The cooperative principle in discourse communities and genres: A framework for the use of metadiscourse

Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2010) 1669–1679

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The cooperative principle in discourse communities and genres: A framework for the use of metadiscourse Reza Abdi a,*, Manoochehr Tavangar Rizi b, Mansoor Tavakoli b a b

Department of English Language Teaching, Faculty of Humanities, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Ardabil, Iran Department of English Language Teaching, Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Article history: Received 19 June 2008 Received in revised form 2 November 2009 Accepted 2 November 2009

Developments in characterizing discourse communities and their various genres are hoped to provide more insight into the nature of language in use. Such characterizations gradually tend to include the rhetorical and less visible aspects of different genres in different discourse communities. The trend seems rewarding due to the multilingual membership in discourse communities and inevitability of interference from speech communities. Although several studies have tried to describe the distribution and nature of metadiscourse marking across disciplines and languages, no systematic attempt was made, to our knowledge, to introduce a practical model that presumably guides the users in the real time of writing. By analyzing metadiscourse samples from the genre of research article of academic discourse community, this study embarks on introducing a tentative model based on Gricean cooperative principle (CP) that is hoped to help the multilingual members of academic discourse community in the use of metadiscourse markers. The Gricean categories of CP, developed here, are hoped to provide a practical framework that informs how to use rather than how is it used of metadiscourse in writing research articles. Such a model can be assumed an improvement against coarse-grained holistic guides for the use of metadiscourse offered by previous studies. The attempt also led to a new classification of metadiscourse and added two new metadiscourse strategies of collapsers and disclaimers. ß 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Discourse community Genre Cooperative principle Metadiscourse Collapsers Disclaimers

1. Introduction In order to be identified as a member of a discourse community, one requires detailed knowledge and appreciation of the trends in that community (Bizzell, 1992; Swales, 1990). Producing a text within a discourse community, according to Bizzell (1992), cannot be successfully achieved unless the writer can define the goals in terms of the community’s current conventions. In fact, without awareness of, and competence in, the writing practices of relevant discourse communities, it will be very difficult to gain entry into these communities (Hyland and Hamp-Lyons, 2002). According to Swales (1990), any discourse community, among others, has a broadly agreed set of common public goals; has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members; utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative utterance of its aims; and has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discursive expertise. Following Swales (1990), the academic community is a typical discourse community. Yet, the disciplinary communities can be assumed to be more specific discourse communities within the academic discourse

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +98 914 153 6010; fax: +98 451 551 0141. E-mail address: [email protected] (R. Abdi). 0378-2166/$ – see front matter ß 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2009.11.001

