Evaluative language in applied linguistics research article discussions: exploring the functions and patterns of that-structures in argumentative texts

Abstract

Research on academic stance and evaluation has been prolific over the past few decades. Few studies, however, have focused on exploring the evaluative potential of that-constructions in shaping the structure of academic arguments. To address this lacuna, the current study aimed at exploring the potential impact of the distinct communicative functions of the research article discussion on the way its argument structure is linguistically shaped through the utilization of evaluative that-structures in applied linguistics research article discussions. Textual analysis was carried out for identifying the forms and functions of that-clauses. The findings indicated that the subtleties of the writers’ intended purposes depict themselves in the way they linguistically structure their arguments by taking advantage of the evaluative potential of that-clauses to specify the findings of their research, to specify the interpretations and implications of their findings, and to comment on the work of others.

Keywords:

• Academic writing
• argument structure
• evaluation
• that-clause
• research article

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Alireza Jalilifar is professor of Applied Linguistics at Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Iran, where he teaches discourse analysis and advanced research. He is the author of two books in discourse analysis and two books in reading for academic purposes. Jalilifar is the editor-in-chief of Journal of Research in Applied Linguistics.

Jorge Arús Hita is associate professor in English language and linguistics at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. His publications include work in the areas of contrastive functional linguistics and Systemic Functional Linguistics in general. He is co-author, with Julia Lavid and Juan Rafael Zamorano, of Systemic-Functional Grammar of Spanish: a Contrastive Study with English (2010). More recently, he has co-edited the Special Lingua issue Dynamicity and Contrast in Systemic Functional Linguistics (2021, with Izaskun Elorza and Tom Bartlett) and the special Revista Signos issue Estudios de Lingüística Sistémico-Funcional en/del Español (2021, with Nora Kaplan).

Ebtesam Abbasi Montazeri is a PhD candidate in Applied Linguistics at Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Iran. As an experienced EFL instructor, she is also teaching applied linguistics courses at higher education institutions in Ahvaz, Iran. Her areas of research interest include argumentative writing, discourse analysis, English language teaching.

Notes

1 References marked by an asterisk (*) indicate the papers included in the current study’s dataset