Investigating academic identity traits

In the last few decades there has been a considerable increase in the globalisation of research practices in Universities all over the world. The wish to be read and quoted as widely as possible at a global level has induced many scholars to publish in English. Thes globalising trends in the academic world have had great implications for research, resulting in very complex formulations. Indeed, in spite of the homogenizing effects deriving from the process of globalisation, academic discourse does not seem to be at all uniform, but shows great variation based on several factors, some of them clearly reflecting aspects of the local tradition and culture. The analysis presented here originates form a recent research project on identity and culture in academic discourse carried out at the University of Bergamo (Italy), whose data show that the (native or non-native) Anglophone textual realisations are clearly influenced by their authors' cultural allegiance to their linguistic, professional, social, or national reference groups.