Title: Epistemic modal markers in two domains of academic research papers in English
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2019, vol. 45, iss. 2, pp. [121]-138
Extent
[121]-138
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2019-2-6
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/142186
Type: Article
Language
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
In this paper we compare the combinations of epistemic modal markers in research articles in medicine and humanities written in English. In our analysis, we focus on three aspects. First, we look at the distribution of combinations of MODAL AUXILIARY + MODAL ADVERB (emphasizer) used in an epistemic sense in two subdomains of academic writing, ACAD: Medicine and ACAD: Humanities in COCA (Davies, 2008–2018). Second, we investigate the statistical significance of the differences between the two subdomains. Finally, we consider the relevance of the epistemic modal markers in presenting the argumentation line in research articles in medicine and humanities. The results demonstrate the difference in preference in co-occurrences of the selected modal markers in the two distinct academic subcorpora and indicate to what extent they are a significant feature to be included in developing academic writing skills, which is crucial for the effective and convincing communication of research results.
References
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[39] Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey, and Svartvik, Jan (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London and New York: Longman.
[40] Salager-Meyer, Françoise (1994) Hedges and textual communicative function in medical English written discourse. English for Specific Purposes 13 (2), 149–170. | DOI 10.1016/0889-4906(94)90013-2
[41] Skelton, John (1997) How to tell the truth in The British Medical Journal: Patterns of judgement in the 19th and 20th centuries. In: R. Markkanen and H. Schröder (eds.), Hedging and Discourse: Approaches to the Analysis of a Pragmatic Phenomenon in Academic Texts. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 42–58.
[42] Ševčíková, Magda (2009) Funkce kondicionálu z hlediska významové roviny. Praha: Ústav formální a aplikované lingvistiky.
[43] Thompson, Geoff (2001) Interaction in academic writing: learning to argue with the reader. Applied Linguistics 22 (1), 58–78. | DOI 10.1093/applin/22.1.58
[44] Varttala, Teppo (2003) Hedging in scientific research articles: A cross-disciplinary study. In: Giuseppina Cortese and Phillip Riley (eds.) Domain-Specific English: Textual Practices across Communities and Classrooms. New York: Peter Lang, 141–174.
[45] Verstraete, Jean-Christophe (2001) Subjective and Objective Modality: Interpersonal and Ideational Functions in the English Modal Auxiliary System. Journal of Pragmatics 33, 1505–1528. | DOI 10.1016/S0378-2166(01)00029-7
[46] Vold, Eva Thue (2006) Epistemic modality markers in research articles: A cross-linguistics and cross-disciplinary study. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 16 (1), 62–87.
[47] Von Wright, Georg H. (1951) An Essay in Modal Logic. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
[2] Ardizzone, Patrizia and Pennisi, Guilia A. (2012) Epistemic modality variation in community law journals. In: Stefania M. Maci and Michele Sala (eds.) Genre Variation in Academic Communication: Emerging Disciplinary Trends. Bergamo: CELSB, 153–174.
[3] Bolinger, Dwight (1972) Degree Words. The Hague and Paris: Mouton.
[4] Boye, Kasper (2012) A Usage-Based Theory of Grammatical Status and Grammaticalization. Language 16 (1), 9–43.
[5] Boye, Kasper (2016) The Expression of Epistemic Modality. In: J. Nuyts and J. Van Der Auwera (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Modality and Mood. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 117–140.
[6] Bybee, Joan, L., Perkins, Revere D., and Pagliuca, William (1994) The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[7] 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
[8] Coates, Jennifer (1983) The Semantics of the Modal Auxiliaries. London: Croom Helm.
[9] Crystal, David (2012) English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[10] Davies, Mark (2008-) The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): 560 million words, 1990-present. Available online at https://corpus.byu.edu/coca/.
[11] Fergusson, Gibson (2007) The global spread of English, scientific communication and ESP: questions of equity, access and domain loss. Ibérica 13, 7–38.
[12] 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.
[13] Flowerdew, John (2007) Scholarly writers who use English as an Additional Language: What can Goffman's "Stigma" tell us? Journal of English for Academic Purposes 7, 77–86. | DOI 10.1016/j.jeap.2008.03.002
[14] Giannoni, Davide (2008) Medical writing at the periphery: The case of Italian journal editorials. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 7, 97–107. | DOI 10.1016/j.jeap.2008.03.003
[15] Gunnarsson, Britt-Louise (2009) Professional Discourse. London: Continuum.
[16] Hermerén, Lars (1986) Modalities in spoken and written English. An inventory of forms. In: Gunnel Tottie and Ingegerd Backlund (eds.) English in Speech and Writing: A Symposium. Studia Anglistica Upsaliensia 60. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 57–91.
[17] Holmes, Janet (1983) Speaking English with the appropriate degree of conviction. In: Brumfit, C. (ed.). Learning and Teaching Languages for Communication: Applied Linguistic Perspectives. London: Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research, 100–113.
