Title: Epistemic modal verbs in research articles written by Ghanaian and international scholars: a corpus-based study of three disciplines
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2017, vol. 43, iss. 2, pp. [5]-27
Extent
[5]-27
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2017-2-1
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/137605
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
This paper discusses epistemic modal verbs as rhetorical markers of argumentation in Ghanaian scholars' research articles (RAs) in the disciplines of Sociology, Economics and Law, and compares the results with similar features in RAs produced by international scholars who are native speakers. In this study, corpus linguistics methods are used to investigate the extent to which Ghanaian scholars' use of epistemic modal verbs differs from international scholars' use of these devices in terms of depth of use, diversity of use, phraseological patterns and degrees of epistemic strength. Statistically examined results show considerable differences in the use of epistemic modal verbs between the two groups of scholars across the disciplines studied, suggesting that the writing practices of the Ghanaian scholars do not fully adhere to international disciplinary conventions. In the conclusion, the theoretical and pedagogical implications of the study are discussed.
References
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[33] Martinéz, Iliana A. (2005) 'Native and non-native writers' use of first person pronouns in the different sections of biology research articles in English'. Journal of Second Language Writing 14, 174–190. | DOI 10.1016/j.jslw.2005.06.001
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[36] McEnery, Tony, Richard Xiao and Yukio Tono (2006) Corpus-Based Language Studies: An Advanced Resource Book. London: Routledge.
[37] Mirahayuni, Ni K. (2002) Investigating Textual Structure in Native and Non-native English Research Articles: Strategy Differences between English and Indonesian Writers. Unpublished PhD thesis. University of New South Wales, Australia.
[38] Mur-Dueñas, Pilar (2012) 'With regard to L2 academic writing: the use of topicalisers in L2 (English and Spanish) and L2 (English) research articles'. Brno Studies in English 38(2), 117–130.
[39] Myers, Greg (1989) 'The pragmatics of politeness in scientific articles'. Applied Linguistics 10(1), 1–35. | DOI 10.1093/applin/10.1.1
[40] Ngula, Richmond S. (2015) Epistemic Modality in Social Science Research Articles Written by Ghanaian Authors: A Corpus-Based Study of Disciplinary and Native vs. Non-Native Variations. Unpublished PhD thesis, Lancaster University, UK.
[41] Nkemleke, Daniel (2010) 'Cameroonian and foreign scholars' discourse: the rhetoric of conference abstracts'. World Englishes 29(2), 173–191. | DOI 10.1111/j.1467-971X.2010.01637.x
[42] Owusu-Ansah, Lawrence K. (1992) Variation According to Context: A Study into the Effects of Formality on the English used by Ghanaian Students. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, UK.
[43] Palmer, Frank (1979) Modality and the English Modals. London: Longman.
[44] Paltridge, Brian (2002) 'Thesis and dissertation writing: an examination of published advice and actual practice'. English for Specific Purposes 21, 125–143. | DOI 10.1016/S0889-4906(00)00025-9
[45] Panocová, Renáta (2008) 'Expressions of modality in biomedical texts'. SKASE Journal of Translation and Interpretation 3(1), 82–90.
[46] Rayson, Paul: Log-likelihood calculator. Internet: http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/llwizard.html, 18.07.2003.
[47] Rizomilioti, Vassiliki (2008) 'Exploring epistemic modality in academic discourse using corpora'. Information Technology in Languages for Specific Purposes 7, 53–71. | DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-28624-2_4
[48] Salager-Meyer, Franҫoise (2008) 'Scientific publishing in developing countries: challenges for the future'. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 7, 121–132. | DOI 10.1016/j.jeap.2008.03.009
[49] Samraj, Betty (2002) 'Introductions in research articles: variations across disciplines'. English for Specific Purposes 21, 1–17. | DOI 10.1016/S0889-4906(00)00023-5
[50] Samraj, Betty (2008) 'A discourse analysis of master's theses across disciplines with a focus on introductions'. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 7, 55–67. | DOI 10.1016/j.jeap.2008.02.005
[51] Swales, John (1987) 'Utilizing the literatures in teaching the research paper'. TESOL Quarterly 21(1), 41–68. | DOI 10.2307/3586354
[52] Swales, John M. (1990) Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[53] Swales, John M. (2004) Research Genres. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[54] Thompson, Celia (2003) Constructing Critical Discourse and University Students Writing. ANZCA03 Conference, Brisbane, July 2003.
[55] Uzuner, Sedef (2008) 'Multilingual scholars' participation in core/global academic communities: a literature review'. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 7, 250–263. | DOI 10.1016/j.jeap.2008.10.007
[56] Vold, Eva T. (2006) 'The choice and use of epistemic markers in linguistics and medical research articles'. In: Hyland, Ken and Marina Bondi (eds.) Academic Discourse Across Disciplines. Bern: Peter Lang, 225–249.
