A contrastive analysis of reporting clauses in comparable and translated academic texts in English and Italian

Abstract

This article investigates the use of finite reporting clauses with that -clause complementation (e.g. I will suggest that …) as devices for the expression of stance in academic texts ( Hyland and Tse 2005 ; Charles 2006 ). These constructions are compared to their functional equivalents in Italian, i.e. reporting clauses with che (‘that’) complementiser. The comparison is carried out using a corpus-based approach, involving the analysis of a parallel corpus of Political Science papers in English and their translations into Italian, as well as a comparable corpus of articles originally written in Italian within the same discipline. Thanks to their ability to convey evaluative meanings, reporting clauses are analysed as structures that may provide insights into the epistemological negotiations taking place in the encounter of different research traditions through the practice of translation.