Adverbial stance marking in the introduction and conclusion sections of legal research articles

Abstract

Although scientific research articles have traditionally been taken as examples of an objective style of writing that aims to minimise researchers voices in their texts (Gilbert and Mulkay, 1984:42), authors inevitably adopt stances towards the information presented and the target audience when writing their papers. This article explores authorial stance as expressed by adverbial markers in the introduction and conclusion sections of legal research papers. Following Biber et al. (1999), and Conrad and Biber (1999), our aim is to identify the most frequent adverbial markers of stance present in each section as indicators of (i) epistemicity, (ii) attitude, and (iii) style. We will try to show whether or not there are functional differences in the use of adverbial stance markers, and whether or not these are derived from the different communicative purposes of these sections.