Citation behaviors of graduate students in grant proposal writing Ismaeil Fazel * , Ling Shi University of British Columbia, Language & Literacy Education Department, Faculty of Education, 2034 Lower Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada article info Article history: Received 31 August 2015 Received in revised form 14 October 2015 Accepted 17 October 2015 Available online xxx Keywords: Grant writing Citation behaviors Doctoral students abstract Although expert and student citation behaviors have been explored in different genres, doctoral students' citation behaviors in grant proposal writing have so far not been subject to investigation. This paper reports on an exploratory study involving six doctoral students in education at a research-intensive Canadian university. The participants commented on the citations they used in their grant proposals submitted to a federal funding agency. The qualitative data analysis yielded five citation functions (to claim knowledge, to seek support, to claim importance, to establish a territory, and to claim competence), which are akin to the rhetorical moves identified in previous research on scholars' grant writing. These five citation functions are predominantly accompanied with three strategies (to emulate other writers, to follow professors' suggestions, and to mask unfamiliarity with the topic), which are indices of a student identity underlying the above five rhetorical acts. We discuss how the doctoral students in the study deployed these rhetorical functions and strategies as gambits to project a scholarly identity in their grant proposal writing, and conclude with implications for teaching and further research. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Many research universities encourage faculty members and graduate students to obtain grants or scholarships for their research. A successful grant proposal can potentially lead to journal publications. In writing research grant proposals, writers need to sound “competently scientific” (Connor & Mauranen, 1999, p. 49) and to “persuade without seeming to persuade” (Myers, 1990, p. 42). With such unique rhetorical skills required, grant proposal writing has attracted attention from re- searchers. Apart from studies that have examined the generic or move structures of grant proposals (Feng & Shi, 2004; Connor, 2000; Connor & Mauranen, 1999; Connor & Upton, 2004; Feng, 2008), a small number of studies have explored the social dimension of grant writing and/or the use of citations in relation to the moves (e.g., Cheng, 2014; Connor & Wagner, 1998; Ding, 2008; Feng, 2011; Mehlenbacher, 1994; Myers, 1990; Tardy, 2009; Tseng, 2011). Following previous research suggesting that citation practices are stamped with certain rhetorical purposes, the present study aims to explore how doctoral students use citations, either rhetorical or strategic, in grant writing. * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: Ismaeil.fazel@ubc.ca (I. Fazel), ling.shi@ubc.ca (L. Shi). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of English for Academic Purposes journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jeap http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2015.10.002 1475-1585/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 20 (2015) 203e214