A Cross-disciplinary Study On Evidentiality In Results And Discussion Of Academic Papers

Fang(2005:27)holds that “Evidentitiality is about the speaker's expression of the sources of propositions and his epistemic attitude toward the reliability of proposition in real linguistic communication”.Evidentiality not only reveals the information source,but also shows writers' attitudes toward the information he presents,so evidentiality is often adopted in academic papers by scholars to enhance the persuasiveness of their claim or findings or lessen the responsibility they bear.The studies on evidentiality of academic papers in recent years focus on either the body or abstracts of academic theses,however,there are few studies focusing on the evidentiality of results and discussion of academic articles.This study compares the distribution of evidentials in the results and discussion in academic papers of natural sciences and social sciences to explore whether disciplinary background influences evidentials' use,and two social sciences(Linguistics and Education)and two natural sciences(Chemistry and Medicine)are studied in the study to explore whether there are disciplinary differences and discuss potential reasons.In this study,20 academic papers of Linguistics,Education,Chemistry,Medicine(only retaining the part of results and discussion)are chosen respectively from 8 international journals to establish two corpora.By comparing realizations of each type of evidential,with the help of Antconc 3.2.4,similarities and differences of the use of evidentials in results and discussion of academic papers of social sciences and natural sciences are worked out.This study adopts Yang Linxiu's(2009)classification which classifies evidentials into sensory evidentials,reporting evidentials,inferring evidentials and belief evidentials,and each type of evidential are realized by different lexical realizations.The study mainly focuses on two questions: 1)How are the four types of evidentials distributed in the section of results and discussion in academic papers of natural sciences and social sciences respectively? 2)What are the cross-disciplinary differences in the use of lexical realizations in results and discussion in academic papers?According to the analysis of the distribution of four types of evidentials,it is found that:1.In social sciences,inferring evidentials take largest proportion,occupying 48.89%,followed by reporting evidentials,taking 46.79%,sensory evidentials and belief evidentials take a quite small proportion,taking 3.03% and 1.28% respectively.In natural sciences,reporting evidentials take largest proportion,taking 63%,inferring evidentials rank second,taking 31.8%,sensory evidentials take 4.7% and belief evidentials take 0.55%.2.Lexical realizations of evidentials in the part of results and discussion in social sciences and natural sciences also show differences.With regard to sensory evidentials,both social sciences and natural sciences like using lexical forms see(Table,Chart,Figure),the difference is natural sciences prefer adopting seen forms,such as as seen,it is seen that and so on,which are objective,while social sciences tend to use lexical realizations such as we see,I see,we saw,we have seen which are more subjective.With regard to reporting evidentials,(1)as for self-reporting evidentials and other-reporting evidentials,self-reporting evidentials in natural sciences are 18% higher than those in social sciences,while other-reporting evidentials in natural sciences are 18% lower than those in social sciences.(2)as for reporting verbs,natural sciences tend to use SHOW and FIND verbs to directly state phenomenon and findings,while natural sciences tend to use ARGUE verbs to show their attitudes toward reported information.With regard to inferring evidentials,both natural sciences and social sciences tend to use modal verbs of low value such as may,might,can,could and median value such as would,will,should.However,the use of relation process such as seem to,appear that is different,the use of relation process in social sciences is 2.4% higher than that in natural sciences.With regard to belief evidentials,there is no significant difference in the use of lexical realizations of belief evidentials between natural sciences and social sciences.In sum,lexical realizations of evidentials in results and discussion of academic papers written by social sciences and natural sciences show similarities and differences.These differences are probably caused by disciplinary backgrounds.The study enlightens us that proper use of evidentials and tactfully choosing lexical forms is essential to the writing of academic papers,and findings in the study may be referential for postgraduates in their results and discussion' writing of academic papers.