Persuasion in academic articles

Ken Hyland

The view that academic writing is persuasive is not news. It dates back

at least as far as Aristotle and is widely accepted by academics

themselves. The kind of persuasion that these writers employ

however is more contentious, and raises a number of important issues,

not least those concerning the relationship between reality and

accounts of it, the efficacy of logical induction, and the role of social

communities in constructing knowledge.

There is a widespread belief that academic discourse is a unique

form of argument because it depends upon the demonstration of

absolute truth, empirical evidence or flawless logic. Its persuasive

potency is seen as grounded in rationality and based on exacting

methodologies, dispassionate observation, and informed reflection.

Academic writing, in other words, represents the discourses of `Truth’

(Lemke, 1995: 178). It provides an objective description of what the

natural and human world is actually like and this, in turn, serves to

distinguish it from the socially contingent We see this form of

persuasion as a guarantee of reliable knowledge, and we invest it with

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cultural authority, free of the cynicism with which we view the partisan

rhetoric of politics and commerce.

It has always been a basic conviction of the sociology of science

however, that there is an intimate connection between knowledge and

the social practices of the academic community. Writing is a social act

and every successful text displays the writer’s awareness of both its

readers and the consequences of the writing. In this paper I want to

explore some of the ways that persuasion is interactionally

accomplished by examining its foundations in disciplinary communities.

My argument will be that not only is the research article a highly

persuasive genre, but that differences in the use of rhetorical features

between disciplines cannot be explained by some universal laws of

proof or logic. Instead, these features can be seen as reflecting the

institutionally sanctioned social practices of those who write and read

them.

lnduction as persuasion: scientifically demonstrated knowledge

I want to begin by looking at a familiar view of how persuasion is

accomplished in the hard sciences. Science is held in high esteem in the

modern world precisely because it provides the model of rationality

and detached reasoning. The label `scientific’ confers reliability on a

method and prestige on its users, it implies all that is most objective

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and empirically verifiable about academic knowledge, and has been

imitated by other areas of human inquiry which are often considered

softer and more rhetorical in their forms of persuasion.

Scientific accounts have been, until fairly recently, widely seen as

reflecting a previously existing reality, independent of the observing

scientist and knowable through the application of appropriate

procedures. For the inductivist, impartial observation and rigorous

experimental methods provide sure foundations for knowledge by

making inferences about natural phenomena. This realist model regards

writing as a means of simply dressing the thoughts one sends into the

world and sees persuasion as a function of logical necessity. Scientific

papers are therefore persuasive because they are observations which

communicate independently existing truths. These truths originate in

our direct access to phenomena in the external world. Persuasion is

merely neutral description for the legitimacy of knowledge is built on

non-contingent pillars of experimental demonstration, replication, and

falsifiability, and the text merely the channel which allows the scientist

to relay the truth from nature.

But induction offers probabilities rather than proof. It is logically

not the case that if the premises of an inductive inference are true

then the conclusion must be true, for by moving from the particular to

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statements about the unobserved, we must acknowledge uncertainty

and inaccuracy. The failure of predictions and models to withstand

experimental tests are therefore critical in science, for theories can

never be established as even probably true by inductive logic.

Unfortunately, conclusive falsifications are also ruled out by the

absence of any secure observational base upon which they could be

tested (Chalmers, 1978). The problem, for both inductivism and

falsification, is that observation depends on what the mind allows the

eye to see, and this is determined, to a large extent, by the theories

and assumptions the scientist brings to the problem (e. g. Kuhn,

1970). Observations are as fallible as the theories they presuppose,

and therefore fail to provide a solid foundation for the acceptance of

scientific claims.

All reporting occurs within a pragmatic context and in relation to

a theory which fits observation and data in meaningful patterns. Thus

Weimer ( 1977: 5) points out that ``theories argue for a particular

pattern or way of seeing reality”. Similarly, the eminent theoretical

physicist Stephen Hawking (1993:44) notes that while a theory may

describe a wide class of observations, ``beyond that it makes no sense

to ask if it corresponds to reality, because we do not know what

reality is independent of a theory”. Thus it is naive to regard texts as

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accurate representations of what the world is like because this

representation is always filtered through acts of selection,

foregrounding, and symbolisation. Because we have no access to

absolute proof, to discuss results and theories is not to provide an

accurate account of `what the world is really like’; it is to engage in

particular forms of persuasion.

