Reading this volume has certainly been a transactional experience : Boosters in Book Reviews of Journals

Book review, as an indicator of scholarship, plays important functions in various academic settings. A book review introduces a new book in a particular scientific discipline and basically evaluates and judges works of colleagues. An element in shaping the argument in a book review is how Stance Markers are effectively deployed by writers. Stance is related to the expression of the speakers or writers personal feelings, attitudes, value judgments, or assessments. Based on Hyland s (2005) model of English academic interaction, the present study has made an effort to investigate the employment of boosters in book reviews of journals in Applied Linguistics and Physics. To this end, a representative sample of 120 book reviews from the two disciplines was selected as the corpus of the study. The two groups were compared in terms of their deployment of boosters. The results of Chi-square recorded significant differences between the groups regarding boosters exploitation. Physics BRs outperformed Applied Linguistics BRs in the utilization of boosters. The results of the present study suggest that the way writers construct boosters in their book reviews varies according to the specific epistemological and social norms of their own disciplinary communities.