No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Expressing an evaluative stance in English and Malay research article conclusions: International publications versus local publications
Abstract
This paper constitutes a multidimensional explanation of an integration of genre-based knowledge and evaluative stance in the context of academic arguments employed in the conclusion sections of English and Malay research articles. For this purpose, it draws on an analysis of the features in Appraisal theory (Martin & Rose, 2003) integrated with an analysis of communicative purposes within a genre analysis framework (Swales, 1990, 2004). Among others, the findings include the observation that evaluative and dialogic stances jointly produce rhetorical effects in both English and Malay conclusions. English conclusions contain a subtle balance of assertion and mitigation while Malay conclusions tend to contract dialogic space and thus could be interpreted as less reader-friendly. This suggests that evaluation and the meaning potential of the genre are experienced and valued differently by scholars publishing in these two different scientific communities (international and local). This variation seems to be due to linguistic, contextual, and potential social cultural influences within the two academic discourse communities. The present study has pedagogical implications in the English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classroom.
... Written and spoken genres are essential instruments that practitioners must impeccably utilise in the advancement of their careers as stated in Ruiz-Madrid et al., [3]. Numerous studies by Sigh [1], Radzuan [4], Rajprasit et al., [5], Loi et al., [6], Rosalina [7], Reals [8] and Puji [9] have shown that engineers and engineering students have trouble communicating effectively while having high technical skills. It has grown to be a significant problem in academia and the engineering field since engineering students are constantly lectured on the value of having a solid command of the English language in oral communication. ...
... For this pilot study, the researcher has employed online questionnaires as to obtained data from the engineering students. The questionnaire contents were adopted from various research both written and oral analysis moves from Loi et al., [6], Adel et al., [28], Ruiying et al., [29], Model et al., [31] and Alamri [32]. In the questionnaire, there were three sections that the researcher has identified to have deeper understanding towards the students' perception towards good characteristics of conclusion section during FYPP which construe of summarising the study, evaluating the study and providing the deduction. ...
... The first section of the questionnaire was related to summarise the study of FYPP conclusion section with five items that were closely adapted from Loi et al., [6]. This study employed a Likert scale questionnaire, with a rating of 5 for very important, 4 is for quite important, 3 for sometimes important, 2 is for not so important and 1 is not important at all. ...
The Final Year Project Presentation or FYPP is an essential academic oral presentation for tertiary students across various university courses and fields. Despite its importance, there exists a notable lack of comprehensive understanding about the genre, particularly about the conclusion section. This study aimed to investigate engineering students' perception of the good characteristics of the conclusion section in FYPP. A questionnaire survey was administered to a sample of 33 engineering students, who identified the following features as important components of the conclusion section: a summary of the final year project, presentation of overall findings, references to previous research, discussion of issues related to the final year project, restatement of the objective/focus, specific results, interpretation of results, significance of the results, limitations, counter-arguments, and an explanation of the final year project. The study reveals that students are aware of the various elements that make up the conclusion section and suggests that this knowledge can help them improve their FYPPs. By better understanding the genre expectations and characteristics, engineering students can present their final year project findings more effectively and demonstrate their mastery of the discipline.
... The meaningful metalanguage of this system can fulfill L2 writers' need for explicitness about voice construction in academic writing classroom. Despite the fact that a number of studies have examined evaluative resources in research writing based on Martin and White's (2005) Engagement System (e.g., Chang & Schleppegrell, 2011;Cheng & Unsworth, 2016;Geng & Wharton, 2016Loghmani, Ghonsooly, & Ghazanfari, 2020;Loi, Lim, & Wharton, 2016;Sheldon, 2019;Xu & Nesi, 2019;Zolfaghari, 2023), they have largely focused on discussion sections. Research targeting RA introductions in terms of engagement resources is still scant (e.g., Chang & Schleppegrell, 2011). ...
... Recent studies, however, have tended to address both attitudinal and propositional dimensions which have generated a variety of systematic frameworks for examining authorial evaluation encoded in academic discourse, like Stance (e.g., Conrad & Biber, 2000), Appraisal (e.g., Martin & White, 2005), and Metadiscourse (e. g., Hyland, 2005). Over the last decade, in particular, numerous studies have drawn on Appraisal (e.g., Chen & Zheng, 2019;Loi et al., 2016;McKinley, 2018;Xie, 2016;Zolfaghari, 2023) and Metadiscourse (e.g., Alghazo, Salem, & Alrashdan, 2021;Hyland & Jiang, 2018;Hyland & Zou, 2021) framework to investigate evaluative resources in academic texts which have thrown light on the importance of evaluative languages in creating knowledge and engaging audience in research writing. ...
... In recent years, Engagement System has been adopted in the dissection of scientific texts, encompassing investigating engagement resources in doctoral dissertations and published research articles in a specific discipline (e.g., Chang & Schleppegrell, 2011;Cheng & Unsworth, 2016;Geng & Wharton, 2016;Loghmani et al., 2020;Xu & Nesi, 2019) and informing cross-cultural/linguistic differences (e.g., Geng & Wharton, 2016;Loi et al., 2016;Sheldon, 2019;Xu & Nesi, 2019). Most of them focus on the part-genre of discussion sections and analyze engagement practices in academic texts for the purpose of suggesting methodological or pedagogical implications (Humphrey & Economou, 2015). ...
This study attempts to explore the ways in which academics from four different disciplinary backgrounds (applied linguistics, education, electrical engineering, biology) engage with their discourse community when writing their research article (RA) introductions. To this end, 200 RA introductions were selected and examined in detail along with the Engagement System of the Appraisal Framework. It adopts a mixed approach to analyze individual engagements as well as combined ones embedded in different move-steps of RA introductions across various disciplines. Moreover, co-articulation of engagement items across longer stretches of text was also qualitatively observed for the purpose of revealing how prosodic spread of engagement values helps to effectively fulfill the rhetorical functions within this part-genre. This research revealed clear function-form mappings between rhetorical move-steps and their linguistic realization. In addition , disciplinary uniformity and variation on engagement values encoded in introductions were disclosed with commonalities weighing over differences. Despite the disciplinary differences on the evaluative features between natural and social sciences, disciplines belonging to either set of the natural/social field also vary from one another. The results have pedagogical implications for EAP practitioners in raising the novice writers' awareness of both discipline and genre when they approach academic writing through evaluative resources.
... China, Hongkong, and Taiwan: Hyland (2003); Dong & Lu (2020); Gao & Pramoolsook (2023); Hyland (2004); You & Li (2021); So (2005); Huang & Zhang (2020); Fang (2021); ; Chen & Su (2012) Japan: Yasuda (2011Yasuda ( , 2015; Myskow & Gordon (2009) Singapore: Yang & Allision (2004) Malaysia: Lim (2006); Loi et al. (2016) Thailand: Kanoksilapatham ( ...
... K. Loi, 2010), methods (Cotos, Huffman, & Link, 2017;Lim, 2006), results (Basturkmen, 2009), discussions (Basturkmen, 2012), conclusions (C. Loi, Lim, & Wharton, 2016), syntactic complexity of RAs (Casal, Lu, Qiu, Wang, & Zhang, 2021), and the overall generic structure of the research articles (Kanoksilapatham, 2015;Yang R & Desmond A, 2004). Friginal and Mustafa (2017) compared research article abstracts from U.S. to those from Iraq using genre-based and corpus-based approaches. ...
... Another study by Loi et al. (2016) combined genre-based approach with appraisal theory to analyze the conclusions of English and Malay RAs and offer pedagogical insights for EAP writing (C. Loi et al., 2016). ...
This article presents a comprehensive systematic literature review of the associations between genre-based approaches (GBAs) and English as a second language (ESL) or English as a foreign language (EFL) writing. It provides an overview of GBAs and second language (L2) writing. The review further elaborates on the theoretical backgrounds of GBAs and ESL/EFL writing. The article then critically reviews 38 studies conducted on GBAs and ESL/EFL writing in the past 20 years (2003-2023). A methodological review was also performed to analyze the various research methods employed by previous researchers. Four major themes of research on GBAs and ESL/EFL writing were identified: research articles’ writing, thesis or dissertations writing, argumentative writing, and other types of professional writing. Additionally, three major methodological approaches were identified: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods. The article culminates by discussing the implications of the results of this review and recommends promising directions for future research.
... Stance has aroused considerable attention in academic writing research, particularly in the research articles (hereafter RAs) genre, in recent years (Hyland, 2005;Chen, 2020). This is due to the role it plays in competent academic writing (Hyland, 2012) and the incrementally acknowledged belief that academic writing is not purely "objective and impersonal" (Hu and Cao, 2011;Liardét and Black, 2019) but expresses writers' stance (Vold, 2006;Loi et al., 2016). Stance, being the indispensable part of interpersonal resources to show writers' textual voice, is defined as "attitudes, feelings, judgments, or commitment concerning the propositional content of a message" (Biber and Finegan, 1989, p. 93). ...
... Previous research from an intercultural perspective has offered an insight into the exploitation of stance markers in RA conclusions. In addition, it is widely accepted that academic writers engage themselves in their writing ascribed to the cultural and disciplinary communities (Dahl, 2004;Vold, 2006;Loi et al., 2016;Ädel, 2022). To date, little research has focused on the use of stance markers in RA conclusions from the cross-cultural/linguistic and cross-disciplinary perspectives. ...
... culture of China (Hofstede, 2001), facts and knowledge are based on prior or previous knowledge and authority (Chen and Zhang, 2017), thus making Chinese writers show certainty and confidence in their findings and assure the truth and reality of the knowledge by boosters. Finally, similar to Malay (Loi et al., 2016) and Spanish (Mur-Dueñas, 2011) writers, Chinese writers are more audacious in exercising boosters for the shared background in the local and homogeneous community. Surprisingly, despite having little use in the whole RAs (Mu et al., 2015) and even no use in RA introductions (Loi and Lim, 2013), attitude markers have been favored by Chinese writers, and they appear as the most frequently used stance markers in our study. ...
Research article conclusions form an important sub-genre in the academic community. This study aims to compare the use of stance markers in English and Chinese research article conclusions and investigate how stance markers may vary in soft and hard sciences. Based on Hyland's stance model, an analysis of stance markers over 20 years was made in two corpora, which were compiled with 180 research article conclusions in each language from four disciplines. It was found that English writers and soft science writers tended to make statements more tentatively by hedges and craft their persona more explicitly through self-mentions. However, Chinese writers and hard science writers made their claims with more certainty by boosters and showed their affective attitude more frequently through attitude markers. The results reveal how writers from different cultural backgrounds construct their stances and also unveil the disciplinary differences involved in stance-taking. It is hoped that this corpus study will inspire future research on stance-taking in the conclusion section and also help cultivate writers' genre awareness.
... Due to the growing interest in interpersonal aspects in academic writing, many research studies were conducted to examine the employment of linguistic resources involved in taking stance. Most of the researchers who adopted the appraisal concept as an analytical framework focused on academic research paper (Chang and Schleppegrell, 2011;Cheng and Unsworth, 2016;Hood, 2004;Loi et al., 2016). However, recommendation letter genres received less attention by researcher compared to other academic texts. ...
... Other studies have used the appraisal system to investigate research articles by focusing on the introduction (Hood, 2004;Chang and Schleppegrell, 2011) the discussion (Cheng and Unsworth, 2016) and the conclusion (Loi et al., 2016). For example, Loi et al. (2016) examined the conclusion sections of English and Malay research articles written by academic writers. ...
