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The expression of attitudinal meaning is negotiated in research articles (RAs) on the basis of shared disciplinary values. The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of the broader cultural context in the expression of attitudinal values, trying to ascertain to what extent language/culture values may be overridden by disciplinary ones. Thus, the paper explores attitude markers in a corpus of RAs from Business Management in two different sociocultural contexts: international American and local Spanish. Overall, results indicate a similar frequency of use and tendencies in the rhetorical purposes of attitude markers in the two sub‐corpora. It could be concluded that a common set of disciplinary values is shared by scholars from these two cultural contexts in this field when publishing their RAs. La expresión de contenidos atitudinales se negocia en los artículos de investigación con arreglo a valores disciplinares compartidos por sus miembros. El objetivo de este artículo es analizar el papel del contexto cultural más amplio en el que se enmarca el artículo de investigación publicado en la expresión de valores atitudinales, con el propósito de discernir hasta qué punto los valores disciplinares pueden suprimir aquellos de índole lingüística/cultural. Así, el artículo analiza el uso de marcadores atitudinales en un corpus de artículos de investigación en Dirección y Organización de Empresas en dos contextos socio culturales diferentes: el norteamericano (internacional) y el español (local). En términos generales, los resultados indican una frecuencia de uso y tendencias en los propósitos retóricos de los marcadores atitudinales similares en los dos corpora. De estos resultados se infiere que existe un conjunto de valores disciplinares compartidos por ambos grupos de autores, pertenecientes a distintos ámbitos socioculturales, pero al mismo campo disciplinar, a la hora de publicar sus artículos de investigación.

English has become the language of dissemination of research findings for scholars, especially in certain fields, and this is not an exception for Spanish scholars. They are under increasing pressure to write and publish research articles in international English-medium journals to establish their credentials, get academic promotion and rewards, and also to gain professional recognition. It is the aim of this paper to look at the process of writing research articles by a group of Spanish scholars in the field of finance by exploring the role played by “literacy brokers” (Lillis and Curry 2010): “wordface professionals” (Shashok 2008) (i.e., proofreaders and language consultants, who tend to be external community members) and gatekeepers (i.e., journal editors and reviewers). The study is based on eight text histories which contain the subsequent versions of the authors' manuscripts, the editors' letters, and the referees' reports. Referees and editors frequently point out the non-nativeness of the Spanish scholars' discourse, and encourage them to resort to English native wordface professionals. The analysis reveals the most common type of language revision which their manuscripts go through to comply not only with standard linguistic and discursive uses of the language but also with prevailing Anglo-American rhetorical conventions. Through this analysis an insight is gained into the extent to which English is used as a lingua franca (ELF) in this disciplinary academic community for research publication and dissemination.

Numerous cross-linguistic and cross-disciplinary studies have looked at the manifestation of author stance in academic texts. One of the most recurrent areas of contrast has been the use of personal pronouns across linguistic and disciplinary cultures. This paper aims at reviewing previous research on self-reference in research articles taking an intercultural perspective. It focuses on 22 studies which report on results regarding this stance feature in 13 lingua-cultural contexts (Bulgarian, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Persian, Russian, Spanish). They have been extracted from relevant publications in the fields of English for Academic Purposes and English for Specific Purposes over the past 25 years (1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012). A close analysis of this research highlights different cultural trends in constructing writer-reader relationships in this academic genre and reveals important methodological issues across different studies. This review article also has implications for English as a lingua franca (cf. Mauranen 2012) as used in international publications.