Epistemic modality in english and spanish psychological texts

Epistemic Modality in English and Spanish Psychological Texis Pedro Martín Martín Universidad de La Laguna In scientific discourse epistemic modality constitutes an important rhetorical device which allows writers to convey their knowledge claims and to reduce the risk of criticism from their peers by mitigating the degree of commitment to the truth of a proposition. This study examines the frequency of occurrence and distribution of modality expressions used in the different rhetorical units that constitute the macro-structure of English and Spanish research article abstraéis. The sample analysed consists of40 texts in English and 40 in Spanish selected at random from recent publications in leading journals belonging to the field of psychology. The results show that the distribution of modality devices varíes similarly in both languages across the different structural units of the abstraéis; however the findings also revealed that the frequency ofuse of modality devices is significantly higher in the English abstracts. This seems to indícate that the use of epistemic modality in scientific texts is culturallybound. 1. Introduction Academic writing involves a social interaction between writers and readers in a specific context. Stubbs (1986) argües that all sentences encode a point of view and that academic texts are no different in containing the author's presence: scientists inevitably indícate their attitude in their writing. Moreover, research from a variety of disciplines has revealed ways in which academic discourse is both socially situated and structured to accomplish rhetorical objectives (Hyland, 1994). In this type of discourse, academics use epistemic modality to modify their knowledge claims in an effort to convince the other members of the research community of the facticity of the results obtained, and to gain community acceptance for their contribution to disciplinary knowledge. The widespread use of modality has been reported, for example, by Gosden (1993), who has pointed out that writers' perception of uncertainty realised through modality markers constitutes 7.6% of grammatical subjects in scientific research. For Palmer (1986), the term epistemic should apply to any modal system that indicates the degree of commitment by the speaker to what he says and should include the speaker's warrant for what he Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos N" 7 y 8 (2000 y 2001) 197 Pedro Martín Martín says and the speaker'sjudgements of the reliability of his knowledge. Epistemic modality, as defined by Lyons (1977:797), refers to «any utterance in which the speaker explicitely qualifies his commitment to the truth of the proposition expressed by the sentence he utters». Epistemic modality indícate, thus, the speaker's attitudes towards knowledge and the varying degrees of commitment towards the proposition expressed. This view of modality comes very cióse to the functional pragmatic definition of the concept of hedge. The use of hedge as a linguistic term goes back to Lakoff's (1972) main concern with the logical properties of words and phrases like rather, largely, very, and their ability «to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy» (Lakoff, 1972: 195). This term was used in its origins only for expressions that modify the category membership of a predícate or a noun phrase. However, this concept has been widened since it was adopted by pragmatists and discourse analysts. Thus, for example, Markkanen and Schroder (1989), who discuss the role of hedges in scientific discourse, see them as modifiers of the writer's responsability for the truth valué of the propositions expressed or as modifiers of the weightiness of the Information given, or the attitude of the writer to the Information. Along the same line, Salager-Meyer (1994) associates hedges to linguistic devices used to convey evasiveness, possibility, tentativeness, mitigation of responsability and/or mitigation of certainty to the truth valué of a proposition. According to this conception, hedging is lexically expressed mainly through the use of modal expressions such as can, may, perhaps, to suggest; although other rhetorical devices could also be included as hedges: the use of impersonal expressions, the passive and other agentless constructions. This implies that the concept of modality and hedge overlap to a lesser or greater extent (cf. Markannen and Schroder, 1997). The 198 Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos N" 7 y 8 (2000 y 2001) Epistemic Modality in English and Spanish Psydiological Texis most common assumption in discourse analysis is to consider hedging as a wider concept that includes epistemic modality as a part of it. Epistemic modality allows academics to tone down their statements in order to reduce the risk of opposition and minimise the face threatening acts. As Myers (1989) states, the making of a claim threatens the general scientific audience because it is a demand for communally granted credit. The claim also threatens the negative face of other researchers because it implies a restriction on what they can