A cross-disciplinary analysis of authorial voice in the rhetorical structures of research article abstracts in the fields of linguistics and economics written by native and non-native English speakers
Andrii Galaidin
Polonia University in Częstochowa, PolandAndrii Galaidin is an alumnus and an academic teacher at Polonia University in Czestochowa, Poland, majoring in English teaching. He is currently a final-year PhD. student in the study programme English language and Anglophone culture at the University of Presov, Slovakia. In his dissertation, he explores cross-field and cross-cultural aspects of academic writing in English with a special focus on research article abstracts under supervision of the second author. At the same time, he is a master´s student of economics at Polonia University in Czestochowa. His scientific interests comprise English linguistics, in the first place, English didactics and translation studies. He takes a sustained interest in the issue of academic writing and its cross-cultural dimensions.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5236-1495
Klaudia Bednárová-Gibová
University of Presov, SlovakiaKlaudia Bednárová-Gibová is an Associate Professor at the Institute of British and American Studies at the University of Presov in Slovakia, majoring in translation studies and lexical semantics. She has primarily devoted herself to institutional translation and aspects of text-oriented analysis in (non-)literary translation. Her more recent research interests oscillate between the sociology of translation and psycho-translation studies. Her current research concerns a socio-psychological profiling of translators as working language industry agents and the affectivity of translator behaviour. She is also a professional translator of specialized texts working from/into English and German and a member of the European Society for Translation Studies (EST) as well as International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS).
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6555-4464
Abstract
This study aims to offer a cross-disciplinary analysis of authorial voice in the rhetorical structures of research article abstracts in the fields of linguistics and economics written by native and non-native English speakers. The research addresses questions related to the frequency of authorial voice in abstracts, the differences between the author’s self-mentioning, cross-discipline-wise and cross-culturally, and its influence on the rhetorical structure of abstracts. The study is based on Hyland’s (2000) five-move model and combines quantitative and qualitative methods. The frequency of the author’s self-mentioning across thirty-two abstracts from the two selected fields of knowledge was determined by specifying the distribution of the author’s visibility among the moves as well the forms of their visibility. The results of the study showcase the similarities and differences in conveying authorial voice in the corpus and are discussed thoroughly. We found that linguistic abstracts are characterised by a low degree of authorial voice while economic abstracts show a much higher frequency of authorial voice in the form of pronouns. We contend that there is a tendency towards higher authorial visibility among Anglo-American academic writers in comparison with non-native speakers.
Keywords:
research article abstract, rhetorical structures, authorial voice, cross-disciplinary analysis, linguistics, economicsReferences
Al-Khasawneh, F. 2017. A genre analysis of research article abstracts written by native and non-native speakers of English. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research 4(1): 1–13.
Ashofteh, Z., Elahi Shirvan, M., & Golparvar, S. E. 2020. The move structure of abstracts in applied linguistics research articles in light of the distribution and functions of metadiscourse markers. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies 16(4): 2077–2096.
Çakır, H. & Fidan, Ö. 2015. A contrastive study of the rhetorical structure of Turkish and English research article abstracts. In D. Zeyrek-Çigdem, S. Simsek, U. Atas & J. Rehbein (eds.), Ankara Papers in Turkish and Turkic Linguistics, 367–378. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
Cremmins, E.T. 1996. The Art of Abstracting. 2nd ed. Arlington: Information Resources Press.
Cross, C. & Oppenheim, C. 2006. A genre analysis of scientific abstracts. Journal of Documentation 62: 428–446.
Daniel, M. 2005. Understanding inclusives. In E. Filimonova (ed.), Clusivity: Typology and Case Studies of the Inclusive–Exclusive Distinction, 3–49. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.
Doğan-Uçar, A. & Akbaş, E. 2022. A corpus-driven cross-disciplinary study of inclusive and exclusive we in research article abstracts. LEARN Journal: Language Education and Acquisition Research Network 15(1): 180–204.
Dontcheva-Navrátilová, O. 2013. Authorial presence in academic discourse: functions of author-reference pronouns. Linguistica Pragensia 23(1): 9–30.
Doró, K. 2013. The rhetoric structure of research article abstracts in English studies journals. Prague Journal of English Studies 2: 119–139.
Ebrahimi, S. F. & Chan, S. H. 2015. Research article abstracts in applied linguistics and economics: functional analysis of the grammatical subject. Australian Journal of Linguistics 35(4): 381–397.
Ebrahimi, S. F. & Saadabadi Motlagh, H. 2017. A cross-disciplinary and linguistic study of
context frames in research article abstracts. Research in English Language Pedagogy (RELP) 5(1): 81–95.
Ernazarova, M. N. 2022. Linguoculturological aspect of language learning in national groups. Eurasian Scientific Herald 4: 107–110.
Filimonova, E. (ed.) 2005. Clusivity: Typology and Case Studies of the Inclusive–Exclusive Distinction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Fløttum, K., Dahl, T. & Kinn, T. 2006. Academic Voices. Across Languages and Disciplines. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Galaidin, A. 2021a. A comparative study of research article abstracts in the fields of humanities and medical sciences based on a contrastive move structure analysis. In: A. Kačmárová (ed.), 17. ŠVUK FF PU Doktorandská konferencia. Zborník príspevkov, 60–70. Prešov: Filozofická fakulta Prešovskej univerzity v Prešove.
https://www.pulib.sk/web/kniznica/elpub/dokument/Kacmarova10
Galaidin, A. 2021b. A genre analysis of research article abstracts in linguistics and engineering: a cross disciplinary study based on a contrastive analysis of micro structures. Language, Culture, Politics 1/2021: 47–56.
