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

Research article abstracts, as academic texts, are not necessarily more objective than other texts; they are simply more effective at hiding subjectivity linguistically (cf. Bhatia 1993, 1996). Abstracts are largely based on rhetorical activity, involving interactions between writers and readers. In this perspective, researchers do not just offer their own points of view, but seek to negotiate a credible account of themselves and their work by claiming solidarity with their readers, evaluating ideas and acknowledging alternative views. The aim of the present research paper is to investigate the way authors assert and present their results to their colleagues and peers, in order to build their own identity vis-à-vis their discourse-community. The data is drawn from an xml TEI conformant corpus of 1,035 research article abstracts, about 200,000 words, from two disciplines in two scientific international journals. The analysis, both quantitative and qualitative, sets out to highlight certain lexico-grammatical features specifically related to ‘cultural-identity’ language. Since, this research paper focuses on evaluation (Aijmer 2005, Mauranen 2004, Stubbs 2001, and Swales 2004) and identity, words under investigation are singular and plural personal pronouns. By means of collocational analysis, we attempt to offer a framework for analysing the linguistic resources connected to evaluation which occur with specific words related to evaluation. The comparative distributional frequencies are the basis for assessing the pragmatic or rhetorical role played by those specific words or constructions. Results of the present study support the hypothesis that evaluation is genre specific and embodies interactions between writers and readers, regardless of the discipline. Precise lexical choices and words appear to be more frequent. However, textual analysis and identification of evaluation pose serious problems to the methodological approach especially with the application of computer-assisted analytic techniques in academic arguments.