Hypes in undergraduate thesis abstracts by Indonesian students across years

Abstract

Previous studies showed that as a result of intense competition to succeed in academic pursuits such as publishing research papers and securing grants, promotional language known as hypes are pervasive in academic texts. This paper investigates hypes in a corpus of undergraduate thesis abstracts written by Indonesian English learners in a span of ten years, from 2011 to 2020. Taking a corpus-based approach, it examines the extent to which hypes are used in the thesis abstracts, including their linguistic manifestations, frequencies over the years, and the values they promote. We found hypes in all five moves of thesis abstracts, but they were most frequent in the introduction, in which they emphasized the importance and novelty of the research and stress the urgency of the research problems. In the span of the ten years, the frequencies of hypes generally increase, indicating the students’ awareness of the need to convince thesis supervisors, board of examiners, and their colleagues and the efforts to stand out in a competitive academic landscape. Important, investigate, and reveal were the most frequent hype words over the years and their instances suggest a growing emphasis on significance, a stronger commitment to evidence-based research, and desire to contribute new and concrete findings.