... Other studies have used the appraisal system to investigate research articles by focusing on the introduction (Hood, 2004;Chang and Schleppegrell, 2011) the discussion (Cheng and Unsworth, 2016) and the conclusion (Loi et al., 2016). For example, Loi et al. (2016) examined the conclusion sections of English and Malay research articles written by academic writers. The authors applied the three domains in appraisal system, namely attitude, engagement and graduation. ...
Purpose
The main objective of the present study is to explore whether there are variations in the employment of evaluative language resources by male and female writers. More specifically, the study focuses on variations, if any, that can be attributed to difference in gender.
Design/methodology/approach
The study compared and contrasted forty recommendation letters written by male academics to the same number of letters written by female recommenders. The study uses both quantitative and qualitative approaches.
Findings
The investigation of three attitudinal resources in letters of recommendations showed that the most employed resource was the judgment sub-system. The appreciation domain was in the second position, and the least frequent was the affect. The results also revealed no statistically significant variations in attitude sub-systems: Affect and appreciation as the writers in both groups (males and females) employed almost the same options in each. In respect with judgment, however, the analysis explored significant differences between the two sets as male academics used more judgment resources than females.
Originality/value
The main contributions of this study may be as follows: first, it is one of very few studies drawing on the attitude-category of appraisal system, as an analytical tool to examine gender differences in recommendation letters very particularly on the ones written by non-native speakers of English. Second, the gender factor is central in the genre of the recommendation letters and hence researchers should be cognizant of its role as certain variations might be impacted by it. Third, the lists of tokens can be offered as heuristics for academics to have most common words or phrases to use in their letters. Finally, the findings can hopefully bear some important pedagogical implications, very specifically for novice and non-native academic writers of recommendations letters.
... There are relatively very few studies (Alramadan, 2020;Cheng and Unsworth, 2016;Fryer, 2013;Hood, 2004;Loi et al., 2016;Poole et al., 2019;Swayer and Eesa, 2019;Xiaoyu, 2017;Zhang and Cheung, 2018) in the literature that have employed Martin and White (2005) Appraisal framework to explore the construction of stance and/or authorial voice in published RAs, though most of these studies investigated cross-cultural variations in the use of these interpersonal aspects. ...
... Furthermore, Loi et al. (2016) explored the evaluative stance in the conclusion section of two sets of psychology RAs. The first was the internationally published RAs in English, while the second set was the locally published RAs in Malay. ...
... To sum up, different fields of knowledge were explored, such as linguistics (Alramadan, 2020;Cheng and Unsworth, 2016;Hood, 2004;Xiaoyu, 2017), psychology (Loi et al., 2016), technology (Zhang and Cheung, 2018), biochemical research (Poole et al., 2019), and medicine (Fryer, 2013;Swayer and Eesa, 2019). However, based on the literature review, there is not, to the researchers" knowledge any study that has employed the Appraisal framework to explore evaluative stance and voice in medical research texts published by professional writers in reputable journals. ...
The focus of the present study is on how professional scholars argue their propositions while maintaining a relationship of solidarity with their readers in the discussion section of medical research articles. More specifically, it provides explanations of (1) how attitude features of effect, judgment, and appreciation are disseminated across academic medical texts published in reputable journals, (2) how different writer voices are constructed through the use of evaluative language, and (3) the assumptions that professional published writers make about the values and beliefs of their readers. Mackey and Gass (2005) Appraisal theory was employed in the present study because it focuses on interpersonal meanings that provide writers and speakers with the means to be critical, value, reject, accept, and challenge other positions. The findings revealed high instances of Appraisal resources in the discussion section of the medical texts. Thus, language played an important role and was used rhetorically to achieve argumentative goals. The interpersonal language was highly achieved through resources of engagement. The study contributes new understandings of interpersonal meaning in the professional writers' medical texts from the functional perspective of Appraisal theory. The findings may provide new directions for the development of literacy in the genre of academic research writing.
Keywords: Appraisal theory; Stance; Authorial voice; Attitude features; Medical research articles; Professional writers.
... Swales ' (1990) 'move-step' analysis was employed as the basic framework for coding bundles. Loi et al.'s (2016) move structure for the conclusions was also referred to. The final framework is shown in Table 4. ...
... The results show that soft science conclusion writers use more bundle tokens in M2S1 than their counterparts. It is also been reported in the literature that soft science researchers often lack agreement in terms of goals and methods Loi et al. (2016) Moves Steps ...
... According to the examples above, writers from both fields use the evaluative adjective 'first' to emphasize the uniqueness and the significance of their contribution. By adding the word 'first', the argument sounds less intrusive, fulfilling the communicative function of convincing the readers that the study is worthwhile (Loi et al. 2016). ...
This study explores how lexical bundles link smaller functional units (steps) in research article (RA) conclusions in hard and soft science knowledge fields by using corpus-based and corpus-driven approaches. RA conclusion corpora from the hard and soft sciences were compiled and four-word lexical bundles were extracted from each corpus. Conclusions containing lexical bundles were then imported into the UAMCorpus tool for manual tagging of functions, structures, moves, and steps associated with lexical bundles. It has been found that the four-word bundles play an important role in realizing the communicative purpose of the functional units in RA conclusions in both the hard and soft sciences. The results demonstrate that the resultative lexical bundle (e.g. the findings of the) is a strong indicator of the conclusions in both soft and hard sciences. Specific bundle structures and functions are identified as signalling different steps of the conclusions. The findings of this study add to the growing body of knowledge regarding the bundle–move connections and contribute to the construction of the RA conclusions in different disciplinary cultures.
... There are relatively very few studies (Alramadan, 2020;Cheng and Unsworth, 2016;Fryer, 2013;Hood, 2004;Loi et al., 2016;Poole et al., 2019;Swayer and Eesa, 2019;Xiaoyu, 2017;Zhang and Cheung, 2018) in the literature that have employed Martin and White (2005) Appraisal framework to explore the construction of stance and/or authorial voice in published RAs, though most of these studies investigated cross-cultural variations in the use of these interpersonal aspects. ...
... Furthermore, Loi et al. (2016) explored the evaluative stance in the conclusion section of two sets of psychology RAs. The first was the internationally published RAs in English, while the second set was the locally published RAs in Malay. ...
... To sum up, different fields of knowledge were explored, such as linguistics (Alramadan, 2020;Cheng and Unsworth, 2016;Hood, 2004;Xiaoyu, 2017), psychology (Loi et al., 2016), technology (Zhang and Cheung, 2018), biochemical research (Poole et al., 2019), and medicine (Fryer, 2013;Swayer and Eesa, 2019). However, based on the literature review, there is not, to the researchers" knowledge any study that has employed the Appraisal framework to explore evaluative stance and voice in medical research texts published by professional writers in reputable journals. ...
... There are relatively very few studies (Alramadan, 2020;Cheng and Unsworth, 2016;Fryer, 2013;Hood, 2004;Loi et al., 2016;Poole et al., 2019;Swayer and Eesa, 2019;Xiaoyu, 2017;Zhang and Cheung, 2018) in the literature that have employed Martin and White (2005) Appraisal framework to explore the construction of stance and/or authorial voice in published RAs, though most of these studies investigated cross-cultural variations in the use of these interpersonal aspects. ...
... Furthermore, Loi et al. (2016) explored the evaluative stance in the conclusion section of two sets of psychology RAs. The first was the internationally published RAs in English, while the second set was the locally published RAs in Malay. ...
... To sum up, different fields of knowledge were explored, such as linguistics (Alramadan, 2020;Cheng and Unsworth, 2016;Hood, 2004;Xiaoyu, 2017), psychology (Loi et al., 2016), technology (Zhang and Cheung, 2018), biochemical research (Poole et al., 2019), and medicine (Fryer, 2013;Swayer and Eesa, 2019). However, based on the literature review, there is not, to the researchers" knowledge any study that has employed the Appraisal framework to explore evaluative stance and voice in medical research texts published by professional writers in reputable journals. ...
This study investigated cybercrime in Assessment among students in Rivers State University, Port Harcourt. Two research questions and two corresponding null hypotheses guided the study. Descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. A sample of 400 year III students were drawn from the population through stratified proportionate sampling technique and used for the study. An instrument titled “Cybercrime Assessment Scale” (CAS) was used for the data analysis. The Face and Content validities of the instrument were determined by experts in measurement and evaluation. Test-retest method was used to determine the validity of the instrument and the coefficient obtained for the CAS was 0.77. Mean, standard deviation and independent t-test was used for the data analysis. The findings shows that; gender, Age significantly influence cybercrime in assessment among students in Rivers State university independently taken. Based on the findings conclusion and recommendations were made.
... This study extends the Malay data in Loi, Lim and Wharton (2016). In the study, a comparison was made between English and Malay research article conclusions in the evaluative stance and rhetorical strategies employed by authors of the two sets of data (English and Malay). ...
... In the study, a comparison was made between English and Malay research article conclusions in the evaluative stance and rhetorical strategies employed by authors of the two sets of data (English and Malay). On the other hand, the present study only focuses on the evaluative stance and rhetorical strategies employed by academic writers of Malay research articles (the Conclusion section) by extending the Malay data with additional insights and at the same time, compared to Loi, Lim and Wharton (2016), not looking into the Engagement element of Martin and Rose's (2003) Appraisal theory. The research questions addressed in the present study are as follows: ...
... A closer examination shows that the evoked Attitudes and inscribed Attitudes are either used separately or simultaneously to realize a move (see examples presented in the above Findings and Discussion section) (cf. Loi, Lim & Wharton, 2016). ...
This paper explains a combination of genre-based knowledge and evaluative stance in the context of academic arguments used in the conclusion sections of Malay research articles. For this purpose, it draws on an analysis of the features in Appraisal theory (Martin & Rose, 2003) together with a move analysis (Swales, 1990, 2004). The data comprises empirical research articles. The conformity with the standard IMRD (Introduction- Method- Results- Discussion) is taken as the first similar feature when selecting the set of empirical research articles from the selected journals. Among others, the findings observe that evaluative stances produce rhetorical effects in Malay conclusions. When taking a stance, both the evoked Attitudes and inscribed Attitudes are employed. A closer examination shows that the evoked Attitudes and inscribed Attitudes are either used separately or simultaneously to realize a move.
... Recently, there has been a growing interest in examining the authorial and evaluative stance in professional texts (e.g. Chang and Schleppegrell 2011;Cheng and Unsworth 2016;Loi et al. 2016) and in student writings (e.g. Hood 2004;Mei 2007;Wharton 2012;Xie 2016). ...
... Some researchers (Alotaibi 20015;Al-Mudhaffari, Hussin, and HoAbdullah 2020) have focused on the use of evaluative stance from the lens of metadiscourse framework. Studies that have used the Appraisal system to investigate stance-taking in RAs have focused on the introduction (Hood 2004;Chang and Schleppegrell 2011) the discussion (Cheng and Unsworth 2016) and the conclusion (Loi et al. 2016). In Chang and Schleppegrell's (2011) study, the Engagement strategies were distributed based on the function of the organizational and rhetorical moves. ...
... Despite differences in objectives, the current research results reiterate the findings of Loi et al. (2016) who found that the employment of contracting resources was more frequent than expanding in RA Malay conclusions, while there was a balance of contracting and expanding resources in English conclusions. The results are also partly similar to Chang and Schleppegrell's (2011) findings where high proportions of contracting options used by second language writers were more associated with Move 2 (establishing a niche). ...