Galtung, J. 1985. Structure, culture and intellectual style: An essay comparing Saxonic, Teutonic, Gallic and Nipponic approaches. Social Science Formation 20(6): 817–856.
Halliday, M. A. K. 1994. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.
Hartley, J. 1997. Is it appropriate to use structured abstracts in social science journals? Learned Publishing 10(4): 313–317.
Hyland, K. 2000. Disciplinary Discourses. Social Interaction in Academic Writing. London: Longman.
Hyland, K. 2001. Humble servants of the discipline? Self-mention in research articles. English for Specific Purposes 20: 207–226.
Hyland, K. 2002. Authority and invisibility: Authorial identity in academic writing. Journal of Pragmatics 34(8): 1091–1112.
Hyland, K. 2003. Self-citation and self-reference: Credibility and promotion in academic publication. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 54 (3): 251–259.
Hyland, K. 2009. Academic Discourse: English in a Global Context. London: Continuum.
Januarto, A. & Hardjanto, T. D. 2020. Authorial presence in English research articles by native and non-native English scholars. LLT Journal: A Journal on Language and Language Teaching 23(2): 241–254.
Kuo, C. H. 1999. The use of personal pronouns: Role relationships in scientific journal articles. English for Specific Purposes 18(2): 121–138.
Nelson, N. & Castelló, M. 2012. Academic writing and authorial voice. Studies in Writing 24: 33–51.
Ngai, C., Singh, R. & Koon, A. 2018. A discourse analysis of the macro-structure, metadiscoursal and microdiscoursal features in the abstracts of research articles across multiple science disciplines. PLoS ONE 13(10): 1–21.
Noorizadeh-Honami, L. & Chalak, A. 2018. Comparative analysis of architecture research article abstracts written by native and non-native authors: A cross-linguistic, cross-cultural study. Theory and Practice in Language Studies 8(3): 325–330.
Pferschy-Wenzig, E.-M., Pferschy, U., Wang, D., Mocan, A., & Atanasov, A. G. 2016. Does a graphical abstract bring more visibility to your paper? Molecules 21(9): 1–4.
Pho, P. D. 2008. Research article abstracts in applied linguistics and educational technology: A study of linguistic realizations of rhetorical structure and authorial stance. Discourse Studies 10(2): 231‐250.
Povolná, R. 2016. Cross-cultural analysis of conference abstracts. Discourse and Interaction 9(1): 29–48.
Qasim, S., Sarvat, H., & Naz, F. 2021. Rhetorical variation in the research article abstracts written by native (L1) and non-native (ESL & EFL) researchers. EEO 20(4): 2700–2710.
Raeisi, M., Dastjerdi, H. V., & Raeisi, M. 2019. Lexico-grammatical analysis of native and non-native abstracts based on Halliday’s SFL model. Theory and Practice in Language Studies 9(11): 1388–1395.
Rahayati, N., & Herlina, R. 2021. Discourse markers in abstracts of international journals. JEEP (Journal of English Education Program) 8(2): 1–7.
Ramadhini, T., Wahyuni, I., Ramadhani, N., Kurniawan, E., Gunawan, W., & Muniroh, R. 2021. The rhetorical moves of abstracts written by the authors in the field of hard sciences. Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research 546: 587–592. Proceedings of the Thirteenth Conference on Applied Linguistics (CONAPLIN 2020).
Rossini Favretti, R. & Bondi Paganelli, M. 1988. Il testo psicologico. Aspetti della traduzione e della lettura in lingua inglese. Bologna: Pitagora Editrice.
Rowley, J.E. 1988. Abstracting and Indexing. 2nd ed. London: Bingley.
Santos, M.B.D. 1996. The textual organisation of research paper abstracts in applied linguistics. Text 16(4): 481–499.
Swales, J. M. & Feak, C. B. 2012. Academic Writing for Graduate Students: Essential Tasks and Skills. 3rd ed. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press.
Tamela, E. 2020. Move structure analysis on research article abstracts in national and international Scopus indexed journals. Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research 434: 12–17. International Conference on English Language Teaching (ICONELT 2019).
Wang, S. P., Tseng, W. T., & Johanson, R. 2021. To we or not to we: Corpus-based research on first-person pronoun use in abstracts and conclusions. SAGE Open, 11(2): 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440211008893
Zhang, W. & Cheung, Y. L. 2018. The construction of authorial voice in writing research articles: A corpus-based study from an APPRAISAL theory perspective. International Journal of English Studies 18(2): 53–75.
Polonia University in Częstochowa, Poland
Andrii Galaidin is an alumnus and an academic teacher at Polonia University in Czestochowa, Poland, majoring in English teaching. He is currently a final-year PhD. student in the study programme English language and Anglophone culture at the University of Presov, Slovakia. In his dissertation, he explores cross-field and cross-cultural aspects of academic writing in English with a special focus on research article abstracts under supervision of the second author. At the same time, he is a master´s student of economics at Polonia University in Czestochowa. His scientific interests comprise English linguistics, in the first place, English didactics and translation studies. He takes a sustained interest in the issue of academic writing and its cross-cultural dimensions.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5236-1495University of Presov, Slovakia
Klaudia Bednárová-Gibová is an Associate Professor at the Institute of British and American Studies at the University of Presov in Slovakia, majoring in translation studies and lexical semantics. She has primarily devoted herself to institutional translation and aspects of text-oriented analysis in (non-)literary translation. Her more recent research interests oscillate between the sociology of translation and psycho-translation studies. Her current research concerns a socio-psychological profiling of translators as working language industry agents and the affectivity of translator behaviour. She is also a professional translator of specialized texts working from/into English and German and a member of the European Society for Translation Studies (EST) as well as International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS).
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6555-4464
