Disciplinary Identities: Individuality and Community in Academic Discourse

Disciplinary Identities is an intelligent blend of synthesis and innovation. With it, Ken Hyland coherently follows the trail of his previous work, in particular that of Disciplinary Discourses (2004), whose final chapters constitute his present point of departure, and of those articles explaining the tension between positioning (authorial stance and visibility) and “proximity ” (the conformity and “engagement ” with communal constraints and expectations) to take a broad view of academic identity through a constructivist approach. Indeed the works on identity currently circulating are, as Hyland states in his preface, diverse and massively numerous, and therefore one must have powerful reasons for launching another book onto the market. Disciplinary Identities, suffice it to say, is not only justified but also welcome because of three very strong points: first, its conjugation of shared knowledge and new findings – the latter regarding hardly explored representational genres such as academic bios, theses acknowledgments, prize applications and academic homepages; second, its eclecticism, both theoretical and methodological, which enriches the current landscape of research into academic interpersonality and provides us with a versatile arsenal of tools; and third, an ample conceptual coverage leading to suggestive directions for further studies. Among them are the connection between identity and multimodality (the author’s survey of academic webpages reminds us that identities are relational, multimodal and semiotic), the whys and wherefores of generic bending, issues of disciplinary and discursive appropriation and hybridization, the diachronic evolution of self- and group branding, the erosion of genres by individual style, or the variation of content and form across channels and media (oral, written, multimodal, traditional and digital) and throughout educational levels. rESEñAS / BOOK rEVIEWS