do from that moment onwards. Epistemic modality is therefore crucial in academic discourse as it is a central rhetorical means of gaining communal adherence to knowledge claims. Research on the use of modality in academic writing is particularly relevant for foreign learners of English. In this communicative situation, using modal expressions appropriately may cause problems even in the mother tongue, therefore it is no wonder that is is problematic in a foreign language. As some interlanguage studies have revealed, this is because the rules of appropriateness vary across cultures (Markkanen and Schroder, 1997). However, despite the importance of this linguistic phenomenon for foreign learners of English, most of the studies that have been carried out on epistemic modality in academic discourse have focused on the analysis of English research texts and only a few (see, for example, Ventola and Mauranen, 1991; Clyne, 1991) have dealt with the aspect of how modality is contrastively realised in different languages and in specific academic genres. The general purpose of this study is to offer an account of the epistemic devices which reflect the rhetorical concerns of academics in English and Spanish by revealing the extent of propositional mitigation that exists in the specific written genre of research article abstracts. To this end, this study has examined the frequency of occurrence and types of modality markers used in the different Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos N" 7 y 8 (2000 y 2001) 199 Pedro Martín Martín rhetorical units that constitute the macro-structure of English and Spanish abstracts, with the ultímate purpose of determining whether there is cross-cultural variation in terms of frequency and distribution of expressions of modality in the English and Spanish texts. 2. Methodology 2.1. Procedure As several studies on scientific discourse in English have reportad the existence of generic variation across academic disciplines, I did not gather my primary sources from a wide range of disciplines, but selected my sample from texts belonging to a single discipline representative of the experimental branch of social sciences: Phychology. The Corpus in English is made up of 40 research paper abstracts selected at random from recent publications in two leading International journals belonging to the field of phsychology: British Journal of Phsychology and Applied Phycholinguistics. Similarly, the Spanish corpus is made up of 40 abstracts drawn randomly from two of the most relevant Spanish journals in the discipline of phychology: Psicológica and Análisis y Modificación de la Conducta. The total number and types of modality devices used in the English texts was recorded and then compared to those used in the Spanish texts. In order to establish the distribution of modality in relation to the different sections of the abstracts, I first undertook the description of the macro-structure of the abstracts by examining the overall textual organization of each abstract. Once I checked that the abstracts written both in English and Spanish represent, in general terms, the four or most of the basic structural components that typically constitute the accompanying research article (Introduction-Methods-ResultsDiscussion), I proceeded to delimit these structural units in each 200 Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos N" 7 y 8 (2000 y 2001) Epistemic Modality in English and Spanish Psychological Texis abstract and then I determined the frequency of occurrence and distribution of the modality expressions used in each unit. 2.2. Classification of modality devices In written academic discourse, there are a number of possible linguistic strategies which permit writers to express grammatically varying degrees of commitment to the truth of a proposition by qualifying their claims. In order to analyse the occurrence of modality devices consistently, these were classified according to the following categories: — Modal auxiliary verbs, such as may, might, can/poder, which are used to express the writer's assesment as to the certainty, probability or possibility that the assertion is true. — Semi-auxiliaries like to seem, to appear/parecer, which are used when the writer dissociates from the reliability of the proposition expressed. — Epistemic lexical verbs like to suggest/sugerir, to indicate/indicar. to speculate/especular, to as sume/asumir, that is, verbs which relate to the probability of a proposition or hypothesis being true. — Verbs of cognition like to believe, to think/creer, to doubt/dudar, which convey the writers' attitude to the truth of their statements. — Modal adverbs (perhaps, possibly, probably) also express the same degrees of commitment that we have seen expressed by verbs. — Modal nouns (possibility, assumption, suggestion) which relate to the probability of the proposition being true. — Modal adjectives (possible, probable, likely) which express varying degrees of certainty. 