This volume explores the relationship between shared disciplinary norms and individual traits
in academic speech and writing. Despite the standardising pressure of cultural and
language-related factors academic communication remains in many ways a highly personal affair
with active participation in a disciplinary community requiring a multidimensional discourse
that combines the professional institutional social and individual identities of its members.
The first section of the volume deals with tensions involving individual collective values and
the analysis of collective vs. individual discoursal features in academic discourse. The second
section comprises longitudinal investigations of the academic output of single scholars so as
to highlight the individuality in their choices and the reasons for not conforming with the
commonality of conventions shared by their professional community. The third part deals with
genres that are meant to impose commonality on the members of an academic community not only
in the drafting of specialized texts but also when these are reviewed or evaluated for possible
publication.
