Stance in REF submissions: Authorial positioning in impact Narratives

The REF (Research Excellence Framework) is the UK government’s means of allocating funding to universities based on assessments of the research they produce. Conducted every five years, this exercise now includes not only the ‘quality’ of research, but also its real world ‘impact’. This helps determine the £7.16 billion distributed annually to universities and influences the reputations of institutions and academics. Writers are therefore keen to make the most persuasive argument for their work they can in these submissions through the narrative case studies that the submission requires. In this paper we examine all 6361 case studies from the last exercise in 2021 to explore the rhetorical presentation of impact through an analysis of authorial stance. We found considerable use of self-mention, hedges and boosters with the hard science fields containing statistically significant more markers and applied disciplines being particularly strong users. The study contributes to our understanding of stance in academic writing and the role of rhetorical persuasion in high stakes assessment genres.