Epistemic stance and the construction of knowledge in science writing: A diachronic corpus study

Poole, Robert; Gnann, Andrew; Hahn-Powell, Gus

doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2019.100784

Cited by 36 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…unfortunately , surprisingly ) [ 8 ]. Considerable research has been conducted to discover how writers use different linguistic resources to persuade readers and convince the discourse community with their claims [ 9 – 20 ]. Some prior work has detailed the presence of stance markers across academic registers, e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One particular productive area of stance research has examined stance features in different academic research articles (RA), e.g. hedging in RA of molecular biology [ 14 , 15 ], stance markers in results sections of experimental RA by biochemists [ 16 ], construction of stance in reporting clauses from a cross-disciplinary perspective [ 11 ], stance and engagement in pure mathematics research articles [ 17 ], stance in dissertation acknowledgements [ 18 ], stance-taking in discussion sections of applied linguistics RA [ 19 ] and stance construction in biochemical RA [ 20 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yang et al [ 37 ] explored the use of epistemic modality in English-medium medical RA, and their results indicated that medical RA written by native English-speaking writers are more likely to use tentative and objective presentation of their claims to construct new knowledge with the purpose of avoiding subjectivization of their statements. A more recent study conducted by Poole et al [ 20 ] analyzed epistemic stance features in a diachronic corpus of biochemical research. Their results revealed an increase in the use of boosters and a decrease in the use of modal verbs over five time periods.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Stance markers in English medical research articles and newspaper opinion columns: A comparative corpus-based study

Shen

Tao

2021

PLoS ONE

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Stance markers are critical linguistic devices for writers to convey their personal attitudes, judgments or assessments about the proposition of certain messages. Following Hyland’s framework of stance, this study investigated the distribution of stance markers in two different genres: medical research articles (medical RA) and newspaper opinion columns (newspaper OC). The corpus constructed for the investigation includes 52 medical research articles and 175 newspaper opinion articles, which were both written in English and published from January to April in 2020 with the topic focusing on COVID-19. The findings of this study demonstrated that the occurrences of stance markers in newspaper OC were far more frequent than those in medical RA, indicating the different conventions of these two genres. Despite the significant difference in the occurrences of stance markers between the two sub-corpora, similarities of the most frequent stance markers in two genres were also highlighted. The study indicated that the topic content seems to play an important role in shaping the way of how writers construct their stance. The lack of information or evidence on the topic of COVID-19 could restrain writers from making high degree of commitment to their claims, which make them adopt a more tentative stance to qualify their statements.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Stance markers in English medical research articles and newspaper opinion columns: A comparative corpus-based study

Shen

Tao

2021

PLoS ONE

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“…Although there are numerous studies on metadiscourse features in research articles (RAs) written by L1 writers, including those on disciplinary variations [5,6], cross-cultural variations [7,8], or metadiscourse features of a particular category [9,10], studies targeting at RAs written by L2 novice writers are scarce [11]. EFL writers have been found to be inadequate in deploying metadiscourse resources [12][13][14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable Development of EFL Learners’ Research Writing Competence and Their Identity Construction: Chinese Novice Writer-Researchers’ Metadiscourse Use in English Research Articles

2021

Sustainability

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English for foreign language (EFL) novice writer-researchers are faced with an increasing pressure for international publication as a prerequisite for sustainable career development in academia. The use of metadiscourse, as a key indicator for their discourse competence, has been a subject of research for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and/or English for Specific Purposes (ESP) scholars. This study investigates metadiscourse features of research articles’ (RA) results and discussion (R&D) sections written by Chinese PhD students and their writer identities reflected through metadiscourse choice. A corpus was built, consisting of a subcorpus of R&D of unpublished research articles (RAs) written by Chinese PhD students (CNWs) and one of the same part-genre by English-speaking expert writers (EEWs). Metadiscourse used by the two groups were identified based on Hyland’s interpersonal model of metadiscourse. Quantitative analyses on the frequency and variety of metadiscourse markers found a significant difference not only in interactional metadiscourse but also in some subcategories of interactive and interactional metadiscourse, indicating that CNWs attach more importance to organisation of ideas than to the persuasiveness of arguments. A questionnaire survey was conducted to explore the influence of the CNWs’ perception of RA writing on their metadiscourse choice. It revealed that knowledge of generic conventions and metadiscourse functions, awareness of the writer–reader relationship, and confidence in language competence may influence metadiscourse choice. The paper concludes with the view that the CNWs generally view themselves as a recounter and reporter of their research, remaining conservative when presenting an authoritative voice and a confident identity as a knowledge creator.

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“…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).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attitude in Abstracts: Stance Expression in Translation Practice Reports and Interpretation Practice Reports by Chinese Students

Wang

Pramoolsook

2021

D&I

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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.

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Epistemic stance and the construction of knowledge in science writing: A diachronic corpus study

Cited by 36 publications

References 12 publications

Stance markers in English medical research articles and newspaper opinion columns: A comparative corpus-based study

Stance markers in English medical research articles and newspaper opinion columns: A comparative corpus-based study

Sustainable Development of EFL Learners’ Research Writing Competence and Their Identity Construction: Chinese Novice Writer-Researchers’ Metadiscourse Use in English Research Articles

Attitude in Abstracts: Stance Expression in Translation Practice Reports and Interpretation Practice Reports by Chinese Students

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