Authorial Voices in Scientific Writing: Toward Reconceptualizing Academic Discourse

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  • YASUDA Sachiko
    School of Languages and Communication, Graduate School of Intercultural Studies, Kobe University

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  • 科学論文における主観性：アカデミック・ディスコース概念の再考
  • カガク ロンブン ニ オケル シュカンセイ : アカデミック ・ ディスコース ガイネン ノ サイコウ

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Abstract

<p>Writing teachers have long proclaimed the belief that good writing emerges from the author’s authentic voice. However, when it comes to writing scientific texts, objectivity is often viewed as a coherent and stable ideal, and science writers are often expected to hide their interpretive activities and rhetorical identities. This article reports on initial steps towards developing materials that could help teachers and students recognize that recent scientific texts do, in fact, present author's voices, attitudes and perspectives, which put readers in dialogue with an author. Focusing on value and orientation markers as a repertoire of resources available for writers to organize a discourse, I analysed a corpus of research articles to explore how the author’s linguistic/rhetorical choices have changed in scientific writing in different disciplines over the past 50 years (from 1970 to 2020). The findings showed that there has been a significant increase in the use of lower value markers (i.e., hedges) and a significant decrease in higher value markers (i.e., boosters), implying that authors of recent scientific texts tend to avoid rigid proposition, stay reserved and show a high degree of deference to the readers. The findings also showed that there has been a significant increase in the use of first-person pronouns, indicating that authors of recent scientific texts tend to demonstrate their personal involvement in their own research explicitly. The overall results indicate that academic discourse is not static but could change over time in response to a paradigm shift in the scientific community.</p>

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