[2] Anyidoho Akosua (2002) 'Analysis of the writing of final year students'. Ghanaian Journal of English Studies 1: 58–72.
[3] Baker, Paul and Yu-Hua Chen (2010) 'Lexical bundles in L1 and L2 academic writing'. Language Learning and Technology 14(2), 30–49.
[4] Basturkmen, Helen (2012) 'A genre-based investigation of discussion sections of research articles in dentistry and disciplinary variation'. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 11(2), 134–144. | DOI 10.1016/j.jeap.2011.10.004
[5] Bazerman, Charles (1988) Shaping Written Knowledge. Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
[6] Biber, Douglas, Ulla Connor and Thomas A. Upton (2007) Discourse on the Move: Using Corpus Analysis to Describe Discourse Structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
[7] Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad and Edward Finegan (1999) Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.
[8] Bunton, David (2005) 'The structure of PhD conclusion chapters'. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 4(3), 207–224. | DOI 10.1016/j.jeap.2005.03.004
[9] Canagarajah, Suresh (1996) '"Nondiscursive" requirements in academic publishing, material resources of periphery scholars, and the politics of knowledge production'. Written Communication 13(4), 435–472. | DOI 10.1177/0741088396013004001
[10] Canagarajah, Suresh (2002) The Geopolitics of Academic Writing. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
[11] Charles, Maggie (2006) 'Phraseological patterns in reporting clauses used in citation: a corpusbased study of theses in two disciplines'. English for Specific Purposes 25, 310–331. | DOI 10.1016/j.esp.2005.05.003
[12] Chovanec, Jan (2012) 'Written academic discourse in English: from local traditions to global outreach'. Brno Studies in English 38(2), 5–16. | DOI 10.5817/BSE2012-2-1
[13] Coates, Jennifer (1983) The Semantics of the Modal Auxiliaries. London: Croom Helm.
[14] Collins, Peter (2009) Modals and Quasi-modals in English. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
[15] Curry, Jane M. and Theresa Lillis (2004) 'Multilingual scholars and the imperative to publish in English: negotiating interests, demands, and rewards'. TESOL Quarterly 38(3), 663–688. | DOI 10.2307/3588284
[16] ElMalik, Abdullahi T. and Hilary Nesi (2008) 'Publishing research in a second language: the case of Sudanese contributors to international medical journals'. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 7, 87–96. | DOI 10.1016/j.jeap.2008.02.007
[17] Fløttum, Kjersti, Trine Dahl, Torodd Kinn, Anje M. Gjesdal and Eva T. Vold (2008) 'Cultural identities and academic voices'. In: Fløttum, Kjersti (ed.) Language and Discipline Perspectives on Academic Discourse. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 14–39.
[18] Flowerdew, John (1999) 'Problems in writing for scholarly publication in English: the case of Hong Kong'. Journal of Second Language Writing 8(3), 243–264. | DOI 10.1016/S1060-3743(99)80116-7
[19] Flowerdew, John (2001) 'Attitudes of journal editors to nonnative speaker contributions'. TESOL Quarterly 35(1), 121–150. | DOI 10.2307/3587862
[20] Flowerdew, John and Yongyan Li (2009) 'English or Chinese? The trade-off between local and international publication among Chinese academics in the humanities and social sciences'. Journal of Second Language Writing 18, 1–16. | DOI 10.1016/j.jslw.2008.09.005
[21] Garside, Roger (1987) 'The CLAWS word-tagging system'. In: Garside, Roger, Geoffrey Leech and Geoffrey Sampson (eds.) The Computational Analysis of English: A Corpus-based Approach. London: Longman.
[22] Halliday, Michael A. K. (1994) An Introduction to Functional Grammar (2nd ed.). London: Edward Arnold.
[23] He, Yuyin and Han Wang (2013) 'A corpus-based study of epistemic modality markers in Chinese research articles', Chinese Lexical Semantics 17717, 199–208.
[24] Henry, Alex and Robert Roseberry (1997) 'An investigation of the functions, strategies and linguistic features of the introductions and conclusions of essays'. System 25(4), 479–495. | DOI 10.1016/S0346-251X(97)00047-X
[25] Hewings, Ann (2004) 'Developing discipline-specific writing: an analysis of undergraduate geography essays'. In: Ravelli, Louise and Robert Ellis (eds.) Analyzing Academic Writing: Contextualised Frameworks. London: Continuum, 131–152.
[26] Hoye, Leo (1997) Adverbs and Modality in English. London: Longman.
[27] Hyland, Ken (1995) 'The author in the text: hedging scientific writing'. Hong Kong Papers in Linguistics and Language Teaching 18, 33–42.
[28] Hyland, Ken (1998) 'Boosters, hedges and the negotiation of academic knowledge'. Text 18(3), 349–382.
[29] Hyland, Ken (2004) 'A convincing argument: corpus analysis and academic persuasion'. In: Connor, Ulla and Thomas A. Upton (eds.) Discourse in the Professions: Perspectives from Corpus Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 87–112.
