CALIFICACIÓN TRIMESTRAL:

As with research on other interaction management features in RAs, work on epistemic modality devices have primarily been studied in order to identify what may count as the suitable and ideal rhetorical patterns to be expected in RAs. Previous studies have ranged from a manual analysis of a few RA texts within specific disciplinary fields – either in the humanities, social sciences, or natural sciences/technology – to quite substantial amounts of RA texts in electronic form, analysed with the aid of corpus methods (e.g., frequency lists, concordances, collocates, clusters/n-grams etc.), and sometimes investigating variations in the use of epistemic resources across disciplines or within the different main sections of the RA.

To begin with, Salager-Meyer (1994) reports the findings of a study into the use of epistemic (hedging) devices in research papers and case reports, two notable subgenres in medical research journals. Salager-Meyer looks at how the communicative purposes of the different sections of the research paper (introduction, materials/methods, results, discussion) and the case report (introduction, case report, comments) influence the distribution and use of a list of epistemic hedging devices grouped under five headings as follows: shields (e.g., ‘seem’, ‘appear’), approximators (e.g., ‘roughly’, ‘approximately’), authors’ personal doubt (e.g., ‘to our knowledge’, ‘I believe’), emotionally-charged intensifiers (e.g., ‘extremely’, ‘of particular importance’) and compound hedges (e.g., ‘it may suggest’, ‘would seem likely’). The data upon which

70

her study is based are 15 articles published between 1980 and 1990 in leading medical research journals.

Besides highlighting differences between the sections of the two subgenres, she finds that shields are the most frequently used hedging devices in both the research papers and the case reports, accounting for 40.7% and 34.3% respectively. While in the research papers, shields are followed by compound hedges (29.3%) and approximators (23.2%), in the case reports, shields are followed next by approximators (32.5%) and compound hedges (26.1%). Overall, shields, approximators and compound hedges record over 90% of all occurrences of hedging devices in the research papers and case reports, and thus suggest that the categories of authors’ personal doubt and emotionally-charged intensifiers are not quite common in these genres. Salager-Meyer (1994: 157) contends that the frequent use of shields (most notably verbal modality) in the two subgenres corroborates previous findings that “modals are frequently used in scientific-technical literature to tone down and enhance quantitative and qualitative information as well as to modulate the degree of certainty on the author’s part”. Salager-Meyer also reports that in the conventional Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion (IMRD) format of RAs, epistemic devices intended for the purpose of hedging claims are most common in the discussion section of scientific research papers.

Skelton (1997), in a study titled ‘How to tell the truth in The British Medical

Journal’, explores the kinds of hedging strategies used in medical articles. Skelton

begins his work by acknowledging the importance of hedges in discourse, but also draws attention to some potential problems associated with the term hedge. He notes, for instance, that typical words/phrases used to express doubt, where absolute

71

certainty is elusive, also express connotations and value-judgments that may not be considered as instances of mitigating certainty. Furthermore, he notes that even when such words/phrases are used in context one may find it difficult to say whether they are expressing truth-judgment (hedge) or value-judgment (some other connotative meaning). Skelton emphasises that hedging devices should be associated only with truth-judgments, but not to only mitigate certainty, intensify it as well.

Following his own conceptualisation of hedging, Skelton then goes on to examine three (3) articles, each from 1853, 1883 and 1991 in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), claiming to trace the development of truth-judgment markers over the long period of existence of this journal. Among other findings on how academic medical papers have developed since the inception of the BMJ, Skelton shows that the vocabulary items used to express truth-judgments in the early years (1853, 1883) are not very different from those in contemporary papers (1991), as both the 19th _century papers and the 20th _{century ones display substantial use of ‘evidential’ judgment} markers, “comments on truth-value which are founded on empirical evidence” (Skelton, 1997: 53) and a limited set of ‘speculative’ judgment markers (hedges) which occur mainly in the introduction and discussion sections of the contemporary paper.

