a cross-disciplinary comparison of boosting in...

A cross-disciplinary comparison of boosting in research articles

Matthew Peacock1

Abstract Boosting, using terms such as obviously and of course, is a communicative strategy for expressing firm commitment to statements. This article describes an interdisciplinary comparison of the extent, form, and function of boosters in research articles (RAs) across six academic disciplines: Business, Language and Linguistics, Public and Social Administration, Law, Physics, and Environmental Science. The investigation involved quantitative and qualitative analysis of a 1,250,000 words corpus gathered from 216 articles published in leading journals (six journals from each discipline and six articles from each journal).

It was found that the boosters in the corpus played a significant role in the efforts of authors to persuade readers of the validity of their claims. The highest proportion of boosters was found in Language and Linguistics and the lowest in Environmental Science. Considerable interdisciplinary variation was also found in the form of boosters: for example, a different type and narrower range of boosters was found in the two sciences than in the other four disciplines.

The results have implications for our understanding of the RA and of scientific expression, and also for teaching ESP to students who are writing dissertations and research papers. We suggest that competence in research writing includes a developed knowledge of boosting. 1. Introduction Whilst the use of hedging or mitigation of claims in academic writing has received attention recently, little empirical research appears to have investigated boosters, even though they may perform an equally important role. Boosters are pragmatic2 devices for emphasising certainty – examples are clearly and obviously. Holmes (1984: 347) provides an early definition: ‘[boosting] involves expressing degrees of commitment or seriousness of intention’. The following extract from an Environmental Science RA 1 Correspondence to: Matthew Peacock, e-mail: [email protected] address: Department of English and Communication, City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong 2 The focus in this article is on the pragmatic function of boosters rather than their linguistic form.

Corpora Vol. 1 (1): 61-84

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serves as an example, ‘The results certainly stress the need for more effective wetland conservation worldwide’. The use of certainly here expresses the author’s firm commitment to the point made.

This article describes an analysis of the use of boosters in research articles across six academic fields. The purpose of the research was to study interdisciplinary differences in the extent and form of the boosters that authors use to underline their commitment to the claims they make. Research articles are clearly important to academics, and, given the pressure to publish, it is not surprising that authors feel the need to persuade editors and readers of the veracity of their claims. Moreno (1997: 170) calls this their primary aim. Swales (1990: 117, 174) argues that as low-level claims add very little to what has been published before, authors feel a need to stress the significance of their work. Hunston (1994: 192) suggests that while RAs are often seen as factual, objective and impersonal, their real goal is to persuade. Hyland (2000: 12-14) agrees, calling the RA author’s main purpose ‘persuasive: convincing peers’ and establishing credibility, adding that making an ‘appropriate level of claim is a critical aspect of research reporting’ (p. 92). He also notes (1999a: 107) that ‘Published academic writing is not the faceless discourse it is often assumed to be’ – a telling phrase. This idea has also been addressed in some social constructionist literature. Latour and Woolgar (1986: 75-77, 87-88) assert that scientists construct facts and reality, adding that they attempt to increase credibility (pp. 198-201) by using persuasive techniques to transform statements from claims into facts. Latour (1987) describes how scientists construct facts (pp. 41-43, 64, 109-114) and how they persuade (pp. 196-197). Gilbert and Mulkay (1984: 39-40) say that reality is a product of the written discourse and also explain, after conducting extensive interviews, how scientists persuade (pp. 66-67; 104). Mulkay (1992: 43-59) investigates the importance of persuasion in constructing reality for readers.

We have seen arguments that RA authors feel a pressing need to persuade readers that their claims are valid. We shall now turn to a rationale for research into boosting, followed by a review of previous empirical and theoretical work on the form and function of boosters, the use of which seems to be an important tactic in the validation of claims. 1.1 A rationale for research into boosting Several calls have been made for more research into the RA and into boosting. Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995: 29) and others3 note that understanding genres is crucial to participation in the practices of the relevant discourse community. Holmes (1997: 322-323) adds that little RA research has examined variability between disciplines. Hyland (1996a:

3 See Yakhontova (1997: 105) and Bhatia (1999: 39).

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252; 1997: 19-20) states that a better understanding of hedging in RAs can improve our understanding of scientific rhetoric and of how scientists work. We suggest that this applies equally to boosting. He later states (1998a: 350) that ‘Even less is known about the role of firm assertion… [boosters] have received little attention in academic writing… further research is needed’, and also (1999a: 121) that ‘much more [inter-disciplinary work] needs to be done’.

If boosting is important in research writing it is also important in the teaching of ESP. Paltridge (1993: 175) points out that writing dissertations and research papers is much more demanding than other writing done by NNS, and that the demands are great even for NS (also see Cooley and Lewkowicz, 1997: 113, who review the literature on NNS students’ difficulties with research writing). Paltridge (1993: 175) adds that effective research writing is a prerequisite for entry to the academic research community. Salager-Meyer (1994: 1654) says that students need to know how to modify claims; Thompson and Ye (1991: 366) add that this is difficult for NNS. Such difficulty could be critical for academics: indeed, NNS writers may not get published if their work is coded in the wrong rhetorical style (Ahmad, 1997: 273). (It should be noted, though, that the needs discussed here are those of NNS writers of dissertations and research papers. Other NNS writers, for example, undergraduate students writing essays, perhaps have less need for instruction in boosting.) Hopkins and Dudley-Evans (1988: 113) suggest that genre research must inform ESP materials and that understanding disciplinary differences is necessary for preparing relevant ESP courses.