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community. Anyhow, discourse communities are quite established and can be said to exhibit a high level of linguistic and non-linguistic sophistication. Inevitably, then, the multilingual members of these communities manifest more or less similar patterns of behavior in order to sustain their membership. In this respect, a discourse community is often contrasted with a speech community. The contrast resides in the fact that a speech community, unlike its discourse counterpart, is one whose membership is not a matter of choice, and which refers to a group of people who naturally share a language (e.g., native speakers of English) in terms of grammar, lexicon, etc. As noted, every discourse community may use several established ways of communication which give rise to various genres (Swales, 1990). A genre is a means of achieving a communicative goal that has evolved in response to particular rhetorical needs, and that will change and evolve in response to shifts in those needs (Dudley-Evans, 1994). Accordingly, genre analysis provides a useful framework for the investigation of language use for a variety of applied linguistic purposes (Bhatia, 2006). In fact, this kind of analysis is an attempt to extract explicit and implicit conventions of genres in order to help new members develop their generic competence. Generic competence is supposed to be the underlying construct that enables fluent communication across genres. More specifically, it refers to the ability to respond to both recurring and new communicative situations by constructing, interpreting, using and exploiting (linguistic and non-linguistic) conventions associated with any genre (Paltridge, 2006). In an attempt to facilitate building generic competence, a good deal of developments has recently been made with regard to the description of the formal features of genres, but, of course, the genres used by different discourse communities are multilayered, and hence too complicated to be captured by purely descriptive formal analyses. Bruce (2003) classifies genres as social and cognitive. According to him, the research article is supposed to be a firmly established social genre of communication in the academic discourse community. Furthermore, by writing research articles, authors strive to have their arguments incorporated into the disciplinary consensus (Hewings, 2006), which seems to be its predominant cognitive genre (see, Bruce, 2003). Writing research articles appears to be a very complicated activity with many visible and invisible layers. Thus, preparing to write research articles requires understanding higher levels of discourse. Moreover, cultural interference at this level of writing adds to the intricacy of the challenge. A generic analysis of research articles can cover a wide variety of focuses from moves and strategies (Bhatia, 1999) to rhetorical features (Hyland, 2005). Works initiated by the contrastive rhetorics of Kaplan (1966) have tried to compare the rhetorical styles of different cultures in order to inform the native speakers of various languages how to communicate with other members of discourse communities through the lingua franca of English. It is now established that a significant part of the rhetorical structure of research articles, that is, the attempt to make it persuasive, is shaped by employing metadiscourse (Hyland, 2005). Metadiscourse is roughly defined as self-reflective linguistic expressions referring to the communication triangle; the evolving text, the writer, and the imagined readers of that text (Crismore, 1989; Hyland, 2004). It is based on a view of writing as a social engagement and, in academic contexts, reveals the ways writers project themselves into their discourse to signal their organizing attempts, commitments, and attitudes. In the meantime, it is claimed that the social and cultural trends of human societies are realized in language, discourse, and communication, and each speech community may have its own norms, values, language and ways of communication (van Dijk et al., 1997). Moreover, as Gee (2005) argues, the way we make visible and recognizable who we are and what we are doing always involves more than just language. Overall, writing is supposed to project socially situated identities. Generally, it is assumed that the putatively different identities from diverse speech communities would tend to (or have to) converge in communications within discourse communities through the lingua franca. However, such convergence requires conscious attempt on the part of the participants and is not easily achieved. Thus, there is a need to provide explicit guidelines regarding the rhetorical features of various genres extracted from authentic performance of competent writers, on the part of researchers, and a need to consciously attend to them, on the part of newcomers to the discourse community. 1.1. Grice’s model of the cooperative principle According to Grice (1975), linguistic exchanges are characteristically cooperative efforts; and each participant recognizes in them, to some extent, a common purpose or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction. Grice (1975:45) proposes a rough general principle which participants are expected to observe. His formulation of the principle runs as follows: ‘‘Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, and by the accepted purpose and direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged’’. A detailed treatment of Gricean CP is beyond the scope of this study. However, it is necessary to remind that Grice’s hypothesis of a cooperative principle at work between speakers was intended to yield a framework in which the relationship between form and meaning was accounted for. For the purpose of this study, it might be enough to recall that his CP consists of a set of maxims subsumed under the categories of quantity, quality, relation and manner which designate the conventions (Table 1 below) which participants in a conversation should and normally conform to (1975:45–46) in order to ensure a successful communication. Although Grice’s idea of the CP was primarily for oral language, and it was introduced to foreground his conversational implicature argument, many studies have tried to use it for different purposes (see Lindblom, 2001:1607 for a list of such studies). Grice himself believed that such a principle could be seen at work in other human transactions. Nevertheless, Davies (2007) strongly criticizes some of such studies when she thinks scholars thereby assume to be probing into the theory of the CP.

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Table 1 The Gricean categories of cooperative principle and relevant maxims. Category

Maxims

Quantity

1. Make your contribution as informative as is required. 2. Do not make your contribution more informative than required.

Quality

Try to make your contribution one that is true: 1. Do not say what you believe to be false. 2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

Relation

Be relevant.

Manner

Be perspicuous: 1. Avoid obscurity of expression. 2. Avoid ambiguity. 3. Be brief. 4. Be orderly.

