TY - JOUR
T1 - “Long-term effects of Covid-19 are poorly understood”: Attitude in medical journal abstracts and highlights
AU - Zou, Hang (Joanna)
AU - Hyland, Ken
N1 - Data availability: Data will be made available on request.
Funding: This work was supported by the Chinese Ministry of Education of Humanities and Social Science Project (Recontextualization of New Media Scientific Discourse from the Perspective of Enhancing Emergency Language Competence, Grant number: 22YJC740111).
PY - 2025/10
Y1 - 2025/10
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
U2 - 10.1016/j.esp.2025.06.002
DO - 10.1016/j.esp.2025.06.002
M3 - Article
SN - 0889-4906
VL - 80
SP - 60
EP - 73
JO - English for Specific Purposes
JF - English for Specific Purposes
ER -