One further study whose orientation is similar to that of Salager-Meyer and Skelton’s is Simpson’s (1990) work on the use of modality features in a literary criticism article by F. R. Leavis entitled ‘The Great Tradition’, an article he considers to be famous and widely cited in this field. Adopting a purely qualitative approach, and also the interpersonal function of language within Halliday’s SFL model, Simpson explored the strategies and techniques of modality that characterize this type of academic writing –

72

literary criticism texts. He examines the two traditional types of modality known in language – epistemic and deontic, with the aim to establish how various modality items are used to show the linguistic organization of a literary criticism text. With regard to epistemic modality, he notes that while many instances of unmodalized expressions (categorical assertion) used to indicate writer confidence are visible in the literary criticism article, there is also the full range of epistemic modality expressions used to convey various degrees of less committed epistemic positions by the writer. Simpson suggests further that less committed positions that are expressed through epistemic modality devices are a clever way of showing politeness to readers in order to achieve persuasion.

What these studies by Salager-Meyer (1994), Skelton (1997) and Simpson (1990) on epistemic modality tried to do, in essence, is to engage in a kind of academic discourse analysis of a few texts (in the case of Simpson just 1) to illustrate what may count as the ideal academic literacy practices in terms of epistemic modality uses in specific disciplines. While Salager-Meyer and Skelton focus on disciplines in the natural sciences, Simpson’s study of a literary criticism article falls within the humanities. Although these studies make a contribution by providing a descriptive account of epistemic modality expressions in RAs, they have been constrained in terms of offering reliable quantitative information of the epistemic modality features due to the small amount of texts examined manually.

In fact, Salager-Meyer attempts to include a quantitative dimension to her study in order to show frequency differences in the use of epistemic markers in sections of medical research articles, and between the medical research article and case report.

73

But with only 15 articles making up her corpus (11, 871 running words), her findings on such frequency differences would probably be taken only as tentative and inconclusive. Obviously, a larger corpus of texts in electronic form whose analysis is aided by corpus tools would offer more reliable frequency information, especially when the focus of analysis in texts is on specific words and phrases. As Biber and Conrad (2009: 74) have noted, corpus-based approaches make “it possible to identify and analyse complex patterns of language use, based on consideration of a much larger collection of texts than could be dealt with by hand”.

Another related study focusing on the use of epistemic modality markers in exemplary native English research articles (RAs) is Varttala (2003). Varttala’s study is also not based on a computerised corpus, and Varttala herself acknowledges this as a limiting feature of her data (p. 145). Nonetheless Varttala’s work is a good attempt to provide a more comprehensive account of this rhetorical feature across three disciplines. She examines 30 RAs across the disciplines of Economics, Medicine and Technology, selecting 10 articles from each discipline, all written by native speakers of English (American English). Her main goal is to show possible variations across these disciplines in terms of the use of these epistemic (hedging) devices. Varttala concludes that hedging devices exhibit notable differences across the disciplines and between the various rhetorical sections of the RA genre, both in the frequency distribution of hedges and the types of lexical items used. Most notably, her study also confirms Salager- Meyer’s finding that the discussion section in the IMRD structure is where hedges are most pervasive, while the introduction comes up as the second most heavily hedged section.

74

Other more recent studies on the use of epistemic modality expressions in the RA have relied on the analysis of corpora stored electronically and analysed with corpus tools. Ardizzone and Pennisi (2012) have explored the use of epistemic modality markers in research articles on community law, with a special focus on the emerging constitution of the European Community/Union. They note that socio-cultural values of Member States of the Union have led to several changes in EU laws over time (from 1990 to 2010), and these changes have been necessary in order to maintain a true European identity, especially in the laws that govern the operations of the Community/Union. As a result, their aim was to “understand the rhetorical organisation and argumentative strategies deployed by disciplinary actors in response to the changing emergent community’s norms and ideology” over the period (p.155).

