In Chapter 3 we examined the importance of developing disciplinary knowledge, and how arguments at university build on such understandings (Section 3.5). We start this chapter with an exploration of expectations of evaluation and argumentation from different perspectives. In Section 4.2 we introduce the six genres in the Critique genre family and the six genres in the Essay genre family. We then focus on shared and contrasting genre features found in introductions, headings and hyperNews. These give us a sense of the organisation and stages of Critiques and Essays. In Section 4.3 we explore disciplinary variation through moves involving the use of first person I and IF–THEN reasoning. In the final section (4.4), we review the basic statistics and multidimensional analysis of Critiques and Essays, then explore keywords in the two genre families, and conclude with a focus on disciplinary variation in the language of Essays, the most populated genre family in the BAWE corpus.

Critical Evaluation and Argumentation

Independent reasoning is developed through critical evaluation and the devising of sustained arguments, which we suggest are semiotically rather distinct processes. They involve the construal of knowledge and understanding in support of a critical appraisal or of a position on an issue. Such links between understanding, argumentation and evaluation are echoed in the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) frameworks for England, Wales and Northern Ireland:

As we explained in Section 3.5, there is an assumption that conceptual understanding (such as that displayed in Explanation genres) is inextricably linked to ‘devising and sustaining arguments’ as well as ‘evaluating current research, concepts and data’.