This study examines the linguistic resources employed by Arab academic researchers to realize the interpersonal values when introducing their research topics. It also investigates how the linguistic resources interact with the rhetorical move functions to formulate the features of effective authorial stance. Specifically, the study focuses on how the interplay of engagement resources and rhetorical move functions persuasively serves the overall argumentative writing expected in academic context. To this end, the study draws on the engagement system by Martin and White (2005) and the move structure in the CARS model by Swales (1990). The data consisted of 20 Arabic RA introductions drawn from two established journals in the field of education. The results showed an evident relation between the meanings conceived in rhetorical moves and authorial stances. The authorial stances were highly interpersonal and dialogic as most of propositions displayed linguistic features pertaining to heterogloss. Furthermore, writers tended to take assertive stance when reporting previous research findings by drawing heavily on Proclaim options, but when creating research gaps, they relied on Disclaim options. When theorizing for their studies, they, however, seemed to claim sharing views with readers through notable employment of Attribute resources. These results may raise writers' awareness of the relationship between authorial stance-taking and rhetorical move purposes, and how that is crucial for the formulation of persuasive argument endeavored in academic writing.
... Therefore, it is necessary to compile these studies to produce a comprehensive picture of the features of academic writings at the expert level. The studies thus far have paid attention to five particular parts of paper writings, namely, introduction (Chang & Schleppegrell, 2011;Fryer, 2013;Xu & Nesi, 2019), results (Fryer, 2013), discussion (Cheng & Unsworth, 2016;Fryer, 2013;Hood, 2006Hood, , 2007Moyano, 2018;Sheldon, 2018), and conclusion (Loi et al., 2016;Xu & Nesi, 2019). ...
... Xu and Nesi (2019) contrast how engagement strategies are used by English and Chinese writers in the introduction and conclusion. Loi et al. (2016) examine contrasts between English and Malay writers. The two studies are consistent in the findings that native writers tend to be more heteroglossic than non-native ones. ...
Evaluative language is crucial in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) writing, particularly in expressing authorial stance and supporting arguments. Among various linguistic frameworks, appraisal in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) has been extensively used to map and assess evaluative linguistic features. Since its inception in the early 1990s, appraisal has been widely applied to EAP writing studies. This synthesis reviews EAP writing studies using the appraisal framework published over the past decades, synthesizing 69 publications. We developed coding schemes based on research questions, focusing on learner levels, subjects studied, text type, and generated findings. Our findings indicate that appraisal has been applied by EAP writers at different levels to perform a range of functions in their writing. However, previous studies show that there is a lack of longitudinal study of appraisal resources used by EAP writers at different levels. We recommend systematic and explicit instruction in the use of appraisal resources in EAP writing. Based on our findings, we offer pedagogical suggestions for EAP writing and teaching, aiming to enhance the effectiveness of EAP instruction and the quality of student writing.
... In such chapters, the writers recommend future research directions and describe practical implications or applications, aside from restating the research purposes and consolidating space for research. Studies on conclusions of research articles in different languages (Loi et al., 2016;Sheldon, 2018;Yang & Allison, 2003) found similar structural moves, those which summarise and generalise the study and draw implications. These findings suggest that academic writers are required to possess both the subject knowledge and rhetorical knowledge in order to express opinions and commentaries for providing insights, improving research or solving relevant issues in their disciplines. ...
... There were also studies investigating the language choice for expressing stance in the concluding components. Loi et al. (2016) identified the move of evaluating the study in research article conclusions written in English and Malay, suggesting the use of language expressing stance. They found that conclusions of English research articles (RAs) express a higher critical stance compared with their Malay counterparts. ...
The rhetorically complex concluding components of academic written texts often challenge novice writers, having to summarise their arguments and stance, and offer prospective comments on future developments concerning the subject matter. With an aim to elucidate the lexicogrammatical expressions of such prospective comments in essay conclusions, the present study adopts the system of modality informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to examine the conclusions of explanatory essays written by non-native English speaking associate degree business students. The analysis compares the modality expressions deployed in high- and low-graded essay conclusions, including modality types, explicitness, subjectivity and value. The analysis also investigates how the modality resources are combined for providing more than one comment in the conclusion. The findings show that high-graded texts have a more balanced choice of modality, less overly assertive features and more prospective comments, while they still require improvements on a more consistent deployment of modality features. This paper concludes with a brief discussion on teaching implications of the present study, in that writing instruction can make explicit the functions of different modality expressions and equip students with the linguistic repertoires appropriate for more formal and technical academic written registers.
... Several studies have examined writer characteristics that may influence the use of hedging or boosting (e.g., [25,106]). Among the important influencing factors we can find educational level and background [54,81] as well as cultural aspects (the author's mother tongue for instance) which have been extensively studied [25,57,70,84,85,90,103,106]. To mitigate the influence of these factors, some linguists have constrained their analyses to only include papers written by native English speakers (e.g., [108]), but doing so provides only a narrow view of publication practices within the analysed domain, especially in scientific writing where papers are written for an international audience. ...
... Linguists often focus their analysis on specific sections of research articles such as abstracts [76,90], discussions (e.g., [14,84]), conclusions (e.g., [85,106]) or a combination of the above (e.g., [40,89]) In fact, among linguistics studies we have previously discussed, only a handful look at complete research articles [51,57,60,100,108,110,112,114] 2 . Focusing on specific sections of articles is particularly interesting since modal terms might serve different functions in different parts of a research manuscript. ...
Introduction: Hedges and boosters are terms respectively used to decrease and increase the strength of statements. They are therefore essential lexical tools in scientific communication, in particular in fields conducting human-subjects experiments such as Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).Objectives: We present an analysis of the use of hedges and boosters in the proceedings of the main HCI conference, namely CHI, between 2010 and 2018 to better understand how CHI authors report empirical findings.Methods: We only considered papers reporting a user study and focused our analysis on the sentences in the abstract that describe empirical results. We used a program to detect boosters and hedges and manually adjusted their classifications.Results: We found that CHI studies reporting inferential statistics are more likely to boost than they hedge. Conclusion: Our work intends to raise awareness within the HCI community of the importance of hedging and boosting when reporting research results. Further, our results establish a baseline of the current use of these linguistic devices in HCI, adding to the current body of linguistic research. We finally contribute tools, procedures, and materials to facilitate future analyses of hedges and boosters in scientific communication. Reproducibility: All data and scripts are available on https://osf.io/kefmr/
... He further argues that this can be achieved by writers via pursuing interactive relationships with readers, evaluating their own topics, and positioning them with other alternative viewpoints. Lack or difficulty of taking an evaluative stance among novice writers is also acknowledged by some researchers (Chang & Schleppegrell 2011;Cheng & Unsworth 2016;Hood 2004;Loi, Lim & Wharton 2016;Mei 2007). While some of these researchers (e.g. ...
... Chang & Schleppegrell, 2011) attributed the lack of stance to teaching instruction, where the main focus is only on grammatical rules in isolation from their use in communicative contexts, others (e.g. Loi, Lim & Wharton 2016) returned it to linguistic and rhetorical variations between English native speakers and EFL/ESL learners. This paper investigates the linguistic resources and expressions chosen by researchers to project their authorial stance and the possibility of relating these linguistic resources to rhetorical move functions in the manner that serves argumentative and discursive writing expected in academic domain. ...
... For example, rhetorical studies have been investigated in English RAIs (Alharbi, 2021;Lu et al., 2020;Lu et al., 2021;Xiaofei et al., 2021) and Indonesian RAIs (Warsidi, 2024). Besides, such studies have also been investigated to discover evaluative stances (Loi et al., 2016;Xu & Nesi, 2019b), engagement resources (Xu & Nesi, 2019a), and research themes (Saeedi et al., 2023). These studies suggest that convincing journal gatekeepers using the convention of the rhetorical structure of the purposive journals is pivotal to getting submitted research papers accepted and published. ...
Given that researchers aim to publish in prestigious journals, understanding the rhetorical organization of such publications is crucial. While this topic has been extensively studied, existing research has yet to explore how authors in reputable journals engage with prior literature. To fill this gap, the present study intends to analyze how research article authors respond to other earlier literature in their research article introductions (RAIs) published in reputable international applied linguistics journals. This study aims to achieve two objectives: to find out to what extent responding to other earlier literature is important in RAIs, and to discover what types of response authors employ in their RAIs. To achieve these goals, this study employed combined descriptive qualitative and quantitative approaches for analyzing 40 RAIs published in Q1 journals as data sets in the present study. Then, a new analytical framework was designed to respond to the above objectives. The results indicated that responding to other earlier literature is obligatory in RAIs published in reputable international applied linguistics journals. In responding to other earlier literature, authors employed three types of response: either extending other earlier studies, modifying other earlier studies, or establishing a new method, idea, or knowledge. This study offers theoretical contributions by expanding the understanding of how research article authors engage with prior literature within their RAIs. Its practical implications include guiding researchers on effectively utilizing prior literature to establish their research agenda when publishing in reputable journals.
... Despite the extensive research conducted on major moves and steps in Introduction (e.g., Lim and Luo, 2020;Lim, 2021, 2022;Moghaddasi and Graves, 2017;Ozturk, 2007;Del Saz-Rubio, 2011), Methods (e.g., Bruce, 2008;Riazi et al., 2020;Lim, 2006Lim, , 2019 Frontiers in Psychology 03 frontiersin.org Martínez, 2003), Results (e.g., Brett, 1994;Bruce, 2009;Kwan and Chan, 2014;Williams, 1999), Discussion (e.g., Basturkmen, 2012;Geng and Wharton, 2016;Hopkins and Dudley-Evans, 1988;Liu and Buckingham, 2018;Sadeghi and Alinasab, 2020), Conclusion (e.g., Bunton, 2005;Loi et al., 2016) and the entire RAs (e.g., Kanoksilapatham, 2015;Tessuto, 2015;Ye, 2019), a comprehensive examination of the entire rhetorical structures within some burgeoning fields remain absent. Among these different sections, an essential component of research articles that warrants careful examination is the Results section. ...
Introduction
Notwithstanding the fact that extensive studies focused on exploring generic structures in established disciplines, scant attention has been directed to macrostructures and rhetorical moves in RAs in some emerging disciplines.
Methods
Based on a self-compiled corpus of 50 research articles (RAs) from five top ranking journals in the field of Nanotechnology, we explored the macrostructures and rhetorical moves in RAs in Nanotechnology.
Results
It was found that (i) scientists in Nanotechnology have a propensity to employ a merged [R&D] structure to immediately discuss and contribute new knowledge tentatively in the specific contextualised situation after research results were presented, (ii) Even though RAs in Nanotechnology largely follows IMRD structure by abiding writing conventions in the research world, disciplinary variations were found regarding the rhetorical structures, specifically, scientists in Nanotechnology tend to employ more moves and steps in establishing research niche, detailed description of research methods, suggesting future research, but less moves and steps related to promotional strategies (M3S4, M3S5, M3S6).
Discussion
The research results have significant implications for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) instructors to make informed choices by using disciplinary empirical-based decisions to guide novice writers and students at tertiary level to write RAs by following disciplinary conventions of research communities in Nanotechnology so as to avoid overgeneralization.
... With English being the international academic lingua franca, these cross-linguistic studies are predominantly undertaken through corpus-based contrastive analysis of English and non-English academic discourse. For example, studies have explored convergences and divergences between English academic writings and their counterparts produced in languages such as Chinese (e.g., Kim & Lim, 2013;Mu et al., 2015), Spanish (e.g., Mur Dueñas, 2011;Lee & Casal, 2014), Persian (e.g., Salar & Ghonsooly, 2016;Ariannejad et al., 2019), and Malay (e.g., Loi et al., 2016). Similar to some studies in the prior group, these studies give more or less prominence to the genre-specific, discipline-specific, and most importantly language-or-culture-specific traits manifested by or affecting the distribution and configuration of attitudinally evaluative lexicogrammatical resources in specialized academic discourse. ...
