Disciplinary differences in the use of evaluative that: Expression of stance via that-clauses in business and medicine

Abstract

A growing body of literature recognizes the importance of interaction between writers and readers in disciplinary academic texts. An effective way for authors to evaluate their or others' findings, methods, and theories is to package propositional information in evaluative ‘that’ patterns (e.g. ‘the author believes that … ‘). These provide various options for evaluating propositions and thematizing the evaluation by signaling either epistemic or attitudinal stance towards the propositional content. While disciplinary differences in the use of this feature have been attested in the literature, there is still a need to confirm the nature of such differences across contrasting disciplines. Adopting a corpus-based approach, we investigate expressions of evaluation and stance signaled via that-complement clauses in published research articles across business and medicine disciplines, drawing on Hyland and Tse's (2005) model of evaluative that-clauses. Evaluative that-clauses were primarily used by authors in both disciplines to comment on their own and previous findings, largely controlled by verbal predicates expressing epistemic assessment towards the evaluated entity. Certain disciplinary conventions were embedded in the use of evaluative that-clauses, indicating how discoursal practices of evaluation and interaction as achieved through such clauses are constructed according to the communicative purposes of texts and disciplinary norms and values.