Appraisal Analysis Of Reporting Verbs In English Research Articles

As an integral part of citation and a clear signal to present evaluation in academic discourse,reporting verb has attracted much research attention in the past few decades.Previous research,however,has only focused on disciplinary influences on citation practices and paid little attention to the dialogic functionality and appraisal meaning of reporting verbs in different academic sub-genres.Within the Engagement system of Appraisal Theory,this study aims to explore the sub-genre and disciplinary differences in the types of reporting verbs in theoretical inquiries and empirical studies.The researcher first put forward a modified framework of reporting verbs in terms of dialogistic positioning based on Coffin’s(2009)and White’s(2012)taxonomies and then chose medicine and linguistics as the representatives of hard disciplines and soft disciplines respectively to examine how native scholars of English deploy different types of reporting verbs to engage themselves with alternative voices in different sub-genres.The detailed analysis of the types and distribution of reporting verbs in the two sub-genres on linguistics and on medicine generates the following findings:With reference to the sub-genre differences in the dialogic options for primary and secondary voices,there were more types of reporting verbs in theoretical inquiries than in empirical studies.The absence of distance citations in empirical studies showing the citing writer’s stance reveals that scholars constructing empirical studies are less deft to open up dialogic space by distancing themselves from the cited propositions which they seem to disagree with.In terms of the sub-genre differences in the distribution of different types of reporting verbs in the two disciplines,more tokens of dialogic options were found in theoretical inquiries than in empirical studies for the primary and secondary voices(except for acknowledge and counter).This shows that,compared with empirical researchers,theorists tend to deploy more reporting verbs to engage themselves with alternative voices in a dialogically expansive or contractive way.With regard to the disciplinary differences in the types of reporting verbs in the two sub-genres,linguists deployed more types of reporting verbs than medical experts for both the primary and secondary voices.The absence of concur in medical research articles indicates that,compared with linguists,the referenced medical scientists are less inclined to establish dialogic contraction by showing agreement with the attributed materials.Besides,no distance was found in medical theoretical inquiries,and this may be attributed to the effect of hard discipline.As for the disciplinary differences in the distribution of reporting verbs,the results also varied considerably across the two sub-genres.In empirical studies,linguistic scholars used more tokens of reporting verbs than medical scientists for both the primary and secondary voices(except for distance).However,in theoretical inquiries,while medical scientists deployed more tokens of reporting verbs than linguists(except for distance)for the primary voice,the referenced linguists pervasively used more reporting verbs(except for reinforce)when showing the cited author’s stance.The present study is significant in that the researcher investigates the impact of sub-genre on reporting practices in academic discourse and takes into account the dialogistic options for both the citing writers and the cited authors.By listing diversified forms of reporting verbs in the two sub-genres and by elaborating the subtleties that reporting verbs embody,this study may shed light on future appraisal analysis of academic discourse and on cultivating the appraisal awareness in language learners.