From among several studies which embarked on using the CP in various areas of applied linguistics, we might specifically mention Arrington and Rose (1987) and Lovejoy (1987) who drew on the CP to develop methods for effective writing strategies. Also, Cooper (1984) made an attempt to examine the nature of writing and the writing process through the CP. Yet, there are other works which directly deal with the relationship between the CP and metadiscourse, some of which are mentioned in section 1.2, below. 1.2. Metadiscourse and the CP ¨ del, 2006; Crismore et al., Several metadiscourse taxonomies have been introduced over the past three decades (e.g., A 1993; Hyland, 2005; Vande Kopple, 1985). However, as time went on, the taxonomies showed more comprehensiveness, clarity and simplicity along a similar theoretical line (except for A¨del, 2006 who brought up some theoretical changes). Hyland’s metadiscourse model (2005), drawing on several earlier models, assumed two main categories for Metadiscourse – interactive and interactional – following the distinction made by Thompson and Thetela (1995) to acknowledge the organizational and evaluative features of interaction (Table 2). Hyland’s model was preferred in this study for (a) being recent, simple, clear and inclusive, (b) building on previous taxonomies, and (c) lending itself more easily to our purpose. To date, there have been only a few studies which tried to explain metadiscourse marking through Gricean CP. For instance, Kumpf (2000) extended metadiscourse to visual fields and introduced some relevant categories. In discussing consistency as a category of visual metadiscourse, he linked it to Grice’s maxim of relation, whereby readers expect items in a discourse to be related. For Kumpf, consistency and relation describe the visual coherence of a document, a coherence that perhaps satisfies a modernist appeal for order and unity. Moreover, understanding the audience is an important factor in the employment of most metadiscourse strategies. In this connection, Lovejoy (1987:12) contended that the CP ‘‘defines for the student the relationship between writer and reader, and it enables the student, when faced with a writing task, to conceptualize an audience. Writing is cooperative in that writers desire for their intended readers to understand the message being sent’’. Riley and Parker (1998), too, related Grice’s maxim of relation to visual fields which Kumpf (2000) considers as metadiscourse. Kumpf (2000:420) finally found it plausible to extend the CP to writing a document and then ‘‘add the function of metadiscourse as a way for writers to plan and assess their role as cooperative communicators’’. However, we found it interesting and rewarding to more systematically and comprehensively generalize the concept of the CP to the use of metadiscourse in research articles by the members of academic discourse community. Communication Table 2 An interpersonal model of metadiscourse (Hyland, 2005:49). Category

Function

Examples

Interactive Transitions Frame markers Endophoric markers Evidentials Code glosses

Help to guide the reader through the text Express relations between main clauses Refer to discourse acts, sequences or stages Refer to information in other parts of the text Refer to information from other texts Elaborate propositional meaning

Resources In addition; but; thus; and Finally; to conclude; my purpose is Noted above; see figure; in section 2 According to X; Z states Namely; e.g.; such as; in other words

Interactional Hedges Boosters Attitude markers Self-mentions Engagement markers

Involve the reader in the text Withhold commitment and open dialogue Emphasize certainty and close dialogue Expresses writers’ attitude to proposition Explicit reference to author(s) Explicitly build relationship with reader

Resources Might; perhaps; possible; about In fact; definitely; it is clear that Unfortunately; I agree; surprisingly I; we; my; me; our Consider; note; you can see that

