Diachronic Analysis of Stance Markers in Research Articles’ discussion Sections

Abstract

It is now increasingly accepted that metadiscourse as one of the significant rhetorical features of research articles is context-sensitive and subject to change in response to the historically developing practices of academic communities. Motivated by such an understanding, the current research drew on a corpus of 914679 words taken from three leading journals of applied linguistics in order to trace the diachronic evolution of stance markers in discussion sections of research articles from 1996 to 2016. The analysis revealed a substantial decline in the overall frequency of stance markers in the discussion section, with devices in all categories, except self-mention which increased dramatically over the past 20 years. Approaching the interactional dimension of academic writing from such a diachronic perspective, it might be argued that academic writing reflects, and in turn constitutes, social and institutional practices derived from contexts that are continually changing. Hence, training in academic writing needs to be a process of raising students’ consciousness of the choices they can make and the consequences of making those choices in particular contexts.

Interactional Metadiscourse Markers in English Research Article Abstracts Written by Non-Native Authors: A Corpus-Based Contrastive Study

“…ra abstracts are explored from a cross-disciplinary or cross-cultural perspective or in a single discipline and cultural context. One group of studies focuses on the use of metadiscourse in English-language research articles investigating it from a synchronic or diachronic perspective (Abarghooeinezhad & Simin, 2015;Farjami, 2013;Hu & Cao, 2011;Gillaerts, 2014;Kozubíková Šandová, 2021;Kuhi & Mousavi, 2015;Nurhayati, 2017). For example, Farjami (2013) explored metadiscourse markers in applied linguistics articles.…”

“…Abarghooeinezhad and Simin (2015) studied the metadiscourse features typical of engineering-related ra abstracts; Nurhayati (2017) examined those associated with efl ra. Hu and Cao (2011), Gillaerts (2014), and Kuhi and Mousavi (2015) compared the use of hedges and boosters in applied linguistics ra abstracts. Kozubíková Šandová (2021) explored metadiscourse in linguistics ra abstracts from a diachronic perspective.…”

“…Previous studies on this academic genre have attempted to reveal its rhetorical organization (e.g., Al-Khasawneh, 2017;Gessesse, 2016;Ji, 2015;Saidi & Talebi, 2021), linguistic features (e.g., Kozubíková Šandová, 2021; Kuhi & Mousavi, 2015), cross-disciplinary and crosscultural variations (e.g., Alonso Almeida, 2014; Belyakova, 2017;Hu & Cao 2011;Martín, 2003;Perales-Escudero & Swales, 2011;Sanz, 2006;Van Bonn & Swales 2007;Yang 2013), interpersonal features (e.g. Lorés Sanz et al, 2010), subjectivity, evaluation and engagement (e.g.…”

COVID-19 and science advice on the ‘Grand Stage’: the metadata and linguistic choices in a scientific advisory groups’ meeting minutes

“…For example, hedges downgrade authorial commitment, making a statement more tentative (e.g., epistemic modals such as "may" and adverbials such as "possibly"), while boosters or emphasisers (e.g., epistemic modals such as "will" and adverbials such as "obviously") convey higher degrees of certainty. The modulation of certainty via hedges, boosters, and other linguistic markers has been extensively studied in spoken dialogue (Coates, 1987;Holmes, 1990), academic writing (Hyland, 2005(Hyland, , 2002, corporate communication (Hyland, 1998), news articles, and science writing (Kuhi and Rezaei, 2020;Poole et al, 2019;Shen and Tao, 2021). Hyland's (e.g., 2005Hyland's (e.g., , 2002 work on academic writing is of particular relevance, due to its concern with the ways writers "balance objective information, subjective evaluation and interpersonal negotiation", and how these functions "in gaining acceptance for claims" (Hyland, 2005, p. 180).…”