Evaluative Language in Engineering Writing

This book examines strategic language use in professional engineering written reports, illustrating how writers create a persuasive stance within an objective style. It describes engineering writing through a close analysis of interpersonal language, using Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), complemented with quantitative corpus linguistics methods and interpreted through concepts drawn from Legitimation Code Theory (LCT). This description demonstrates how engineering writers have a strong preference for a certain type of evaluative language, with a dominant stance focused on the worthiness of things and processes. It is also demonstrates that engineering writers make strategic choices in their use of interpersonal language towards a certain aim, particularly in documents written to gain approval of a project by a regulatory body.
This research is focused on engineering writing in the Australian context, but given the globalised nature of the engineering profession, also has relevance internationally. The creation of an objective stance in writing is also relevant to other disciplines.

Author Biography

Claire Simpson-Smith currently works as a learning designer in Data61, a unit of the CSIRO. She completed her PhD at the University of South Australia and formerly taught engineering communication at the University of Adelaide, Australia.