Academic texts do more than report research that plausibly

represents an external world, they work to transform research

findings or armchair reflections into academic knowledge. This

knowledge is not a privileged representation of reality, but a

conversation between individuals. To accept this view we do not have

to fall into a realm of idealism divorced from the physical world.

Sociologists as much as scientists need their sensory experience of the

world, but this experienced reality under-determines what they can

know/say about it, and they must therefore draw on principles and

orientations from their cultural resources to organize it. We cannot

step outside the beliefs or discourses of our social groups to find a

justification for our ideas that is somehow `objective',’, and this leads us

to see writing as an engagement in a social process, where texts reflect

appropriate disciplinary practices.

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Interaction as persuasion: socially constructed knowledge

When we look to the interactions of academics themselves for

evidence of how persuasion is accomplished. we see `reality’ as

constructed through processes that are essentially social; involving

authority, credibility and disciplinary appeals. Texts are produced

through the actions of situated writers, and are persuasive only when

they employ social and linguistic conventions that colleagues find

convincing. We therefore explore a more pragmatically oriented

realism that grounds academic persuasion in disciplinary practices for

producing agreement.

Thus the persuasive practices of science are socially contingent.

While `empirical adequacy’ may be the cornerstone of gaining

ratification of one's work, the fact that ``truth” does not lie exclusively

in the external world means that knowledge can only emerge from a

disciplinary matrix. There will always be more than one plausible

interpretation of any piece of data and more than one way of looking

at any problem. So while all claims require ratification to become

knowledge, readers always have the option of refuting them. At the

heart of academic persuasion then, is the writer's attempts to

anticipate possible negative reactions to his or her claims.

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In sum, effective persuasion requires an awareness of the cognitive and

interpersonal backgrounds of the audience and a rhetorical anticipation

of their likely responses. This means that all claims have to display a

plausible relationship with `reality’ (the discipline's epistemological

framework), and writers must demonstrate this by encoding ideational

material, employing warrants, and framing arguments in ways that the

potential audience will find most convincing. In addition, writers have

to create a professionally acceptable persona and an appropriate

attitude, both to their readers and their arguments, by displaying

proper respect for colleagues and due regard for their views and

reputations. Persuasion therefore involves relating ones’ independent

research to shared experience, collectively creating knowledge

through interacting with one's peers.

Persuasion and disciplinary ideologies

Persuasion in academic articles comprises a series of rhetorical choices

designed to galvanise support express collegiality, resolve difficulties.

and avoid disagreement in ways which most closely correspond to the

community's assumptions, methods, and bodies of knowledge.

Importantly then, persuasion is not simply accomplished with language,

but with language that demonstrate legitimacy. Writers must recognize

and replicate the field’s organizational structures, beliefs, and

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authorized institutional practices in order to appeal to readers from

within the boundaries of their discipline.

Discoursal conventions are persuasive because they are

significant carriers of the epistemological and social beliefs of

community members. I want to suggest that regularities in these

conventions are influenced by knowledge constructing practices that

broadly reflect the types of intellectual inquiry and cognitive

understandings of the hard and soft knowledge domains. The concept

of hard and soft fields carries connotations of clear-cut divisions,

risking reductionism by packing a multitude of complex abstractions

into a few simple opposites. But this scheme is directly related to

established disciplinary groupings (Becher, 1989), and gains support

from studies which suggest that it may actually represent participant

actors’ own perceptions of their practices (Biglan, 1973; Kolb, 1981 ;

Hyiand, 1999). If the hard-soft distinction is conceived as a continuum,

then I believe it offers a useful way of examining general similarities and

differences between fields.

The hard knowledge disciplines can be seen as predominantly

analytical and structuralist. concerned with quantitative model building

and the analysis of observable experience to establish empirical

uniformities. Explanations thus derive from precise measurement and

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systematic scrutiny of relationships between a limited number of

controlled variables. Knowledge is characterised by relatively steady

cumulative growth, problems emerge from prior problems and there

are fairly clear-cut criteria of what constitutes a new contribution and

how it builds on what has come before (Becher, 1989; Hyland, 1998b).

