A.A. Baibatyrova
Foreign Philology Master’s, PhD student, L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University, Astana, Republic of Kazakhstan
THE FREQUENCY OF INTERPERSONAL METADISCOURSE IN THE
RESEARCH ARTICLE INTRODUCTIONS AS A REFLECTION OF THE AUTHORIAL
RHETORICAL STRATEGIES
This paper opted to focus on the interpersonal metadiscourse employed by the writers to enhance the effectiveness of the moves in the English research article Introductions. Specifically, the article aims to illustrate that the density of the interpersonal metadiscourse across the Introduction moves can betray their dependence on the authorial intent and investigate the extent to which linguistic choices can be reflections of the authorial rhetorical strategies. The findings suggest that the most frequent interpersonal metadiscourse markers are hedges and boosters mush considerably presented in Move 1. The least typical items are engagement markers, which signal that direct addressing to readers seems inappropriate in academic communication.
Key words: research article, move, interpersonal metadiscourse, quantitative analysis, discursive analysis.
INTRODUCTION
The credibility of the research findings has had an increasing significance since science was viewed as a textually-structured result of investigation [1]. With this perspective, linguists tend to enhance the reliability of claims by designing their discourses in an adequate textual shape to obtain acceptance with readers. Moreover, to reinforce the persuasiveness of their claims researchers tend to manipulate the linguistic resources, especially those which are related to the cognitive processing of information, such as metadiscourse for presenting and commenting the findings.
While studying the topic researchers employ the procedures of analysis that are likely to show more truthful picture of the phenomena under investigation. In this regard, researchers’ claims on the urgent need for the quantitative methods to be used in linguistic analysis are of paramount importance to provide credibility of the research procedures and analytical framework [2]. Employment of such methods endorses the responsibility of writers for the justifications proposed. Using the quantitative analysis procedure, manual or computer-based, the latter vigorously developing in the current linguistics [e.g., 3], appears to be considerably effective for a large number of corpora, like online databases such as the British National Corpus and Corpus of Contemporary American English which have collections of academic texts compiled across various disciplines. The corpus-based tool has been employed for studying the whole discourse structure, including analysis of moves and their linguistic realizations to attempt to “rigorously segment complete texts into well-defined discourse units” [4, 10] and “to then discover general patterns of discourse organization that hold across all texts in the corpus” [4, 11]. These frequency-based approaches enable researchers to overarch large amount of database and present the overall picture of the linguistic realizations that permit to deduce some qualitative inferences indispensible for the comprehension of the textual features. Moreover, most researchers successfully combine the two approaches, for instance, K. Hyland merged the corpus-based analysis of 240 research articles in 8 disciplines with qualitative study of individual texts, additionally involving the interview of insider informants of certain fields of study [5]. The quantitative analysis of the metadiscourse showed the more preferable and quite typical authorial strategies to present an appropriate stance and demonstrate due engagement with the audience. Consequently, the quantitative approach to datasets combined with the qualitative analysis of the individual texts in their contextual realizations provides the reliability and validity of the research conducted.
This paper highlights the rhetorical authorial strategies expressed in the interpersonal metadiscursive choices of reinforcing and mitigating claims, which show how the writers promote the research and display solidarity with readers. Among them, hedges, boosters, attitude, selfmention and engagement markers, important rhetorical resources that aid to warrant claims and effectively engage with readers in academic communication [5]. They are studied in this article with the perspective of how numerously and densely they are presented in the moves. J. Swales proposed a move analysis approach to Introduction within the general field of English for Specific Purposes [6] and defined the move as a “discoursal or rhetorical unit that performs a coherent communicative function in a written or spoken discourse” [7, 228-229]. The move analysis has acquired numerous developments [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], since J. Swales initiated his CARS model [6] presenting how writers can Create a Research Space by adequately structuring the research article Introduction text. They cover different disciplines whose standards influence the organization of texts and their linguistic features: management [13], applied linguistics [14], [15], [16], medicine [17] and conservation biology and wildlife behavior [18]. It is stated that the disciplinary standards can influence structuring of the text, for instance, there have been examined the similarities and disparities in the use of metadiscourse in two closely related disciplines [19].
