Talking to the Literature: Stance Taking in Citing Others' Work

This chapter explores the role of reporting verbs and stance markers to convey the writer’s evaluation of information imported from other sources, commenting on its evidential status positively, negatively or neutrally. Academic arguments must balance originality with established knowledge, showing that new claims are embedded in an existing disciplinary literature. To use citation effectively in building on prior work and differentiating their own research from it, writers must take a stance towards the reported material and this positioning can be a key aspect of citation. It is clear that the embedding of current work in earlier research remains a key aspect of academic argument, with the massive rise in both the total and normed referencing of prior research indicating both the growing importance of the practice and the expanding literature to cite. Instead, there seems to be a growing preference for the neutral incorporation of prior literature into current work.