. Among the eight science and engineeringtexts, only one, a masters dissertation in engineering, includes explicit quotation.On the other hand, the humanities and social science texts contain 181 quotations(see Fig. 5).

(11) However, despite the research and studies on this subject, both the nature andscope of personal and social education remain controversial. (Galloway, 1990,p. 1). [Graciela 2:2]

(12) Indeed, Trumper and Rizzi (1985) maintain that since the origins of this phe-nomenon aect not only Greek, it is more plausible to talk about a Sprach-

bund balcanico-calabrese meridionale-salentina (p. 70). [H2 42:1a]

D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429 21Quotation is, however, a visible feature only as long as it is signaled. Ordinarily, areader assumes that language not signaled as quotation has been composed by thewriter, not repeated from another source. However, in this corpus that assumptionis not reliable. Numerous passages contain language repeated (nearly) verbatim froma source, without quotation marks, and often without mention of the source. Exam-ples of this appear in (13), (14) and (15).

(13a) Sensitivity, S, is usually dened as the ratio between the undisturbed shear

Presence of Quotations

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Occ

urre

nces

SCI ENG HUM SS

Fig. 5. Frequency of signaled quotation.strength to the remoulded shear strength, as determined either from vane testor from unconned compression test. [Eng2 23:5]

(13b) Sensitivity, St, is usually dened as the ratio of the undisturbed shear strengthto the remoulded shear strength, determined either from vane tests or fromunconned compression tests. [Brenner et al., 1981, pp. 214215]

(14a) This view is not shared by those who distinguish that the practices appropriatein the pastoral sphere may not always be appropriate in the academic sphere(and vice versa), and even that separate organisational arrangements may benecessary (Best, Ribbins, Jarvis, & Oddy, 1983, p. 276). [Graciela 3:2]

(14b) . . . there are grounds for arguing that the practices appropriate in the pastoralsphere may not always be appropriate in the academic sphere (and vice versa),and even that separate organizational arrangements may be necessary. [Bestet al., 1983, p. 276]

(15a) The control of owering time is a process of primary importance in agricul-ture and also of great scientic interest for the understanding of plant devel-opment. [Ingrid 3:1a]

(15b) The control of owering time is a process of primary importance in agricul-ture and also of great scientic interest for the understanding of plant devel-opment. [Lagercrantz, Putterill, Coupland, and Lydiate, 1996, p. 13]

80

22 D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429Repetition of this sort is surprisingly common in the corpus. Considered as a pro-portion of the parts of the writing samples which were compared to their sources,

0

20

40

60

Port

ion

Repe

ated

[%]

SCI ENG HUM SS

Fig. 6. Unattributed quotation as a proportion of compared writing samples.Unattributed Quotation100and excluding language signaled as quotation, 41% of the corpus consists of lan-guage repeated without attribution from sources. Interestingly, as Fig. 6 shows,the writers who relied most on unsignaled repetition from their sources were the biol-ogiststhe group which made no use at all of signaled quotation.

In three respects, thenthe use of secondary citation, the nature of the sourcesreported and the use of explicit quotationthe texts give the appearance of con-forming closely to expectations. Standards for secondary citation are likely to bebroadly shared across academic areas, while disciplines dier in the types of sourcesused, and the acceptability of quoting language from a source. With regard to thetype and age of the source referred to, the prole presented by the science writerssharply diers from the other three groups, and Bechers urban and rural distinctionoers an explanation for the dierence. The presence or absence of signaled quota-tion is accounted for by the familiar distinction between hard and soft subject areas.In all three areas, the visible aspects of source use approximate disciplinary expecta-tions more closely than the occluded aspects, which in some cases violate commonstandards.

4. Explaining the divergence

Why did the writers in this study use sources in ways which so sharply divergedfrom the predictable expectations of their discourse communities? Were the mis-

leadininapp

D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429 23permit a full discussion of the role of intention in plagiarism, it should be notedthat a current trend in composition theory is concerned with providing alternativeexplanations for dependence on the language of sources. Howard (1995, 1999) hascoined the term patchwriting to describe the dependence of novice writers on thelanguage of their sources, and argues that this is a common developmental stage.Anecdotal accounts of writers who use the language of their sources without ade-quate attribution, but who seem to be motivated by something other than astraightforward intention to cheat, can be found in Crocker and Shaw (2002), Cur-rie (1998), Hull and Rose (1989), Matalene (1985), and Petric (2004), among oth-ers, and empirical evidence is provided by Pecorari (2003). Barks and Watts (2001)argue for the need to raise students awareness of the complexities of issues insource use, complexities which electronic media augment (Belcher, 2001; Bloch,2001).