Swales (1990: 174) states that our picture of the RA ‘is far from complete’. We suggest that this is still true today and particularly true for the role played by boosters. Persuasion is clearly an important part of research writing and boosters might play a significant part in that persuasion. However, as yet there have been very few studies of boosting. We propose that there is a need for more empirical research on boosting in RAs across a range of academic disciplines. Such research could have relevance for the study of academic writing and the understanding of scientific expression – in particular, it could provide better understanding of boosting, one of the methods that RA writers use to persuade. It also has a clear application to the teaching of ESP, because the more we know about boosting, the better we can teach this strategy to NS and to NNS. 1.2 Previous empirical and theoretical work on boosting in RAs Hyland (1998a) examined fifty-six RAs, one from each of seven journals in eight disciplines, for sixty-one different boosters. He found 5.88 boosters

4 Also see Hunston, Francis, and Manning (1997: 208), Skelton (1997: 135), Thetela (1997: 102, 117), Yakhontova (1997: 106), and Hunston and Francis (1998).

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per 1,000 words (34.5 per paper). The most frequent were will, the fact that, show, clear(ly), and actually. Disciplinary differences are shown in Table 1 below.

Discipline Boosters per1,000 words

Philosophy 9.7 Marketing 7.1 Applied Linguistics 6.2 Physics 6.0 Mechanical Engineering 5.0 Sociology 4.6 Biology 3.9 Electrical Engineering 3.2

Table 1: Boosters per 1,000 words: disciplinary differences (Hyland 1998a)

The highest proportion of boosters was found in the seven Philosophy papers and the lowest in Electrical Engineering. He says that the sciences have a ‘low use of boosters’ (p. 359) …because of a ‘preference for impersonal strategies’ there (p. 371). He concluded that his data show that writers ‘in the soft fields relied more on personal projection’ (p. 372). In another study (1998c) he searched twenty-eight RAs, one from each of seven journals in four disciplines, for different boosters (the number and form is not given). Overall he reports 3.9 boosters per 1,000 words (he does not list the most frequent forms), and also ‘[similarity] across disciplines’ (p. 445). Boosters were most common in the seven Applied Linguistics papers (4.6 per 1,000 words); numbers per 1,000 words in other disciplines were Marketing 4.2, Biology 3.5, and Astrophysics 3.05.

Hyland in other work theorises on why RA authors use boosters. He suggests that they boost to gain credit and credibility for their achievements (1996b: 435), to persuade readers that their claims are justified (1996b: 436) and that their observations are facts (1997: 21), to ‘galvanise support, express collegiality, and avoid disagreement’ (1999b: 79), and to transform claims into knowledge (1996b: 435).

5 Hyland (2000: 84-103) also researched boosting in scientific letters. However, as he describes this genre as differing from the RA in scope, purpose, and audience, that research will not be reviewed here. He does provide a list of sixty-six boosters (p.188); the list is similar to his 1998a list.


1.3 Definition and types of booster Holmes’ 1984 definition was given above. Hyland has offered other definitions, for example, ‘boosters are communicative strategies for increasing the force of statements … [they represent] a strong claim’ (1998a: 350). For this study, boosting was defined (after Hyland) as a communicative strategy for increasing the force of a statement and emphasising certainty, strong commitment, conviction, and accepted truth.

Previous writers have described the pragmatic functions of boosters as being to express variously evidential or implicit truth, accepted truth, and solidarity. Regarding evidential or implicit truth, Skelton (1997: 128-130) says that verbs such as show, demonstrate, and find/found are writers’ means of claiming that the truth they are discussing is ‘evidential’ – declared to be true as a result of the study in question. He adds that writers are trying to show they are not making a judgment claim. Hunston (1993: 124-126; 1995: 136) argues that show, demonstrate, and establish imply certainty resulting from the convincing nature of the data itself rather than from human persuasive skills. Swales (1990: 151) and Salager-Meyer (1994: 165) both assert that the latter three verbs emphasise commitment to a proposition; Swales calls them ‘powerful rhetorical tools’ for signalling that claims are to be taken as substantiated.

We agree with these authors that the above verbs are clearly boosters, because they emphasise a writer’s certainty and commitment (though it should be noted that this type of booster covers both evidence (Skelton, Hunston) and rhetoric (Swales)).

Accepted truth is very similar to evidential or implicit truth. Hyland (1998a: 371) states that modals (will, must) are used to signal accepted truth – that is, they downplay the author’s involvement by implying that the claim or statement made is one that is already generally accepted in the discipline. Devices such as of course and obviously (Hyland, 1998a: 368) appear to have the same function. We add another common booster, clear(ly), here. A slightly different term for such boosters is solidarity boosters (Vassileva, 2001: 97). Vassileva gives an example of a solidarity booster, ‘it is indeed a well-known fact’. The use of accepted truth or solidarity boosters implies to readers that they do not need further explanation because they already possess the requisite understanding, as they are already members of the relevant discourse community (also see Harwood, 2005: 344; Myers, 1989).

Describing boosters by pragmatic function is quite helpful for conceptualising boosters and their roles. However, it does not address the question of context – that is, the fact that the same booster can perform different functions at different times. Context is vital in booster research. Salager-Meyer (1994: 154) and others6 say we must look at both form and function when looking for hedges, and clearly the same applies to boosters.

6 See Hyland (1996: 437-438, 1998a: 373) and Moreno (1998: 571).

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Merely counting the boosters in a corpus is entirely inadequate because of the importance of context, since the same form can act as a booster in one sentence but not in another.

In the next section, Methodology, we will describe the aims of our research, state our research questions, and describe the corpus and how it was created. We will also explain how our list of boosters was built up and how the corpus was searched for boosters. Our results will be presented in the section following Methodology, and this will be followed by our Discussion, in which we will interpret the results and compare them with previous research. We will conclude by discussing implications for teaching and suggestions for further research. 2. Methodology The aim of this study was to advance and extend previous research on the extent, form, and function of boosting in RAs across six disciplines: Business (Marketing and Management), Language and Linguistics, Public and Social Administration, Law, Physics and Materials Science, and Environmental Science. We employed a much larger corpus than used in previous studies. We also aimed to develop a more comprehensive list of boosters. 2.1 Research questions and our corpus The following questions are directly addressed in this study:

1) How frequently do RA authors boost across a range of disciplines? Are there any interdisciplinary differences?

