Research
Dr. Tachino’s primary research interest is the role of language in knowledge diffusion. In particular, he is interested in how to increase the impact of good research so that more public policies are informed by sound research.
Dr. Tachino’s research in Canada found that academic research has impacts in public policies, but its uptake is seldom direct, and the resulting policies do not explicitly acknowledge the relevant research. To elucidate the nature of this subtle and complex relationship, he introduced a concept called “intermediary genre” (Tachino, 2012), a third-party genre that facilitates uptake but also obscures the connection between the original research and the resulting policy. Furthermore, he has examined the role of citation and reported speech in this uptake process and found their functions in policy-related genres are different compared to their functions in academic writing. Ultimately he argued that the functions of these linguistic elements are not independent of genres and that reported speech cannot be defined solely in terms of linguistic elements, namely, repetitions and reporting expressions. Rather, he argued that reported speech is a discursive status negotiated between the reader and the writer, and the linguistic elements are tools to negotiate (but not determine) that status.Tosh Tachino – Research