2.3.1 Hyland’s Definition of Discipline
Discipline is a very common label to illuminate knowledge, institutional structures or individuals in academic fields.Participants such as teachers or students are less likely to have trouble in recognising their belonging in a discipline, which can be evidenced by salient academic events such as institutional seminars and lectures or academic conferences.However, discipline is difficult to define and needs to be treated cautiously.Not all disciplines, as Hyland (2012) points out, ‘exhibit the same degree of cohesiveness and internal agreement’ (p.24), because different disciplines attach to different traditions, beliefs, academic theories and methodologies, or even standards of research quality, not mentioning that there are different education systems that can be ascribed to cultural and geographic variations in disciplines (Podgorecki, 1997).All of these differences potentially cause difficulties in reconciling a group of individuals with an aggregate of experiences to share discursive conventions and group affiliation.
Ideally, Hyland (2012) defines the concept of discipline as a site of identity which:
‘puts each individual’s decision-making and engagement at centre stage and underlines the fact that academic discourse involves language users in constructing and displaying their identities, both moment by moment and over extended periods, as members of disciplines.’ (p.26)
Hyland (2012) argues that, rather than ‘mere chimera’ (p.25), disciplines are not only physical sites of local institutions in which certain groups of people teach or study, but also an imagined community that mediates a sense of group membership for these people who act as members of the groups.It is through the use of academic language that individuals in the disciplines recognise and identify others in the groups or outside the groups in terms of similarity and difference.Through routinised participation in group interaction over time, they will affiliate with others who have similar things as ingroup members, but will distance from those who have differentiated things as outgroup ones.Then, as Hyland puts forward in the definition above, the identities of these members of disciplines will be constructed in their acting of group identification and affiliation.
Hyland’s definition actually resonates with the merits of social identity theory (Tajfel, 1978; Tajfel & Turner, 1979, 1986) in which individuals have preferences for creating group membership.Arguably, there is a tension between individual, cultural, and ethnic or social influences upon the interpersonal interaction, and thus it would not be possible to avoid relational group boundaries.That is why social identities are constructed in both conflict and affiliation.In a discipline, however, almost all individuals are expected to shape a positive identity of membership.They thus are supposed to enact disciplinary practices in common, such as recognising and sharing the values of the discipline, understanding the accepted knowledge, or attending seminars and academic conferences.In particular for the students in a discipline, they are less likely to avoid affiliating themselves in different groups such as seminars or lectures.The idea of group membership affiliation seems to be helpful for explaining the constructive relationship between the discipline and individual identities construction, in a way of performing and negotiating the identities in both a range of appropriate practices and affective stances.