[30] Hyland, Ken (2007) 'English for professional academic purposes: writing for scholarly publication'. In: Belcher, Diane (ed.), Teaching Language Purposefully: English for Specific Purposes in Theory and Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1–27.
[31] Hyland, Ken and John Milton (1997) 'Qualification and certainty in L1 and L2 students' writing'. Journal of Second Language Writing 6(2), 185–205.
[32] Leki, IIona, Alister Cumming and Tony Silva (2008) A Synthesis of Research on Second Language Writing in English. New York: Routledge.
[33] Martinéz, Iliana A. (2005) 'Native and non-native writers' use of first person pronouns in the different sections of biology research articles in English'. Journal of Second Language Writing 14, 174–190. | DOI 10.1016/j.jslw.2005.06.001
[34] Mauranen, Anna (1993) 'Contrastive ESP rhetoric: metatext in Finnish-economic texts'. English for Specific Purposes 12, 3–22. | DOI 10.1016/0889-4906(93)90024-I
[35] McEnery, Tony and Nazareth A. Kifle (2002) 'Epistemic modality in argumentative essays of second-language writers'. In: Flowerdew, John (ed.) Academic Discourse. London: Longman, 182–195.
[36] McEnery, Tony, Richard Xiao and Yukio Tono (2006) Corpus-Based Language Studies: An Advanced Resource Book. London: Routledge.
[37] Mirahayuni, Ni K. (2002) Investigating Textual Structure in Native and Non-native English Research Articles: Strategy Differences between English and Indonesian Writers. Unpublished PhD thesis. University of New South Wales, Australia.
[38] Mur-Dueñas, Pilar (2012) 'With regard to L2 academic writing: the use of topicalisers in L2 (English and Spanish) and L2 (English) research articles'. Brno Studies in English 38(2), 117–130.
[39] Myers, Greg (1989) 'The pragmatics of politeness in scientific articles'. Applied Linguistics 10(1), 1–35. | DOI 10.1093/applin/10.1.1
[40] Ngula, Richmond S. (2015) Epistemic Modality in Social Science Research Articles Written by Ghanaian Authors: A Corpus-Based Study of Disciplinary and Native vs. Non-Native Variations. Unpublished PhD thesis, Lancaster University, UK.
[41] Nkemleke, Daniel (2010) 'Cameroonian and foreign scholars' discourse: the rhetoric of conference abstracts'. World Englishes 29(2), 173–191. | DOI 10.1111/j.1467-971X.2010.01637.x
[42] Owusu-Ansah, Lawrence K. (1992) Variation According to Context: A Study into the Effects of Formality on the English used by Ghanaian Students. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, UK.
[43] Palmer, Frank (1979) Modality and the English Modals. London: Longman.
[44] Paltridge, Brian (2002) 'Thesis and dissertation writing: an examination of published advice and actual practice'. English for Specific Purposes 21, 125–143. | DOI 10.1016/S0889-4906(00)00025-9
[45] Panocová, Renáta (2008) 'Expressions of modality in biomedical texts'. SKASE Journal of Translation and Interpretation 3(1), 82–90.
[46] Rayson, Paul: Log-likelihood calculator. Internet: http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/llwizard.html, 18.07.2003.
[47] Rizomilioti, Vassiliki (2008) 'Exploring epistemic modality in academic discourse using corpora'. Information Technology in Languages for Specific Purposes 7, 53–71. | DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-28624-2_4
[48] Salager-Meyer, Franҫoise (2008) 'Scientific publishing in developing countries: challenges for the future'. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 7, 121–132. | DOI 10.1016/j.jeap.2008.03.009
[49] Samraj, Betty (2002) 'Introductions in research articles: variations across disciplines'. English for Specific Purposes 21, 1–17. | DOI 10.1016/S0889-4906(00)00023-5
[50] Samraj, Betty (2008) 'A discourse analysis of master's theses across disciplines with a focus on introductions'. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 7, 55–67. | DOI 10.1016/j.jeap.2008.02.005
[51] Swales, John (1987) 'Utilizing the literatures in teaching the research paper'. TESOL Quarterly 21(1), 41–68. | DOI 10.2307/3586354
[52] Swales, John M. (1990) Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[53] Swales, John M. (2004) Research Genres. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[54] Thompson, Celia (2003) Constructing Critical Discourse and University Students Writing. ANZCA03 Conference, Brisbane, July 2003.
[55] Uzuner, Sedef (2008) 'Multilingual scholars' participation in core/global academic communities: a literature review'. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 7, 250–263. | DOI 10.1016/j.jeap.2008.10.007
[56] Vold, Eva T. (2006) 'The choice and use of epistemic markers in linguistics and medical research articles'. In: Hyland, Ken and Marina Bondi (eds.) Academic Discourse Across Disciplines. Bern: Peter Lang, 225–249.