Reporting verbs argue, claim and believe in Linguistics research articles: A corpus-based study
Abstract
No research article is imaginable without reporting verbs. They help the writer voice his/her own views against the backdrop of other community voices, while also serving to project his/her authority and expertise in the field. The vast variety of reporting verbs in academic discourse and their disciplinary specificity account for a huge challenge this topic can pose for EAL academic writers. In this study, we analyzed the rhetorical and discursive functions of strong reporting verbs argue, claim and believe in a corpus of 40 articles from leading Linguistics journals, with close attention to their Self/Other references. It has been revealed that argue and claim are mostly used in this realm to refer to other authors, while believe is slightly more common with reference to the writer himself/herself. While it tends to be perceived as interchangeable with argue, claim is almost exclusively used to introduce the opinion of others; besides, it is often an opinion that the writer does not fully support. Also, we have shown that it is typical for argue to play a discourse-organizing role, being featured in retrospective endophoric markers. We believe it is important to help novice academic writers understand the subtle nuances in the semantics of these reporting verbs and their discourse functions.
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