“Understanding a disciplines epistemology, its methodology, and its discursive practices is a difficult, complex task which requires both an historical perspectives and the tools of rhetorical and linguistic analysis” (295). The textual practice of a disciplinary community, whether in the sciences or the humanities, are usually highly conventionalized…These conventionalized linguistic practices serve a number of functions: They are the means through which members of a field communicate with on another through professional forums such as conference and journals; they are also the means through which professional writers position their studies within the intertext of that particular field through the use of citations” (297).
“[P]eer reviewers (as well as one’s other colleagues) depend both on genre knowledge to assess the credibility of new knowledge claims and on their shared epistemological presuppositions to determine what constitutes a warranted claims…The warrants for knowledge claims that such concepts provide are embedded in the conventions of the research report. These conventions have evolved over time and are intimately connected with the processes through which disciplinary knowledge becomes institutionalized through the development of the common discursive practices and literary forms” (300).
Because, historically, we have looked for certain conventions to validate a new knowledge claim, we cannot easily shift to a new paradigm. A new paradigm would need to shift the ways in which we make knowledge, which would require us to adopt new conventions.
TL;RD: “[A] field’s methodological assumptions are embedded in its textual practices” (298).