FUNCTIONAL PARAMETERS OF PRAGMATIC INTERACTIVE MARKERS IN COMPOSITIONAL PARTS OF RESEARCH ARTICLES

Abstract

It is a common knowledge that academic writing is expected to be factual and objective, however, the authors tend to express their subjective opinions demonstrating their attitudes towards their claims and, apparently, influencing the readers’ attitudes. In order to pass on their messages in an intelligible, convincing, cooperative and polite way academic authors employ pragmatic interactive devices, i.e. boosters and hedges, whose function is to optimize the authors’ relationship with their texts and with their readers. It is widely recognized that boosting and hedging are the communicative strategies adopted by academic authors to express a different degree of commitment or detachment. One of the frequently stated problems in this area is concerned with application and distribution of boosters and hedges in the componential parts of research articles. The aim of this study is to indicate the frequency of boosters and hedges in Introduction, Results and Conclusions parts of research articles and to pinpoint their pragmatic meanings. This may provide an opportunity to advance our understanding of the mechanisms of authors’ influence and persuasion in the text production and text perception. The factual material of the study is collected from academic papers published in on-line linguistic journals. On the first step of the analysis the componential sections of the selected article (Introduction section, 7 pages; Result section, 13 pages; Conclusion section, 6 pages) are examined separately in order to trace the correspondence of their textual patterns to the academic audience expectations. Applying the procedure of quantitative analysis, the occurrences of boosters and hedges are counted manually in each of the componential parts; the data obtained are presented in the tables. Using the procedural elements of contextual and discourse analyses the spotted modifiers are examined in their narrow and broad distribution in order to point out their pragmatic functions in each of the research article sections. The cases of occurrence of boosters and hedges are interpreted as forms of social behavior or author’s stances taken to establish interpersonal relationship with the audience and to ensure adequate reading of the text by their academic colleagues. The findings of the study are reported and commented on in the Results and Discussion section and generalized in Conclusions.