"This book is unusual in its breadth of coverage. It analyses popularisations, pedagogical and student genres as well as journal articles, and spoken as well as written texts. It brings together perspectives from discourse analysis, composition research, English for Specific Purposes, literacy studies, and sociology of science, as well as genre analysis. And its examples come from Chinese, American, and British academic institutions. Because of this breadth, even readers who think they are up to date with one aspect or another of academic discourse will find some new insights, and references to studies they had missed. All this is presented with brevity, lightness of touch, apt quotations, striking examples, and a readable style." - Greg Myers, Professor of Rhetoric and Communication, Lancaster University, UK.

"Ken Hyland's latest book provides a refreshingly non-technical orientation to the important world of academic discourse. In it, he covers an impressively wide range of genres, both spoken and written, and does so with a welcome and useful integration of sociological and discourse-analytic perspectives." - John M. Swales, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, University of Michigan, USA.

Academic discourse is a rapidly growing area of study, attracting researchers and students from a diverse range of fields. This is partly due to the growing awareness that knowledge is socially constructed through language and partly because of the emerging dominance of English as the language of scholarship worldwide. Large numbers of students and researchers must now gain fluency in the conventions of English language academic discourses to understand their disciplines, establish their careers and to successfully navigate their learning.

This accessible and readable book shows the nature and importance of academic discourses in the modern world, offering a clear description of the conventions of spoken and written academic discourse and the ways these construct both knowledge and disciplinary communities. This unique genre-based introduction to academic discourse will be essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying TESOL, applied linguistics, and English for Academic Purposes.