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through research articles in discourse communities can be taken as a qualified act of cooperation that seems to be shaped by implicit and explicit rules and regulations which are gradually gained, and keep doing so, from philosophical preferences, schools of thought, research paradigms, relevant institutions and pioneering members. Note that, in line with eloquent argument put forward by Davies (2007), we believe that cooperation here mostly means rationality from a philosophical point of view, besides (our emphasis) the general folk-linguistic meaning of working together. As an example, in order to meet the quality requirement, we need to be rational, while to realize manner, an understanding of the audience (i.e., working together with them) is inevitable. By looking closely at native-speakers writings, this paper makes an attempt to tentatively formulate a similar CP which can be argued to be at work in helping how to use metadiscourse markers in research articles. Such a principle, if recognized as a logical driving force, might act as a shield that prevents any interference of inappropriate norms from differing speech communities of the multilingual members, and their idiosyncratic preferences. 2. Method This study reviewed 36 recent research articles (all appearing in 2007) from six disciplines. Three disciplines were selected from natural sciences and the other three from social sciences. From each discipline six recent articles were chosen from three journals – two articles from each journal. An attempt was made to choose articles that had at least one English native-speaker author judged by the names and affiliations of the authors. The study originally included two sections; (a) a contrastive quantitative section in which English and Persian research articles were studied in order to find out any similarities and differences in the use of metadiscourse (which motivated the above sampling), and (b) a qualitative section. This article only reports the latter. As the title of the present paper suggests, while studies like this can investigate various genres of communication from different discourse communities, this study only sought to examine the genre of research article for the following reasons. Firstly, the research article is an outstanding and widely used genre of communication among academia. Secondly, a large number of rejections of non-native writers’ articles in international scholarly journals are said to be due to language problems. Finally, non-native writers have recently shown a stronger tendency to join their relevant disciplinary communities, mostly through writing research articles. Such a trend might be due to the fact that publication is more considerably appreciated in hiring, promotion and continued employment in recent regulations throughout the world (Belcher, 2007). For the purpose of this study, the formal realizations of Hyland’s (2005) 10 metadiscourse strategies were recognized before and during the analysis. It is necessary to point out that Hyland (2005:218–223) proposes a long list of formal items for each metadiscourse strategy, while he and most other scholars acknowledge that no comprehensive list of formal items representing metadiscourse strategies could be provided. Therefore, the propositions containing metadiscourse markers were identified manually and functionally1 throughout our small corpus and were studied to discover any implicit CP governing its use across disciplines. 3. Results and discussion In this study, an attempt is made to find a relationship between metadiscourse strategies and the categories of the CP (and the associated maxims) assumingly followed by the authors to demonstrate their cooperation in writing research articles. Of course, it should be noted that cooperation in communication, through the categories of quantity, quality, relation and manner, is realized through a multitude of other options, but the concern of this study is metadiscourse marking and, as such, we try to hypothesize about the underlying CP for metadiscourse employment. Here, a point should be made with regard to relation as one of the categories of the CP, which does not formally appear in our model. The point of departure in this study is the metadiscourse strategies and the attempt is to find a category in the CP that matches the strategy under discussion. As a practical consequence of this approach, none of the metadiscourse strategies appeared to match Grice’s relation. Yet, we would agree with Wilson and Sperber (2004) that being relevant is a criterion permeating the whole processes of writing to ensure coherence and successful transaction. As a result, we recognize that throughout the different processes of writing, including metadiscourse employment, a writer tries to achieve maximum cognitive effect through minimum processing effort. In other words, conceived within the relevance theory framework, relation is always there, while using Gricean approach, it does not specifically match any of the metadiscourse strategies investigated in this study. Thus, since the goal of this study in not to probe into the theories of Grice and Wilson and Sperber, we leave any discussion on this issue to other studies. 1 Although this is mostly a problem in quantitative studies, yet it is worth noting that the results of studies that use concordancing software and similar computer-assisted methods to spot metadiscourse markers are not appropriate for several reasons despite the fact that they make it possible to study a large corpus. The most important reason is that the software in question cannot distinguish internal-reference from external-reference markers (see Hyland, 2005), which could damage the validity of a study. Furthermore, metadiscourse is an inherently fuzzy, functional and context dependent category (Dahl, 2004; A¨del, 2006) that makes it difficult to analyze by machine. Of course, in a smaller corpus it is possible for the researcher to re-attend to the items identified by the computer software, but, again, there is a risk of skipping the items that cannot be recognized prior to analysis. However, the computerassisted programs could be cautiously employed as a useful aid in text analysis (A¨del, 2006).

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3.1. A closer look at metadiscourse markers Through a qualitative look at the following choices of metadiscourse strategies, deliberately appearing in a different order from that of Hyland, we intend, through combining the works of Grice and Hyland, to formulate a model of CP which we believe is at work in the employment of metadiscourse strategies. Note that we have tried to include only representative examples of different possible varieties of relevant metadiscourse strategies spotted in our corpus. For convenience, the metadiscourse markers are boldfaced in each example and only the markers under discussion are identified. The unnecessary parts of the selected sentences are omitted and the names of the relevant journals are given at the end of each sentence. 3.1.1. Endophoric markers (1) (2) (3) (4)

As noted above, many of these changes were . . .. (Fig. 7). Food and Chemical Toxicology However, as mentioned previously, such transitions . . .. Infrared Physics and Technology These . . . are examined in greater depth in Sections 3 and 4. International Journal of Educational Research Below, during our last meeting Cindy talks about . . .. Teaching and Teacher Education