The interdependence between moves and metadiscourse employed has not been widely
studied, but there can be cited some solid investigations, such as [20, 140], which “highlights linguistic resources that can be explicitly linked with the functional moves that they enable and construct”. Metadiscourse expands interaction when “an utterance…actively makes allowances for dialogically alternative positions and voices (dialogic expansion)”, or contracts it — “acts to challenge, fend off or restrict the scope of such (dialogic contraction)” [21, 102]. By expanding and contracting interaction authors promote an authorial evaluative stance by manipulation of language
means that create a convincing stance through “a balance of assertion and concession” [20, 141].
For this study, four high-impact factor journals with the conventional organizational IMRD structure have been selected, namely English for Academic Purposes (EAP), English for Specific Purposes (ESP), Discourse Studies (DS) and Written Communication (WC). The articles by expert writers have been chosen to see how reputable academic discourse writers organize the text as genre specificity and present persuasive introduction writing. Although the Introduction section is the focus of research, most articles (16 out of 20) have complementary Literature Review sections, which have also been included into the study. The 2000 and 2017 issues of each journal were chosen: the total corpus comprises 20 research articles with a total of 26185 words. The quantitative approach is used to each Introduction section for counting the interpersonal metadiscourse features in each separate move to identify where the authors demonstrate a powerful assertive stance or downplay the claims to sound less categorical. Besides, all the linguistic items have been carefully considered in the large rhetorical context which emphasizes the more typical manifestations of metadiscorse.
MAIN PART
The communicative principle has been applied to the analysis of the linguistic items but the communicative purposes of the Introduction do not always seem clear and apparent. Probably, the Introduction has more than one function, namely, analysis of the previous studies, claiming importance of the topic and general description of the present research. The results of the quantitative analysis show the general number and distribution of the metadiscourse items in each move category presented in Table 1. It demonstrates that the authors use far more metadiscourse in Move 1 than in the other two moves and conversely, least in Move 2. Moreover, Table 1 shows the highest figures for hedges overall. Self-mentions and engagement markers display very low frequency of occurrence across all the moves.
Table 1. Number and distribution of the interpersonal metadiscursive items identified in the corpus
Interpersonal metadiscourse Move 1 Move 2 Move 3 Total
Hedges 254 51 77 382
Boosters 233 62 70 365
Attitude markers 73 16 11 100
Self-mention 19 2 41 62
Engagement 15 2 6 23
Total 594 133 205 932
Like in [4], the main vocabulary-based discourse units (VBDU) are identified in the corpus to present the most frequent interpersonal metadiscourse items illustrated in Table 2. Only those whose number is higher than 10 occurrences are illustrated here, which can be interpreted as the most discursively promotional markers of the authorial stance and engagement. They include semantics of different modalities: possibility, relativity, opinion, frequency, evidentiality, evaluation and degrees of certainty. The other metadiscourse which is not displayed here covers a large variety of lexical items.
Table 2. Most frequent interpersonal metadiscourse items hedges and boosters in the corpus
__________________________________________________________________________
Hedges Boosters Attitude markers Self-mention Engagement
__________________________________________________________________________
can 57 more 31 important 19 our 28 see 15 may 57 especially 24 considerable 10 we 22
suggest 21 very 21 significant 10 possible(ly) 19 often/frequent(ly) 19 argue 17 find 15
tend 14 largely 14 might 10 show 14
relatively 10 clear(ly) 13
__________________________________________________________________________
According to Swales’ conceptualization, Introduction seems to be the section primarily devoted to persuade readers that the topic of investigation is important [6], [7]. This is realized by claiming centrality of the topic under investigation and generalizing its background knowledge. Move 1 functionally fulfills these communicatively significant acts, which is explicitly represented by the highest density of the metadiscourse features in the present corpus. Their major presence in this move can be justified by the promotional strategy of the authors to persuade readers that the study undertaken is relevant. The evidence suggest that analysis of the previous literature in Move 1 requires from writers consistent interpretation of the claims proposed remarkably realized in the use of interpersonal metadiscourse resources, mainly boosters and hedges, which contribute to balancing the authorial confidence and caution. Hyland states that “hedges and boosters are a response to the potential negatability of claims […]. They work to balance objective information, subjective evaluation and interpersonal negotiation, and this can be a powerful persuasive factor in gaining acceptance for claims” [22, 5]. Despite the fact that there are slightly more hedges than boosters in this move and overall in the corpus, the latter indicate their considerable relevance and salience:
(1) The abstract has increasingly become an essential part (booster) of the research article. As it captures the essence of the whole article, the abstract tends (hedge) to be the first art of a journal article to be read (Hartley, 2003; Salager-Meyer, 1990); this is especially true (booster) in today’s busy world flooded with information. Very few (booster) journals would not require (hedge) an abstract to be submitted with the main research article (Martin-Martin, 2002). (Pho, DS, 2008).
