The Good Me or the Bad Me? Identity and Evaluation in Research Article Abstracts

Abstract

s therefore play various roles: first they help the reader to ascertain the paper’s purpose, then they provide the reader with a preliminary overview of the research and, in some cases, may help to recall its basic content. Publishing, as observed by Swales (1990), is a way to join a discourse community, so that authors need to persuade their audience of what they say, to press their point of view by means of an articulate, competent use of language. The standard style of academic writing suggests that it should be objective not attitudinal, and that the text should be entirely free of personal judgements. This, however, does not happen very often because one of the chief functions of scientific research articles is to persuade the reader of the validity of the writer’s claims, and in order to accomplish this purpose, the work of the writers and of other researchers is constantly evaluated along the text distribution (Hunston 1993, 1994). Academic writing is as rhetorical as any other type of discourse, no matter how technical and apparently detached it might appear, as its discourse is always designed to convince readers of the reliability of its claims. Hunston therefore rejects the widespread idea that “evaluation is personal and scientific writing impersonal” (1983: 58). Evaluation is not the only key feature of RAAs, however; a crucial role may also be played by identity. Hyland (2000: 63) states that RAAs are “a rich source of interactional features that allow us to see how individuals work to position themselves within their communities”. Other studies (e.g. Myers 1990) have shown that before a research paper is published, a great deal of negotiation on the final version to be published goes on between authors, editors and referees. Researchers have to argue their case in front of the bar of the scientific community before their work can be taken up and accepted. Myers (1985) argues that the tension inherent in the publication of any research article makes negotiation between the writer and the potential audience essential: the researcher tries to show that s/he deserves credit for something new, while on the other hand the editors try to relate the article’s claims to a body of existing knowledge. Thus the focus shifts from the individual researcher to the entire research community, from authorial identity to 141 A.M. Cava / M. Venuti, The Good Me or the Bad Me? Identity and Evaluation in Research Article Abstracts