A number of alternatives are therefore available to the view that apparent plagia-rism stems from an intentionally deceptive act. A further explanation that can beadded to these is the role that visibility and occlusion play in students eorts to entertheir discourse communities. Visibility is a key element in Lave and Wengers (1991)articulation of legitimate peripheral participation. In the successful apprenticeshipthey describe for tailors in West Africa, novices performed small tasks which ex-posed the relationship between pieces of a garment and the whole. By contrast,apprentice butchers in a supermarket were blocked from learning, in part by thephysical layout of the workplace, which prevented them from seeing what the skilledworkers did: the working practices they were to learn were quite literally invisible tothem. Visibility is achieved when novices can observe the work processes, and notmerely their products.

Theses and dissertations are often produced and assessed with emphasis on theproduct. It is reasonable to think that students model their own eorts at least in parton the scholarly publications they read; they can, however, observe only the visiblefeatures of the nished product. Students reading a published research article canonly guess whether the writer always consulted primary sources, cited sources accu-rately and signaled all quotations; a similar blind spot aects supervisors reading stu-dent texts. The processes and features that are not visible cannot be observed, butonly inferred.

In interviews, the student writers whose texts were investigated here emphasizedthe tentative nature of their inferences. Ingrid, a biologist, explained that she wasuncertain to some extent about her writing but tried to observe what other writersdid: I think everyones doing it in more or less the same way. Having made theirbest eorts, the students relied upon their advisors to judge their success. As Roulasaid:

thats why I think the tutor has to. . . be a part of the whole thing, to read theparaphrases and quotations and tell you if youre doing the right place, or ifg aspects of source use intentional? This last is an important question sinceropriate source use may be interpreted as plagiarism. While space does notyou have to rewrite it, or if you dont have to just mention it at all.

unawsuperand tand tcomm

24 D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429come to the study of plants through a background in animal biology and thatmuch of the relevant literature was new to her. However, he concluded, Shesmade a reasonable job of trying to understand what people are doing and whytheyre trying to do it. Dr. Frost criticized Ingrids work for referencing a rela-tively small proportion of the available literature on the topic but said clearlyshes found a lot of key ones, adding that the program wanted students to givetheir topics broad coverage, and yes, she has. However, when we looked to-gether at Ingrids text and its sources, this assessment changed sharply. Dr. Frostwas clear in categorizing Ingrids strategies as inappropriate: That is not whattheyre expected to do, and if Id spotted it I would have been very concerned aboutit, yes [emphasis added].

The occluded aspects of academic writing were, therefore, in a blind spot for thestudents and supervisors both. Certainly the students could have asked their super-visors to comment on their performance, but doing so would have presupposed anawareness of what issues need comment. From the supervisors side, investigatingthe occluded features of every student text would have been impossible in practicalterms. Dr. Frost noted this reality:

It worries me that she has taken a large chunk very much verbatim from pub-lished work and it doesnt surprise me that were not spotting it with so manycoming through all we do, youve got half an hour for each project report,theres no way most people would have the time to go back and check to whatextent this sort of straight copying has occurred. Im not happy about it.

More importantly though, investigating the occluded features would reect suspicionof the text. Precisely because the relationship between a source and a report of it isoccluded, it is widely accepted that source reports should be transparent; that is, theyshould use the conventional signals to create an accurate portrait of the relationship(Groom, 2000; Tadros, 1993). The absence of transparency is more often treated as aquestion of academic ethics than of skills. An advisor would ordinarily investigatethe occluded features of a students text only if he or she suspected deliberate, trans-gressive behavior. That, thankfully, is not part of the typical advisor-student rela-

tionsare of the problems with source use. Early in our interviews, I asked thevisors to comment generally on the strengths and weaknesses of the texts,heir responses indicated that although the dissertation samples were drafts,herefore oered scope for improvement, they were broadly acceptable. Theents of Dr. Frost, Ingrids supervisor, are revealing. He noted that she hadIngrid, whose work leant heavily on its sources, agreed: I just do what I think I sup-posed to and they never actually make that much comments about it. (Here andelsewhere, quotations from the interviews are verbatim, with nonstandard lexicaland grammatical usage maintained.)