2) What forms do RA authors use to boost across a range of disciplines? Are there any interdisciplinary differences?

The corpus for this study consisted of 216 published RAs. Only

empirical data-driven RAs were selected7 for two reasons. First, we agree with Hyland (1998b: 97) that this type of RA is a recognised and increasingly important genre, and, secondly, to allow an interdisciplinary comparison to be made of booster form and function within this specific genre. Thirty-six RAs were selected from each of the six disciplines. These particular disciplines were chosen for three reasons: (i) they represent a wide range of academic fields of study; (ii) large numbers of NNS research writers study in these disciplines in Hong Kong, where this writer works, and perhaps around the world – these students may need advice on how to boost; and, (iii) boosting has not been previously studied

7 Review essays, discussions, and RAs by writers already selected were not used.


in three of these six disciplines. We decided to select leading journals from each discipline. To do

this, advice was sought from experts in each area: two separate informants within each discipline were asked to name ten leading journals in their field. Only journals named by both experts were put on our final list8 of thirty-four journals, six from each discipline: however, only four were used from Law as the experts could not identify more. The journals are listed in Appendix B. After the list was completed one informant from each discipline was asked to confirm that each journal has a high impact factor relative to other journals in their discipline and is equally highly regarded. Six articles published in 2000/1 were randomly selected from each of the thirty-four journals. It was necessary to use twelve RAs from the Journal of Criminal Justice and eighteen from the International Review of Law and Economics, because, while Law does contain plenty of empirical data-driven RAs, they are confined to a smaller number of journals than in other disciplines.

The corpus contained 1,259,187 words in total. This does not include RA titles, abstracts, acknowledgements, tables, references and appendices, which were excluded from the search. We suggest that each disciplinary corpus is representative of the discipline to an acceptable degree for three reasons: the use of two informants from each discipline to select the journals, the length of each corpus (that is, the large number of RAs from each discipline), and the fact that six RAs were used from each journal (apart from Law). Using six RAs, and therefore six authors, from each journal increased representativeness by reducing the chance that any one author would distort the results.

Before searching the corpus for boosters, a list of 118 lexical items (see Appendix A) was compiled from previous research on the topic (Hyland, 1998a: 375; Hyland, 2000: 192; Hunston, 1993: 124-26 and 1995: 136; Skelton, 1997: 129; Vassileva, 2001: 95-98; Holmes, 1984: 352-54), dictionaries, and forms found in the RAs themselves. Very was excluded from the list because it is such a common intensifier, and the inclusion of it would perhaps throw little light on the topic. Other items such as not even, no less than and as much as were excluded after we found that they are very rare in the corpus. Remarkable and striking were included after they were located in RAs, whereas astonishing was excluded because it did not appear. The fact that every booster on the list can function as such was confirmed during this preliminary search of one quarter of the RAs. The next step involved examining all 216 RAs for all the boosters in the list using a word search tool9, the ‘Find’ function on Microsoft Word. Every single occurrence of a booster was manually checked in context once, and later checked again, to make sure that it was performing a boosting

8 Finalising the list involved further visits to two of the academic departments. 9 As noted above, titles, abstracts, acknowledgements, tables, references and appendices were not searched.

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function. This was done by comparing every example with our definition and description of the function of boosting, i.e., that boosters increase the force of statements and emphasise certainty, strong commitment, conviction, and accepted truth; persuade readers that their claims are justified and that their observations are facts; ‘galvanise support, express collegiality, and avoid disagreement’; transform claims into knowledge; and imply certainty resulting from the convincing nature of the data itself. Examples that matched this definition and performed these functions were classified as boosters, and those that did not were excluded from the count. For example, will in the phrase ‘We will now turn to our results’ is not functioning as a booster, and neither is show in the phrase ‘Examples are shown in Figure 3.’ Shown in the second phrase does not emphasise certainty, strong commitment, or conviction – it merely indicates that Figure 3 contains examples, and is not a comment on their value. An example from the corpus of show functioning as a booster is, ‘This study has shown the importance of the FO in communication of social status information…’. Here, the author appears to be trying to emphasise strong commitment, conviction, and accepted truth, and transform claims into knowledge. Many occurrences of will, shows, always and entirely, and a few occurrences of must, were excluded from the count. Examples of will that were excluded are ‘We found a structure which will be called a global minimum…’ and ‘This paper will present…’, whereas we did include ‘H2 asserts that the effects will always be positive…’. Examples of must that were excluded are ‘The law says it must be at least a 5 year sentence…’ and ‘The crime must have included the use of a weapon…’, whereas we did include ‘The multiple variable must remain as it is…’ and ‘These overarching principles must be taken into account in addressing the unique social challenges of AIDS vaccine research’.

The analysis was validated by testing both inter-rater and intra-rater agreement10. Inter-rater agreement was tested by using a second coder, a lecturer in a local university, who independently checked the entire count and analysis. The second coder has an MA in Applied Linguistics and is a teacher of ESP and of persuasive writing. Tests for intra-rater agreement were made by this researcher re-checking every booster in the corpus in context six months after the initial analysis. Inter-rater and intra-rater agreement were both over 90 percent – the former was .9040, the latter .9675. Finally, all boosters were counted and frequencies were calculated.

10 Testing for both inter- and intra-rater agreement involves comparing the independently obtained results and measuring the correlation between them.


3. Results All quantitative results will be presented in this section, and discussed in the next section. We will first present results on our research questions one and two. 1) How frequently do RA authors boost across a range of disciplines? Are there any interdisciplinary differences? A total of 11,517 functioning boosters were found in the 1,259,187 words corpus – an average of 9.15 boosters per 1,000 words, or fifty-three per RA. During the search it was observed that the authors of all 216 papers used boosters11. Disciplinary differences in the number of boosters per 1,000 words and per RA are shown below in Table 2.

