“Long-term effects of Covid-19 are poorly understood”: Attitude in medical journal abstracts and highlights

IF 3.2 1区文学 Q1 LINGUISTICS

English for Specific Purposes Pub Date : 2025-07-09 DOI:10.1016/j.esp.2025.06.002

Hang (Joanna) Zou , Ken Hyland

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Studies of authorial stance are now a staple of the discourse analytic literature. Less studied, however, are the more personal, affective attitudes authors take towards their material and how these contribute to persuading an academic audience. In this paper, we employ Hyland’s (2005) metadiscourse model to examine the role of affect in two of the most explicitly rhetorical genres in the academy: abstracts and highlights. Despite differences, these genres share the promotional purpose of announcing research and seeking to attract an audience for it. Based on the abstracts and corresponding highlights from 261 articles in high profile medical journals addressing Covid-19 research, we show how attitude markers are used to strategically manage this purpose in different ways. The results indicate that academics routinely express attitudes to promote their research, with proportionately more features in the highlights. Variations in markers and their functions underscore their importance. Our study contributes to the literature on attitude markers and rhetorical persuasion, particularly in Covid-related discourse.

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“对Covid-19的长期影响知之甚少”：医学期刊摘要和重点报道中的态度

作者立场研究是话语分析文学的重要内容。然而，研究较少的是作者对其材料采取的更个人、更情感的态度，以及这些态度如何有助于说服学术读者。在本文中，我们采用Hyland（2005）的元话语模型来研究情感在学术界两种最明确的修辞类型中的作用：摘要和重点。尽管存在差异，但这些类型都有一个共同的宣传目的，即宣布研究结果并为其吸引观众。基于知名医学期刊上关于Covid-19研究的261篇文章的摘要和相应的重点，我们展示了如何使用态度标记以不同的方式战略性地管理这一目的。结果表明，学者们通常会表达促进他们研究的态度，在亮点中有更多的特征。标记及其功能的变化强调了它们的重要性。我们的研究为态度标记和修辞说服的文献做出了贡献，特别是在与covid相关的话语中。

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来源期刊

English for Specific Purposes LINGUISTICS-

CiteScore

5.70

自引率

8.00%

发文量

审稿时长

62 days

期刊介绍： English For Specific Purposes is an international peer-reviewed journal that welcomes submissions from across the world. Authors are encouraged to submit articles and research/discussion notes on topics relevant to the teaching and learning of discourse for specific communities: academic, occupational, or otherwise specialized. Topics such as the following may be treated from the perspective of English for specific purposes: second language acquisition in specialized contexts, needs assessment, curriculum development and evaluation, materials preparation, discourse analysis, descriptions of specialized varieties of English.