Expressions of interest in research articles: Geo-academic location and time as influencing factors

Abstract

Linguistic expressions of interest that signal academic authors’ epistemic attitude toward propositional content in their research articles are inherently associated with knowledge-making practices. Drawing on a semantic frame developed for expressions of interest, this study examined how an academic author’s geo-academic location and time of publication mediated the deployment of such interest markers in a 4-million-word corpus of 640 research articles sampled from four disciplines. To complement the corpus-based analyses of the interest markers, text-based interviews were conducted with 16 specialists from the four disciplines to explore their considerations in employing these markers. The corpus-based analyses found that time of publication and geo-academic location reliably predicted the overall use of interest markers and/or the presence of several frame elements. As revealed by the analysis of the interview data, these identified patterns of use were attributable to the Periphery-based scholars’ disadvantaged positions in academia and increasing competition for international publication.