Soft knowledge disciplines, in contrast, often concern the influence of

human actions on events. Variables are therefore more varied and

causal connections more tenuous. These fields tend to employ

synthetic rather than analytic inquiry strategies and exhibit a more

reiterative pattern of development with less scope for reproducibility

(Becher, 1989: 12- 17; Kolb, 1981).

These representations have rhetorical effects which are

reflected in preferred patterns of persuasion. In the following two

sections I will examine some of these patterns and outline how they

are used by academics to demonstrate their professional credibility

and the value of their work to their disciplines.

Interaction and evaluation: Taking a stance

One significant dimension of academic persuasion is the expression of

authorial stance. In framing information, writers also adopt

interactional and evaluative positions: conveying opinions, judgements,

and degrees of commitment to what they say, boosting or toning down

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claims and criticisms, expressing surprise or importance, and

addressing readers directly. Stance refers to the ways that writers

project themselves into their texts to communicate their integrity,

credibility, involvement, and a relationship to their subject matter and

their readers (Biber & Finegan, 1989; Hyland, 1999a). It expresses a

writer’s socially constructed persona and has three main elements:

evidentiality, affect and relation.

Evidentiality indicates the degree of confidence in what is said, and

can also interactionally mark informality, conviviality and group

membership (Coates, 1987; Holmes, 1995). It comprises hedges and

boosters. Hedges (1) are items such as possible, might, and believe

which indicate the writer's decision to present information as an

opinion rather than as a fact (Hyland. 1996, 1998). Boosters (2), on the

other hand, mark the expression of certainty and emphasise the force

of a proposition.

(1) However, it seems likely that the context in which these

students study is important in understanding the results. (AL)
Heat dissipation can be largely attributed to line sources and has
a time constant rTH, typically in the region of a microsecond. (EE)

(2) It is indeed the case that the same more inclusive standards of
political citizenship have been extended not only to women but also
to children, and arguably, to fetuses. (Soc)

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 (3) This particular result is undoubtedly attributable to the
impending incorporation of Hong Kong into the People's Republic
of China. (Mk)

The persuasive power of these devices is enhanced by the tact

that writers also manipulate commitment to display interactive rather

than propositional uncertainty (Myers, 1989). The use of boosters can

mark involvement with the topic (Chafe, 1986) and indicate solidarity

with readers (Holmes, 1984) while hedges can signal acknowledge-

ment of readers’ face needs (Myers, 1989) and community norms

concerning rhetorical respect for colleagues’ views (Hyland, 1998).

Affective factors reflect the writer's viewpoint or assessment of

information. Obviously language serves to organise and express

experience and so it always codes orientation and perspective, but I

am referring here to the overt expression of a range of personal

feelings and dispositions. Attitude markers thus convey surprise,

obligation, agreement. importance, frustration, and so on. They are

typically writer-oriented and are most often signalled by attitude verbs,

necessity modals, sentence adverbs, and adjectives:

(3) It is my hope that this model will facilitate further inquiry into
. . . (AL)

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 . . ..the time step must be checked for each iteration using the
Courant-Freidrichs-Lewy criterion to ensure numerical stability.
(ME)

Unfortunately, there are serious doubts about the fitness of the

concept of life to play such a major role in moral theory. (Phil)

. . . it is important to consider the hydration of the plant the

minimum temperature and . . (Bio)

Relational elements refer to the discursive construction of

relations with an audience. The ways authors represent their audience

and their own involvement contributes to the level of engagement and

detachment in a text, and its interpersonal tenor (Halliday, 1994).

With relational markers writers can explicitly address readers to

either selectively focus their attention, emphasise a relationship or

include them as participants in the text situation These consist of

second person pronouns, question forms, imperatives, and digressions

which directly address the audience (Crismore et al, 1993).

(4) Now let us consider equation (8a) and form the scalar product
(EE)

Why did impoverished and almost defenseless shantytowns emerge

as the center of resistance to authoritarian rule! (Soc)

Consider now the simple conventional reflection effect.. (Phy)

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 In addition, writers use person markers to acknowledge the

presence of both themselves and their audience to create a sense of

disciplinary solidarity and shared endeavour. A writer's decision to

present material subjectively (we believe, my analysis shows),

interpersonally (we can see from this), or objectively (it is possible

that) is thus an important dimension of stance.

(5) We describe two nuclear genes that behave genetically as . .

(Bio)
I suggest that this arises largely because of the extreme
powerlessness of . . (Soc)

While this scheme is not exhaustive, the classification provides a

basis to compare the persuasive preferences of different communities.

