Stancetaking in English-Medium Research Article Abstracts: A Contrastive Analysis

Abstract

This paper, inspired by interest in semantics and pragmatics of academic discourse, focuses on English-medium research article abstracts by authors with native languages other than English. The study assumes that in order to convey an authorial stance and establish an effective relationship with the reader, representatives of different cultures use a repertoire of metadiscourse devices varying in terms of quality and quantity. The theoretical basis of the research is K. Hyland’s taxonomy of stance markers. Hedging and boosting devices found in the corpus were analysed using the terminology proposed by K. Hyland and H. Zou. The analysis showed that hedges and boosters are important elements of academic discourse. They play a crucial role in authorial efforts to make claims tentative and avoid categorical statements or persuade readers of certainty and accuracy of research results. The study found that academic article abstracts by Latin American authors contain considerably more hedges than those written by their Russian counterparts, who make extensive use of boosters. Anticipating and acknowledging alternative points of view, Latin American authors are more careful when making claims, which is in compliance with the internationally accepted academic writing norms. The findings suggest that Russian novice academic writers should be taught stancetaking strategies in line with the academic writing norms.