Attitudinal evaluations have long been of interest to researchers of academic discourse. Yet, much research on the linguistic phenomena has been carried out with reference to first or second language users’ English academic writings. Cross-linguistic studies are seldom undertaken in relation to the coupling patterns of attitudinal evaluations and their variations in different academic languages. Designed as mixed-methods research, this study investigates attitudinal evaluations in a collection of research articles published in both Chinese and English versions, exploring how evaluative coupling patterns shift cross-linguistically in terms of the systemic functional ideas of attitudinal evaluation and coupling. Findings show that while some cross-linguistic coupling pattern shifts normally occur with the evaluated targets remaining unchanged, some others usually appear with concomitant target change. Importantly, the study reveals that some coupling pattern shifts stand out by displaying lexicogrammatical delicacy variations in representing evaluative meaning or exhibiting what may be called a cross-linguistic metaphoric shift towards thingness. It was argued that the study adds to the picture of different approaches to evaluative language and offers a heuristic for characterizing cross-linguistic rhetorical variations and teaching languages for academic purposes, especially to students with Chinese or English as the foreign or second language.
... Dalam perkembangannya appraisal digunakan untuk mengungkap pelbagai fenomena kebahasaan, seperti wacana persuasif (Ziliwu 2020), interaksi pembelajaran (Pasaribu 2020), wacana permintaan maaf (Wang, Ngai dan Singh 2021), dan komunikasi kesehatan di media sosial (Yao dan Ngai 2022). Lebih dari itu, kerangka appraisal yang merupakan dimensi interpersonal itu kini dipandang sebagai bahasa evaluatif dan dioperasikan untuk menyingkap wacana yang semula dianggap sebagai ekspresi kebahasaan yang bersifat netral, seperti wacana akademis (Geng dan Wharton 2016;Bahmani, Chalek, dan Tabrizi 2021;Alhaded et al. 2022) dan artikel ilmiah (Yang dan Xiaojuan, 2015;Loi, Lim, dan Wharton 2016;Moyano 2018;Kashiha, 2021;Saidi 2021). Meskipun demikian, dari pelbagai kajian itu, peneliti tidak mendapati penelitian yang menginvestigasi bahasa evaluatif pada wacana akademis berbahasa Indonesia, yang memberi batasan antara objektivitas dan evaluatif-kritis. ...
Authors of scientific articles are faced with two opposing demands: objectivity and critical evaluation when expressing reality and truth. To date, no evaluative language mapping has been performed on Indonesian scientific articles which can accurately describe an article’s degree of objectivity so that it can be used as a tool for objectivizing and negotiating truth. Using the appraisal framework, this research aims to identify and examine these two opposing orientations as they appear in Indonesian scientific articles. The qualitative approach was applied to perform in-depth analysis of interpersonal functions in scientific articles. Data in the form of Indonesian scientific articles were obtained from top ten highest impact factor journals which are accredited and indexed by the Science and Technology Index (SINTA), representing ten different scientific disciplines. Results show that the authors could not completely avoid subjectivity. However, objectivity was clearly sought through five strategies: passivation, verbalization, prioritization of verbs before explicit expressions of affect, nominalization, and prioritization of nouns before explicit expressions of affect. Using the appraisal framework, the modality theory in Indonesian (Alwi 1992), and the lexical semantic theory (Cruse 1986) as bases for data analysis, this research offers a taxonomic evaluative language map of Indonesian scientific articles. This research used the appraisal framework (Martin and White, 2005), especially the attitude and graduation system, to define boundaries while combining objective and evaluative- critical language in three parameters: (1) distance between the personal evaluation source and the evaluative item; (2) the prominence of agentivity and a person’s involvement in the actualization of events; and (3) the root meaning of evaluative lexemes.
... Due to their importance, hedges and boosters have attracted remarkable interest in the literature such as the use of hedges and boosters across cultures (Mu, Zhang, Ehrich, & Hong, 2015;Mur-Dueñas, 2011), academic disciplines (Ken Hyland, 1998), undergraduate students' essays (Ho & Li, 2018;Lee & Deakin, 2016), post-graduate writing (Hyland, 2004(Hyland, , 2010Risda et al., 2018) non-native writing (Abdollahzadeh, 2011;Loi, Lim, & Wharton, 2016;Vassileva, 2001;Yagız & Demir, 2014). However, the study of hedging and boosting in advanced Arab L2 writing is relatively scarce and so research on these features in this context could yield fruitful pedagogical implications (Yagız & Demir, 2014). ...
ABSTRACT
Academic writing is recognized as a persuasive endeavor that involves various interactional strategies to help writers express viewpoints and engage with members of their discourse community. Among the most frequently used interactional features in academic writing are hedges and boosters, referred to as interactional metadiscourse (MD) strategies. These strategies are typically employed to convey the author's stance on the content presented. Due to cultural variations in rhetorical strategies, L2 writers might use hedges and boosters in ways that are not favored in the Anglo-American context. This study aims to explore the use of these features in Yemeni L2 academic writing. To this end, 34 applied research articles by Yemeni L2 writers were examined. The analysis of hedges and boosters was based on Hyland’s (2005) MD model and Halliday & Matthiessen's (2004) taxonomy of hedges. Using Hyland’s model, a software concordance tool was utilized to identify instances of hedges and boosters in the corpus. Moreover, all potential interactional MD features were analyzed individually to examine their metadiscoursal functions in context. The findings indicate that interactional MD strategies were employed in relatively small proportions. Contrary to previous research assumptions, hedges were used slightly more than boosters, especially in the conclusion sections of the research articles, although the differences were not significant. It was also found that hedges and boosters were used for limited purposes. This study has important pedagogical implications for the teaching of L2 writing.
Key words: Genre analysis; academic writing, Hedges, boosters, L2 writing
... As the conclusion section has always been the critical section in a complete article, scholars research the conclusion in various ways. Some scholars compare expressions of an evaluative stance in English and non-English research article conclusions (Loi et al., 2016). The structure of conclusion is a popular topic to discuss. ...
Epistemic modality is an important and complex linguistic device in academic writing, which could help authors state their claims and positions. The conclusion is also a critical part in research articles, where authors summarize their studies and give suggestions. Many scholars study modality in many aspects, but they rarely focus on its application in research article conclusions. Therefore, this study compared the use of modality in 25 conclusions of linguistic research papers written by native English speakers and 25 English conclusions written by Chinese authors from a systemic functional perspective. It focused on the similarities and differences of the use of modality in linguistic research article conclusions from two perspectives: value and orientation. The results show that both native English speakers and Chinese authors are more likely to rely on low and median value and subjective orientation in their conclusions. The findings suggest that linguistic research article authors tend to make claims in a reserved and tentative way. Moreover, this study shows that Chinese authors are more likely to employ modal expressions and subjective orientation of modality in their conclusions, which may relate to cultural diversity and modality shift. The findings of the study may help non-native English authors to produce linguistic research articles in a more acceptable way.
... Since Swales's (1990) creation of the CARS model for analyzing the introduction of research articles (RAs), many studies have been carried out to investigate other sections of RAs, including abstracts (Darabad, 2016;Rashidi & Meihami, 2018), literature reviews (Khoo et al., 2011;Rabie & Boraie, 2021), methods (Lim, 2006;Zhang & Wannaruk, 2016), discussions (Amirian et al., 2008;Peacock, 2002), and conclusions (Amnuai & Wannaruk, 2013;Loi et al., 2016). Nevertheless, introductions have received the most extensive attention in this research area due to their crucial role in establishing a link between previous research on the topic and the new work being presented (Bhatia, 1993). ...
Genres are characterized by their purposes (Bhatia,2014). Accordingly, the MA thesis and research articles (RAs) differ in their communicative purposes (Károly, 2009). The former aims to examine students’ research capability, while the latter aims to communicate research among scholars to spread knowledge.Nonetheless, since Swales’s (1990) CARS model, no model has been developed for studying the MA thesis introductions regarding their rhetorical move structure (RMS), particularly in the ELF context. This paper addresses the gap and contributes to the field of genre analysis by creating a model for representing and analyzing the RMS of MA thesis introductions in applied linguistics, taking the CARS Model as a starting point. The proposed model is created by systematically and critically reviewing existing theories and empirical research on the topic. Subsequently, a pilot study involving 10 MA theses from a Hungarian university was conducted to test the reliability and validity of the model and make necessary refinements. The results showed that somesub-moves, such as “Stating research focus,” “Stating study framework,” “Stating historical context,” “Stating research relevance,” “Methodological gap,” and “Quotation/hook,” are missing from the model and were added. The proposed model holds implications for understanding the RMS and provides a tool for researchers to analyze MA thesis introductions, particularly in Applied linguistics. Such studies are important pedagogically for teachers as well to understand the students’ writing with the view of communicative functions.
... Some features such as COUNTER and DENY often co-occur, serving as a persuasive strategy to mitigate the appearance of confrontation in addressing alternative claims (Geng & Wharton, 2016;Xu & Nesi, 2019a, 2019bZhang & Cheung, 2017). Among the ATTITUDE categories, APPRECIATION appears more frequently in academic writing than AFFECT and JUDGEMENT (Loi et al., 2016;Xie, 2016;Zhang & Cheung, 2018). The preference for APPRECIATION to express feelings as evaluations of things or phenomena represents the institutionalized and nominalized nature of academic genres (Hood, 2010;Martin, 2000). ...
... Así, son múltiples los géneros discursivos que han sido abordados desde este punto de vista. Por ejemplo, el Artículo de Investigación (Hyland, 2014;Loi et al., 2016;Meza, 2016Meza, , 2017aMeza, y b, 2018, el Trabajo Final de Grado (Wu y Paltridge, 2021;Álvarez y Romero, 2022;Cañada y Bach, 2022;Navarro et al., 2022), el Ensayo (Uccelli et al., 2013) y la Guía Didáctica (Velasco et al., 2022), entre otros. En el ámbito del Derecho, solo encontramos una investigación que ha explorado el posicionamiento del autor en un género jurídico: la Demanda (Meza et al., 2022a). ...
Nuestro objetivo es determinar la variación, según el grado de formación del escritor, en el uso de estrategias de posicionamiento del autor en el género jurídico Contestación de la Demanda (CDD). A partir de una investigación cualitativa, analizamos un corpus constituido por 14 CDD: 7 producidas por estudiantes de Derecho y 7 por abogados profesionales. El análisis fue realizado por parte de un equipo interdisciplinario, con apoyo del software Atlas.ti (v.7.5.18), y fue sometido a diversos procedimientos de validación superados exitosamente. Entre los principales resultados, destacamos el aporte de un modelo específico para la descripción del posicionamiento del autor en el género CDD. Además, descubrimos que son las CDD producidas por abogados las que despliegan mayor variedad y cantidad de estrategias de posicionamiento. En conclusión, la producción de CDD puede concebirse como un conjunto de interacciones estratégicas en las que los sujetos despliegan estrategias de posicionamiento con distintos propósitos.