Ardizzone and Pennisi therefore examine the frequency patterns and semantic properties of ten epistemic modality markers in English (may, could, might, possible,

appear, perhaps, probably, seem, assume, indicate) in forty academic articles dating

from 1990 to 2010. These articles deal with the emerging constitution of the EU and are drawn from four prestigious international journals according to the time span. They found that the modal may is the most frequently used epistemic modality marker in their legal corpus and its use has increased from the period 1990 to 2010. On the communicative functions of these epistemic markers, Ardizzone and Pennisi note, for instance, that the epistemic markers may, might, could and possible do not only express personal judgment; they also sometimes simply state an eventuality without any visible modalizing agent. This often serves to disguise the source of the evaluation and consequently gives the impression of an objective stance taken by the writer. This seems to correspond to the accuracy-based hedge proposed by Hyland (1996, 1998),

75

where a proposition made is based not on reliable facts but on plausible inferences drawn by the writer.

Vold (2006) also carried out a corpus-based study of epistemic markers in RAs in English. She compares the use of epistemic markers in Linguistics and Medicine RAs. Although Vold is aware that epistemic modality may include uncertainty markers (e.g., hedges) and certainty markers (e.g., boosters/emphatics), she focuses her analysis only on the hedging effects of epistemic modality, without dealing with expressions of certainty in her study. Her main aim is to explore possible variations in the frequency and communicative function of eleven selected epistemic markers in the two disciplines. She also includes in her analysis the distribution of the epistemic markers in the different IMRD parts of the article. In total, her analysis is based on a corpus of 40 research articles (20 from linguistics and 20 from medicine) taken from prestigious refereed journals published between 1998 and 2002.

One notable finding on frequency in her study is that while seem is the most frequently used epistemic marker in the Linguistics RAs, may is the most frequent in the Medicine articles. The epistemic marker suggest is fairly common in both disciplines as it represents the second most frequent in the two disciplines. Regarding communicative functions of epistemic markers, Vold establishes that the most important functions of these hedging devices are common to both disciplines. She notes, for instance, that in both disciplines authors present conclusions in a cautious manner, stressing that this “protects the writer against the negative consequences that might arise if at a later stage the conclusions should turn out to be inaccurate” (Vold, 2006: 239). The epistemic forms often used for this purpose are may, might and suggest, but the same function

76

is further achieved in the Linguistics articles with seem and appear. This function of epistemic markers used to mitigate claims in the conclusion of RAs accords with Myers’ (1989: 12) view that in the scientific community, a writer’s claims are (always)“pending acceptance”.

Perhaps the most comprehensive account of expressions of epistemic modality in research articles (RAs) is derived from one of the leading scholars in academic discourse and EAP studies: Ken Hyland. Hyland has spent many years of his research activities shedding light on the idea that scientific academic writing is less an exercise by which writers simply present propositional facts but more of an engagement between writers and readers. As a result, he discusses a broad range of linguistic resources used to demonstrate this writer-reader relationship under such terms as ‘stance and engagement’ (Hyland, 2005a) and ‘metadiscourse’ (Hyland, 2004b, 2005b, 2009). Expressions of epistemic modality in RAs are one of the major engagement markers that have received considerable attention in Hyland’s work, the results of which have been reported in various research outlets (Hyland, 1996, 1998a, 1998b, 2001). Although Hyland recognises the linguistic features he looks at as epistemic modality devices in academic argument (see Hyland, 2001), he discusses these features under the labels hedges and boosters.

In total, the studies undertaken by Hyland on hedges and boosters as epistemic markers in RAs in English are based on a corpus of 240 research articles selected from leading international journals in eight disciplines spanning the ‘soft disciplines’ (humanity and social science papers) and the ‘hard disciplines’ (science and engineering papers). To complement the corpus data for his study, Hyland also interviews leading

77

members within the respective disciplines to solicit their views about the use and significance of hedges and boosters in scholarly writing. His work addresses virtually all the pertinent issues in respect of epistemic markers in RAs, offering insights in the interactive role of hedges and boosters in RAs generally, the types of hedges and boosters used across disciplines and across different IMRD sections, quantitative variations across disciplines and across IMRD sections, as well as the typical discourse functions hedges and boosters serve in RAs across disciplines and in the different IMRD sections of the RA.