3. Results In table 1 the quantitative results of my analysis with respect to the frequency of occurrence and category distribution of modality expressions recorded in the English and Spanish abstracts are presented: Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos N™ 7 y 8 (2000 y 2001) 201 Pedro Martín Martín Table 1: Frequency of occurrence and distribution of modality devices in the different structural units of the abstracts Structural unit INTRODUCTION METHODS RESULTS DISCUSSION Category - Modal verbs - Semi-auxiliaries - Epistemic verbs - Verbs of cognition - Modal adverbs - Modal nouns - Modal adjectives Totals - - Modal verbs - Semiauxiliaries - Epistemic verbs - Verbs of cognition - Modal adverbs - Modal nouns - Modal adjectives Totals - Modal verbs - Semiauxiliaries - Epistemic verbs - Verbs of cognition - Modal adverbs - Modal nouns - Modal adjectives Totals Totals English 18 (60%) - 4 (13%) - -1 (9%) 6 (20%) 2 (6.6%) 30 Ítems - 2 (18%) 3 (27%) 2 (18%) - - 3 (27%) 1 (9%) 11 Ítems 2 (33%) 2 (5.5%) 19 (53%) - 1 (2.7%) 1 (2.7%) 1 (2.7%) 36 Ítems 77 Ítems Spanish 7 (64%) 2 (18%) 1 (9%) - 2 (18%) - 11 ítems - 1 (20%) 2 (40%) 2 (40%) - - - - 5 ítems 3 (23%) 2 (15%) 4 (31%) - - 1 (7%) 2 (15%) 13 ítems 29 ítems 202 Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos N"" 7 y 8 (2000 y 2001) Epistentic Modality in English and Spanish Psychological Texis The results in table 1 show that there is a statistically significant difference in the frequency of use of epistemic modaUty between the abstracts written in EngUsh and Spanish in the field of psychology: The total number of modal markers used in the English texts was 77 in contrast to the total number of 29 found in the Spanish abstracts. Whereas this rhetorical strategy with the function of mitigating claims was favoured by the majority of academics who wrote in English for International publications (there were examples of modality in 33 out of the 40 English abstracts that constitutes our sample), this practice of using modal devices was only found in 18 out of the 40 abstracts analysed in Spanish. The results in table 1 also show that in both languages the frequency of occurrence and distribution of modality devices varies similarly across the different structural units of the abstracts: the most heavily-hedged unit both in English and Spanish is the Discussion unit. This is probably due to the fact that it is in this final section that writers make the highest level of claims and tentatively explore implications not directly tied to their findings. The modal markers most frequently used in this unit in both languages are epistemic verbs (to suggest, to indícate, to tend, to propose; sugerir, indicar, sefialar) and modal verbs {may, can, might; poder). It is in the Discussion unit, especially in the English abstracts, that most instances of groups of modality devices in the same sentence were found, reinforcing in this way their epistemic strength: «It is tentatively suggested that the congenitally blind may show different learning strategies from the sighted as a result of allocating more attention to sensory information processing». «The discussion considers possible explanations for the findings and the possibility that different subgroups of these samples might show differential effects». «Sugerimos por tanto, que si bien los factores en solitario no parecen Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos N" 7 y 8 (2000 y 2001) 203 Pedro Martín Martín ejercer ningún efecto, en futuras investigaciones se delimite la relevancia del status del investigador». The second most-heavily hedged unit, again in both languages, is the Introduction, where the level of generability is also fairly high. Likewise, in this unit, the modality devices most frequently used in both languages are modal verbs (can, would, may, might; poder) followed by modal nouns (assumption, possibility, indication; posibilidad). Typical of most of the English and Spanish abstract introductions is the presence of a subunit in which writers indicate the main purpose of their studies or describe the main features of their research. For the realisation of this move, in Swales' (1990) terms, writers occasionally made use of modality expressions in order to reduce their commitment to the claims expressed: «This study explores the possibility that beginning writers do not revise because they do not read their own writing». «Para profundizar en este objeto de conocimiento, este trabajo se plantea la posibilidad de potenciar el efecto específico del tratamiento psicológico del dolor...». Another frequent subunit or move in the abstract introductions of both languages is that in which writers establish the relevance of their work for the research community, mainly by showing their knowledge of their research topic. For the realisation of this move, the writers also used on some occasions modality devices as a way of mitigating their claims: «There is wide agreement that current psycholinguistic techniques may help US understand (...). This application would seem particularly worthwhile in the domain of schizophrenic speech». «En términos generales, se puede decir que para algunas personas resulta fácil llevar a cabo una intención frente a otras fuerzas competidoras». 204 Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos N'" 7 y 8 (2000 y 2001)