Stance markers in forestry research articles: Indicators of authoritative voice

Abstract

Stance markers, serving as the primary discursive category of interactional metadiscourse, function as a reliable measure for evaluating how authors of research articles authoritatively foreground their research within disciplinary communities. Stance research primarily focuses on how authors or speakers adjust the certainty level of their assertions, both epistemically and emotionally. This study examined the occurrences of stance markers in each rhetorical move within the Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion sections of forestry research articles. The corpus comprised 40 research articles randomly selected from five ISI journals in the forestry discipline. This study utilized Hyland’s (2005) model of academic interactions and Kanoksilapatham’s (2005) framework as analytical tools for identifying stance markers and the rhetorical structure of forestry research articles. The findings revealed differences in the distribution of these markers across the different sections and constituent rhetorical moves within the research articles. Overall, hedges and self-mentions emerged as the most prevalent stance markers in this study. Across sections, attitude markers and hedges predominated in the Introductions, while self-mentions and hedges were pervasively applied in the Methods sections. Boosters and attitude markers were common in the Results, and boosters along with self- mentions were notable in the Discussions. Finally, stance markers appear to play a fundamental role in shaping distinct argumentations across discourse communities, while effectively reflecting disciplinary voices.