A Diachronic Study Of Stance Markers In The Articles Of International Academic Journals

Recently,the traditional view of academic writing as a collection of facts and a direct and impersonal convention-bound monologue devoid of writer involvement has undergone a fundamental change.Academic discourse has been gradually viewed as a very complicated persuasive text in which the writer needs to convince other members of the academic community of the significance of his/her work.The persuasiveness of academic writing actually indicates the interaction between the writer and the reader.Writers should anticipate the expectations of their readers so as to propose a more persuasive claim that can withstand criticism.Interaction in academic writing has frequently been studied within pragmatic and social frameworks and emphasis has been laid on “stance”,one of most widely used linguistic devices.Despite long-term and widespread concern on the notion of stance and stance in SLA,together with an interest in the use of stance devices in different research genres and disciplines,very little has been known of how it has changed in recent years and whether such changes have occurred uniformly across disciplines.In this article we set about exploring these issues.The current study strives to explore the changes in the use of stance devices over forty years(1976~2016),and at the same time,to make an inter-and intra-disciplinary comparison.Three corpora are established by taking research articles from the same four journals in four disciplines spaced at three periods over the past 40 years: 1976,1996 and 2016.Linguistics,education,biology and chemistry are selected as representatives of both the soft science and the hard science,and five articles are taken at random from each of the four journals that achieved the top ranking in their fields according to the 5-year impact factor in 2016.Altogether the corpora comprise 240 articles.The frequency and distribution of the stance markers in the conclusion parts of these research articles are explored by following Hyland & Guinda's(2012)stance system.And a detailed study is made to analyze the underlying factors that contribute to the differences.The following three questions are answered in detail:(1)What was the general trend in the use of stance markers over the past 40 years?(2)How did stance devices change within disciplines over the past 40 years?(3)How did stance devices change among disciplines over the past 40 years?The results show that in the past four decades,academic writers tended to use significantly less stance devices,especially in the field of hard sciences.According to previous researches,stance devices are the ways in which writers project themselves into their texts to reveal their integrity,credibility and involvement.They also can be used to establish a writer-reader relationship and interaction in academic discourse.This downward trend indicates that the writer of academic articles still tends to hide his/her authorship,in order to avoid unnecessary risks and shun his/her responsibility for a proposition.As for the changes in the use of stance markers within disciplines,the present study finds that knowledge construction gradually changed within disciplines.Traditionally,the accumulation and compactness of knowledge structure in natural sciences require the author to present findings of his/her research succinctly.Besides,traditional tag of academic writing has always been an objective,faceless and impersonal form of discourse.This traditional view results in the author-evacuation in the academic discourse,which,however,has undergone a tremendous change.In chemical and biological research articles,especially in biology,the use of self-mention was constantly increasing,indicating a strong awareness of authorial identity.This may be due to the author's attempt to leave an authoritative and confident scholarly image on his/her readers so as to promote his/her research within an increasingly competitive “academic market”.Soft sciences,which depend more on discourse strategies,are moving towards the opposite direction.The use of hedges and boosters in linguistics and pedagogy show a downward trend and,especially in the field of linguistics,self-mention declined year by year.These changes in the use of stance devices in soft disciplines demonstrate that writers take a more prudent way to make a proposition or draw a conclusion.Academic writers choose to focus more on the objective reality under study rather than the employment of linguistic devices to convince readers.It is a strictly empiricist view that researchers should allow the truth to speak for itself.The research outcomes should be the same no matter who conducts the study.As to the changes in the use of stance markers among disciplines,the use of evidentiality in hard sciences,compared with soft sciences,showed a dramatic decline,which may be attributed to the knowledge structure in different disciplines,and more attitude markers were used in soft sciences than in hard sciences,which may be largely because,without experiments and data,articles in soft sciences tend to be more interpretive.An increased employment of attitude markers not only shows the author's position on a claim,but also guides readers to follow his/her intention,so the article can be accepted out of mutual understanding.Besides,the use of presence increased in both hard and soft sciences,especially in the former.This may be related to today's academic marketization.The use of self-mention can emphasize the value and uniqueness of the research,thus helping the authors to promote his/her articles in the congested academic environment.Effective academic writing depends on rhetorical decisions about interpersonal intrusion that recognize and align with both disciplinary epistemology and social practices and with wider political and institutional changes.Analysis of stance devices can provide discourse strategies for novice writers who attempt to publish their articles in international journals.It can effectively guide writers to express themselves in the academic community.The greatest significance of study on academic discourse may lie in its potential to reveal the ways knowledge is constructed and disseminated to new audiences outside a traditional peer group,including commercial and industrial sponsors,who might make use of the knowledge created and personnel boards that make high-stake decisions regarding the careers of academic writers.