[18] Hoye, Leo (1997) Adverbs and Modality in English. London and New York: Longman.
[19] Huddleston, Rodney and Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2002) The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[20] Hyland, Ken (1996) Talking to the academy: forms of hedging in science research articles. Written Communication 13 (2), 251–281. | DOI 10.1177/0741088396013002004
[21] Hyland, Ken (1998) Hedging in Scientific Research Articles. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamin Publishing.
[22] Hyland, Ken (2001) Definitely a possible explanation: epistemic modality in academic argument. In: Maurizio Gotti and Marina Dossena (eds.) Modality in Specialized Texts. Bern: Peter Lang, 291–230.
[23] Hyland, Ken (2012) English for academic purposes and discourse analysis. In: J. P. Gee and M. Handford (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge, 412–423.
[24] Kranich, Svenja and Gast, Volker (2015) Explicitness of epistemic modal marking: recent changes in British and American English. In: J. R. Zamarano-Mansilla et al. (eds.) Thinking Modality: English and Contrastive Studies of Modality. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 3–22.
[25] Large, J. Andrew (1983) The Foreign-Language Barrier: Problems in Scientific Communication. London: André Deutsch.
[26] Lyons, John (1977) Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[27] Maher, John (1986) The development of English as an international language of medicine. Applied Linguistics 7, 206–218. | DOI 10.1093/applin/7.2.206
[28] McEnery, Tony, Xiao, Richard and Tono, Yukio (2006) Corpus-based Language Studies: An Advanced Resource Book. London and New York: Routledge.
[29] Myers, Greg (1990) Writing Biology: Texts in the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge. London: University of Wisconsin Press.
[30] 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.
[31] Ngula, Richmond S. (2017) Epistemic modal verbs in research articles written by Ghanaian and international scholars: A corpus-based study of three disciplines. Brno Studies in English 43 (2), 5–27. | DOI 10.5817/BSE2017-2-1
[32] Nuyts, Jan (2001) Epistemic Modality, Language and Conceptualization: A Cognitive Pragmatic Perspective. Amsterdam and Philadelhia: John Benjamins.
[33] Nuyts, Jan (2016) Analyses of modal meanings. In: Jan Nuyts and Johan Van Der Auwera (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Modality and Mood. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 31–49.
[34] Orta, Ignacio Vázquez (2010) A contrastive analysis of the use of modal verbs in the expression of epistemic stance in Business Management research articles in English and Spanish. Ibérica 19, 77–96.
[35] Palmer, Frank (1986) Mood and Modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[36] Palmer, Frank (2001) Mood and Modality. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[37] Panocová, Renáta (2008) Expressions of modality in biomedical texts. SKASE Journal of Translation and Interpretation 3 (1), 82–90.
[38] Pérez-Llantada, Carmen (2010) The 'dialectics of change' as a facet of globalisation: The Epistemic modality in academic writing. In: M. F. Ruiz-Garrido, J. C. Palmer, I. Fortanet-Gómez, I. Fortanet (eds.) English for Academic Purposes. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 25–42.
[39] Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey, and Svartvik, Jan (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London and New York: Longman.
[40] Salager-Meyer, Françoise (1994) Hedges and textual communicative function in medical English written discourse. English for Specific Purposes 13 (2), 149–170. | DOI 10.1016/0889-4906(94)90013-2
[41] Skelton, John (1997) How to tell the truth in The British Medical Journal: Patterns of judgement in the 19th and 20th centuries. In: R. Markkanen and H. Schröder (eds.), Hedging and Discourse: Approaches to the Analysis of a Pragmatic Phenomenon in Academic Texts. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 42–58.
[42] Ševčíková, Magda (2009) Funkce kondicionálu z hlediska významové roviny. Praha: Ústav formální a aplikované lingvistiky.
[43] Thompson, Geoff (2001) Interaction in academic writing: learning to argue with the reader. Applied Linguistics 22 (1), 58–78. | DOI 10.1093/applin/22.1.58
[44] Varttala, Teppo (2003) Hedging in scientific research articles: A cross-disciplinary study. In: Giuseppina Cortese and Phillip Riley (eds.) Domain-Specific English: Textual Practices across Communities and Classrooms. New York: Peter Lang, 141–174.
[45] Verstraete, Jean-Christophe (2001) Subjective and Objective Modality: Interpersonal and Ideational Functions in the English Modal Auxiliary System. Journal of Pragmatics 33, 1505–1528. | DOI 10.1016/S0378-2166(01)00029-7
[46] Vold, Eva Thue (2006) Epistemic modality markers in research articles: A cross-linguistics and cross-disciplinary study. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 16 (1), 62–87.
[47] Von Wright, Georg H. (1951) An Essay in Modal Logic. Amsterdam: North-Holland.