Hyland (2005) and Peterlin (2005), among others, believe that such markers function as signposts within a text anticipating something that follows and summarizing something stated previously. While attributing some truth to their account of endophoric markers’ function, we believe that these markers are employed primarily to avoid repetition of a linguistic or graphic item whenever there is a need to have internal cross-reference to them (1–4). In fact, by using these markers, the writers say ‘‘we don’t want to include the items here once more’’, while notifying that there is a need on the part of the reader to pay attention to them for the purpose of a clearer understanding of the immediate proposition. Apparently, in examples 1 and 2, the reverse has taken place and something that was mentioned before is repeated again, but we think, according to a closer analysis of some instances, that what is repeated is only the gist of what is broadly explained somewhere else in the text. Of course, when a minimal repetition is a necessary reminder to foreground a different argument, markers like ‘as noted earlier’ signify the writers’ acknowledgment of this violation, which is normal and appropriate (1 and 2). 3.1.2. The cooperation category and the overall orientation of endophoric markers The omission of endophoric markers will result in different pieces of information being repeatedly included in the text wherever the writer finds it necessary to refer to them. This would make the text unduly long and might consequently prove boring to the audience. Thus, we can argue that endophoric markers are employed to materialize the quantity requirement of the CP. This requires that, in order to avoid repetition, the reader is guided to spot the items somewhere else. So, even the functions of helping to spot, clarifying, etc. are indirectly helping quantity to be realized. In addition to endophoric markers, we recognized one more metadiscourse strategy employed to avoid repetition. Consider the following examples: (5) Lawrence et al. (2005) examined . . ., autonomic nervous system (ANS) and . . . children with attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD). Biological Psychology (6) To examine these questions, electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings were . . . Biological Psychology (7) MRI is an imaging technique that combines . . . [7]. 2 Technological Forecasting and Social Change (8) Signs of . . . bars, adult video stores, etc., . . . Social Science and Medicine Initialisms (5, 6, and 7) are found to be widely used in research articles. In 5 and 6, the reverse act of code glossing, that is, coding after providing full phrases, takes place once and the short form is used afterwards in order to avoid making a text long. The same purpose is sometimes achieved through using demonstrative pronouns (these in 6). Also, words like ‘et al.’ and ‘etc.’ (5 and 8) are commonly employed in research articles. Still, some journals use numbers to forgo the names of cited scholars altogether, thus signifying journal-specific conventions for quantity (7). Superscript numbers on some terms to be glossed in the footnote or endnote is yet another norm followed by some journals (7). Anyhow, all these forms are used to avoid overwhelming the audience by providing undue information that may disturb the normal propositional stream. Our use of numbers in parentheses serves the same function. We take collapsers as a cover term to label this strategy. Overall, it can be said that endophoric markers and collapsers (i.e., the options in the quantity category of the CP) are used to make a text short, friendly and manageable. 3.1.3. Transitions (9) Therefore, there is a fundamental need to understand . . .. Chemical Engineering Science (10) Nevertheless, because where . . ., we used data for . . .. However, data on crime . . . were not available . . .. We thus used data that . . .. Social Science & Medicine (11) Additionally, even without impending oil shortages . . .. Social Science Research

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Transitions are employed to signpost the argument stream without which the reader might be confused (9–11). Thus, they are necessary to help readers follow the line of argument as visualized by the writer (Hall, 2007). 3.1.4. Frame markers (12) We begin with familiarity with solutions, creative intentions, and then trust (decision process variables) in relation to decision novelty . . .. Technological Forecasting and Social Change (13) Three questions guided the research:  Does the information design . . .?  Does the interaction design . . .? . . .. The Internet and Higher Education (14) A synthesis of . . . proposes three principles of effective teaching: (a) engaging learners’ . . .; (b) the essential role . . .; and (c) the importance of . . .. The Internet and Higher Education (15) We wished to determine how . . . Free Radical Biology & Medicine (16) Overall, these results tend to support the results obtained . . .. Teaching and Teacher Education (17) Now, as diffusion occurs, the position of this energy level . . .. Infrared physics and technology Frame markers are overt organizing attempts that are employed to reduce processing load. They can be lexical (12), numerical, alphabetical (14) or bulleted (13) sequencers. Explicit expression of acts (15) is also significant in assuring that the reader is following the maze as meant by the author. Labeling stages (16) and shifting topics (17) are, too, varieties of frame marking (Hyland, 2005). Of course, the canonical dividing of a genre into parts, such as introduction, method, results and discussion and conclusion and some other visual elements in research articles, are cases of frame marking, too, which are marginally recognized as metadiscourse in the literature (see Kumpf, 2000). Anyhow, by using frame markers, the author tries to make sure that the scenario at issue is acted out as planned. 3.1.5. Code glosses (18) An example on imaging techniques (i.e., MRI) is provided in Section 4. Technological Forecasting and Social Change (19) . . . is known as the isoelectric point. This is defined as the . . .. Chemical Engineering Science (20) Other individual-level covariates include race/ethnicity (white, black, Hispanic, other), education (less than high school, high school graduate, college graduate) . . .. Social Science and Medicine (21) . . . it would be possible to see and understand how the cultural resources of the group—e.g., adherence to the class’ norms of behavior, the particular language of the classroom, and the relationships built on respect and responsibility—would be . . .. International Journal of Educational Research A member of a discourse community generally has an idea of what the shared threshold knowledge of the other members is (Swales, 1990). Code glosses offer valuable resources in order to clarify the presumably ambiguous terms and concepts briefly (18) and extensively (19) through defining, reformulating and exemplifying. Sometimes, an explanation is added to some familiar terms in order to delimit the commonly conceived general and, hence, ambiguous definitions (20 and 21). For a detailed analysis of code glosses, you may consult Hyland (2007). 3.1.6. The cooperation category and the overall orientation of transitions, frame markers and code glosses From the discussions in sections 3.1.3–3.3.5, it can be concluded that transitions, frame markers and code glosses mainly serve the function of making the texts clear and comprehensible to the audience. In fact, they are devices intended to minimize the processing efforts of readers. As such, they can be hypothesized to act as strategies which help to meet the requirements of manner in the CP model. 3.1.7. Evidentials Streaming theories have been developed to . . . [11–13]. Applied Acoustics It has been predicted that . . . [1,2]. . .. Infrared Physics and Technology This decrease is generally believed to be related to . . .. Applied Surface Science . . . and has been widely applied to analyses of a variety of environmental impacts (Cole and Neumayer, 2004; Cramer, 1996, 1998; Rosa et al., 2004; Shandra et al., 2004; Shi, 2003; York et al., 2003a,b,c). Social Science Research (26) Teachers of different grades, in different countries, and over different time periods have all reported moderate to high levels of job stress (Fontana & Abouserie, 1993). Teaching and Teacher Education (27) In contrast, Goldman and Duran (1988) induced . . .. Contemporary Educational Psychology (22) (23) (24) (25)

