Linguistic features associated with the expression of voice of

voice of Med-E-Pops writers

In the last two decades, there have been various studies within the fields of rhetorics and pragmatics (Salager-Meyers 1994, 1998; Connor 1996, 2003; Luzón-Marco 1998; Lafuente-Millán 2008, 2010) and under a transitivity approach to SFG (Martínez 2001; Blanco-Gómez 2002; Marín-Arrese 2002; Pérez de Ayala 2002) that have focused their analysis on the interpretation of the linguistic realisation of the writer’s presence in specialised written texts. That is, like many others, these researchers have observed from different methodological perspectives that there is a range of linguistic conventions that are aimed at portraying the writers’ intervention in their own texts, for instance, the writers’ commitment or detachment from what is expressed in their texts. Since Med-E-Pops are the resulting products of Med-RAs adaptations, and they therefore mirror their counterparts, I have turned to some studies on the writers’ positioning or proximity in RAs to illustrate that some linguistic features or rhetorical conventions can also be associated with the presence of the writers in their texts. Therefore, these realisations can also be applied to the study of the concept of voice in Med-E-Pops. Apart from justifying this conceptual association that inspires this study, this section also aims to introduce, to a certain extent, the linguistic features associated with the expression of voice of Med-E-Pops writers. These features will be explored in depth in the data analysis section of Chapter 2 when dealing with the methodology used in this contrastive analysis.

The presence of the text writers has been observed from many angles in applied linguistics. One of the most common angles is the phenomenon of attenuation. Following Thomas (1995), the rhetorical attenuation phenomenon could be defined as strategies or elements that help the approximation of author and reader through the use of a certain politeness or of other specific discourse conventions. The main purpose of this phenomenon is to allow text authors to be present and visible in their piece of writing in a more or less objective way

while presenting their research findings. Pérez-Llantada (2003: 30) defines this phenomenon as follows:

The pragmatics of discourse makes necessary the author’s acceptance of limitations, thus showing humility, sincerity in the piece of writing […] Together with the use of persuasive style, technical discourse also complies with the pragmatic criterion of appropriateness, in the sense of adaptability—or rather formality—of style to the audience addressed. One of the most systematic features for showing politeness in academic writing are the well-known “hedges” or “hedging devices” (Kress and Hodge, 1979; Salager Meyer, 1994).

This attempted politeness by RAs writers has usually been studied from pragmatic, semantic and discourse perspectives.51 _{The attenuation phenomenon comprises}

a sociopragmatic angle that allows authors to portray both author uncertainty and their authorship. In other words, this linguistic phenomenon—studied by many other researchers such as Zadeh (1965),Weinreich (1966), Lakoff (1972) or Clemen (1997), portrays the commitment and stance of writers towards what is conveyed in their texts. Among other aspects, Hyland (1996a) suggests that by using rhetorical strategies RAs authors can for instance present research findings in a cautious way or can also encourage research dialogue between the members of their discourse community. For Salager-Meyer (1994, 2003) rhetorical strategies 51 Zadeh (1972), inspired by Lakoff (1972), bases his semantic perspective on the analysis of simple semantic units (i.e. much or essentially) and more complex semantic units (technically or slightly). From a pragmatic perspective, Fraser (1975) and Brown and Levinson (1978) study the potential relationship of modal verbs as mitigating elements. From a sociocultural view Calsamiglia (1996) refers to this pragmatic perspective as follows:

Focusing on the interaction between speaker and hearer, the presentation of the self and face management in the social scene (Goffman 1959, 1967, 1971) provides the background to understand the politeness principles (Leech 1983, Brown and Levinson 1987). Interaction is regulated by the co-operative principle which governs conversational maxims (Grice 1975), and the positive and the negative face of the interactants, that is to say, preserving one’s positive image and securing one’s space of action. (1996: 64)

From a discursive perspective, this politeness or rhetorical phenomenon has been defined by Biber (1988) as several informal linguistic realisations that somehow express a grade of certainty of the author (1988: 240): “Hedges are informal, less specific markers of probability or uncertainty. Downtoners give some indication of the degree of uncertainty; hedges simply mark a proposition as uncertain”. Swales (1990) defines hedges as a rhetorical strategy to preserve authors’ honesty and to help them to become integrated into their discourse community.

have to convey fuzziness, authors’ modesty as regards their achievements and personal involvement and thirdly the impossibility or non-willingness of reaching an absolute accuracy related to the scientific issue, looking for a balance between rhetoric, conviction, caution and probability. Above all, Myers (1989a) reminds researchers that it is essential to fulfil genre conventions in order to get research published. That is, to publish their research, authors have to be “humble servants of the discipline”. Therefore, if some linguistic features can for instance be interpreted as writers’ attitude markers towards what is said in RAs, that means that these features implicitly indicate the writers’ presence associated with them. In other words, if the writers were not present in their texts, they could hardly manifest their attitude, positioning or commitment towards their research in their RAs.