... The purpose is to ensure that they can find moves and strategies appropriately. Besides, moves and strategies are also able identified by linguistic signals (Loi et al., 2016) appearing in application letters. During the twelve students analyzed application letters, they were free to ask the researcher about the procedures and ways to analyze their application letters. ...
em>Genre studies in English for specific purposes (ESP) have long been widely investigated, including in academic and professional texts. In professional texts, these studies have been conducted in business letters, formal letters, newsletters in China and Australia, advertising promotional media in Indonesia, and application letters. However, application letters are still the least investigated in the Indonesian context. Furthermore, contrastive genre analysis of English and Indonesian application letters has never been investigated to date. Based on finding and comprehending this gap in the literature, the researcher is encouraged and interested in conducting the present study. The researcher involved and trained 12 English foreign language (EFL) students to analyze rhetorical moves of 63 English and 63 Indonesian application letters. However, among the 63 English application letters, 25 were written by non-native English speakers. Thus, the researcher only focused on analyzing 38 English and 63 Indonesian application letters. Then, to ensure the validity of the analysis results, the researcher reanalyzed the rhetorical moves by re-reading application letters three times using a top-down approach and identifying their linguistic signals. The results showed two rhetorical models of English and Indonesian application letters. These two models imply that they have rhetorical differences in communicating their purposes.</em
... Stance in academic writing has been mainly examined from two perspectives: cross-disciplinary (Hyland, 2005b;Chan, 2015;Yang, 2016;Li, 2020) and cross-linguistic (Hu and Cao, 2011;Mur-Dueñas, 2011;Kim and Lim, 2013;Jiang, 2015;Loi et al., 2016;Bax et al., 2019). A comparison of research articles in different disciplines has shown that soft disciplines generally employ more stance markers than hard disciplines (Hyland, 2005b;Chan, 2015). ...
Dissertation is the most important research genre for graduate students as they step into the academic community. The abstract found at the beginning of the dissertation is an essential part of the dissertation, serving to “sell” the study and impress the readers. Learning to compose a well-organized abstract to promote one's research is therefore an important skill for novice writers when they step into the academic community in their discipline. By comparing 112 dissertation abstracts in material science by Chinese and American doctoral students, this study attempts to analyze not only the rhetorical moves of dissertation abstracts but also the lexical-grammatical features of stance in different abstract moves. The findings show that most of the abstracts include five moves, namely, Situating the research, Presenting the research, Describing the methodology, Summarizing the findings, and Discussing the research. However, fewer abstracts by Chinese students include all five moves. In addition, the choices of stance expressions by the two groups vary across the five abstract moves for different communication purposes. The results of this study have pedagogical implications for facilitating the development of academic writing skills for L2 writers.
... Different sections in RAs, i.e., abstract, introduction, method, results and discussion, and conclusion, have been the focus of many genre analysis papers (e.g., Swales, 1990;Peacock, 2002;Yang and Allison, 2003;Koutsantoni, 2006;Bruce, 2009;Loi et al., 2016;Zare and Naseri, 2021a). The results of such investigations have generally shown that, in RAs, these sections follow different rhetorical structures or moves and thus rely on different sets of lexical or structural features. ...
The purpose of this corpus-based study was to investigate whether different sections in chemistry research articles, i.e., abstract, introduction, and results and discussion, rely on different sets of lexical bundles. Lexical bundles, associated with the above sections, were extracted from a corpus of 4 million words, comprising 1,185 chemistry research articles, using WordSmith Tools 5.0, and were categorized according to their functions. Altogether, 197 key bundles were identified in the three sections of chemistry research articles, 15 in the abstract, 99 in the introduction, and 83 in the results and discussion section. Two functions also emerged for lexical bundles in chemistry research articles, including purpose-oriented bundles, which refer to the aim/aims of the study; and literature-oriented bundles, which are used to refer to the literature. Altogether, the results showed that various sections in chemistry RAs are associated with specific sets of lexical bundles and, as such, deal with different rhetorical functions.
... The framework has been widely used in previous studies that examined attitudinal markers from different perspectives (e.g. Geng & Wharton, 2016;Loi et al., 2016;Wang, 2008). It provides an elaborate taxonomy of attitudinal mean-ings and "a comprehensive map of appraisal resources that we could deploy systematically in discourse analysis" (Martin, 2000: 148). ...
This study analyzes attitudinal positioning in academic and media discourse pertaining to COVID-19 from the COVID-19 Corpus and Coronavirus Corpus, using a discourse dynamics approach. Underpinning this approach is the Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST), which we employ to examine the discursive practices of a discourse event across time periods (timescales). The analysis identified significant differences in attitudinal markers and noteworthy developmental patterns in attitude positioning; the developmental trajectories of attitude construction were characterized by a nonlinear developmental pattern subject to fluctuations and variability. We also discerned the existence of dynamic interaction between the uses of attitudinal markers and the reported cases of COVID-19. Methodologically, we demonstrate how the integration of the discourse dynamics approach with corpus linguistics strengthens the social contextualization of data by enabling the identification of developmental patterns of targeted language features over time, and the interconnections of these language features with contextually important social factors.
... The present study focuses only on a single discipline (biology) in case that any observed differences may be due to differences in the discipline of the texts (Chen 2019;Loi et al. 2016). The discipline of biology is selected because Yang (2013) has studied the use of hedges in the biological written discourse. ...
This paper presents the findings of a multidimentional contrastive analysis of linguistic features between international and Chinese local biology journal English research articles based on a large-scale comparallel corpus. While both international and Chinese local journal English research articles as academic discourse are characterized as objective, formal, abstract and informational in rhetoric, international journal English research articles (IJERAs) are found more interactive and context-independent while Chinese local journal English research articles (CLJERAs) are more certain in tone and context-dependent. The authors/translators of CLJERAs seem to purposefully add a large number of first-person pronouns absent in Chinese local journal Chinese research articles (CLJCRAs) and overuse passive voices to meet the English writing conventions. Such linguistic features as premodifiers and emphatics have been remained or transferred into English from Chinese in their translating or writing process. The implications for professional English writing are discussed in the paper.
... This important language feature is closely related to stance, which refers to "the ways [that] writers present themselves and convey their judgments, opinions and commitments" (Hyland 2005: 176 In the latest decades, adopting stance framework in Hyland's (2005) interactional model, a considerable amount of studies on stance expression have been conducted in various genre-specific contexts, covering research articles (RAs) (Hyland 1999, 2005, Auría 2008, McGrath & Kuteeva 2012, Taki & Jafarpour 2012, Adams & Quintana-Toledo 2013, Hyland & Jiang 2016, Kafes 2018, Poole et al. 2019, M.A. theses and Ph.D. dissertation (Xu 2015), reports (Crosthwaite et al. 2017, Fuoli 2017, students' essays (Aull & Lancaster 2014, Çandarlı et al. 2015, Jiang 2015, Aull et al. 2017, students' course work (Lancaster 2016). Furthermore, among those studies, the stance expression in the section in RAs or Ph.D. dissertations has been examined, including Introduction (Auría 2008), Discussion (Cheng & Unsworth 2016), Conclusion (Kafes 2018), Introduction and Conclusion (Adams & Quintana-Toledo 2013, Loi et al. 2016 in RAs, Acknowledgement (Chan 2015) in Ph.D. dissertation, even Abstract in RAs (Hyland & Tse 2005, Gillaerts & Van de Velde 2010, Hu & Cao 2011 and Abstract in Engineering Ph.D. thesis (Ahmad & Mehrjooseresht 2012). In addition, several studies have been carried out to reveal the variations of the stance expression across different disciplines (Hyland 1999, 2005, Taki & Jafarpour 2012, Çandarlı et al. 2015, Jiang 2015. ...
Given the importance of stance expression in the writing of abstracts, this study adopted a corpus-based comparative approach to investigate the stance expression in abstracts of the Translation Practice Report (TPR) and the Interpretation Practice Report (IPR), which are two newly emerging reporting genres in Master of Translation and Interpretation (MTI) in China. Based on a set of corpora composed with 30 TPR abstracts (8,738 tokens) and 30 IPR abstracts (8,699 tokens) collected from 30 universities located in 16 provinces in China, the stance expression was examined in terms of hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mention by employing the stance framework in Hyland’s (2005) interactional model. The findings revealed a genre-specific convention in utilizing the four categories of stance in both the TPR abstracts and the IPR abstracts, which is different from that in the abstracts of the empirical studies. The analysis also found discipline-specific variations of stance expression between the two corpora due to different disciplinary conventions and practice of the two subdisciplines. Then, the interviews with the insider informants were conducted to clarify and to enrich the research findings. The results in the study may be taken as a useful reference to expressing attitude in writing the abstracts in the MTI field of China, and possibly in other fields.
... Authorial stance is defined as the way that a writer conveys personal evaluations toward the subject matter under discussion and this phenomenon has received increasing research attention [1][2][3][4]. During the recent decade, extensive research has shown that skilled academic writers are able to strategically present authorial stance that contributes to critical evaluation, reader solidarity, and persuasive argumentation [5][6][7][8][9][10]. Taking an effective stance is thus gradually considered as a crucial skill for both professional academics and student writers for achieving successful writing and sustainable development of writing scholarship [11,12]. ...
Effective stance-taking is considered as a crucial skill for successful academic writing and sustainable development of writing scholarship. However, student writers often encounter difficulties in this aspect. Scholars have thus called for explicit instruction to develop students’ academic writing ability as a sustainable goal. Learning stance-taking is a particularly relevant area of intensive interest among writing scholars. Yet, few empirical studies have been conducted to examine its effectiveness on students’ academic writing quality and stance deployment. To fill this gap, a quasi-experimental research was conducted with 46 undergraduate students in a Chinese university, who were randomly assigned to two conditions: a treatment group and a comparison group. The treatment group received an eight-week explicit stance instruction, while the comparison group received curriculum-based writing instruction at the same time. Academic texts were collected both prior to and after the period of intervention. Results revealed that the treatment group outperformed the comparison group in the post-test in terms of academic writing quality and stance performance. Their writing also exhibited changes in the frequencies of an array of stance types deployed (e.g., proclaim: pronounce, proclaim: endorse, entertain, attribute), indicating their enhanced understanding of stance and improved competence of mitigation and integrating external voices for better academic writing. Implications for writing instruction are discussed.
... Whereas a growing body of literature exists on genre analysis of thesis/dissertation introductions (e.g., Samraj, 2008;Soler-Monreal, Carbonell-Olivares, & Gil-Salom, 2011), abstracts (e.g., Friginal & Mustafa, 2017;Lorés, 2004;Martin, 2003, Samraj, 2005Tanko, 2017), research article introductions (Bhatia, 1993;Lim, 2012;Samraj, 2002), titles (Haggan, 2004;Jalilifar, 2010), method (Cotos et al., 2017;Lim, 2011Lim, , 2017, results (Atai & Falah, 2005;Lim, 2010;Williams, 1999), discussion (Basturkmen, 2012;Holmes, 1997;Lim, 2008), and conclusion (Bunton, 2002;Loi, Lim, & Wharton, 2016), there is not considerable in-depth research on thesis/dissertation acknowledgements. A few studies have focused on different academic features used to establish and maintain such scholarly identity and academic relationships (e.g., Hyland, 2000Hyland, , 2001Hyland, , 2004Hyland, , 2005Kuo, 1999;Thompson, 2001). ...
Acknowledgement appears at the forefront of the high-stakes academic genre of thesis/dissertation writing. Previous research shows the generic structure of acknowledgements written by native Persian postgraduate students contains a 'thanking-God move', absent in native English speakers' acknowledgements. In an approximate replication of Hyland's (2004) study of the generic structure of acknowledgments, we aimed to verify the occurrence, frequency, and variation of moves and steps in three small corpora of acknowledgments from six disciplines (applied linguistics, business management, computer science, electrical engineering, microbial biotechnology, & biochemistry). Each corpus contained 200 sample acknowledgements written in Persian or English. The authors were native Persian speakers and native English speakers. Fifty acknowledgements (100-400 words) were randomly selected from each corpus and analyzed using Hyland's model. Two coders carefully, content-analyzed, and coded the acknowledgments. Then the data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results confirmed findings of previous research indicating that acknowledgements written by native Persian speakers (in Persian & in English) contain all the moves and steps defined by Hyland plus a new step called 'thanking-God' step. The use of this step was significantly different across Persian and English (84% in English & 100% in Persian; X 2 = 1.63, p≤ 0.05) and across writers (84% Persian & 34% English; X 2 = 28.17, p≤.05). 'Accepting responsibility' and 'dedicating the thesis' were used least frequently by all writers, while 'thanking move' and 'reflecting move' were used most frequently. Pedagogical and conceptual implications are discussed.