Table 2 reveals some interdisciplinary variation in booster frequency. The highest proportion of boosters was found in Language and Linguistics (10.98 per 1,000 words) and the lowest in Environmental Science (7.57 boosters per 1,000 words). 2) What forms do RA authors use to boost across a range of disciplines? Are there any interdisciplinary differences? The five most common boosters in the whole corpus were (in order) show, will/will not, clear(ly), establish, and must. These five accounted for no less than 40 percent (4,570) of the 11,517 boosters in the corpus.

Discipline Boosters per 1,000 words

Boosters per paper

Language and Linguistics 10.98 72 Law 10.05 63 Public and Social Administration 9.61 59 Physics and Materials Science 8.53 43 Business (Marketing & Management) 7.84 47 Environmental Science 7.57 38

Table 2: Boosters per 1,000 words and per paper: disciplinary differences

The frequency of appearance of these and other common boosters, plus disciplinary differences, are shown in Table 3 (see Appendix C).

11 It was also observed that booster frequency did not vary much between journals within a discipline.

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Table 3 (see Appendix C) reveals a number of interdisciplinary differences in booster form and frequency, and further detailed analysis of the data revealed some more fundamental differences, which we will now describe. 1) The two sciences used a different type of boosters than the other four disciplines No less than 32 percent of all boosters in Physics and in Environmental Science were of the ‘evidential or implicit truth’ type: show, demonstrate, find/found, and establish. Figures for the other disciplines were much lower: Business 23 percent, Language and Linguistics 20 percent, Public and Social Administration 23 percent, and Law 19 percent. Three examples12 from the sciences follow (excerpts 1, 2, and 3; all text excerpts are numbered): 1. We showed that the signals in the untwinned part of the crystal for Bc-axis agree well with the Coffee-Clem and Tinkham models. The signals in the twinned crystal showed deviation from the model that can be unambiguously related to the presence of twins ... in a previous publication [2], it was shown that in BSCCO, an additional signal appears that extends to low temperatures much below Tc, and whose position and intensity strongly depend on the orientation. (Physics) 2. Model output also demonstrated how panther road-associated mortality increased the more panthers moved over the course of a day, as demonstrated by males, and as more humans moved into the area, as demonstrated in output from future scenarios. The model demonstrated how panther home ranges became restricted… (Environmental Science) 3. Figure 6 clearly demonstrates an important influence of the matrix purity on GB diffusion. (Physics)

2) The two sciences used a narrower range of boosters than did authors in the other four disciplines

12 Care was taken to ensure that all examples were representative of booster use in the relevant discipline.


a) Environmental Science. The five most common boosters (see Table 3, Appendix C) in the whole corpus accounted for no less than 56 percent of all booster use in this discipline. (Figures for the other disciplines were as follows: Business 40 percent, Language and Linguistics 33 percent, Public and Social Administration 42 percent, Law 41 percent, and Physics 41 percent). The two most common boosters in Environmental Science, show and will/will not, accounted for as much as 42 percent of all booster use in the discipline (figures for the other disciplines were 30, 22, 26, 26, and 28 percent respectively). Here are two examples from Environmental Science: 4. Our review has shown that answers will not come quickly, unless, possibly, new techniques are integrated with the conventional, established ones to produce more comprehensive and accurate models. 5. The meteorological data undoubtedly show that the frequency of dust storms increased in the 1970s and 1980s…

b) Physics. Booster frequency was low overall, and the single most common booster, show, accounted for no less than 20 percent of all booster use in the discipline. This means that the use of other boosters was low. c) Language and Linguistics. Booster frequency was very high, and the five most common boosters accounted for only 33 percent of all booster use in the discipline. A wider range of boosters was therefore used. Two examples follow: 6. The fact that cross-linguistic structures appear in the children’s English at all is extremely interesting… (Language and Linguistics) 7. In other words, there can be no doubt that Searle’s contribution to the theory he inherited is very remarkable and original. (Language and Linguistics)

3) Interdisciplinary differences with individual boosters Clear(ly), obviously, of course. There were marked interdisciplinary differences in the frequency of these common boosters. They were rare in Environmental Science (0.26 per 1,000 words) and Business (0.28), but more than twice as common in Language and Linguistics (0.70 per 1,000 words), Public and Social Administration (0.67), Law (0.66), and Physics (0.73). Here are two examples:

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8. The major drawback is clearly that there is very limited surface information available at the moment, and limitations of attaining deep data clearly restrict the correlation which can be carried out. So far, the match looks encouraging. (Physics) 9. All these will of course affect the effectiveness of local planning authorities. (Public and Social Administration)

Further differences are apparent amongst the most frequent

boosters in each discipline (see Table 3, Appendix C). Establish was much less common in Business and in Physics, and more frequent than average in Public and Social Administration. Law had other individual differences: the frequency of will/will not and find/found that was high, whilst show was relatively low. An example from Law follows: 10. However, for other parameter values, we find that jury bias is accentuated by the endogenous spending decisions of the parties to the dispute … We find that jury bias is generally non-neutral in its effects on the incentives to file and defend cases.

Other individual boosters with low use in Physics and Materials

Science were will/will not and particularly. Environmental Science shows low or very low use of many other boosters – must, the fact that, indeed, in fact, conclude (that), apparent(ly), and actually. 4. Discussion We will repeat the answer to our first research question: RA authors boost frequently, averaging fifty-three boosters per paper, and there are interdisciplinary differences in frequency (see Table 2). The results differed from those of previous research. This study found 9.15 boosters per 1,000 words compared with Hyland’s 5.88 (1998a – see Table 1. The present results will not be compared with Hyland’s 1998c results because in that study, he does not give the number or type of boosters analysed). We found a higher proportion of boosters in Language and Linguistics (10.98 per 1,000) than in Business (7.84 per 1,000), whereas Hyland (1998a) reports a higher proportion in Marketing (7.1) than Applied Linguistics (6.2). However, these differences are not at all surprising. First, the list of boosters used in the present study was much longer and more comprehensive than Hyland’s list (118 versus sixty-one – twice as long. Items not on Hyland’s list accounted for much of our count). Secondly,


this study investigated different disciplines, not including the four disciplines with the lowest frequency in his study13.

