Authorial identity construction through implicit stance-taking in the introduction of research articles

Abstract

Stance is an important resource for the construction of authorial identity. However, much attention has been paid to explicit self-mentions (e.g., I/we), and very little is known about how authorial identities are constructed through implicit stance resources across disciplines. Drawing upon an adapted stance model from Hyland (2005a), this research explores authorial identities constructed through implicit stance resources in 120 introductions of research articles from both soft (i.e., philosophy and linguistics) and hard (i.e., bioscience and materials science) disciplines by using mixed methods. Findings show that: (1) In the construction of opinion holders, with the exception of linguistics, all disciplines tend to employ certainty-indicating boosters rather than fact-asserting boosters to express their opinions; authors of soft disciplines tend to employ commitment hedges, while authors of hard disciplines tend to employ accuracy-oriented hedges. (2) In the construction of evaluators, all disciplines predominantly employ assessment markers and rarely use emotional markers; authors of linguistics use less significance markers than those of hard disciplines to highlight the research value. These nuanced findings are beneficial for teaching students to construct discipline-recognized authorial identities in academic writing.