Tentativeness vs Assertiveness: Metadiscourse Choices of Russian Engineering Writers

Abstract

The communicative features of academic discourse have been explored from different perspectives. However, these studies have been predominantly carried out on English-language material. Little is known of how rhetorical elements, including stancetaking markers, are used in Russian academic prose. The сurrent study assumed that in order to ensure effective communication academic writers use a repertoire of stancetaking features. The theoretical basis of the study is Hyland’s model of stance markers which is frequently used in studying interactional strategies found in academic discourse. As research material the articles by Russian engineering scholars derived from six academic journals were used. The analysis revealed a large number of stance items with a predominance of boosters in the article introductions selected to build the corpus. It is suggested that the differences in the employment of stance markers identified in the study reflect discipline-specific writing peculiarities of the engineering academic community, while the discursive choices made by engineering writers are constrained by discursive conventions and depend on the level of the writers’ language proficiency. Despite some data limitations, the research results can be seen as a starting point for the future research of stancetaking in Russian research articles from different perspectives.