Boosters appear to play an important role in RA authors’ attempts to persuade readers of the veracity of their claims. We observed that the persuasive force of boosters is increased when they are used in pairs or clusters. Here are three examples: 11. They clearly had a highly significant linguistic - and political - role this century… (Business) 12. We have shown that there are cohort effects in word association. The degree of overlap between the two groups in terms of their dominant responses showed this very clearly. (Language and Linguistics) 13. The second major contribution of this research is that it conclusively demonstrates that involvement and influence are indeed two different aspects of the manufacturing executive’s role in the strategic planning process. (Business)

Regarding our second research question, examination of Table 3

(Appendix C) shows that RA authors use a variety of forms to boost across a range of disciplines.

The clear interdisciplinary differences in booster frequency and form that we have found are not easy to explain. The starting point for this discussion must be the fact that all RA writers have to appeal to their audience (RA editors and readers) in order to claim membership of the relevant discourse community. RA authors are seeking acceptance. Sanctions, in the form of rejection of the RA by editors and questioning (even rejection) of claims by readers, are probably placed on writers who step too far outside discipline conventions. And, as disciplines differ, so styles and methods of claiming must also differ among disciplines. Hyland (2000: 78) theorises that writers might use the forms they do to ‘project an insider ethos’, and also (1999a: 108) that the differences reflect rhetorical constraints within different disciplines.

Authors in the two sciences used a much higher proportion of boosters of the ‘evidential or implicit truth’ type (show, demonstrate, find/found, establish) than did authors in other disciplines (they also used a narrower range of boosters and fewer boosters). They seem to be trying to minimise their personal involvement in their findings, exercise caution, and appear more objective, by signaling that their claims are ‘evidential’ – attributable to the convincing nature of the data itself rather than their own 13 Other (less likely) reasons are that our corpus consisted of thirty-six journals from each discipline rather than only seven, and that they were different journals.

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persuasive skills. The choice of these verbs may reflect a different stance towards findings in the sciences – a different way of validating findings and expressing commitment. Referring to hedges, Hyland (1998b: 16, 127) states that such choices are strategic, made to express different degrees of certitude and maintain the authority of science. In the case of hedges, he also notes that they indicate the adoption of a cautious position: the opposite seems to be true with boosters. These choices lead us to turn to the notion of writing as a social act. Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995: 24) call writers ‘social actors’ who are familiar with disciplinary norms, adding that knowledge of these norms requires ‘immersion … a lengthy period of apprenticeship and enculturation’. Hyland (1998b: 16, 22-23) explores this area in relation to hedging, arguing that writers enter into a dialogue with their audiences – who they need to ratify their arguments – in order to obtain collective agreement that their data represent facts. (For the present corpus this audience includes journal editors and reviewers.) Part of this dialogue is the negotiation and ratification of claims and through these actions science writers in the present corpus seem, in their choice of linguistic forms, to be giving us indications of the status of knowledge within science and thereby more information about how scientists think, work, operate, and negotiate the status of knowledge. We presume that these writers are conforming to disciplinary norms.

These science writers also seem to be following a science convention of suppressing the presence of the author. Support for and one explanation of this idea is provided by Gilbert and Mulkay (1984: 58-59), who interviewed scientists. A scientist speaks:

Everybody [says] “it was found that”. If it’s later shown that it was wrong, don’t accept any responsibility. “It was found. I didn’t say I believed it. It was found”. … [You] make it sound like these things just fall down into your lab notebook … “it was shown that” [is] more objective ... [it gives] a fair, objective view … you are not getting personally involved … [you] can spread the blame if it’s wrong. (Original emphasis)

The excerpts from our science corpora also provide support for the

idea, for example, ‘The signals in the twinned crystal showed… it was shown…’ (excerpt 1), ‘the model demonstrated…’ (excerpt 2), ‘Figure 6 clearly demonstrates…’ (excerpt 3), ‘The meteorological data undoubtedly show’ (excerpt 5). “The data show”, or “the model shows”, rather than “we show” or “we demonstrate”.

Further analysis of our corpus provided additional evidence in support of the idea that science writers minimise their personal involvement. We found that the frequency of the personal pronouns we, I, my and our was far lower in the two sciences. The frequency in Physics was only 1.41 per 1,000 words, and in Environmental Science 2.77. Figures for the other disciplines were much higher: Business 6.05,


Language and Linguistics 6.83, Public and Social Administration 5.38, and Law 3.1214. It appears that outside the sciences, greater personal involvement is permitted.

We have seen that RA authors in Language and Linguistics, Public and Social Administration, and Law used more boosters, a different type of boosters, and a wider range of boosters (see Table 3 under Appendix C and the following paragraphs). We suggest that this is because authors in these disciplines rely more on personal presentation and personal persuasion than on presenting hard facts and hard data and then letting those facts and data speak for themselves.

For RA authors much might depend on publication and the acceptance of their peers. The sanction of rejected papers and claims may motivate authors to follow the conventions of their discipline. If this is true, the existence of this author motivation constitutes one move towards the better understanding of scientific rhetoric, and of how scientists work, that Hyland predicted could result from research into hedging. In any case, we conclude that the interdisciplinary differences in form that we found exist because those particular forms are accepted within the relevant discipline as the recognised way to persuade readers of the validity and legitimacy of their data and conclusions.