... Entre las diferentes metodologías que existen para dar cuenta de los textos que circulan en el ámbito académico, la línea denominada genre analysis, iniciada por Swales (1990) con las introducciones de los artículos de investigación, y luego extendida a otros géneros discursivos, ha permitido describir, de manera satisfactoria, las partes o segmentos de organización de textos escritos por expertos de diferentes idiomas (Sabaj, 2012;Navarro y Moris, 2012;Loi et al., 2016). Por lo tanto, resulta fundamental describir el género discursivo informe, no explorado con profundidad en su formación ni en su diversidad de manifestaciones en la universidad, e indagar cuáles son los movimientos discursivos prototípicos que realizan los estudiantes en una etapa inicial, para elaborar programas de alfabetización académica contextualizados. ...
La investigación, inscrita en la tradición metodológica del análisis del discurso, tiene como objetivo describir las clases de informes que escriben los estudiantes del área de las Ciencias Sociales y Humanas en sus primeros años de estudio. La investigación, desde un enfoque cualitativo, de alcance descriptivo, plantea la identificación de categorías con base en la unidad de análisis denominada movimiento discursivo (moves) de Swales. El corpus de naturaleza muestral estuvo constituido por 110 informes escritos. Los resultados dan cuenta de rasgos discursivos comunes y divergentes en la organización de cuatro tipos de informes identificados: informe de caso, informe bibliográfico, informe de investigación canónica e informe de diagnóstico. Los resultados del estudio constituyen una evidencia empírica valiosa acerca del aprendizaje de un género discursivo de alta recurrencia, y constituye un aporte para la construcción de aplicaciones didácticas de la escritura académica y profesional según tipos de informes.
... Due to their importance, hedges and boosters have attracted a widely remarkable interest in the literature such as the use of hedges and boosters across cultures (Mu et al. 2015;Mur-Dueñas 2011), academic disciplines (Hyland 1998a;Youssef 2016), undergraduate students' essays (Ho and Li 2018;Lee and Deakin 2016), post-graduate writing (Hyland 2004;Risda,Asfina, A. Effendi Kadarisman 2018;Hyland 2010), non-native writing (Abdollahzadeh 2011;Loi, Lim, and Wharton 2016;Vassileva 2001;Yagız and Demir 2014). These studies do not only underscore the significance of hedges and boosters but have established that these strategies are essential conventions in academic writingbeing important rhetorical means for attending to readers' needs and assessing their reactions. ...
Academic writing has been established as a persuasive endeavor which involves various interactional strategies including hedging and boosting. Nevertheless, there exists variation of hedging and boosting preferences across cultures. The purpose of this study is to explore the use of hedges and boosters, as interactional metadiscourse (MD) strategies, in Yemeni L2 academic writing. Using Hyland (2005), the study was conducted on a text of 34 applied linguistics research articles (RAs) produced by L2 writers. Based on Hyland's model, a textual soft waretool was employed to search the instances of hedges and boosters in the corpus. The findings demonstrate that interactional MD strategies were utilized in relatively small proportions. Contrary to the assumption in the literature, hedges were used more than booster especially in the conclusion section of RAs. However, the findings suggest that Yemeni L2 writers tend to present argument like an established fact i.e. making assertive and unqualified statements. Given the limited use of hedging and boosting and the tendency to make unhedged statements, limited rhetorical functions were detected. The study has useful implications for academic writing instruction especially in EFL context.
... Available experiences are basically within free writing based tasks and surface-level knowledge transmitting without evaluative lens and knowledge transforming (Kang, 2005). In addition to the inadequate linguistic skills, students' lack of confidence to master a second language appropriately also leads students to avoid knowledge transforming with an evaluative stance (Cheng & Unsworth, 2016;Loi et al., 2016). ...
Genre analyses of research articles (RAs) have identified types of communicative purposes or moves achieved in different sections. However, very few studies have explored why moves are sequenced in specific manners. This study examines how writers relate moves to be coherent in the conclusion section of fifty applied linguistics RAs. The analysis shows that the writers achieved different types of moves in a relational manner for specific rhetorical intentions. The majority presented a summary of the study or previous research trends as background information to guide readers to acknowledge the significance of the study or the findings they later indicated. Some writers drew implications from findings of their studies they presented earlier to demonstrate the usefulness of the findings. Others provided recommendations for future studies based on the limitations of their studies that they indicated earlier to draw readers’ attention away from the limitations as potential weaknesses.
This study explores how doctoral students negotiated academic conflict (AC) in discussion section of their dissertations and what engagement resources they utilized to convey academic conflict. To this end, discussion chapters of 30 doctoral dissertations in Applied Linguistics (15 samples by each writer group) were analyzed using Huston’s (1991) academic conflict framework and Martin and White’s (2005) engagement system of Appraisal Theory. The functional analysis constituted discovering components of academic conflict and engagement resources in the discussions. We found that components of academic conflict determined engagement values used to convey them. The linguistic background of the authors was less of an issue in resolving conflicts. The two writer groups managed academic conflict and related engagement resources more or less similarly in different components of academic conflict. They mainly expressed their novel contribution readily and identified the flaws of previous research; however, both writer groups showed little tendency to explain controversial points. The findings have pedagogical implications for academic writing courses highlighting the importance of developing awareness of AC and resolving the conflicts.
Students of English as a foreign language (EFL) are often found to have weak control over authorial stance for constructing persuasive argumentation in academic writing. However, little interventional research has been reported on improving students’ stance-taking, particularly the patterning of stance resources. To fill the gap, we conducted this quasi-experimental study to explore the effects of the systemic functional linguistics (SFL) Engagement system as a pedagogical affordance on improving EFL students’ stance-taking with a pre- and post-test design. Forty-six Chinese EFL undergraduate students were randomly assigned either to a treatment group or a comparison group. The treatment group was provided with a seven-week intervention which included explicit instruction in stance-taking, while the comparison group received regular writing instruction that did not involve the teacher teaching stance-taking explicitly to students. Upon completion of the intervention, we conducted qualitative analysis of stance patterns and found across-group differences. Students in the treatment group were more capable of establishing argumentation through an alternation of contractive and expansive stances. The stance patterns for introducing external sources further indicate their enhanced undertaking of authorial responsibility and better incorporation of sources. However, both groups kept using unspecified sources in stance attributions. We conclude our study with a discussion of pedagogical implications.
The Introduction-Methods-Results-Discussion (IMRD) pattern is frequently used in research articles (RAs) in many disciplines. Following the IMRD format enables writers to organize research content more easily, and thoroughly understanding IMRD sections and their functions will facilitate the writing of IMRD-structured RAs (Mack 2018). Studying lexical bundles, especially their functions, can help understand how research writing is organized. Combining top-down move analysis of RAs with bottom-up frequency-based identification of bundle functions can provide evidence for the occurrence of bundle functions in a particular position of an RA. However, previous studies integrating these two approaches tend to focus on RA Introductions, lacking a systematic investigation of the other three sections. To fill this gap, the present study connects bundle functions and moves in all the sections of RAs in the field of developmental and educational psychology. The results reveal that there are differences between RA sections in terms of the functional distribution of lexical bundles, which are related to the respective roles of the four sections in RAs. The results also show that lexical bundles of certain functions stand out in the moves of each RA section. For novice writers, awareness of such salient combinations of bundle functions and specific moves in the IMRD sections may improve the clarity of argumentation and make their writing more persuasive.
Interviews are a recognized and valued method for obtaining research data. Usually, these data are drawn from the content of interviews. However, words and prosodic elements that accompany them may reveal complementary, and even contradictory information, that substantially alters the researcher’s first impression. After the publication in September of 2018 of the document COAlition Plan S which announced that research results funded by European institutions would have to be published in Open Access from 1 January 2020 (later postponed to 2021), 10 experienced researchers were interviewed on this topic. It is these interviews that will be the focus of this paper: the interviewees’ discourse and its meaning. To develop this research, the Appraisal Theory (Martin & White, 2005) was selected. Even though it was originally designed to study the English language, the Appraisal Theory framework proved to be very useful for analysing the researchers’ attitudes towards Open Access (OA) through several Spanish and Catalan language strategies. In addition, as interviews were audio recorded, it was decided to complement the linguistic analysis by paying attention to paralinguistic resources. The multimodal analysis of Appraisal in these researchers’ opinions reveals the dilemma they are faced with, either to publish in a limited number of less prestigious journals using Open Access, or to pay very high fees to use Gold Open Access.
Research article sections, particularly the introductions, have received considerable scholarly attention over the years. However, linguistic strategies in the conclusion sections of research articles (RAs) remain under-researched. In light of this, we aspired to add to such scholarship by examining linguistic variation in RA conclusions across six disciplines. A multi-dimensional analysis of conclusions was conducted by using Biber’s (1988) dimensions. Analytical results indicate that the conclusion writers in natural sciences and social sciences exhibit significant differences along D1 (Involved and Informational Discourse), D2 (Narrative and Non-Narrative), and D4 (Overt Expression of Persuasion). The findings suggest that conclusions from all six disciplines tend to use possibility modals (e.g., can) and prediction modals (e.g., will) to evaluate studies and to refer to future research directions. Additionally, conclusions in education and sociology tend to contain more interaction and persuasion elements than those in natural sciences, indicating a more human-centered research approach to soft sciences. On the other hand, conclusions in natural sciences are more information-condensed and procedure-oriented than those in social sciences. This study adds to the growing knowledge of RA sections and contributes to the study and teaching of EAP and ESP.
Studies on academic writing of EFL students have found that they have been less successful in presenting an effective stance. It has been assumed that how they perceive authorial stance may influence their stance deployment. Yet few studies have been conducted to assess student writers’ perceptions of stance. To fill the gap, this research intends to develop and validate an instrument, the Perceptions of Authorial Stance Questionnaire (PASQ), for assessing EFL students’ perceptions of authorial stance and further exploring their relationships with stance deployment and the overall quality of English academic writing. Taking a dialogic perspective, we designed the research with two studies in it. In Study 1, exploratory factor analysis with 197 respondents and subsequent confirmatory factor analysis with another sample of 191 respondents produced results of a 17 item scale with two-factors: dialogic contraction and dialogic expansion. In Study 2, scores for the two subscales of the PASQ were examined in relation to the frequencies of various stance types and writing scores. Results show that scores for the two subscales of perceptions were positively correlated with the frequencies of different stance types. However, no significant relationship was detected between students’ perceptions and their writing scores. Possible reasons of the findings and their pedagogical implications are discussed.
Taking an authorial stance is essential in academic writing but remains a challenge for novice researchers, especially EFL/ESL writers. This study explores how authors of English and Arabic research article discussions employ evaluative language resources while commenting on their results. To this end, the study investigated the employment of Engagement resources within Appraisal Theory ( Martin & White 2005 ). The findings exhibited a great divergence between the two language groups as Arabic discussions relied more on Contracting strategies, which indicate the tendency to close down the space for dialogic alternatives, while their English counterparts preferred Expanding resources, which open up the dialogic space for alternative voices. The study, therefore, bears some pedagogical implications for L2 learners.
