Certainty markers in Lithuanian and English research articles in the humanities and social sciences

Abstract

Studies of author stance expression remain one of the major trends in academic discourse investigations frequently addressing the issues of language variation from cross-disciplinary (e.g., Hyland2008)andcross-linguistic (e.g.,Fløttumetal.2006)perspectives. Whilemuchoftheresearch concentrates on differences between the so-called soft and hard fields, fewer studies investigate ways of author stance variation in disciplines with in one of the two fields.Thispaper looks at the frequency information and usage patterns of linguistic items acting as author certainty markers in English and Lithuanian research articles in linguistics, literary studies, sociology and economics. It attempts to contributetotheexistingresearchonboosters/emphaticswithinthehumanities andsocial sciences (Vassileva2001,Abdi2002,Bondi2008,Afros&Schryer2009,Abdollahzadeh2011,Hu&Cao2011). The second issue the paper addresses is intercultural variation in the expression of author certainty. Mapping out argumentation patterns of different discourse communities not only helps to define their national academic identity features, but also higlights those that are discipline specific (see Fløttum et al. 2006, Lorés-Sanz 2011).