scholarly journals Stance and modals of obligation and necessity in academic writing

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Parkinson

Abstract Variation has been demonstrated in modal use between written and spoken registers and between disciplines. This article investigates variation within a discipline by comparing modals of obligation and necessity used in three science genres. Obligation modals project strong authoritative stance, thus contrasting with the tendency in academic writing towards tentativeness. The modal auxiliaries must and should and quasi-modals have to and need to are investigated using student writing from the BAWE (British Academic Written English) corpus and a corpus of published research articles. Findings include a dearth of obligation modals in the empirical genres (research articles and laboratory reports). Also a greater prominence was found of dynamic modal meaning (where necessity arises from circumstances) rather than deontic meaning (where the necessity arises from human authority or rules). A further finding is the prominence of objective meaning in the science register compared with the International Corpus of English (Collins 2009a).

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Parkinson

Abstract Variation has been demonstrated in modal use between written and spoken registers and between disciplines. This article investigates variation within a discipline by comparing modals of obligation and necessity used in three science genres. Obligation modals project strong authoritative stance, thus contrasting with the tendency in academic writing towards tentativeness. The modal auxiliaries must and should and quasi-modals have to and need to are investigated using student writing from the BAWE (British Academic Written English) corpus and a corpus of published research articles. Findings include a dearth of obligation modals in the empirical genres (research articles and laboratory reports). Also a greater prominence was found of dynamic modal meaning (where necessity arises from circumstances) rather than deontic meaning (where the necessity arises from human authority or rules). A further finding is the prominence of objective meaning in the science register compared with the International Corpus of English (Collins 2009a).


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-130
Author(s):  
Jean Parkinson

Abstract Variation has been demonstrated in modal use between written and spoken registers and between disciplines. This article investigates variation within a discipline by comparing modals of obligation and necessity used in three science genres. Obligation modals project strong authoritative stance, thus contrasting with the tendency in academic writing towards tentativeness. The modal auxiliaries must and should and quasi-modals have to and need to are investigated using student writing from the BAWE (British Academic Written English) corpus and a corpus of published research articles. Findings include a dearth of obligation modals in the empirical genres (research articles and laboratory reports). Also a greater prominence was found of dynamic modal meaning (where necessity arises from circumstances) rather than deontic meaning (where the necessity arises from human authority or rules). A further finding is the prominence of objective meaning in the science register compared with the International Corpus of English (Collins 2009a).


Author(s):  
I Nyoman Suka Sanjaya ◽  
Anak Agung Raka Sitawati ◽  
Ni Ketut Suciani

The study examines whether English and Indonesian research articles written by their respective native speaker scholars are significantly different from each other in terms of the number of hedges used. Hedges are rhetorical features (e.g. may, perhaps, suggest) used to withhold complete commitment to the truth-value of propositions. The ultimate goal of the study is to examine whether Indonesian scholars need special instruction in hedging propositions. The assumption underlying the present study is that when they write in English, Indonesian scholars will deploy rhetorical features inherent in the Indonesian academic writing. Statistical analysis on 52 Applied Linguistics research articles (26 from each language) reveals that English research articles contain significantly more hedges than their Indonesian counterparts (Mann-Whitney U = 68.00, n1 = n2 = 26, p < 0.05, r = - 0.69), suggesting that Indonesian scholars are indeed in need of instruction that specifically focuses on hedging propositions in English.


2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tofan Dwi Hardjanto

As a communicative strategy, hedging plays a central role in academic writing. Numerous different linguistic forms can be used to express this strategy. This article attempts to investigate modal auxiliary verbs as the principal means of expressing hedging in English academic discourse. For this purpose, a corpus of 75 primary empirical research articles from economics, linguistics, medicine, natural sciences and engineering was analyzed quantitatively with the help of corpus linguistic method. The results revealed that modal auxiliaries were used most frequently in linguistics and economics and least frequently in engineering and natural sciences while their use in medicine came in between. This seems to suggest that there is noticeable disciplinary variation in the degree of hedging through the use of modal auxiliaries in English research articles. Modal auxiliaries tend to be more common in soft sciences than in hard sciences whereas their use in health sciences in comparison with soft and hard sciences does not seem to show any significant difference.