Публикация научной статьи в журналах с высоким индексом цитированияоказывается огромным вызовом как для опытных, так и для начинающих ученых. Написание такойстатьи подразумевает не только глубокое знание о предмете исследования, но и умение представитьрезультаты в форме, соответствующей требованиям общепринятым в англоязычной академичнойкультуре. Эти требования включают умения структурирования текста с точки зрения его коммуникативно-прагматических целей и семантической информации, распределенной в конвенциональныхразделах Introduction-Methodology-Result- Discussion (IMRD). Данная статья имеет целью представить как IMRD реализуется в 60 научных статьях из журналов гуманитарного цикла с высокимимпакт–фактором, авторы которых сами являются экспертными учеными в области академического дискурса, жанровых исследований и текстологии. Основным методом является квантитативныйанализ статей, который способствовал идентификации наиболее частотных моделей макроструктуры, таких как Abstract-Introduction-(Other Heading)-Methodology-Results-Discussion-Conclusionи Abstract–Introduction-Methodology-(Results & Discussion)-Conclusion. Кроме того, дискурсивныйанализ статей также позволили выделить текстовые фрагменты, которые наиболее ярко представляют коммуникативную цель отдельного раздела статьи. Результаты изучения организации научнойстатьи показывают, что структурирование текста по своей природе когнитивно, так как включаетзнания области исследования, организации текста и ожиданий адресатов. Структурирование текстатакже прагматично, так как автор преследует цель убедительно представить исследование и получить желаемый перлокутивный эффект от реципиентов текста. В связи с этим в работе составленакогнитивно–прагматическая модель макроструктуры исследованных научных статей. Результатыданного исследования могут быть использованы начинающими учеными при написании эмпирических статей
Evaluation is pervasive in academic writing, and the past decades have witnessed a proliferation of research on writer's authorial evaluation in English academic writing. However, there is a lack of systematic review on evaluation research so far in the literature. To address this gap, this review aims to outline the major strands of research on authorial evaluation in English academic writing as well as the major methodological approaches adopted in the field of applied linguistics over the past twenty years, and to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the methodological approaches in revealing the matter. The review identified four broad strands of literature in terms of the analytical framework applied (if any): the stance strand, the metadiscourse strand, the appraisal strand, and the voice strand. Then three major methodological approaches, namely the corpus-based approach, the in-depth textual approach, and the ethnographic approach, were identified and discussed with regard to their respective strengths and drawbacks in exploring evaluative meanings in English academic writing. Implications from this review were further discussed, and methodological directions for future research were pointed out.
This study examines how academics from different sociocultural contexts use Attitude to project authorial stances that build convincing arguments and naturalise certain communities of shared values and interests. Specifically, the study investigates the use of the Appraisal resources, Affect, Judgment and Appreciation (Martin and White 42-69), in the introductions of Applied linguistics research papers that are written in English and Modern Standard Arabic by: (1) published English-speaking academics, (2) published Saudi academics and (3) Saudi EFL Master's degree students. Results revealed that writers preferred different Attitude options leading to varying degrees of subjectivity in the texts. Cross-cultural contrasts also pertained to the nature of the entities and ideational fields of discourse that were appraised. Results also showed that the stance construed by the EFL writers did not reflect the exclusive influence of any of the two cultures involved, but represented an inter-genre with a blend of different features coexisting in the same text. The study has implications for EFL writers and for tertiary academic institutions. Explicit instruction of discipline-specific Attitude conventions is required to achieve rhetorically-effective arguments from the perspective of the target discourse community.
Among the significant tasks faced by academic writers are establishing their expertise in negotiating their new research findings, and resolving tensions between current knowledge and previous claims. These little-explored areas contrast with the attention devoted to examining basic moves and steps in different parts of research articles. The present article implements Hunston's (1993) conceptualization of academic conflict by native and non-native writers when composing the discussion section of papers written in their L1 and L2. To this end, three types of Applied Linguistics research articles were selected as the main corpus of the study: 20 English papers written by native speakers of English, 20 English papers written by non-native speakers of English, and 20 Persian papers written by native speakers of Persian. The analyses revealed that English papers (whether written by native or non-native writers) included more academic conflict structures compared to Persian research articles. However, in terms of the distinct components of academic conflict, English and Persian articles contained a similar number of recurrent proposed and opposed claim structures. The main area of difference between English papers (written by natives) and Persian articles was in the use of inconsistency indicators and conflict resolution.
Research Article is one of the most important genres that received extensive attention in genre analysis. Research abstracts have received extreme importance due to the valuable academic information in the world. The present study aims to explore the rhetorical structure of the Iranian and international abstracts published in leading English and Persian journals. The researcher randomly selected 40 research articles from six Iranian journals of applied linguistics and international journals of applied linguistics. The study used two types of instruments. The Ant Mover software is a freeware text structure analysis program (developed by Anthony Laurence, 2003). According to Hyland's model, five moves are involved, including Introduction (M1) purposes (M2) Method (M3) product (M4) and conclusion (M5). The corpus, then, was analyzed based on the Ant Mover software and Hyland's (2000) five move frameworks to identify the rhetorical structure of the selected corpus. As a result, the frequency of each move in each abstract was calculated after the moves were analyzed. A frequency and percentage were counted and a chi-square analysis was run to answer the research hypothesis. The finding also showed that despite the differences in frequency of moves in two corpora, these differences were not statistically significant.
Citation, an indispensable feature of academic English writing, is often regarded as an indication of the degree of sophistication in academic writing. Building on previous studies that have shown the importance of integral citation in academic writing, this study investigates one of the subcategories of integral citation: “genitive citation” (e.g., Smith's study, where ’s denotes a possessive relationship: the study is in Smith's possession, so Smith is the possessor, study is the possessee). Based on a corpus of 82 articles collected from the discipline of applied linguistics, with 41 from six leading international journals written by experts and 41 from the MICUSP linguistics sub-corpus written by college students, this study renders a cognitive semantic analysis of (a) the possessee nominals in genitive constructions and (b) the evaluative functions of genitive citations. Based on the specificity of cue validity, possessee nominals are classified into three types: 1) research-as-a-whole; 2) ideological; and 3) methodological. The analysis yields the following results. First, genitive citations are commonly used by both experts and students, with the use of s-genitive citations significantly outnumbering that of the of-genitives. Second, expert writers prefer possessee nominals with specific meanings while student writers tend to use words with less specificity, especially in terms of methodological possessee nominals. Third, in terms of evaluative function, the expert writers’ s-genitive citations include much more sophisticated employment of engagement and attitude resources than those used by student writers, though both groups make extensive use of this structure. Based on the analysis, the study proposes a semantic framework for classifying possessee nominals in s-genitive citations. Limitations of the study and implications for future research are also discussed.
This article offers a framework for analysing the linguistic resources of intersubjective positioning, meanings which have elsewhere been treated under such headings as modality, polarity, evidentiality, hedging, conces-sion, intensification, attribution and consequentiality. Drawing inspiration from Bakhtin/Vološinov's dialogic perspective, it proposes that this lexico-grammatically diverse grouping can be brought together on discourse semantic grounds, namely that they all provide the means for speakers/ writers to take a stance towards the various points-of-view or social posi-tionings being referenced by the text and thereby to position themselves with respect to the other social subjects who hold those positions. The paper offers a typology of these resources, with categorizations attending to differences in the way the textual voice engages with the alternative voices and/or points-of-view being referenced or activated by the text. It argues, for example, that these resources can be broadly divided into those which entertain or open up the space for dialogic alternatives and, alternatively, those which suppress or close down the space for such alternation. The typology has emerged from continued research into the interpersonal functionality of discourse, research interested in how language construes social roles and relationships and in the potential of language to operate rhetorically to influence beliefs, attitudes, expectations and modes of inter-relating. In order to demonstrate the application of the typology to the exploration of such questions, the paper singles out one issue for close attention—the linguistic mechanisms by which texts naturalise certain value positions and construct for themselves ideal, model or compliant readerships.
This paper reports on an analysis of the conclusion sections of English research articles published in Thai and international journals. A comparison was made between 20 conclusion sections in international journals and 20 conclusion sections in Thai journals written by Thai writers in the field of applied linguistics. The two corpora were analysed using Yang and Allison's (2003) move model. The results revealed that all three moves of the proposed model occurred in the two sets of data but with differences in their frequency of occurrence. There were no obligatory moves or steps in the two corpora. Move structures in the conclusion sections of the Thai corpus varied more from the proposed model than those of the conclusion sections in the international corpus. The findings could assist considerably in an understanding of the rhetorical move structure of the conclusion sections of research articles. In addition, they may yield implications for a pedagogical framework for the teaching of academic writing, syllabus design, and genre-based teaching and writing.
Dealing effectively with L2 writers requires a clear understanding of the nature of L2 writing. In an attempt to develop such an understanding, 72 reports of empirical research comparing L1 and L2 writing were examined. The findings of this research indicate a number of salient differences between L1 and L2 writing with regard to both composing processes (and subprocesses: planning, transcribing, and reviewing) and features of written texts (fluency, accuracy, quality, and structure, i.e., discoursal, morphosyntactic, and lexicosemantic). Implications of the findings for L2 and L1 writing theory; future comparative writing research; and the practical concerns of assessment, placement, staffing, and instruction are discussed.
This study investigates the rhetorical organisation of English and Chinese research article introductions in the field of educational psychology using Swales’s (1990, 2004) framework of move analysis. A corpus of 40 research articles (20 Chinese and 20 English) was selected. The English research articles, written by first-language English speakers, were selected from The Journal of Educational Psychology while the Chinese research articles, written by first-language Chinese speakers, were selected from 心理發展與教育 (Psychological Development and Education). The findings reveal that English and Chinese research article introductions generally employ the three moves (i.e., Move 1, Move 2 and Move 3) as outlined by Swales (1990, 2004). Swales’s Create a Research Space (CARS) model however, could not account for certain rhetorical strategies found in the two sets of introductions. English and Chinese research article introductions differ in the extent to which the moves and steps are used in the introductions. That is, generally speaking, the rhetorical moves and steps were employed in fewer Chinese introductions compared to the English. It is proposed that an analytic-synthetic approach can be used to teach academic writing to Chinese ESL students, encouraging them to engage in genre-analysis tasks before doing their own writing.
The international marketing of school education has gathered momentum in the Asia Pacific region, where an English medium education is prized by many parents. This paper investigates the responses of a group of teachers in Australia to the needs of international students in their school. The analysis of a 1h professional discussion between four teachers in one school context shows a range of diverse opinions and attitudes. In particular, an APPRAISAL analysis [Martin, J. R. (1995). Reading positions/positioning readers: Judgement in English. Prospect, 10(2), 27–37] of this discussion points to the ways in which the teachers across the key discipline areas to which international students are attracted, position themselves in relation to their roles and responsibilities towards these international students. The analysis reveals that the subject specialist teachers, while concerned about the educational needs of these international students and aware they have particular linguistic and learning needs, do not accept responsibility for teaching language in their specialist subjects. Furthermore, across the phases of the discussion, there is little shift in the stances of some of the specialist teachers as they engage with each other and with the ESL teacher, suggesting the need for more productive conversational strategies. We conclude by identifying a number of factors that need to be accounted for in such professional discussions if ESL teachers are to effectively assist specialist teachers in supporting international students in meeting the language, as well as academic demands of their specialist areas.
Hedging is a well-documented feature of spoken discourse as a result of its role in qualifying categorical commitment and facilitating discussion. Its use in academic writing has received less attention, however, and we know little about the functions it serves in different research fields and particular genres. Hedging is a significant communicative resource for academics since it both confirms the individual's professional persona and represents a critical element in the rhetorical means of gaining acceptance of claims. Hedges allow writers to anticipate possible opposition to claims by expressing statements with precision, caution, and diplomatic deference to the views of colleagues. Based on a contextual analysis of 26 articles in molecular biology, this paper argues that hedging in scientific research writing cannot be fully understood in isolation from social and institutional contexts and suggests a pragmatic framework which reflects this interpretive environment.