The table below shows the distribution of over 300 stance markers

across research articles in the same eight disciplines as above. The

extent to which writers represent themselves and their readers in

these texts demonstrates the importance of stance in making content

persuasive to colleagues. More interestingly, the distribution of these

features suggests that they reflect disciplinary practices. Collectively,

the papers in applied linguistics, marketing, philosophy and sociology

contained almost 30% more stance expressions than those in the

sciences and engineering, coinciding perhaps with our intuitions that

the sciences produce more impersonal texts.

Table Stance features in academic articles (per 1,000 words) (From
Hyland, 1999b)

item App. Market Phil. Socio- Elec. Mech. Bio- Physics

Ling. -ing b-Y Eng. Eng. ‘0ti-Y
Hedges 18.0 20.0 I 8.5 13.3 / 8.2 / 9.6 13.6 9.6
Attitude 6.9 8.9 7.0 1 5.5 / 5.6 2.9 3.9 ’
Markers
Boosters 6.2 7.1 9.7 4.6 1 3.2 i 5.0 3.9 6.0

Person 4.8 / 6.2 6.5 3.5 2.6 j 1.3 3.3 5.0

Markers / I
Relational I.91 1.3 I I.8 I 4.6 1.2 / 1.8

Totals
markers iI 39.5 / 41.5 55.4 1 33.1 20.7 ! 23.4 24.3 / 26.4

The table suggests that what constitutes admissible reasoning differs

between communities. The view that hard knowledge is cumulative

and tightly structured, for example, means that writers can make use

of a highly formalised reporting system to represent arguments

compactly, and this enables them to minimise their apparent presence

in the text. In contrast, writers in the soft disciplines cannot assume

an appropriate framework of knowledge, but must rely on a personal

projection into the text to invoke an intelligent reader and a credible,

collegial writer. In other words, where problems are less clearly

defined and demarcated, criteria for what counts as adequate

explanation are less assured and interpretative variation increases.

This is particularly clear in the greater use of hedging and higher

densities of attitude and relational markers in the soft-knowledge

texts. Hedges are not only used to convey propositional uncertainty,

but also to make claims more acceptable to colleagues, softening

interpersonal imposition and displaying conformity to interactional

norms. Hedges were twice as frequent in linguistics, marketing and

philosophy as engineering and physics, and this suggested a greater

orientation to readers and more sensitivity to the possible subjective

negation of their claims . Typical hedges in the soft areas appeared to

carry a strong interpersonal element:

(6) ..one may suggest that discussing the moral and social merits
of .. . (SOC)

One could conceivably conclude from this type of result that . . .

(AL)

We cannot op possibly predict what would have happened under

different historical conditions. (Phil)

Similarly, soft-knowledge writers also showed greater efforts to engage

readers in their discourse by the use of relational markers. While

writers in the hard disciplines used imperatives mainly to direct

readers to a particular aspect of the exposition or help guide them

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through the text (7), in the soft field papers they seemed less

impositional and sought to express a more personal style (8):

(7) It is seen that the measured port-to-port insertion loss of 1 .7

dB is .. (EE)

To this purpose, let the load vary in a quasi-static manner . . . (ME)

Note the increase in power requirement and BE field

compression and distortion as the Bo field increases. (Phy)

(8) I must ask readers to trust me that a viable syntax and

semantics can be had.... (Phil)

..behind the economics, if you like, is the validation of an ethical

orientation.. . . (Soc)

Let me finally add that I do not know of any interesting account of

vacuous . . . (Phil)

The distribution of inclusive pronouns as a persuasive strategy of

reader engagement varied dramatically. They were heavily used by

philosophers, while engineers employed them sparsely and they did not

occur in the science articles at all. A sense of in-group solidarity in

philosophy is also promoted by the high use of emphatics. Inferential

mustand the adverbs clearlyand obviouslywere heavily used by

philosophers and worked to invoke an intelligent reader in the text, a

co-player in a closely-knit community of peers. Emphatics were also

relatively common in the physics, marketing and applied linguistics

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papers, but here they tended to stress the strength of warrants in

establishing a correspondence between data and claims, predominantly

with establish and show, and to express confidence in expected logical

out-comes using predict and will

(9) So it looks as if indicative conditionals must be material

implications. (Phil)