Evidentials are widely resorted to in order to build premises on established grounds (24 and 25) and attribute the commitment to the other members of the community (22, 23, 26 and 27). Sometimes they are entered in the text to compare evidence (27). They can be mentioned explicitly (22, 25–27) or vaguely (24). All in all, they bestow credibility on writers’ propositions and arguments. You might consult Swales (1986), for a broader investigation of ‘citation’.

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3.1.8. Hedges (28) The results show that . . . almost twice that of . . .. Chemical Engineering Science (29) Our results suggest that familiarity . . . may aid in challenging the dominant response and generating novel solutions . . .. Technological Forecasting and Social Change (30) The evidence from this and other studies (for example Lloyd, Stead, Jordan, & Norris, 1999) suggests that . . . and may, therefore, be more appropriately considered as a . . .. International Journal of educational research (31) It is possible that the measurement of more than one endpoint of the irritation response would be necessary to adequately assess . . .. Food and Chemical Toxicology (32) Further investigation is needed to . . ., but it is likely to be a . . . Infrared Physics and Technology (33) Thus, teachers may need to display behaviors that encourage student success and that stimulate students’ academic minds . . .. Teaching and Teacher Education Hedges are linguistic forms to indicate that evidence is not enough or is vague to support a hedgeless proposition (28–33). So, hedging, we think, is being honest more than being polite though the two functions are very close. The inadequacy of evidence is overtly stated in 28, 29 and 30, but implied in the others. They are sometimes scholarly guesses of the writer (31–33) or other dependable figures (30). If evidence is enough, using hedges will be inappropriate, much like saying ‘‘I think the sun sets in the west’’. Some scholars maintain that hedges are used to provide room for the audience (Crismore, 1989; Crismore et al., 1993), but we think if this were the case, they could have been welcomed in all statements, including the above example. Thus, an evidence-based conceptualization of hedges seems more tenable. 3.1.9. Boosters

