The Structure of Philosophical Discourse by Kyle Lucas

The Structure of Philosophical Discourse by Kyle Lucas

This book builds on existing work in genre analysis and move analysis in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and applies this new framework to academic philosophical discourse, offering new insights into how ESP traditions can elucidate shifts in language conventions across disciplinary contexts.

The volume begins by surveying the state of the art in English for Specific Purposes and genre theory, as well as other genre theory paradigms before turning the focus on move analysis. Lucas and Lucas seek to maximize the potential of move analysis to precisely operationalize functional units of discourse by implementing a cognitive theory of genre grounded in frame semantics. Using the case of academic research articles in philosophy, the authors demonstrate how this framework can reveal distinctive dimensions unique to philosophical discourse and, in turn, how such an approach might be applied more broadly to examine nuances in language across disciplines and inform ESP research in the future.

This book will appeal to students and researchers in English for Specific Purposes, discourse analysis, academic writing, applied linguistics, and rhetoric and composition.

"Philosophers do not have very developed vocabularies for talking about the structure of philosophical writing, which does philosophy students at both the graduate and undergraduate levels a disserviceThis work is part of the solution. Philosophers tend to lean on argument forms to describe writing, which rarely capture the global structure of a philosophy paper. By clearly distinguishing between the macro- and micro-structure within philosophical writing, the work goes a long way towards making visible the structure of papers in the central journals of analytic philosophy and will make an excellent resource for students and teachers of philosophy."

Christopher Yeomans, Professor of Philosophy, Purdue University

"In this comprehensive, groundbreaking, lucid, and very readable book, the authors employ both theoretical and empirical means to develop a clear and detailed description of philosophical discourse, working from and adding to the ESP research tradition, and, in the process, contributing new and productive insights into genre and move analysis."

Tony Silva, Professor Emeritus of English, Purdue University

Kyle Lucas is a Instructor of Writing at Ferris State University, Michigan, USA. He received his PhD in English from Purdue University in 2022.

Sarah Lucas is a PhD candidate in the Philosophy Department at Purdue University, Indiana, USA, and a Full-Time Lecturer in Philosophy at Ferris State University, Michigan, USA.