Affective Language in Student Peer Reviews: Exploring Data from Three Institutional Contexts

<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en-US" xml:lang="en-US"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> <title> Affective Language in Student Peer Reviews: Exploring Data from Three Institutional Contexts | Journal of Academic Writing </title> <meta name="generator" content="Open Journal Systems 3.3.0.8"> <link rel="schema.DC" href="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" /> <meta name="DC.Creator.PersonalName" content="Anna Wärnsby"/> <meta name="DC.Creator.PersonalName" content="Asko Kauppinen"/> <meta name="DC.Creator.PersonalName" content="Laura Aull"/> <meta name="DC.Creator.PersonalName" content="Djuddah Leijen"/> <meta name="DC.Creator.PersonalName" content="Joe Moxley"/> <meta name="DC.Date.created" scheme="ISO8601" content="2018-09-14"/> <meta name="DC.Date.dateSubmitted" scheme="ISO8601" content="2017-08-08"/> <meta name="DC.Date.issued" scheme="ISO8601" content="2018-09-14"/> <meta name="DC.Date.modified" scheme="ISO8601" content="2022-01-24"/> <meta name="DC.Description" xml:lang="en" content="Although peer review is a common practice in writing classrooms, there are still few studies that analyze written patterns in students’ peer reviews across multiple institutional contexts. Based on a sample of approximately 50,000 peer reviews written by students at the University of South Florida (USF), Malmö University (MAU), and the University of Tartu (UT), this study examines how students formulate criticism and praise, negotiate power relations, and express authority and expertise in reviewing their peers’ writing. The study specifically focuses on features of affective language, including adjectives, expressions of suggestion, boosters and hedges, cognitive verbs, personal pronouns, and adversative transitions. The results show that across all three contexts, the peer reviews contain a blend of foci, including descriptions and evaluations of peer texts, directives or suggestions for revisions, responses to the writer or the text, and indications of reader interpretations. Across all three contexts, peer reviews also contain more positively glossed responses than negatively glossed responses. By contrast, certain features of affective language pattern idiosyncratically in different contexts; these distinctions can be explained variously according to writer experience, nativeness, and institutional context. The findings carry implications for continued research and for instructional guidance for student peer review."/> <meta name="DC.Format" scheme="IMT" content="application/pdf"/> <meta name="DC.Identifier" content="429"/> <meta name="DC.Identifier.pageNumber" content="28-53"/> <meta name="DC.Identifier.DOI" content="10.18552/joaw.v8i1.429"/> <meta name="DC.Identifier.URI" content="https://publications.coventry.ac.uk/index.php/joaw/article/view/429"/> <meta name="DC.Language" scheme="ISO639-1" content="en"/> <meta name="DC.Rights" content="Copyright (c) 2018 Journal of Academic Writing"/> <meta name="DC.Rights" content=""/> <meta name="DC.Source" content="Journal of Academic Writing"/> <meta name="DC.Source.ISSN" content="2225-8973"/> <meta name="DC.Source.Issue" content="1"/> <meta name="DC.Source.Volume" content="8"/> <meta name="DC.Source.URI" content="https://publications.coventry.ac.uk/index.php/joaw"/> <meta name="DC.Subject" xml:lang="en" content="peer-review"/> <meta 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href="https://publications.coventry.ac.uk/index.php/joaw/issue/archive"> Archives </a> <span class="separator">/</span> </li> <li> <a href="https://publications.coventry.ac.uk/index.php/joaw/issue/view/33"> Vol. 8 No. 1 (2018): Methodologies, Methods and Processes for Teaching and Assessing Academic Writing </a> <span class="separator">/</span> </li> <li class="current" aria-current="page"> <span aria-current="page"> Articles </span> </li> </ol> </nav> <article class="obj_article_details"> <h1 class="page_title"> Affective Language in Student Peer Reviews: Exploring Data from Three Institutional Contexts </h1> <div class="row"> <div class="main_entry"> <section class="item authors"> <h2 class="pkp_screen_reader">Authors</h2> <ul class="authors"> <li> <span class="name"> Anna Wärnsby </span> <span class="affiliation"> Malmö University </span> <span class="orcid"> <svg