Taking an assertive stance toward research being reviewed or reported is a challenging task for second language writers. This aspect of interpersonal meaning is especially difficult to address through direct instruction, as attention to particular grammatical and lexical choices outside of contexts of use is not enough to help students develop the prosodies (Hood, 2004; 2006; Lemke, 1992; 1998) that are required to be authoritative and create a texture that coherently presents an authorial perspective. This article illustrates how a systemic functional linguistics analysis can identify and render explicit to second language writers some ways published authors create textures of expanding or contracting options as research is presented, reviewed, and evaluated. Drawing on the Engagement framework (Martin & White, 2005), we illustrate different approaches to research article introductions in connection with their rhetorical purposes (Swales, 1990; 2004), highlighting the linguistic resources that are in interaction with each other as authors introduce their studies and review related studies. Specifically, we describe two patterns of expanding options and two patterns of contracting options found in educational research, and suggest pedagogical approaches to making these patterns salient to L2 writers.
The ways that writers distinguish their opinions from facts and evaluate the certainty of their assertions is central to the meaning of academic texts, yet this is an area that second language students often find extremely problematic. In this paper I examine the view that the items writers use to modify their claims, commonly referred to as hedges and boosters, may actually be unnoticed by L2 readers, a phenomenon Low (1996) calls the 'Lexical Invisibility Hypothesis'. Data is presented from a small retrospective think-aloud study which explores how 14 Cantonese L1 undergraduates respond to hedges and boosters in an academic text. The discussion is supported by questionnaire data which seeks to determine learners' awareness of the meanings of these forms. The results suggest that while the subjects generally attended to the boosters, hedges did seem to be more invisible.
Empirical studies designed to test Kaplan's thesis that discourse structure varies widely with ‘culturo-linguistic systems’
have provoked wildly conflicting results. This lack of agreement is due in large measure to certain assumptions being made
about the relation between a language system and a culture, to the nature of the questions being asked, and to a certain amount
of disarray in the methodology of studies mounted to test the claim. To overcome these problems, this paper focuses on the
likely sources of variability in discourse structure by comparing the introductions to papers written in variety of related
disciplines by three groups of physical scientists: Anglo-Americans writing in English, Chinese writing in English, and Chinese
writing in Chinese. We find that there is, indeed, an underlying rhetorical structure common to all language groups and disciplines,
but that there are systematic variations from this structure. Some variations characterize the discipline rather than the
language or nationality of the writers. Others show strong differences between western and Chinese scientists, irrespective
of language. The nature of these variations indicates the futility of broad generalizations about the connections between
discourse structure and ‘culturo-linguistic systems’, a finding that courses in English for academic purposes should heed.
Explores the issue of reading positions from the perspective of one aspect of appraisal in English. The analysis focuses on the realization of judgment in history texts, taking note of explicit and implied realizations, and the range of reading positions (compliant, resistant, or tactical) that might be taken up. (nine references) (Author)
The main purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent there is rhetorical variation between the research article abstracts written in English for international journals and those written in Spanish and published in Spanish journals in the area of experimental social sciences. To this end, the structural units that constitute the macrostructure of these texts have been analysed comparatively. The results show that the Spanish abstracts in this field largely follow the international conventions based on the norms established by the English-speaking international academic community, as they present the four basic structural units (Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusion) which constitute the different sections of the underlying research article. However, some degree of divergence has been found, mainly in the frequency of occurrence of the Results unit, and Move 2 in the abstract introductions, which is where writers justify their work in their research field as a way of creating a niche. The rhetorical variables found across the two languages may be mainly explained by the different expectations that the members of the international and Spanish scientific communities have. © 2002 The American University. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
This paper compares the rhetorical organization of research article introductions in Brazilian Portuguese and in English within a subfield of Applied Linguistics. Using Swales’ (1990) CARS model as an analytical tool, this exploratory study investigated 20 research articles. The findings indicate that introductions in Brazilian Portuguese tend to follow a different pattern from that of the model, whereas the introductions in English follow it closely. Different explanations are offered to account for the cross-cultural differences.
The Discussion sections of 30 social science Research Articles, 10 each from the disciplines of history, political science and sociology, were analyzed according to a modified version of the moves, or communicative categories, presented in previous studies. It was found that, although there were fundamental similarities to the natural sciences, social science Discussion sections also displayed some distinctive features. History texts were particularly distinctive, and of the three disciplines bore the least resemblance to those of the natural sciences. It is suggested that this distinctiveness is sufficient to justify the idea of a social science subgenre of the Research Article genre and that data of this kind are needed if academic reading and writing materials are to be developed that are sensitive to the structural features of academic texts and in particular to the ways in which such features vary according to discipline.
This paper describes an analysis of communicative moves in discussion sections across seven disciplines—Physics, Biology, Environmental Science, Business, Language and Linguistics, Public and Social Administration, and Law. While introductions in academic writing have received attention recently, much less research has investigated discussion sections and there has been little investigation of their move structure, including interdisciplinary and NS/NNS variation. Findings in these areas have clear relevance for the teaching of ESP: the rapid growth in the number of research writers, and the need to teach them discipline-specific research writing, makes these factors increasingly important. Research articles (RAs) were analysed in terms of Dudley-Evans's 1994 model. The total corpus was 252 RAs (36 from each discipline, 1.4 million words). A number of marked interdisciplinary and NS/NNS differences were found in the type and number of moves and move cycles. Conclusions are that the findings have relevance for the teaching of research writing. They may help ESP teachers inform learners of typical move sequences and also how much flexibility the genre allows regarding obligatory and optional moves and cycles, and the optimal order of moves. A revised model for the discussion sections is also put forward.
A modified version of the rhetorical categories proposed by Brett (1994) for the Results section of sociology articles was applied to eight medical research articles to determine how the model might be used pedagogically with undergraduate students of medicine. The analysis revealed that the Statement of Finding category represented 77% of sentences and occurred in both cyclical and linear patterns. The type of report and subject matter were found to influence the organization and pattern of presentation. Additional categories are suggested to cover layering (successive shifts of level) and conflicts between chronological and hierarchical order. These findings provide additional evidence of greater disciplinary variation in this section than in the Introduction and Discussion sections.© 1999 The American University. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd
The paper borrows inspiration from three main sources: discourse organization and processing, genre analysis, and ethnography of communication. It explores cross-cultural variation in academic discourse on the basis of some English and Polish data from the field of language studies. Strategies of paper introduction are examined and compared with the help of an extended version of Swales' (1990) Move Analysis. It is argued that there exist potential areas of (in)compatibility between the two writing styles. These involve first of all the scope of information that is normally revealed in initiating a paper, and the rhetorical work that is done to handle academic face-phenomena.
Our paper examines how selected research articles (RAs) reporting empirical investigations in applied linguistics proceed from first presenting results to eventually offering final conclusions or some other form of closure. After reviewing the literature on relevant aspects of RA structure and its functions, we report the findings of a genre analysis of 20 RAs in applied linguistics concerning rhetorical choices among possible Results, Results and Discussion, Discussion, Conclusion, and Pedagogic Implications sections, and identify specific organizational choices within each section. We propose a two-level account (Moves and Steps) of the separate Discussion sections in our corpus, and argue that this is able to capture general trends and specific rhetorical realizations in an insightful way.
This paper reports on an analysis of research article introductions from two related fields, Wildlife Behavior and Conservation Biology, using Swales' [Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis. English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press] Create-A-Research-Space (CARS) model. The results of the analysis reveal disciplinary variation in the structure of this genre, which has important pedagogical implications. The Conservation Biology introductions fulfill a greater promotional function than the Wildlife Behavior introductions through the use of steps such as centrality claims. These introductions also tend to justify the research being reported in terms of real world matters rather than the epistemic world of research, in contrast to the Wildlife Behavior introductions. The results also indicate that a greater degree of embedding is needed in the CARS model to account for the structures found in the introductions analyzed. A modified version of the CARS model based on the results is presented in the concluding section.
This paper presents a linguistic description of the schematic organisation of research articles in the field of computer science. Forty articles from three different academic journals in computing research have been analysed; the results indicate that the IMRD (introduction-methods-results-discussion) pattern cannot be applied to research articles in computer science systematically. Introductory and concluding sections, however, are used in more instances. It is the central part of these articles which seems to depart more from the IMRD pattern. Detailed analyses of the structure of introductions, results, and conclusions are included, and relevant comparisons with previous studies are drawn.
A major problem for second language students writing academic essays in English is to convey statements with an appropriate degree of doubt and certainty. Such epistemic comments are crucial to academic writing where authors have to distinguish opinion from fact and evaluate their assertions in acceptable and persuasive ways. Despite its importance however, we know little about how second language writers present assertions in their writing and we often measure their attempts to master appropriate forms against the work of expert writers. Based on a corpus of one million words, this paper compares the expression of doubt and certainty in the examination scripts of 900 Cantonese speaking school leavers writing in English with those of 770 British learners of similar age and educational level. A detailed analysis of the texts reveals that these L2 writers differ significantly from the NSs in relying on a more limited range of items, offering stronger commitments, and exhibiting greater problems in conveying a precise degree of certainty. The authors highlight a number of issues raised by the research and make some pedagogical suggestions for developing competence in this important pragmatic area.
Numerous studies have investigated the linguistic expression of stance and evaluation in university registers, focusing especially on academic research writing and to a lesser extent classroom teaching. The present study extends previous research in two ways: (1) it compares and contrasts the use of a wide range of lexico-grammatical features used for the expression of stance (rather than focusing on a particular feature), and (2) it describes major patterns of register variation within the university, comparing the marking of stance in academic versus ‘student management’ registers, within both speech and writing.The study shows that the expression of stance is important in all university registers. However, at the same time, the study shows that there are important register differences in the particular kinds of stance meanings that are expressed, the grammatical devices used to express stance, and in the overall extent to which stance is expressed at all.
This paper investigates the rhetorical organization of the introduction sections of English and Chinese research articles in the field of educational psychology. The study reported in this paper adopts
[41] and [42] framework of move analysis. In general, the findings of the present study reveal that there are similarities and differences between English and Chinese research article introductions in terms of the employment of moves and steps. It is suggested that the rhetorical differences reflect some of the distinctive characteristics of the two different cultures, English and Chinese. The findings of the present study have both theoretical and pedagogical implications.
Taking as their starting point recent work in genre and discourse analysis the authors attempt, through the presentation of results of their own investigations, to establish a framework for a pedagogically useful description of the organisation of discussion sections in research-focused articles and dissertations. A provisional list of descriptive categories is offered along with observations on regularly occurring patterns of moves identified in the texts investigated.
This study uses a genre-based analysis of 20 research articles (RAs) from the discipline of sociology to present a provisional, pedagogically usable description of the communicative categories or “moves” (Swales 1981, 1990) found in the Results sections. These categories are described in terms of function, lexis, and grammatical form, and a model of the typical, cyclical patterns formed by combinations of the categories is given. The categories found extend and refine previous models of this section, reveal certain similarities with the Discussion sections of hard science RAs, and provide evidence of disciplinary variation.
The purpose of the study is to investigate the rhetorical properties of Arabic research article introductions, using Swales’ CARS model. It is shown that Arabic introductions are varied in terms of their organization, resulting in a hybrid rhetorical structure: A few of them include features proposed in the CARS model, while the majority differs from it substantially. It is also shown how main features of Arabic discourse such as repetition and high-flown, ornamented expressions interact with rhetorical aspects of introductions. The significance of the findings is discussed using insights from the converging fields of genre analysis, contrastive rhetoric, and cross-cultural communication.
Reader versus writer responsibility: a new typology
- Hinds
Applied genre analysis and ESP
- Bhatia