Cultural standards determine how individuals are expected to express themselves in academic writing within their cultures. These contextual expectations are more frequently studied when individuals are introduced into a different culture and they have to adapt to a new context. In this work, I use a pragmatic framework to analyze the cultural differences between U.S. and Argentina's contextual expectations regarding academic written texts. In order to achieve this, I first describe how each culture conceives the production and communication of scientific knowledge. Then, I apply pragmatic concepts as well as data found in previous research about Spanish and English writing styles to the relationship established between reader and writer in each context. I focus on the humanities and social sciences and provide examples extracted from published research papers in educational science journals. I chose published works because the texts have gone through selection mechanisms which guarantee that they are considered appropriate in their own academic communities.

Laura Marina Colombo is an Argentine graduate student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). She has a B.A. in Education Sciences from the Universidad. Abierta Interamericana, Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has taught EFL in Argentina at the elementary school level. Currently she is in her second semester of the INCC Master's program at UMBC. She also teaches a beginning Spanish course at UMBC. She is interested in academic writing, especially on the adjustment process that international students must go through in order to produce appropriate written texts in a foreign academic setting.