Academic Writing in the Baltic States: Rhetorical Structures through culture(s) and languages

About this project

<p><span style="font-size: 11pt"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif">In academic setting, writing is an increasingly important skill for students and scientists. Being the most convenient form of evaluation, writing tasks are increasingly popular in university settings. Within the last decades, writing has also become central for researchers whose performance is often evaluated in terms of publications.&nbsp;</span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif">Nowadays, most scientists publish their work in English, the current lingua franca of science. However, in the Baltic States, scientists still have the opportunity (and sometimes obligation) to publish research in the local languages, especially in social sciences and humanities. Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian are also (still) relevant in teaching and learning on lower levels of higher education.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 11pt"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif">The current project aims to map rhetorical conventions of academic writing in Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian. Focusing on the humanities and social sciences, we will investigate the academic discourse on macro- and micro-level. As such, we will investigate rhetorical structure typical of specific genres as well as stance and coherence in discourse.&nbsp;</span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif">The project contributes to understanding local writing conventions and helps to preserve Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian in all the domains, including research and higher education. The results can be used when teaching academic writing in Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian. In addition, the results will contribute to studies of academic identity aspects and add to the intercultural rhetoric research worldwide.</span></span></p>

Bilateral cooperation results

Each Baltic country team was primarily responsible for the language-specific data analysis, coding, and reporting across the partners. The Estonian team was also responsible to steer the discussions between the Norwegian team and the data analysis processes. The Norwegian team provided data analytical know-how and data analysis procedures across the selected data and data coding. Their computational and data analytical expertise was a vital component in supporting the language-specific and across-language analysis. Without their expertise in machine learning, deep learning, and data analysis, which included knowledge of data analysis in R and Python, other teams would not have been able to move forward. For the Baltic researchers, this also meant that the large-scale data analysis provided a lot of learning opportunities, as most of the teams, specifically Latvian and Lithianian, mainly had experience with small corpus or small data analyses, and lacked experience in machine learning methods. Valuable knowledge was exchanged and understanding improved throughout the project period, Project teams will continue to apply for future funding to utilise the data for teaching and learning and research.

Project partners

• University of Bergen Donor project partner· Norway
• Liepaja University Project partner· Latvia
• Vilnius University Project partner· Lithuania