(2) Literature also shows (booster) that although writers in hard sciences tend (hedge) to offer less personal interpretations than their peers in soft knowledge fields, they do step in (booster) and project interactional positioning or disguise their personal involvement at critical points to make their readers find what they said trustworthy, plausible and persuasive (Charles, 2004; …). Basturkmen (2012) found (booster) that dentistry authors persistently evaluated the results in the
discussion section…(Basturkmen, 2012). (Crosthwaite et al., ESP, 2017).
Conversely, the other moves show largely moderate density of the metadiscourse, for instance, Move 2 where the main rhetorical act is indicating a gap in the previous research, illustrates the lowest number of occurrences (133). This may be explicated by a considerably less space the text segment realizes this rhetoric in the introduction and, therefore the authors show their stance in few sentences, mainly by boosting the lack or insufficiency of the prior research on the matter (62). By boosting, the authors illustrated their confidence that there is some void in the study which should be addressed urgently. However, the other almost equal number of metadiscourse in Move 2 is hedges (51) that balance boosting and let readers have their views on the subject. In example (3) a strong confident claim reinforced by only is downplayed by the authorial to our knowledge which limits the statement to their personal background and welcomes possible readers’ counter-claims. In excerpt (4) a strong claim that states the lack of study is mitigated by the employment of the hedge appear, which downplays the author’s commitment to the truth or validity of the propositional content.
(3) Only a limited few (booster), to our knowledge (hedge), are corpus-based, crossdisciplinary studies focusing on how promotion is realized strategically and linguistically in RAs (i.e., Afros & Schryer…). (Wang & Yang, EAP, 2015).
(4) In addition, there appears (hedge) to be no linguistic study (booster) of how the discourse structure of texts referred to as research papers may (hedge) vary across courses in undergraduate or graduate programs. (Samraj, EAP, 2004).
Similarly, Move 3 that describes the authors’ present research is mainly promoted by a nearly equal number of hedge and booster occurrences which dominate the other metadiscourse markers. As Move 3 describes the aim(s), methods and, occasionally, the outcomes of the present research, the authors attempt to boost their claims with certainty, on the one hand, and soften them when they feel that their views can be counter-acted, on the other. In most occurrences these metadiscourse features are mix-used to indicate a powerful and careful authorial claim in the text. Traditionally, the aims and methods are mainly described in a plain and objective way, while the interpretation of results and stating the value of the research tend to display cautious writers taking off their full commitment for disputable claims seen in hedging. It is worth noting that only 3 occurrences of presenting the results and 12 value statements have been identified in the 20 introductions:
(5) The results of the study indicate (hedge) that in Conservation Biology abstracts include some moves that have been ascribed to research article introductions. The presence of these moves results in abstracts from Conservation Biology having the persuasive function more usually (booster) fulfilled by introductions. The two genres appear (hedge) to be more clearly (booster) differentiated in Wildlife Behavior. (Samraj, ESP, 2005).
It is worth mentioning that modal/semi-modal and epistemic verbs were the preferable hedging means, while expressions ‘in our/my opinion’ or ‘we think that’ were very few. One possible explanation could be the fact that they are substituted by the modal verbs synonymous in meaning to them because they occupy less space reducing the number of words. Another justification is more semantic which can stand for the view that more possibilities can be allowed by quite broad semantics of the modals.