This is obviously quite unlikely. (Phil)

Furthermore we have demonstrated for the first time that the

introduction of a .., Phy)

Having established the validity and reliability of the measurement

instrument, the analysis now turns to consideration of the
hypotheses. (MK)

Listening will continue to play a large part in pronunciation

training,. . . . (AL)

The limited use of stance markers in science and engineering articles

on the other hand appears to reflect the construction of a particular

narrative of events that emphasises researcher invisibility. Writers

typically conceal their rhetorical identities behind a cloak of linguistic

detachment. Impersonality in knowledge creation emphasises a

collaborative endeavour driven by the goal of helping nature to reveal

itself more clearly. Not only does the lower use of attitude and relational

markers express this reluctance to project a prominent authorial

presence, but attitude markers tended to reveal the author's opinions or

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character only through commenting on what readers should attend to,

and how the writer would like them to respond to information:

(10) ...is a difficult, but important and interesting, subject of

extensive study over the past.. . (ME)

It is clearly necessary to use improved device structures and to

employ... (EE)

In simulation studies one must check limiting case of calculations

. . . (Phy)

. .it is important to consider the hydration of the plant the

minimum temperature and .. (Bio)

The writers of soft papers on the other hand tend to persuade with a far

greater variety and more opinionated affective signals:

(11) It is reasonable to assume that other variations in the status of

women may be consequential. (Soc)

It is my hooe that this model will facilitate further inquiry into . . .

(AL)

Chesterton was a serious and even excellent philosopher. (Phil)

Conversely, the toned, aerobicized look that fits with the

collective mood offers a body image ideal standard that is not so easily
discounted. (MK)

This suppression of the author was also evident in the

reluctance of hard-knowledge writers to offer personal judgements

when hedging claims. A higher proportion of hedges tend to be modal

verbs, which are less specific in attributing a source to a viewpoint and

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there is a marked preference for the use of ``abstract rhetors'', which

allow agency to be attributed to things:

( 12) The results presented here suggest . . (Bio)

The code equations imply that . . . (ME)

. , . hence, as the triangular requence suggests. the rotation unravels

the effect.. . . (Phy)

In the soft disciplines writers were more likely to indicate the subjectivity

of evaluations with the use of verbs which conveyed more personal

conjecture:

(13) I suggest that certain ways of thinking about social movements

are likely to be . . . (Soc)

Although further research is needed, we suspect that the type of

new product used in . . . (MK)

Wittgenstein's philosophy, I believe, suggests that such values

should be argued . . (Phil)

Perhaps the clearest indication of the writer's self-presentation is

the use of person markers. The decision to use first person can help

writers to construct an explicitly accountable stance or to conceal the

interpretative practices behind their accounts. But while the engineering

texts in my corpus contained very few references to the author, both

biology and physics used this form extensively, the intra-disciplinary

variability suggesting a high degree of rhetorical freedom. There do seem

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to be disciplinary preferences however, for the verbs most commonly co-

occurring with the first person, indicating distinct representations of

authorial presence.

There was an overall tendency for the first person to collocate

with verbs conveying reasoning and possibility in the humanities and social

sciences, and with those describing research activities in the hard

sciences. In the soft papers we find personal intrusion being used to refer

more to perspectives on the object studied, suggesting writers’ decisions

to place their claims in a framework of personal perception (14). In

contrast. in the engineering and science papers the first person was

mainly used to construct the text and present decisions, rather than take

a personal stand on the object studied (15).

(14) I argue for a modified essentialist account of spacetime points

that avoids these obstacles. (Phil)

I suggest that this arises largely because of the extreme

powerlessness of . . . (Soc)

..we concur with Baumgardner and Tongue (I 988: 136) who call it.. .
(AL)

We believe that the threshold force was not high enough to

distinguish the difference.. (EE)

(15) In this paragraph we report a comparison between the results

obtained with our method.. . (EE)

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 In this case we rewrite the former two expressions of equation (25)
as . . . (ME)

We acid shocked cells in the presence of the non-specific CA2+

channel inhibitor La3+. (Bio)

In simulation we set x=2, about I as much as x. (Phy)

Clearly the role of the first person offers the writer complex

and varied ideological and interpersonal positions, but these

preliminary findings suggest broad differences in the ways that

academics employ it for best persuasive effect.

