Abstract
This study sought to investigate the linguistic functions of reviewers’ comments in academic journal peer review reports, primarily from a pragmatics perspective. Drawing on Searle’s (1976) Speech Act Theory (SAT), reviewers’ comments from 20 academic journal peer review reports were qualitatively analysed. The analysis revealed two main types of speech acts, directive and expressive speech acts, underlined the reviewers’ comments. Among the two types of speech acts, the directive speech act was preferred by the majority of the reviewers. It was also found that the expressive speech act was much more prominent when the reviewers provided negative comments. The results obtained suggest the need for a collegial peer review with more positive and constructive suggestions by reviewers.
Highlights
This study aims to examine the speech acts of reviewers’ comments in academic journal peer review reports by answering the following research questions: 1) What types of speech acts are used by reviewers when providing written comments on manuscripts?
A total of 326 instances of reviewers’ comments were evident in the corpus. These comments were categorised into two main categories: directive and expressive speech acts. 53% of the total comments were on the directive speech act
This study contributed to the literature on pragmatics and journal peer review by offering a speech act theory perspective on reviewers’ comments in academic journal peer review reports
Summary
In the context of journal publications, peer review is a common scholarly activity. Submitted manuscripts are subjected to peer review before they can be accepted for publication in an academic journal. Oftentimes, peer review is viewed as indispensable for building academic credibility, and it is essential to the development of novel research and contributions to the existing academic literature (Hyland, 2015). It is “the most effective mechanism for ensuring the reliability, integrity, and consistency of the scholarly literature” There is no doubt that many universities these days consider peer-reviewed publications as a measure of academic excellence, and appointments and promotions are typically based on peer-reviewed work (Tardy, 2019)
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