The lower figures shown in Table 1 are for self-mentions which indicate that the authors prefer to appeal to readers in an impersonal way using the inanimate subject construction (e.g., the paper investigates) instead of we — or I-pronoun patterns (e.g., I examine). The use of the first person pronouns is the primary feature of authorial voice. However, their low frequency may indicate avoidance of being more promotional than expected in the community by hiding their presence in the impersonal or passive constructions. On the other hand, this can also point to the authors’ endeavor to comply with the academic writing conventions which ‘prescribe’ an impersonal presentation [see 23]. However, occasional very reputable expert writers allow for explicit self-presence, which probably witnesses their full commitment to the enterprise undertaken.
As a strategic use, self-reference and self-citation is seen as authors’ “individual contribution and their assertion of academic priority” (emphasized in the orig.) [24, 252]. The distributions again reflect how the authors seek to promote the significance of the research and their personal contribution, highlighted in Move 3 by 41 occurrences of self-reference, like in excerpt (6):
(6) In our work, we (self-mention) draw specifically on a sociocultural definition of voice as articulated in Matsuda (2001), which extends the concept beyond the traditional, individualistic conceptions (Tardy & Matsuda, DS, 2009).
The engagement markers display the lowest number of occurrences: the most salient are the imperative forms of addressing by which the authors involve readers into the interpretation of the claims in Move 1 by citing (e. g., see Hyland, 2005) or referring to another section or evidence (e.g., see 3.2, see Table 2).
The lowest number of the engagement markers can be justified with the more theoretical nature of the Introduction section where the engagement markers can be of less significance for writers than in the Discussion section. Or, the direct appealing to recipients is likely to be facethreatening, especially in the imperative forms. However, there are other resources like the second person pronouns that have not shown any presence in the corpus analyzed.
In summary, metadiscourse options are therefore constrained by the rhetorical expectations of the discourse (the importance of move strategies) and the strength of claims the writers intend to make.
CONCLUSION
The quantitative approach to academic text analysis showed that the metadiscourse resources are unevenly distributed across the moves in the introductions studied, which suggests that they are rhetorically-oriented and their employment is motivated by the authorial communicative intent. The statistics illustrates that the most frequent items present typical discursive strategies of the authors from the four different journals. Besides, the contextual analysis also supports the statistical findings by evidencing that metadiscourse markers of force and mitigation consistently occur and co-occur in the texts. These items fulfill rhetorical functions of presenting the research in a promotional way by convincing and dialoguing with readers. Although this study has been conducted on relatively small dataset, its provisional findings indicate the typical tendencies in the promotional acts of academic communication.
REFERENCES
1 Bazerman C. Shaping written knowledge. — Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. – 356 pp.
2 Köhler R., Altmann G., Piotrowski R.G. Quantitative Linguistik. Ein internationales Handbuch. Quantitative Linguistics. An international handbook. — Berlin — New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2005. – 1041 pp.
3 Gray B. More than discipline: Uncovering multi-dimensional patters of variation in academic research articles // Corpora. – 2013. — № 8(2). – Pp. 153-181.
4 Biber D., Connor U., Upton T. A. Discourse on the move: Using corpus analysis to describe discourse structure. – Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007. – 290 pp.
5 Hyland K. Stance and engagement: a model of interaction in academic discourse // Discourse Studies. -2005. — № 7 (2). – Pp. 173-192.
6 Swales J. M. Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. — Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. – 260 pp.
7 Swales J. M. Research genres: Exploration and applications. — Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. – 314 pp.
8 Brett P. A genre analysis of the results section of sociology articles // English for Specific Purposes. – 1994. — № 13. – Pp. 47-59.
9 Nwogu K.N. The medical research paper: structure and functions // English for Specific Purposes. – 1997. — № 16 (2). – Pp. 119-138.
10 Holmes R. Genre analysis, and the social sciences: an investigation of the structure of research article discussion sections in three disciplines // English for Specific Purposes. – 1997. — № 16 (4) – Pp. 321-337.
11 Lewin B.A., Fine J. & Young L. Expository discourse: a genre-based approach to social science research texts. — London: Continuum, 2001. – 166 pp.