Taken together then, the writer's expression of stance suggest that

this is an important aspect of academic persuasion, conveying the field-

specific expressive and interpersonal meanings which help readers to

evaluate information and writers to gain acceptance for their work Once

again, persuasion can be regarded as a response to the potential

negatability of a writer's claims, acting to engage the reader and anticipate

objections by soliciting support and displaying competence and

reasonableness.

Claiming significance and credibility

We have seen that persuasion in academic research articles largely

involves constructing a text using devices that best position the writer

and his or her research within a particular discourse community. In this

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section I will briefly review a number of other discursive strategies that

writers use for both promoting their work and for demonstrating

disciplinary competence.

One way academics claim significance is to open their papers with a

promotional statement. In the science and engineering papers writers did

not introduce their work with the purpose of naively establishing a

territory, but frequently by offered the research as a valuable contribution

to pressing real-world issues:

(16) Physical maps are an important resource for most molecular

research facilitating positional cloning of trait genes, sequencing of
genomic DNAs and analysis of chromosome and genome
structure in detail. (Bio)

The self-diffusion coefficient of a material is an important physical

parameter. It is a very sensitive probe to the structure of a
medium. (Phy)

Therefore, it is of paramount importance for the shop engineer to

be capable of preventing the front end bending from occurring in
his mill. A first step toward this goal is to understand how the
metal flow characteristics are affected by each of various factors
that may lead to the unbalanced rolling. (EE)

Thus while we might expect practitioners to be aware of these points.

their inclusion in the introduction serves to reinforce the significance

of the topic in the minds of readers.

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 Introductions in the humanities/social science texts more often

filled-in potential gaps in readers’ topic awareness, but they also

frequently claimed topic centrality (Swales, 1990: 141). The principal

means of establishing importance was to establish a disciplinary

relevant, rather than real-world problem:

(17) My main concern in this paper will be to examine an essentialist

solution, proposed by Maudlin (1990), for a concrete problem in
Philosophy of Spacetime: the dilemma between spacetime
substantivalism and determinism raised by the New Leibuizian
Argument (NLA). (Phil)

The problem of separating the effects of household heterogeneity

from state dependence in brand choice models is important from
a theoretical as well as a managerial perspective. (Mkt)

The issue of selecting a particular topic, method, or approach is not

only important in securing colleagues’ interest. but also in displaying

one’s disciplinary credentials. Bruner (1994) observes that topics are

resources of joint attention which co-ordinate activities and mark co-

participation in communities of practice. This is especially the case in

the soft knowledge disciplines where theories often fail to provide a

coherent programme to guide research. Constructing a credible

problem is therefore often a major way that writers in the soft fields

display a familiarity with the discipline's literature and awareness of the

topics which it currently considers urgent or interesting.

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 Representing the topic as important to the community is often

achieved, particularly in the soft fields, by indicating that it had formed

the subject of earlier work However greater significance, and

community credibility, can be claimed by indicating a gap in this

literature (Swales, 1990). Here writers represent a problem as

something which is unresolved by the community. The following cases,

for example, do not directly address the focus under study, but the

state of argument and knowledge current in the field:

(18) Noticeably absent from the ecological literature on crime and

control, however, is any systematic attempt to specify how and
why patterns of policing vary across communities. (Soc)

But in mainstream composition studies little consideration has been

given to writing in languages other than English.... . . (AL)

Unfortunately, research on both information-sharing norms and

integrated goals has been largely conceptual with limited empirical
support. (Mkt)

The ability to identify such omissions is a critical step in claiming

insider status in all disciplines, but is particularly crucial in the soft

fields where the greater diffusion of research areas and approaches

often requires validation of the topic itself.

A related demonstration of insider credibility is a writer's use of

explicit appeals to the community's situated cultural understandings.

