Resumen de A corpus-based analysis of the lexical profile of textbooks for construction and architecture
With a bottom-up approach in this thesis I move from the analysis of text as a final written product with specific lexico-grammatical, semantic and rhetorical features to regarding the written product as linked to the social context of production and interpretation of the text. This approach involves paying attention to the way the process of writing about buildings is affected by the community-specific, institutional and socio-historical circumstances in which the texts are produced. My analysis of textbooks then seeks to interpret the text in context, thus moving from the analysis of the individual writer's practices to the analysis of the writing practices of the community. My analysis then covers 'text-internal' features of the textbook genre (that is, the recurring lexico-grammatical elements and the discourse organization and development of the texts by means of rhetorical strategies) and its relationship with 'text-external' features (that is, the construction of discourse roles, discourse privileges of the textbook writers and the way these writers reflect the ideology of the profession) hence moving the focus beyond the text to 'what makes a text possible'(Bhatia, 2002a, p. 21).
Considering that the concept 'building' is a key concept for the construction engineering community, the specific aim of this PhD work is to understand what 'building' means for this particular community. In other words, by looking at the texts themselves I seek to reach an understanding of the beliefs, values and ideologies underlying the community and, more specifically, how these beliefs, values and ideologies are reflected in the text-internal features of the texts. With this aim in mind, my first goal is to define the lexico-semantic profile of the noun building in a corpus of construction engineering textbooks, the Construction Textbooks Corpus (CTC). Understanding the importance of vocabulary choice as a sociolinguistic competence (Carter & McCarthy, 1988, p. 212) and acknowledging the difficulty posed by specialized vocabulary in the techno-scientific discourse, I try to answer Carter and McCarthy's questions (1988, p. 212) about the lexical choices available for the members of the construction engineering discourse community when talking about buildings. I then adopt Hunston's (2002) pattern grammar approach and hypothesize that there is a close link between lexis, grammar and meaning and describe building as a particular lexical item in connection to specific semantic, grammatical or clausal features of the discourse of construction engineering. With a lexical approach, this thesis argues that these sequences of lexico-grammatical patterns are subject to disciplinary and generic constraints.
To fully comprehend the concept 'building' is impossible. But to reach a comprehensive view of this concept, it is, in my view, necessary to understand the large number of hyponyms and meronyms that contribute to build the ontology of the concept 'building' by designating, with a higher or lower degree of specificity, the types and parts of the building. Applying the theoretical background of semantics theory, particularly the work of Lyons (1968, 1977, 1995) and Cruse (1986, 2000, 2002, 2003), I attempt to investigate how the semantic relations of hyponymy and meronymy are specific to the discourse community of construction engineering and argue that meaning is acquired through its use in context, so that in addition to defining the lexico-grammatical profile of building, I also conduct a co-textual analysis of the concept 'building' to unveil the implications beyond the limits of the word, to the boundaries of the sentence and, furthermore, to the whole text (cf. Halliday & Hasan, 1976; Hoey, 1983).
The text-internal analysis of the lexico-grammatical patterns of the noun building is interpreted in relation to the analysis of the text-external influences which condition the lexical choices of construction engineering textbook writers. The aim of this analysis is to explore how construction engineers describe, define and evaluate the building in textbooks. In doing so, I seek to approach the disciplinary creation of the image of the building and how this image is constructed at a textual level. In line with discourse semantics theory, my assumption is that lexical choice is conditioned by historical, social or cultural implications, and in the case of the specialized lexis of the construction discipline, by the shared expectations and conventions that members have on the way of making, using and talking about buildings. For the functional analysis of the building I then depart from those theories which view language as a social phenomenon and therefore governed by social conventions and ideologies (van Dijk, 1995, 2006; Fairclough, 2002; Kress & Hodge, 1979). According to this social theoretical framework, every culture creates its own values, influenced by the social, cultural or aesthetic models of that culture. In this respect, it is widely acknowledged that epistemological values and beliefs are linked to the emergence and perpetuation of disciplinary identity (Dressen-Hammouda, 2008; Matsuda & Tardy, 2007). For this reason, I argue that the purpose of construction engineering textbooks is not only the creation of disciplinary knowledge, but also the transmission of disciplinary ideology, values and beliefs, which will ultimately mean to forge the public attitude towards both the building and the construction profession itself. Accordingly, in this PhD work I explore how the textbooks produced by the disciplinary community of construction engineering have built the image of the building in terms of those disciplinary values (Hyland, 2005b; Martin, 2000, 2003).
With these research goals in mind I intend to contribute to a better understanding of the generic integrity of the textbook genre, and of the intricate relations between its textual features and the specific discourse practices and disciplinary values of the community in which this genre is produced and received. The understanding of the nature of this particular genre would be useful to define the specific communicative needs of this community of professionals and to provide more adequate ESP instruction to the members of this community in their use of English as a tool for communication.