As mentioned in section 1.4.1.1, to study how the voice of Med-E-Pops writers is crafted and projected, more than a single approach should be used. Therefore, since I needed to design a taxonomy that could help to interpret the linguistic evidence found in my data—regarding the presence of the writers, I first review below as a starting point some methodological studies on the rhetorical phenomenon in RAs first and then in impersonality. This review will allow me to develop an empirical methodology that should help me to measure the linguistic realisations of the concept of the writer’s voice for further interpretation of this gradable concept in the Med-E-Pops genre.

Needless to say the same rhetorical item can fulfil different functions depending on the context in which it occurs. Therefore, it is difficult to isolate linguistic elements to be used as rigid discourse strategies. Although many taxonomies have been proposed and applied in the study of rhetorical phenomena in English medical discourse (see for instance Prince et al. 1982; Rounds 1982; Hübler 1983), Salager-Meyer’s (1994) is a good starting point for the formal analysis of the data found in this dissertation. In her early taxonomy for the observation of rhetorical attenuation of medical discourse, Salager-Meyer (1994) establishes five categories for a formal analysis: shields, approximators, author’s personal doubt and direct involvement, emotionally charged expressions and compound hedges. Shields (e.g. appear, probably) are elements that aim to protect the authors from potential discourse community denial when presenting research findings. The author is prudent when presenting his or her results and therefore introduces his or her findings in a humble way. Approximators (e.g. occasionally, roughly) are usually introduced in the discussion section of Med-RAs and aim to convey vagueness, as the researchers should not openly present absolute certainty or full command

of the research finding. The author’s personal doubt and direct involvement (e.g. I believe, to our knowledge) imply full command of the subject but above all attempt to encourage dialogue between the members of the discourse community. This category has been questioned by many scholars such as Fortanet et al. (1998) as regards potential direct involvement as a defensive attitude. Emotionally charged expressions (e.g. particularly encouraging) are almost removed from modern science. As commented before in section 1.2.3, the discourse of science pleads for objectivity and therefore it is highly difficult to find any of these expressions in conventional medical genres. Finally, compound hedges combine different types of rhetorical attenuation (e.g. it

may suggest that). To some extent, Salager-Meyers’ (1994) approach to author’s

personal doubt and direct involvement in RAs casts light onto the interpretation of this dissertation results. However, whereas Med-E-RA authors may display their full command of the subject by using personal pronouns to openly project their voices, Med-E-Pops writers use other linguistic features that are different from personal pronouns, such as the use of reporting with direct and explicit reference to Med-E-RAs researchers. According to many researchers (c.f. Ivanič 1998; Vassileva 1998; Kuo 1999; Tang and John 1999; Hyland 2001, 2002a,b; Fløttum 2003a, 2003b; Harwood 2005; Martínez 2005; Lorés-Sanz and Murillo- Ornat 2007; Lorés-Sanz 2008; John 2009a; Hyland and Sancho 2012; among others), the use of personal pronouns is the clearest expression of the writers’ voice (as mentioned in section 1.4.1.1). Therefore, as explained further in the data analysis section of Chapter 2, the use of personal pronouns is the most visible realisation of the writers’ voice in the cline proposed in this analysis on the concept of the voice of Med-E-Pops writers. Example 4 aims to illustrate this point:

Med-E-RA24 Med-E-Pop24

(4) After we performed propensity matching to control for differences between comparator groups, patients with intraoperatively diagnosed PFO had similar rates of in-hospital stroke (2.3% vs 2.3%, P=.84) and hospital death (3.4% vs 2.6%, P=.11). Length of hospital stay (mean [SD] time, 12.7 [14.0] vs 12.1 [11.7] days; P=.21) and days spent in the ICU (mean [SD] time, 3.5 [7.7] vs 3.1 [6.2] days; P=.70) were also similar between those with intraoperatively diagnosed PFO and those without.en and 55 women).

Further analysis indicated that patients

with intraoperatively diagnosed PFO had similar rates of in-hospital stroke and hospital death. Length of hospital stay and days spent in the ICU were also similar between those with intraoperatively diagnosed PFO and those without.