class="orcid_icon" viewBox="0 0 256 256" aria-hidden="true"> <style type="text/css"> .st0{fill:#A6CE39;} 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</span> </li> <li> <span class="name"> Joe Moxley </span> <span class="affiliation"> University of South Florida </span> </li> </ul> </section> <section class="item doi"> <h2 class="label"> DOI: </h2> <span class="value"> <a href="https://doi.org/10.18552/joaw.v8i1.429"> https://doi.org/10.18552/joaw.v8i1.429 </a> </span> </section> <section class="item keywords"> <h2 class="label"> Keywords: </h2> <span class="value"> peer-review, big data, intercultural rhetoric, corpus research, affective language </span> </section> <section class="item abstract"> <h2 class="label">Abstract</h2> Although peer review is a common practice in writing classrooms, there are still few studies that analyze written patterns in students’ peer reviews across multiple institutional contexts. Based on a sample of approximately 50,000 peer reviews written by students at the University of South Florida (USF), Malmö University (MAU), and the University of Tartu (UT), this study examines how students formulate criticism and praise, negotiate power relations, and express authority and expertise in reviewing their peers’ writing. The study specifically focuses on features of affective language, including adjectives, expressions of suggestion, boosters and hedges, cognitive verbs, personal pronouns, and adversative transitions. The results show that across all three contexts, the peer reviews contain a blend of foci, including descriptions and evaluations of peer texts, directives or suggestions for revisions, responses to the writer or the text, and indications of reader interpretations. Across all three contexts, peer reviews also contain more positively glossed responses than negatively glossed responses. By contrast, certain features of affective language pattern idiosyncratically in different contexts; these distinctions can be explained variously according to writer experience, nativeness, and institutional context. The findings carry implications for continued research and for instructional guidance for student peer review. </section> <section class="item author_bios"> <h2 class="label"> Author Biography </h2> <section class="sub_item"> <h3 class="label"> Anna Wärnsby, <span class="affiliation">Malmö University</span> </h3> <div class="value"> <p>Faculty of Education and Society, Department of Culture, Languages and Media</p><p>Associate Professor</p> </div> </section> </section> </div> <div class="entry_details"> <div class="item galleys"> <h2 class="pkp_screen_reader"> Downloads </h2> <ul class="value galleys_links"> <li> <a class="obj_galley_link pdf" href="https://publications.coventry.ac.uk/index.php/joaw/article/view/429/600"> PDF </a> </li> </ul> </div> <div class="item published"> <section class="sub_item"> <h2 class="label"> Published </h2> <div class="value"> <span>2018-09-14</span> </div> </section> </div> <div class="item citation"> <section class="sub_item citation_display"> <h2 class="label"> How to Cite </h2> <div class="value"> <div id="citationOutput" role="region" aria-live="polite"> <div class="csl-bib-body"> <div class="csl-entry">Wärnsby, A., Kauppinen, A., Aull, L., Leijen, D., & Moxley, J. (2018). Affective Language in Student Peer Reviews: Exploring Data from Three Institutional Contexts. <i>Journal of Academic Writing</i>, <i>8</i>(1), 28–53. https://doi.org/10.18552/joaw.v8i1.429</div> </div> </div> <div class="citation_formats"> <button class="cmp_button citation_formats_button" aria-controls="cslCitationFormats" aria-expanded="false" data-csl-dropdown="true"> More Citation Formats </button> <div id="cslCitationFormats" class="citation_formats_list" aria-hidden="true"> <ul class="citation_formats_styles"> <li> <a aria-controls="citationOutput" href="https://publications.coventry.ac.uk/index.php/joaw/citationstylelanguage/get/acm-sig-proceedings?submissionId=429&publicationId=356" data-load-citation data-json-href="https://publications.coventry.ac.uk/index.php/joaw/citationstylelanguage/get/acm-sig-proceedings?submissionId=429&publicationId=356&return=json" > ACM </a> </li> <li> <a aria-controls="citationOutput" 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Affective Language in Student Peer Reviews: Exploring Data from Three Institutional Contexts | Journal of Academic Writing