Hyland found, for instance, that across all the disciplines hedges and boosters are important interpersonal markers used by academic writers to engage readers and to achieve persuasion. But he noted also that overall the use of these epistemic markers is generally more pervasive in the ‘soft disciplines’ than in the ‘hard disciplines’. His findings further revealed the most frequent hedges in research articles to be may,

would and possible, and the most frequently used boosters being will, show and the fact that. There is also an indication that epistemic verbs like suggest, indicate, assume and seem were heavily used as hedges.

Overall, the studies of epistemic markers in RAs reviewed in this sub section (from Salager-Meyer to Hyland) form part of the micro-level analysis of the linguistic and rhetorical resources associated with RA writing. A typical feature of such studies, as I have shown in this review, is that researchers often rely on the best exemplars of RAs in English, published in leading journals of the various disciplines, and often authored by experienced native speakers of English. The careful selection of articles for examination/study seems important as the features identified in the analysis tend to

78

represent what may count as the ideal and suitable rhetorical patterns and conventions in the RA genre, thereby serving as a guide for learners, novice researchers and other non-native speakers of English in their own (future) productions. This explains the implication such studies have for pedagogy, and for material development to aid the teaching of research and scholarly writing. As Varttala (2003: 168) has suggested, an awareness of the appropriate textual rhetorical features in RAs “by those involved with ESP research and pedagogy would probably provide important information for those engaged in the construction of RAs”. Already, the outcome of some studies on aspects of the textual properties of RAs has led to the development of materials and books, especially for advanced learners, novice researchers and non-native speakers generally (Hyland, 1998b; Swales, 1990; Swales and Feak, 1994; 2012).

Furthermore, the above studies highlight the theoretical importance of interaction elements such as epistemic markers in academic discourse, especially in the RA genre. While in the past, it was held strongly that impersonality, objectivity and open-mindedness in scientific academic writing meant presenting only the facts as they occurred in an investigation of an activity, thereby discouraging the use of interactive words by authors of scientific texts (Arbon, 1996; Bolsky, 1988; Lachowicz, 1981), the contribution of the above studies on epistemic markers (as well as other rhetorical features in academic discourse such as self-mention, exemplification, addressee features, etc.) has now, quite clearly, established written academic texts as embodiments of interactions between writers and readers (Thompson, 2001; Hyland, 2012). It is this understanding that has led to the view that academic writing is essentially a persuasive venture, and in it “academics are not seen as simply producing

79

texts that plausibly represent an external reality, but as using language to acknowledge, construct and negotiate social relations” (Hyland, 2012: 417).

Also, as the RA remains the most important academic discourse genre through which research findings are reported, extensive studies on its rhetorical and linguistic resources have often been the basis for the development of taxonomies of those resources, and such taxonomies have proven to be useful guides for future research. Two examples of such taxonomies of rhetorical resources in RAs are Swales’ (1990) taxonomy of citation practices, where he identifies two main types: integral and non-

integral, and Hyland’s (1996, 1998) taxonomy of the communicative functions of

hedges, where he classifies hedges into content-based hedges and reader-motivated

hedges. It is clear, then, that empirical studies of the rhetorical resources in RAs play a

crucial role in the development and construction of linguistic theory.

To sum up, the scientific investigation of epistemic modality markers (and by extension of other interactive rhetorical features) in the best exemplars of RAs written by experienced scholars and active members of the discourse communities not only informs EAP and research English (RE) studies, but also enhances our knowledge and understanding of the ways these resources contribute to the overall construction of this genre in a community. I now move on to the next sub section to consider how epistemic modality devices in English are used in the writing practices of non-native scholars for the purposes of conveying appropriate levels of commitment in academic argumentation as reflected in their RAs.

80