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Instead of demonstrating the relevance of their research by invoking

the literature, writers frequently draw on, or exploit, the implicit

domain knowledge of the discipline. This is connection is occasionally

marked explicitly, as in these examples:

(19) Clahsen's well-known conclusion is. of course. that Universal

Grammar is not available to the adult L2 learner (AL)

Although reciprocal exchange of limiting resources is the most

obvious (and traditional) choice for cost: benefit analysis,. .._ (Bio)

It has become something of a commonplace in moral philosophy

to regard this simplicity as more of a vice than a virtue. (Phil)

Traditional models of CS/D formation typically model satisfaction

to be a function of antecedent constructs that are defined relative
to the choice already made. (Mkt)

This persuasive strategy is found in all disciplines, but a variation

common in the soft fields is to appeal directly to the community,

rather than its domain knowledge. Here writers deliberately promoted

their group membership by invoking it specifically, aligning themselves

with their readers:

(20) One of the things applied linguists have to decide is whether

they like the name that this particular professional affiliation
bestows upon them. (AL)

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 Traditionally, philosophers have explored two possibilities. (Phil)

Sociologists in general, and political sociologists in particular,

seemingly share a strong commitment to their own societies and
sociopolitical problems. (Soc)

If we look more closely at preferred lexical patterns of persuasion, we

find a variety of devices used to emphasize the value of papers. The

principal rhetorical justifications can, in order of occurrence, be

glossed as `benefit'’, `novelty'’, `importance’ and `interest' Hard

knowledge writers tend to employ appeals to novelty and benefit,

while writers in marketing, applied linguistics and sociology largely

draw on the notion of importance as persuasive strategies.

Mechanical and electronic engineering accentuate their practical,

applied orientation by emphasizing the utility of the reported research,

mainly to the industrial world which relies on it This also seems to be

the major strategy employed in the marketing abstracts, another field

closely associated with non-academic interests:

(21) Our results help explain why consumers value price guarantees
(e.g., offering to refund the difference if a customer finds the
brand at a lower price within 30 days) and performance
guarantees (e.g., offering free upgrades on software for 12
months). (Mkt)

ABC is a tool that can help companies become more profitable

and understand the true functions and drivers of their costs. (ME)

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 The structure function, however, may help us very efficiently to
identify the different subregions of the heat-flow path from their
contribution to the overall response. (EE)

In this paper, a heuristic method that provides a good solution for

the cell formation and machine selection design stage in an
acceptable resolution time is proposed. (EE)

The science fields, where constant innovation and progress is a central

part of their disciplinary cultures, tend to stress the novelty of their

research. Practitioners expect scientific advancement and readers tend

to look mainly for new results to further develop their own research

(Bazerman, 1988, ch 8). Consequently, the need to stress novelty was

paramount, although sometimes combined with a statement of value:

(22) In addition to D. palmicola, the two further species are,

therefore, described as new in this paper and a key to Delortia
species is provided. (Bio)

The assays presented herein illustrate two novel approaches to

monitor the intracellular dynamics of nuclear proteins. (Bio)

A new design for a minimum inductance, distributed current,

longitudinal (z) gradient coil, fabricated on the surface of an
elliptic cylinder is proposed. (Phy)

We will show the result from combining sputter and spin-coating

techniques in novel four-layer Cerenkov configurations. (Phy)

99
In sum, readers make judgements about claims based on their

knowledge of the topic and how it is being handled, and part of this

involves making an evaluation of the writer as an informed colleague

who is able to speak with authority. Persuasion here then involves

using signals which convey insider credibility that helps to secure

agreement for claims.

Conclusion

The issue of how persuasion is accomplished in research writing has

been the subject of long philosophical debate (eg. Pera & Shea, 1991).

Part of this debate has involved the extent to which epistemic and

rhetorical factors can be distinguished; whether it is possible to

separate truth-construction from the consensus achieved by

techniques of persuasion. In this paper I have argued that knowledge

itself has to be seen as a rhetorical construct, socially created in

particular disciplinary communities, and that what is regarded as

persuasive concerns the ways writers accommodate the needs of their

readers as community members.

Persuasion is possible only if numerous rhetorical problems can

be overcome. Writers must identify a credible disciplinary issue,

demonstrate its significance, locate it within a wider disciplinary

context adopt an appropriate authorial stance towards it, and display

100
one’s credibility as a disciplinary member. Persuasion then is at least

partly attained through a discursive display of credibility, `membership',’,

and appropriate argument using the patterns of interaction valued by

the community to signal one's status and to shape a valued disciplinary

position. Embedded within the characteristic generic practices of the

research article are writers’ perceptions of appropriate norms of

engagement, their epistemological beliefs of how knowledge is

understood, and the best ways to package this knowledge and

persuasively represent it to their colleagues. I hope to have shown

here some of the ways that particular discursive practices are used to

accomplish this.

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