Regarding the usefulness of the existing descriptions of the pragmatic functions of boosters, we find one term, Skelton’s ‘evidential or implicit truth’, to be valuable. The boosters of this type appeared to fulfil this function throughout our corpus. We find the other two terms (accepted truth, and solidarity) to be much less useful, because they neglect the importance of context, and many boosters perform different functions in different contexts. 5. Conclusion Pedagogical implications Our findings have implications for teaching research writing. We presented our argument above that boosting could be important to the teaching of ESP, particularly to students who need to write dissertations and research papers. Boosting was universal in our corpus, and its prevalence in research writing leads us to suggest that competence in this skill includes a developed knowledge of boosting, i.e., when, where and how to boost. That the nature of this knowledge varies to some extent between disciplines can be seen from the findings of the present study. One implication for teaching argument and persuasion in research writing is clear: sensitivity to 14 Other differences were as follows: we and our were much more common in Business than in any other discipline, while I was relatively rare. I was much more common in Language and Linguistics and in Public and Social Administration than in other disciplines (it was particularly common in Language and Linguistics).

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interdisciplinary variations in boosting is required in those who would write syllabuses and materials for these students. We will make some suggestions for teaching boosting:

1. It is important to inform students that boosting is an essential part of research writing, and that awareness of genre conventions is a necessary step for membership of the relevant discourse community.

2. One starting point can be a discussion of boosting in the students’ L1; discussion and instruction at this stage can focus on why boosters are necessary and what they do.

3. Prepare a discipline-specific list of high frequency boosters. 4. Prepare discipline-specific texts from the target genre. Swales

(1990) and many others have described the necessity of using such texts as models. In our view (reinforced by the results of the present study) this is essential.

5. For teaching boosting, then, discipline-specific texts will act as models, and discipline-specific lists of high frequency boosters will provide further input.

6. Ask students to find all the boosters in a text. 7. Ask students to estimate the level of persuasiveness of boosters

(in a list, or underlined in a text). 8. Ask students to find all the boosters in another text. 9. Replace the boosters in a text with blank spaces. Ask students to

supply boosters. 10. Remove the boosters from a text (leaving no spaces). Ask

students to increase its persuasive force, or emphasise certainty and commitment, using boosters from a list.

Other teaching ideas can be found in Yakhontova (1997: 108-109)

and Weissberg and Buker (1990). Hyland (1998b) suggests that teachers show students how hedges relate to the writer’s overall plan (this idea applies equally to boosters), and show students examples found by concordancer15. Further research 1) Finding more boosters. For further research on boosting, it may be helpful to develop a more complete list of boosters. However, this has a severe limitation: Crompton (1997: 281) says that hedging cannot be pinned down to a list of items, and the same must be true of boosting. This notion that no list of boosters can ever be complete is an important and difficult one to tackle in boosting research, and the task of preparing lists of boosters before undertaking a complete corpus search is likely to remain

15 See Johns and King (eds.) 1991.


difficult. For example, as noted above, very was excluded from our list as it is a common intensifier; astonishing, not even, no less than, as much as and other items were excluded because they did not appear or were very rare; remarkable and striking were added after they were located in RAs. At present it is difficult to see an improvement on the approach adopted for this study – compiling a list by combining lists used in previous research on the topic, forms found in dictionaries, and forms found in the RAs themselves. The latter tactic, in particular, is fruitful. 2) Hedging and boosting. The association of, and balance between, hedges and boosters16 in RAs (two hedges (possibly and generally) can be seen above, in extracts four and ten respectively) also needs work as they appear to affect each other. 3) Further research questions. Other questions that may be worth investigating are: How do successful writers know when to boost? Exactly how does boosting affect RA readers and editors?

This study has provided indications that persuasion is one of the primary goals of RA authors, that boosters are a principal means of achieving this goal, and that there are interdisciplinary differences in how authors do this. Analysis of our large corpus has shown boosting to be an important part of research writing. The boosters in the corpus play a significant role in the efforts of RA authors to persuade readers of the authenticity of their claims. Our results indicate that RA authors boost frequently across a range of disciplines using a variety of forms, though there are distinct interdisciplinary differences in booster frequency, type, and range.

Clearly boosters are an important weapon in the lexical armory of academic writers, and an interesting question is whether authors who do not sufficiently stress the significance of their work may have more problems getting their RA published. We advise RA authors to use an appropriate amount and type of boosting.

It is hoped that this study has added to our understanding of boosting in academic writing and has also shed a little more light on our understanding of the RA and of scientific expression. Holmes closes her 1984 paper with the words, ‘It is tempting to hypothesise … that academics are amongst the greatest attenuators in any speech community’ (p. 364). It is also tempting to hypothesise this about boosting. References Ahmad, U.K. 1997. ‘Research article introductions in Malay: Rhetoric in

an emerging research community’ in A. Duszak (ed.) Culture and Styles of Academic Discourse, pp. 273-301. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

16 Hyland (1998a) says hedges are more common.

M. Peacock 78

Berkenkotter, C. and T.N. Huckin. 1995. Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication: Cognition/Culture/Power. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Bhatia, V.K. 1999. ‘Integrating products, processes, purposes and participants in professional writing’ in C.N. Candlin and K. Hyland (eds.) Writing: Texts, Processes and Practices, pp. 21-39. London: Longman.

Cooley, L. and J. Lewkowicz. 1997. ‘Developing awareness of the rhetorical and linguistic conventions of writing a thesis in English: Addressing the needs of EFL/ESL postgraduate students’ in A. Duszak (ed.) Culture and Styles of Academic Discourse, pp. 113-29. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Crompton, P. 1997. ‘Hedging in academic writing: Some theoretical problems’, English for Specific Purposes 16 (4), pp. 271-87.

Gilbert, G.N. and M. Mulkay. 1984. Opening Pandora’s Box: A Sociological Analysis of Scientists’ Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Harwood, N. 2005. ‘We do not seem to have a theory... the theory I present here attempts to fill this gap’: Inclusive and exclusive pronouns in academic writing’, Applied Linguistics 26 (3), pp. 343-75.

Holmes, J. 1984. ‘Modifying illocutionary force’, Journal of Pragmatics 8, pp. 345-65.

Holmes, R. 1997. ‘Genre analysis, and the social sciences: An investigation of the structure of research article discussion sections in three disciplines’, English for Specific Purposes 16 (4), pp. 321-37.