The writers applied a straightforward principle: they inferred rules, attempted toput them into practice, and waited for feedback. When the feedback did not in-clude comments on source use, the students assumed that theirs was appropriate,along with the inferences that guided it. For similar reasons the supervisors werehip. Thus, worryingly, these students and supervisors approached their tasks

versitinstansuper

D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429 25(16) The medium developed by Murashige and Skoog (1962) (see Appendix: Stu-dent sources) for tobacco tissue culture is being used extensively in micro prop-agation of Mentha, as well as other plants. [Erden 3:1a]

Because this paper was conspicuous by being much older than the others Erdencited, I asked him and his supervisor to comment on it. Erden explained that themedium described in the paper is one which everybody uses. His supervisor con-curred that the paper was widely used and cited, but not widely read:

A journal would insist on. . . that reference, Murashige and Skoog must beamong the most widely cited papers ever and virtually nobody will have readit but everybody has to cite it.

The apparent paradox lies in the fact that theMurashige and Skoog medium, which issold commercially, already prepared, is widely enough used not to need explanationor justication. The authors who rst described it are cited primarily to give credit fortheir innovation. Understanding this as a legitimate exception to general rules aboutciting secondary sources requires an understanding of the specic disciplinary context.

Other exceptions have been documented. Devitt (1991), in her study of the genresof tax accounting, describes a common practice which she terms unmarked quota-tion, what teachers might call plagiarism and which often suits the rhetoricalneeds and especially the epistemological values of the accounting community(p. 348). Prior (1998, p. 136) reports an instance of what was apparently unattributedsecondary citation in the work of the student he calls Mai. Mai cited one author(Erickson) but her text appears to have stronger similarities with another authors(McLaughlins) account of Erickson, along with language repeated from McLaugh-lin. Yet Prior shows that McLaughlins text in turn has language in common with

Ericky-wide level, and not considered to need a discipline-specic approach. Yet thece of unattributed secondary citation in (16) was defended by the student andvisor involved as entirely appropriate.with strategies which left the occluded source features not only uninvestigated butalso unsuspected.

Non-normative source use was not detected because it was occluded. How did itarise in the rst place? Of a number of factors which may have contributed to thesituation, two are closely related to the question of occlusion. First, the fact thatsource relationships are occluded to the reader of a text aected both the supervisors,as readers of their students work, and the students, as readers of the scholarly liter-ature. The students prime opportunities to learnobservations of texts in theirelds, and feedbackonly educated them about visible textual features.

Second, occluded textual features may mask a gap between what the academiccommunity says it expects, and what is actually done. A case in point is the reportingof secondary sources. In a survey of university plagiarism policies (Pecorari, 2001)unacknowledged secondary citation was actually identied as a form of plagiarism,evidence that secondary citation is addressedat least at some institutionsat a uni-son, but not marked as quotation.

ton acknowledges X) and non-factive verbs (Stilton proposes X) convey quite distinctevaluations. Whether the evaluation which is signaled to the reader is that which is

26 D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429intended by the writer is ordinarily occluded to the reader. The chance that occlusionmasks an unintended evaluation is, presumably, higher when the writer is less expe-rienced, and when the writer is an NNSE.

Occlusion gave the texts studied here a supercial appearance of appropriateness,masking potential or actual problems which an ad hoc approach to thesis supervi-sion could not reveal. This suggests that the project of learning about the occludedaspects of academic texts can be facilitated by an apprenticeship approach. It isworth noting that the thesis with the most appropriate source use, that of H2, in-cluded in its reference list a paper co-authored by the student with the supervisor.Although it would be wrong to read too much into this isolated case, it is possiblethat co-authoring a paper provided this student with an experience of situatedlearning.