Processes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 1177
Author(s):  
Charikleia Prochaska ◽  
George Gallios

In this study, a combined technique of bibliometric and social network analysis was applied on research articles, related to the application of nano-adsorbents for cobalt removal from wastewater, published in Scopus database up to 2020. The results revealed that the first relative research article appeared in the Scopus database in the year 2002. The total output of research articles reached 214 in the year 2020. Published research articles of the years 2014–2020, added up to 83.6% of total articles. King Saud University of Saudi Arabia, Chinese Academy of Science, and LUT University of Finland were found to serve as the gatekeepers who control information flows in the network of the most prolific institutions, while cooperation between China, Saudi Arabia, and United States was also identified. On average, the most prolific authors cooperated with five others, while the top 10 cited publications appeared to represent a sparse and weakly interconnected network of co-authors. Graphene oxide was the most prominent nano-adsorbent among the top 10 cited publications, and their respective co-citations network visualization helped in capturing the value of certain citations to the evolution of the research on the topic, putting thus scientific work impact assessment to a different perspective.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Anis Firdatul Rochma ◽  
Sulis Triyono

<em>As an effort to give contribution to the existing knowledge, it is expected for the undergraduate students to compose an engaging research article in order to convince the readers about the importance of the research article. However, there is only a little attention given to the articles written by the undergraduate students although it is considered very critical to examine whether the exposure of English academic writing has significantly enhances the writing competence of the students. Furthermore, as it is also very crucial to build a meaningful semantic meaning among the sentences in order to disclose the worthiness of the research article, it is essential to analyze the cohesion of the research article written by the undergraduate students. Henceforth, the present research is projected to investigate the cohesion of the research articles written by the undergraduate students of English Language Teaching. As the introduction section of research article is likely to be an area to portray the logical explanation of the research, the present research solely focuses on examining the cohesion of the introduction section of research article. By adopting a qualitative design and involving several steps to analyze the introduction section, it is revealed that the grammatical cohesion is considered to be the most utilized type of cohesion in writing the introduction section. Still, the lexical cohesion is also necessary to build an eloquent semantic meaning about the topic as well the importance of the research article.</em>


2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-293
Author(s):  
Isaac Nuokyaa-Ire Mwinlaaru

Abstract This study explores the benefits of a synergy between ESP research on genre and theoretical dimensions of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). It models genre on SFL dimensions and employs this model to analyse 200 biodata written by Applied Linguistics scholars, 100 each from research articles and seminar posters. Data were analysed from contextual, logico-semantic and lexicogrammatical perspectives. The findings reveal five generic stages in biodata. The frequency distribution of these stages and the phases that realise them shows variation between research article bios and seminar bios. The most frequent logico-semantic (or rhetorical) relations identified among stages and phases are of the expansion type, namely addition and elaboration, Further, collocational frameworks are used in organising some generic phases into waves of meaning and in construing different identities. Finally, evaluative resources, in the form of lexical bundles, modification and circumstantial elements in the clause, are employed by writers to boost their professional achievements and promote themselves. These findings contribute to theoretical discussions on genre and the scholarship on the interface between identity construction and academic writing, and also motivate further research.


Author(s):  
Amanda Goldrick-Jones ◽  
Daniel Chang

Writing centres offer a safe space for writers, including English-as-additional-language (EAL) students, to negotiate meaning and become more <luent with academic writing genres. However, a disconnect still exists between the writer-centred principles that inform WC tutoring practice and the pervasive myth that writing centres repair “broken” writing. An analysis of data from a writing centre’s client reports, as well as peer tutors’ comments and student writing samples, indicates that a student’s language membership does not predict types of writing challenges or errors. This <inding inspired a roundtable discussion about pedagogical approaches that not only empower EAL students but help writing centres resist the “broken writer” myth.


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