Hyland (1998) also approaches the rhetorical phenomenon by considering other parameters different from Salager-Meyers (1994).52 _{He distinguishes two types of}

rhetorical attenuation: content oriented and reader oriented. The first type relates “to strictly epistemic functions and express doubt or confidence in statements” (1998: 186). The second type concerns “interpersonal issues in facilitating ratification” (1998: 186). Hyland’s (1998) work enlightens this dissertation data interpretation through his distinction between accuracy-oriented and writer- oriented categories included under the umbrella of content-oriented rhetorical strategies. Table 4—taken from Hyland (1998: 186)—shows that some linguistic features used in RAs and classified by Hyland as hedges of writers’ commitment can be interpreted as representations of the writers’ alignment with what is conveyed in the text. In the latter category he includes impersonal expressions such as the passive, abstract rhetors and empty subjects. These linguistic features— and not the other features displayed in this table—interpretable as Hedges writer commitment, are two of the most recurring features in the Med-E-Pops corpus. Two examples are shown below to illustrate this point:

(5) Medical records were used to analyse the relative risk of ovarian cancer. [Med-E-Pop26].

(6) A new study, published online July 20 in Pediatrics, found that the Internet is the newest place for kids to get exposure to positive messages on tobacco use. Although tobacco content was found on less than 1 percent of the pages that teens view, there were more pro-tobacco pages than anti-tobacco pages. [Med-E-Pop33].

Therefore, the observation of these recurring linguistic features should lead this dissertation not only to the interpretation of the Med-E-Pops writers’ commitment but also to the interpretation of the gradable phenomenon of voice in Med-E-Pops, which is the core of this study:

52 In a later work Hyland defines hedges through contrast with boosters. The former indicate that “information is presented as opinion rather than accredited fact, or it may be to convey deference, modesty or respect for colleagues’ views” (2000: 87). Hedges are once again described as features that portray the level of writers’ involvement or commitment with what is conveyed in their own texts. On the other hand, boosters, according to Hyland (2000: 87), “allow writers to express their certainty in what they say and to mark involvement and solidarity with their audience, stressing shared information, group membership and direct engagement with readers”. Boosters have not been considered in this study because no tokens have been found in the Med-E-Pops corpus.

CONTENT-ORIENTED

Accuracy-oriented Writer-oriented READER-ORIENTED

Hedges propositional content Hedges writer commitment Hedges assertiveness

Attribute Type Precision Adverbs: • Content disjuncts • Style disjuncts • Downtoners Reliability type

Epistemic Lexical verbs • Epistemic adjectives • Content disjuncts adverbs • Limited knowledge

Epistemic Lexical Verbs: • Judgmental • Evidential Impersonal expressions: • Passive • Abstract rhetors • Empty subjects Modal verbs • Thematic epistemic devices • Attribution to literature Impersonal reference to:

• Method • Model

• Experimental conditions

Epistemic Lexical Verbs: • Judgmental • Deductive Personal attribution Personal reference to • Method • Model

Assume shared goals • Hypotheticals • Conditionals Involve the reader

• Indirect questions • Refer to testability Table 4. Hyland’s table on the most frequent hedge realisations and their functions (1998: 186).

Modality, for instance, widely studied in relation to rhetorical attenuation— Downing and Locke 1992; Hunston and Francis 2000; Nystrand 2001; Nuyts 2001;Piqué-Angordans et al. 2002; Vázquez et al. 2006; Mur-Dueñas 2010a; Lorés-Sanz 2011a; among many other researchers, has also been left out of this piece of research due to the almost complete absence of tokens in the Med-E-Pops. Med-E-Pops writers may not attempt to evaluate what has been conveyed in the corresponding Med-E-RA, which is the source for the Med-E- Pop, but to display a clear, simple and understandable adaptation of the final medical findings. Moreover, the potential absence of modality also prevents Med-E-Pops writers from both evaluating and showing their attitude to the research or the researchers, and therefore they avoid projecting any trace of their authorship or visibility.

The three most recurrent linguistic features associated with the concept of voice found in this piece of research—the use of personal pronouns, passive constructions and abstract rhetors—have been studied from various angles in applied linguistics. There are studies such as Oliver’s (2004) that explore the rhetorical medical discourse in English; interpreting, associating and merging

different linguistic features from different linguistic levels. Oliver’s analysis taxonomy included below shows how these concepts could be related:

Pragmatic Categories Functions in Discourse Linguistic Items Linguistic Level

1. SHIELDS To protect the subject

and anticipate negative feedback or the so called “boomerang effect”. Allows scientists to present their knowledge cautiously and introduce claims. (Salager-Meyer, 1994) a)modal verbs b) semi-auxiliaries c)probability adjectives d) probability adverbs e)epistemic verbs LEXICAL 2. APPROXIMATORS To make things

vague and to indicate probability. This is related to the author’s avoidance of personal involvement and the impossibility of reaching absolute accuracy (Salager- Meyer, 1994). Adjectives and/or adverbs of: a) quantity b) degree c) frequency d) time

Non personal forms a) conditional b) First-person markers 3. AUTHOR’S PERSONAL DOUBT AND INVOLMENT To emphasise the interpersonal

dimension: evaluate and assess one’s material and negotiate the status of one’s claims. Encourages dialogue with the audience and facilitates discussion (Hyland, 1998).

