Naslov
Non-human subjects and present perfect as mechanisms of rhetorical judgment

Autori
Gradečak, Tanja ; Varga, Mirna

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, ostalo, ostalo

Skup
4th International Conference on Academic Writing Blurring the Lines: Academic, Professional, and Popular Writing

Mjesto i datum
Tel Aviv, Izrael, 07.07.2020

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
non-human subjects, present perfect tense, research articles, hedging

Sažetak
In view of the role that tenses play in forming the grammatical context for the claims reported in RPs, it has already been established that the morphosyntactic structure contributes greatly to the rhetorical function of specific paper sections (Lackstrom, Selinker & Trimble, 1970, 1973) and the reliability or hedging degree of arguments presented and discussed (Hyland 1999). In academic writing in English the difference between specific information and generalizations is frequently demonstrated in the use of past simple and present perfect. For example, in reporting empirical investigations such as experiments or surveys, detailed information specific to the study is reported in the simple past tense, while the present perfect construction is used for generalized conclusions (Swales 1990). We have examined the distribution of tenses in the corpus of 20 research articles in English in the field of applied linguistics in both integral and non-integral citation structures and the types of subjects introducing the arguments. A quantitative analysis across the IMRD structure shows a high frequency of non- human subjects (e.g. ‘the research’, ‘the results’, ‘the findings’ etc.) followed by reporting verbs in present perfect, especially in the Introduction section of RPs. The results of the analysis coincide with Oster's (1981) observations that the present perfect is employed to introduce the generalizations of the reviewed topics, followed by the past simple or the present simple, depending on whether writers would like to report the procedures of past literature or to draw conclusions about the reviewed past literature, respectively. The structures with non-human subjects and verbs in present perfect thus create clearly entrenched hedging constructions with the function of rhetorical judgments about the relevance of time to the concept of generality of claims made in RPs and may be of interest in evaluative and teaching processes involved with academic writing in English.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

POVEZANOST RADA