CLAVIER 2012: Corpus and Genre in English for Academic Purposes, International Seminar (Modena 12-13 April 2012)

Research on English for Academic Purposes (EAP) has shown an increasing interest in the developments in corpus linguistics and genre analysis over the last two decades. The major contribution to EAP has come in the description of the specific features of academic discourse. The joint contribution of corpus-based studies and discourse analytical methods can be seen as one of the reasons for the current burgeoning of EAP studies, with important repercussions on didactic approaches. A significant development in this respect is the recent change of focus from EAP teaching to EAP learning. The Seminar focused on such issues in order to provide a better definition of the methods of investigation of academic English, the tools, the approaches, the new perspectives, bringing together two complementary strands of linguistic investigation \u2013 corpus analysis and genre analysis. The Seminar described the extent to which the English language and generic resources are creatively exploited in academic discourse, variously responding to or determining new scenarios, with a special interest in technological developments which have radically changed the way knowledge is disseminated across academic communities. This is also the main general objective of the CLAVIER research group (Corpus and Language Variation Research Group), a research centre recently founded by the Universities of Bergamo, Firenze, Modena and Reggio Emilia, Rome \u201cSapienza\u201d, and Siena, and currently based in Modena. The point of departure is the invaluable contribution of two complementary strands of linguistic investigation \u2013 corpus analysis and discourse analysis \u2013 to research on language variation in English, both in quantitative and qualitative terms. One of the purposes of the CLAVIER Seminar 2012 was to reinforce national and international cooperation with scholars and research centres that can widen and complement the interest in English academic discourse currently driving research at the centre. The seminar brought together different perspectives on English academic discourse. Plenaries, papers and the round table gave a special insight into the following topics: 1) genre and textual analysis in EAP; 2) corpus analysis in EAP; 3) contrastive EAP rhetoric; 4) pedagogical implications in EAP; 5) English as Lingua Franca in academic settings; 6) translation and terminology in EAP