MORPHOLOGICAL

4. AGENTLESS

STRATEGIES 1) These are used to modify or even hide

the author’s attitude towards the content (Lewn, 1998). 2) To fulfil academic

conventions, to seem more precise, more scientific (Salager- Meyer 2003). a) agentless passive b) depersonalisation (active verbs with inanimate subjects and nominalisations). SYNTACTICAL

Table 5. Oliver’s (2004: 181) taxonomy for the study of rhetorical

It was Martínez’s (2001) seminal work on impersonality in medical discourse which eventually cast light onto the interpretation of the linguistic features associated with the expression of voice in Med-E-Pops. This study emphasises the importance of analysing impersonal structures as alternative realisations of the syntactic subject of writers’ actions. Her understanding of how this impersonality can be perceived as a gradable feature in Med-RAs can also be extrapolated to the interpretation of how gradable the voice of the Med-E-Pops writers could also be, since this dissertation has obtained its results from Med-E-RAs and Med-E- Pops contrastive analysis. Figure 2 illustrates how Martínez’s (2001) approach to impersonality in Med-RAs can be applied to the most recurring linguistic features associated with the expression of voice in Med-E-Pops. Her ideas of grading in a cline the lexico-grammatical realisations of the writers’ impersonality in Med- RAs has also shown how to measure and interpret the writers’ realisations of voice in Med-E-Pops. See figure 2 below:

[- visible Med-E-Pop writers]

[+ visible Med-E-Pop writers]

Animate agent +verb

(We were able to separate the ancestral

sex chromosome branch…)[only in Med-E-RAs]

Passive contructions+agent

(The research was financed by

the World Health Organisation)

Passive agentless construction

(Infection with the H1N1 virus has been reported)

Active verbs with inanimate subjects

(The study found that obese pregnant women …)

Reporting sequences

(Dr. De-Kun Li, the lead author, said that…) Figure 2. Cline of (in)visibility designed for the interpretation of the corpus.

This figure shows the four linguistic features that linguistically characterise the voice of the Med-E-Pops writers in this dissertation. That is, the use of; animate agent + verb constructions, passive constructions, active verbs with inanimate subjects (or abstract rhetors) and reporting. This last feature is conceived in this piece of research as a genre-specific syntactic construction—as explained in section 1.3 when dealing with the issue of medical popularizations such as JRV and WAs—which is considered the most visible representation of the voice of Med-E-Pops writer in this study, since these writers appear to decide what

should be reported and quoted and how. This linguistic evidence reveals that Med-E-Pops writers are more present in their texts when using reported speech than when using passive constructions because the syntactic agents of these constructions, despite not being mentioned, are assumed to be the researchers or the research institutions. As we move up the axis of the above figure 2 it could be interpreted that these linguistic features show a less visible Med-E-Pops writers’ presence but a more visible Med-E-RAs authors’ presence in the Med-E-Pops. Chapter 2 explains in depth how I obtained and developed this taxonomy in this contrastive data analysis. Chapter 2 also deals with the methodology utilised to gather and justify the corpora explored in this piece of research beyond Chapter 3. Conclusions drawn from the discussion of the results obtained are included in Chapter 4. In that chapter I will reflect on whether the linguistic choices that in this dissertation are considered to represent the voice of Med-E-Pops writers were triggered by the text communicative purposes, the generic context of Med- E-Pops, the dissemination channels, the target audience, the social and cultural values of the addressees, the willingness to reach absolute accuracy by the Med- E-Pops writers, the intention to reduce a potential conflict related to the research or perhaps a lack of commitment by the writers.

CORPUS AND METHODOLOGY

Implicit in scientific papers there are several lexico-grammatical choices whose textual effect is to depersonalise the research presented in the RAs depriving it from apparent human intervention. In the case of Med-RAs, this should be interpreted as a rhetorical convention shared by the members of the medical discourse community and characteristic of a genre-specific scenario. The assumed aim of such practice is to present the research as an objective process. As regards Med-E-Pops, this depersonalisation process can be taken to be a way for Med-E-Pops writers to detach themselves from the report made. However, whereas RAs researchers do not avoid projecting their authorship, although the research is narrated as depersonalised and objective, in the genre of popularizations writers simplify the scientific lexico- grammar used keeping the scientific rigour yet bringing the presence and voice of