Hopkins, A. and T. Dudley-Evans. 1988. ‘A genre-based investigation of the discussion sections in articles and dissertations’, English for Specific Purposes 7, pp. 113-21.

Hunston, S. 1993. ‘Professional conflict - disagreement in academic discourse’ in M. Baker, G. Francis and E. Tognini-Bonelli (eds.) Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, pp. 115-34. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Hunston, S. 1994. ‘Evaluation and organization in a sample of written academic discourse’ in M. Coulthard (ed.) Advances in Written Text Analysis, pp. 191-218. London: Routledge.

Hunston, S. 1995. ‘A corpus study of some English verbs of attribution’, Functions of Language 2 (2), pp. 133-58.

Hunston, S., Francis, G. and E. Manning. 1997. ‘Grammar and vocabulary: Showing the connections’, English Language Teaching Journal 51 (3), pp. 208-16.

Hunston, S. and G. Francis. 1998. ‘Verbs observed: A corpus-driven pedagogic grammar’, Applied Linguistics 19 (1), pp. 45-72.


Hyland, K. 1996a. ‘Talking to the academy: Forms of hedging in science research articles’, Written Communication 13 (2), pp. 251-81.

Hyland, K. 1996b. ‘Writing without conviction? Hedging in science research articles’, Applied Linguistics 17 (4), pp. 433-54.

Hyland, K. 1997. ‘Scientific claims and community values: Articulating an academic culture’, Language and Communication 17 (1), pp. 19-31.

Hyland, K. 1998a. ‘Boosting, hedging and the negotiation of academic knowledge’, Text 18 (3), pp. 349-82.

Hyland, K. 1998b. Hedging in Scientific Research Articles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Hyland, K. 1998c. ‘Persuasion and context: The pragmatics of academic metadiscourse’, Journal of Pragmatics 30, pp. 437-55.

Hyland, K. 1999a. ‘Disciplinary discourses: Writer stance in research articles’ in C.N. Candlin and K. Hyland (eds.) Writing: Texts, Processes and Practices, pp. 99-121. London: Longman.

Hyland, K. 1999b. ‘Persuasion in academic articles’. Perspectives 11 (2), pp. 73-103. Working Papers of the Department of English, City University of Hong Kong.

Hyland, K. 2000. Disciplinary Discourses: Social Interactions in Academic Writing. Harlow, UK: Longman.

Johns, T. and P. King. (eds.) 1991. Classroom Concordancing. Birmingham, UK: Centre for English Language Studies.

Latour, B. 1987. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Latour, B. and S. Woolgar. 1986. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Second Edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Moreno, A.I. 1997. ‘Genre constraints across languages: Causal metatext in Spanish and English RAs’, English for Specific Purposes 16 (3), pp. 161-79.

Moreno, A.I. 1998. ‘The explicit signaling of premise-conclusion sequences in research articles: A contrastive framework’, Text 18 (4), pp. 545-85.

Mulkay, M. 1992. Science and the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Allen and Unwin.

Myers, G. 1989. ‘The pragmatics of politeness in scientific articles’, Applied Linguistics 10 (1), pp. 1-35.

Paltridge, B. 1993. ‘Writing up research: A systemic functional perspective’, System 21 (2), pp. 175-92.

Salager-Meyer, F. 1994. ‘Hedges and textual communicative function in medical English written discourse’, English for Specific Purposes 13

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(2), pp. 149-70. Skelton, J. 1997. ‘The representation of truth in academic medical writing’,

Applied Linguistics 18 (2), pp. 121-40. Swales, J.M. 1990. Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research

Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thetela, P. 1997. ‘Evaluated entities and parameters of value in academic

research articles’, English for Specific Purposes 16 (2), pp. 101-18. Thompson, G. and Y. Ye. 1991. ‘Evaluation in the reporting verbs used in

academic papers’, Applied Linguistics 12 (4), pp. 365-82. Vassileva, I. 2001. ‘Commitment and detachment in English and Bulgarian

academic writing’, English for Specific Purposes 20 (1), pp. 83-102. Weissberg, R. and S. Buker. 1990. Writing Up Research. Englewood Cliffs,

NJ: Prentice Hall. Yakhontova, T. 1997. ‘The signs of a new time: Academic writing in ESP

curricula of Ukrainian universities’ in A. Duszak (ed.) Culture and Styles of Academic Discourse, pp. 103-12. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.


Appendix A List of boosters absolute (ly) actually always apparent (ly) assuredly I (we) believe categorical (ly) certainly clear [adj.] (ly) compelling completely comprehensive (ly) conclude (that) conclusive (ly) confirm (ed) confirmation considerable (y) consistently conspicuous (ly) constantly convincing [adj.] (ly) corroborate (tion) credible (ly) crucially decisive (ly) definite (ly) definitive (ly) demonstrate deserve (dly) distinctively do / does + infinitive doubtless (ly) enhanced [adj.] entirely especially essential (ly) establish evident (ly) exceptionally exhaustive (ly) extensive (ly) extraordinary

extremely the fact that find / found that firm [adj.] (ly) forceful (ly) fully striking (ly) successfully fundamental (ly) genuine (ly) great highlight highly impossible (y) impressive (ly) incontrovertible (y) indeed indispensable (ly) inevitable (y) in fact manifest [adj.] (ly) marked [adj.] (ly) meaningful (ly) must necessarily never no doubt notable (y) noteworthy noticeable (y) obvious (ly) of course outstanding particularly perfectly persuasive (ly) plainly powerful precisely profound (ly) prominent (ly) proof

prove (d) quite radical (ly) really reliable (y) remarkable (ly) rigorous (ly) safe (ly) secure [adj.] (ly) self-evident show sizable (ly) superior [adj.] sure (ly) thorough (ly) totally truly unambiguous (ly) unarguably unavoidable (y) undeniable (y) undoubtedly unequivocal (ly) uniquely unlimited unmistakable (ly) unprecedented unquestionable (y) uphold (upheld) vast (ly) vital (ly) we know well-known will/will not

82

Appendix B Journals in the corpus (in alphabetical order by discipline) A total of 216 RAs were analysed, thirty-six from each discipline. Six RAs were used from each journal (except Law, where the numbers were uneven, as shown below).