12 Basturkmen H. Commenting on results in published research articles and masters dissertations in Language Teaching // Journal of English for Academic Purposes. – 2009. — № 8. — Pp. 241-251.
13 Lim J.M.H. Commenting on research results in applied linguistics and education: a comparative genre-based investigation // Journal of English for Academic Purposes. – 2010. — № 9.
– Pp. 280-294.
14 Yang R., Allison D. Research articles in applied linguistics: moving from results to conclusions // English for Specific Purposes. – 2003. — № 22. – Pp. 365-385.
15 Lim J.M.H. Commenting on research results in applied linguistics and education: a comparative genre-based investigation // Journal of English for Academic Purposes. — 2010. — № 9.
– Pp. 280-294.
16 Oztürk I. The textual organisation of research article introductions in applied linguistics: variability with a single discipline // English for Specific Purposes. – 2007. — 26(1). — Pp. 25-38.
17 Li L.- J., Ge G.- C. Genre analysis: Structural and linguistic evolution of the Englishmedium medical research article (1985-2004) // English for Specific Purposes. – 2009. — № 28. — Pp. 93-104.
18 Samraj B. An exploration of genre set: research article abstracts and introductions in two disciplines // English for Specific Purposes. – 2005. — № 24. — Pp. 141-156.
19 Afros E., Schryer C. F. Promotional (meta) discourse in research articles in language and literary studies // English for Specific Purposes. – 2009. — № 28(1). – Pp. 58-68.
20 Chang P., Schleppegrell M. Taking an effective stance in academic writing: making the linguistic resources explicit for L2 writers in the social sciences // Journal of English for Academic Purposes. — 2011. – № 10. – Pp. 140-151.
21 Martin J. R., White P. R. R. The language of evaluation: appraisal in English. — N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. – 278 pp.
22 Hyland K. Boosting, hedging and the negotiation of academic knowledge // Text. – 1998. — № 18(3). Pp. 349-382.
23 Biber D. University language: a corpus-based study of spoken and written registers.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2006. -261 pp.
24 Hyland K. Self-Citation and self-reference: Credibility and promotion in academic publication // Journal of the American society for information science and technology. – 2003. — № 54(3). – Pp.251-259.
А.А. Байбатырова
Ғылыми мақалалардың Кіріспесіндегі автордың риторикалық стратегиялар ретінде қарастырылған тұлғааралық метадискурсивтың жиілігі
Л.Н. Гумлев атындағы Еуразия Ұлттық университеті
Астана, Қазақстан
Бұл мақала метадискурсивтік бірлітерді ғылыми мақалалардын Кіріспесінде пайдаланған коммуникативтік стратегиялар ретінде қарастырады. Метадискурсивтік бірлітердің жиілігі тіл кұралдардың тандауы автордың сенімді дискурсты ұсыну ниетін дәлелдейді. Квантитативтік талдаудың нәтижесі ең жиік тұлғааралық метадискурсивтік бірлітері хедж пен және бустерлер болып шыққаннын көрсетті, олар көбнесе 1-ші Стратегиясында жиналған. Ең төмен жиілігін адресатқа тура сілтеме маркерлер болып шықты, олар ғылыми коммуникацияда тұлға аралық қатынас білдіретін аса тандаулы метадискурс болған емес екен білдірді.
А. А. Байбатырова
Частотность употребления межличностного метадискурса во Введении научных статей как отражение авторских стратегий в риторике текста
Евразийский Национальный университет им. Л.Н.Гумилева, Астана, Казахстан
Данная статья имеет целью представить метадискурсивные единицы в качестве выразителей коммуникативных стратегий, используемых авторами во Введении англоязычной научной статьи. В частности, анализ частотности употребления метадискурсивных единиц доказывает, что выбор языковых средств является отражением авторского намерения представить убедительный дискурс адресатам текста. Результаты квантитативного анализа свидетельствуют, что наиболее часто используемыми межличностными метадискурсивными средствами являются хеджи и бустеры, главным образом сконцентрированные в Стратегии 1. Наименее частотными средствами метадискурса оказались маркеры прямой адресации к реципиентам, что свидетельствует о том, что они не являются предпочтительными для создания межличностных отношений в научной коммуникации.