Adding elements of apprenticeship to postgraduate advising may or may not beAt least two explanations are available for these seemingly exceptional cases. Onone hand, they may simply illustrate that unconventional source use is not limited tostudents. However, the case of the Murashige and Skoog medium seems to indicateeither that university-wide prescriptions do not accurately reect the practices of thedisciplines, or that individuals may interpret general principles dierently, or both. Ifso, one implication is that the source use documented here which appears to departfrom accepted standards may in some cases simply signal adherence to a set of localstandards. Another implication is that the task of novices learning to write in theirdisciplines may have an additional level of complexity: not only must they be obser-vant of visible practices and somehow learn and negotiate the occluded practices,they must also be sensitive to the competing levels at which practice is regulated.Their task could be facilitated by research into the writing practices that are accept-able in the disciplines.

5. Conclusion

The ndings presented here have pointed to the fact that fundamental aspects ofacademic writing are occluded and therefore go unaddressed, with the worrying con-sequence that students may leave the university with important writing skills un-learned. Even more worryingly, the writers studied here used sources in wayswhich might be labeled plagiarism, with potentially grave consequences should theyapply the same writing strategies later in their academic careers.

Swaless (1996) discussion of occlusion has been extended here in two ways. First,occlusion has been shown to mask aspects of texts from established members of theacademic discourse community as well as novices; and second, it has been appliednot only to certain genres but to some features of visible genres. Other occluded fea-tures remain to be identied. Reporting verbs, for example, are evaluative (e.g.,Thompson & Ye, 1991). To the experienced reader, factive reporting verbs (e.g., Stil-an achievable objective in practical terms. An apprenticeship approach calls on

Belcher, D. (2001). Cyberdiscourse, evolving notions of authorship, and the teaching of writing. In M.Hewings (Ed.), Academic writing in context: implications and applications (pp. 140149). Birmingham:University of Birmingham Press.

power. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Bloch, J. (2001). Plagiarism and the ESL student: from printed to electronic texts. In D. Belcher & A.

D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429 27Hirvela (Eds.), Linking literacies: perspectives on L2 readingwriting connections (pp. 209228). AnnArbor: University of Michigan Press.

Charles, M. (2003). This mystery. . .: a corpus-based study of the use of nouns to construct stance intheses from two contrasting disciplines. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2, 313326.

Crocker, J., & Shaw, P. (2002). Research student and supervisor evaluation of intertextuality practices.HERMES Journal of Linguistics, 28, 3958.

Currie, P. (1998). Staying out of trouble: apparent plagiarism and academic survival. Journal of SecondLanguage Writing, 7, 118.

Devitt, A. J. (1991). Intertextuality in tax accounting: generic, referential, and functional. In C. Bazerman& J. Paradis (Eds.), Textual dynamics of the professions: historical and contemporary studies of writing inBelcher, D. (2004). Trends in teaching English for specic purposes. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics,24, 165186.

Becher, T., & Trowler, P. (2001). Academic tribes and territories: intellectual enquiry and the culture ofdisciplines (2nd ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press.

Berkenkotter, C., & Huckin, T. (1995). Genre knowledge in disciplinary communication: cognition/culture/advisors to provide increased time, involvement and attention, all of which maysimply not be compatible with the reality of academic work loads and the nancialconstraints under which academic institutions labor. However, the evidence pro-vided by this study is that novice writers and their advisors expend considerableenergy and attention in meeting those needs they can see. Some means of address-ing the other, occluded demands of writing is necessary if postgraduate instructionis to address the full range of students learning, and not merely the visible tip ofthe iceberg.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Maggie Charles and Philip Shaw for their comments on earlydrafts of this paper.

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D. Pecorari / English for Specic Purposes 25 (2006) 429 29Diane Pecorari is a senior lecturer in the Department of Humanities at Malardalen University in Sweden,where she teaches English applied linguistics and academic writing. Her research interests include writingacross the disciplines and discourse analysis.

Visible and occluded citation features in postgraduate second-language writingIntroductionMethodsEstablishing disciplinary expectationsExamining the visible featuresExamining the occluded features

Visible and occluded source use in the writing samplesSecondary citationDetails of the sourcesImported language

Explaining the divergenceConclusionAcknowledgementsReferences