Business Industrial Marketing Management International Business Review International Journal of Project Management International Journal of Research in Marketing Journal of Business Venturing Journal of Operations Management Language and Linguistics English for Specific Purposes Journal of Neurolinguistics Language and Communication Language Sciences Speech Communication System Public and Social Administration Child Abuse and Neglect Evaluation and Program Planning Habitat International International Journal of Public Sector Management Social Science and Medicine World Development Law California Law Review (two RAs) Canadian Journal of Criminology (four RAs) International Review of Law and Economics (twelve RAs) Journal of Criminal Justice (eighteen RAs) Physics and Material Science Acta Materialia Chemical Physics International Journal of Fatigue Journal of Luminescence Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids Physica C: Superconductivity Environmental Science Applied Energy Atmospheric Environment Biomass and Bioenergy Ecological Modelling Environmental Pollution Global Environmental Change

M. Peacock

App

endi

x C

AL

L D

ISC

IPL

INE

S B

usin

ess (

Mar

ketin

g an

d M

anag

emen

t)

Lan

guag

e an

d L

ingu

istic

s Pu

blic

and

Soc

ial

Adm

inis

trat

ion

Boo

ster

co

unt

per

1,00

0 w

ords

co

unt

per

1,00

0 w

ords

co

unt

per

1,00

0 w

ords

co

unt

per

1,00

0 w

ords

Sh

ow

1657

1.

32

260

1.21

32

0 1.

35

248

1.12

w

ill/w

ill n

ot

1570

1.

25

245

1.14

25

5 1.

08

309

1.40

cl

ear (

ly)

478

0.38

29

0.

14

121

0.51

11

9 0.

54

Esta

blis

h 44

9 0.

36

20

0.09

76

0.

32

154

0.70

M

ust

399

0.32

59

0.

28

71

0.30

65

0.

29

find/

foun

d (th

at)

380

0.30

57

0.

27

66

0.28

52

0.

24

Parti

cula

rly

295

0.23

49

0.

23

47

0.20

67

0.

30

Dem

onst

rate

28

3 0.

22

53

0.25

44

0.

19

39

0.18

Es

peci

ally

27

7 0.

22

28

0.13

58

0.

24

61

0.28

th

e fa

ct th

at

247

0.20

43

0.

20

77

0.32

48

0.

22

cons

ider

able

(ly)

230

0.18

27

0.

13

52

0.22

36

0.

16

Hig

hly

213

0.17

44

0.

21

41

0.17

34

0.

15

Inde

ed

213

0.17

38

0.

18

63

0.27

25

0.

11

in fa

ct

203

0.16

32

0.

15

54

0.23

24

0.

11

conc

lude

(tha

t) 19

7 0.

16

33

0.15

29

0.

12

19

0.09

ap

pare

nt (l

y)

192

0.15

17

0.

08

55

0.23

50

0.

23

Act

ually

18

0 0.

14

34

0.16

42

0.

18

35

0.16

ex

tens

ive

(ly)

157

0.12

29

0.

14

35

0.15

18

0.

08

Table 3 (part one): Most frequent boosters in the corpus: disciplinary differences

obvi

ous (

ly)

144

0.11

22

0.

10

32

0.13

24

0.

11

83

A

LL

DIS

CIP

LIN

ES

AL

L D

ISC

IPL

INE

S L

aw

Law

Ph

ysic

s and

Mat

eria

ls

Scie

nce

Phys

ics a

nd M

ater

ials

Sc

ienc

e E

nvir

onm

enta

l Sci

ence

E

nvir

onm

enta

l Sci

ence

B

oost

er

coun

t p

p

p

per

1,0

00 w

ords

coun

ter

1,0

00 w

ords

coun

ter

1,0

00 w

ords

coun

ter

1,0

00 w

ords

Sh

ow

1657

1.

32

186

0.82

31

9 1.

75

324

1.81

w

ill/w

ill n

ot

1570

1.

25

394

1.75

11

9 0.

65

248

1.39

cl

ear (

ly)

478

10

0 0.

09

0.38

0.44

92

0.

50

17

Esta

blis

h 44

9 0.

36

65

0.29

28

0.

15

106

0.59

M

ust

399

0.32

11

0 0.

49

65

0.16

0.

36

29

find/

foun

d (th

at)

380

0.30

13

5 0.

60

45

0.25

25

0.

14

Parti

cula

rly

295

0.23

73

0.

32

19

0.10

40

0.

22

Dem

onst

rate

28

3 0.

22

70

0.31

36

0.

20

41

0.23

Es

peci

ally

27

7 0.

22

52

0.23

34

0.

19

44

0.25

th

e fa

ct th

at

247

0.

2034

0.

15

30

0.16

15

0.

08

cons

ider

able

(ly)

230

0.18

49

0.

22

23

0.13

43

0.

24

Hig

hly

213

0.17

37

0.

16

28

0.15

29

0.

16

Inde

ed

213

0.17

56

0.

25

26

0.14

5

0.03

in

fact

20

3 0.

16

60

0.27

22

0.

12

11

0.06

co

nclu

de (t

hat)

197

0.16

55

0.

24

48

0.26

13

0.

07

appa

rent

(ly)

19

2

5 0.

03

0.15

27

0.12

38

0.

21

Act

ually

18

0 0.

14

57

0.25

4

0.02

8

0.04

ex

tens

ive

(ly)

157

0.12

15

0.

07

22

0.12

38

0.

21

Table 3 (part two): Most frequent boosters in the corpus: disciplinary differences

obvi

ous (

ly)

144

0.11

19

0.

08

31

0.17

16

0.

09

84

a cross-disciplinary comparison of boosting in...

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