(34) Certainly the process of acquiring the knowledge and . . . could be a source of added stress and/or burnout to faculty. The Internet and Higher Education (35) For example, it is indisputable that cars are responsible for consuming large quantities of energy. Social Science Research (36) ‘‘It is obviously a strong desire that vacation will take place at such a time of year that it provides . . .’’ (Andra Lagutskottet, 1953, p. 11). Journal of Environmental Psychology (37) It is well known that removal of such perylene contamination is difficult, and . . .. Applied Surface Science Boosters are resources that suggest that the writer feels somehow confident to accept the commitment on the grounds that the evidence is convincing, but perhaps not enough to qualify the proposition to a naked one (34 and 35). Again, boosting, too, is being honest more than being arrogant, if it is supported by enough evidence. Yet, in 36 and 37, the commitment is not upon the writer; rather it is left to others through overt (36) and implied (37) evidentials. When hedges and boosters are used in indirect (and direct) quotations, they still fulfill the evidence-based conceptualization, where the writer does not judge the value of evidence personally. This signifies that writing research articles is a cooperative endeavor on the part of authors and their colleagues to use all available evidence to push the frontiers of ambiguity further back. 3.1.10. The cooperation category and the overall orientation of evidentials, hedges, and boosters It can be seen from the discussions in sections 3.1.7–3.1.9 that the three strategies of evidentials, hedges and boosters are similar in an essential way. Basically, all of them deal with the truth of propositions. That is to say they are used to undergo or condition the truth-value commitment reflecting the writers’ evaluative judgments of available evidence. Evidentials are used to attribute commitment (low, high or full) to the truth of propositions to other members. Sometimes, however, the writers’ own evaluative judgment can follow to compare and/or contrast. On the whole, the impression of the audience is that there is a degree of commitment to the propositions containing such markers whoever undergoes it. Hedges are employed to make it clear that evidence available to the author is not satisfying enough to undergo commitment, while boosters indicate that the author feels some confidence due to relatively sufficient evidence and thus shoulders commitment to the truth of propositions. Therefore, it can be concluded that all three strategies are devices employed to promote the quality category of the CP. Grice’s supermaxim of this CP category—‘‘try to make your contribution one that is true’’—signifies this conception. In fact, authors employ these three evaluative strategies primarily to make their propositions tenable in the face of available evidence. In addition to the categories of evidentials, hedges and boosters, we recognized another interesting strategy widely used to promote the quality of propositions. Consider the following examples: (38) Note that this finding does not necessarily suggest that older people consume more energy than younger people. Social Science Research (39) This is not to suggest that boys were less inclined than girls were to employ this coping strategy, rather their actions may not always . . .. International Journal of educational research (40) We note that a significant correlation does not imply a . . .. Biological Psychology

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(41) It is important to note that I held no position of power or authority over the students who volunteered for this study. I was neither their seminar leader nor course instructor at the time that data generation . . .. Teaching and Teacher Education (42) First, the present findings may generalize only to people . . ., rather than to all members . . .. Second, we have . . ., but our data do not allow us to specify . . .. Environmental Psychology (43) Finally, the study focused just on the screens of the online modules and did not examine the supporting materials such as . . .. Internet and Higher Education (44) A main limitation of this approach is that (inter)subjective forecasts are used as a starting point for the scenarioexercise. Technological Forecasting and Social Change Metadiscourse might be used to clarify the writers’ stance toward propositions both in the immediate sentential context and in some other parts of the text. In the above examples, the writers try to prevent any untenable interpretation of their immediate and later propositions so that their quality may not be threatened. We prefer to call such markers disclaimers. They often include negative particles, like no, not and only (38–43), and are often used after engagement markers, like note that or it should be noted that (38 and 39), both to promote the truth of propositions and to ward off any probable critique on the part of imagined audience. Words like but, except, and even of course can also be used in disclaiming phrases. Yet, acknowledging the limitations of studies can also be assumed to be a disclaimer variety in order to defend probable critiques on the methodological drawbacks (43 and 44). Disclaimers seem to be conceptually close to hedges in that both withhold commitment; however, they differ in the sense that the former are used to deny untenable interpretations and outline the tenable ones, whereas hedges are employed to cautiously sidewalk propositions and show uncertainty. In fact, hedges say what something really is while disclaimers outline what something is not. For more clarity, we can postulate the existence of a commitment (or truth) continuum where disclaimers are at one extreme and naked propositions at the other, with hedges appearing close to the former and boosters being adjacent to the latter (see section 3.3 below). Note that evidence, in this article, is a cover term that refers to whatever that might support a proposition. Therefore, decision about the existence and adequacy of evidence for using disclaimers, hedges, boosters and/or naked propositions could be made based on the findings of one’s own and others’ studies (29, 30, 35 and 36), shared beliefs (37), one’s intuition and common sense observation (31–33), etc., depending on the nature of the proposition involved. 3.1.11. Attitude markers (45) Unfortunately, specially designed experiments were not . . .. Chemical Engineering Science (46) An interesting application of thermoacoustics is . . .. Applied Acoustics Like evidentials, hedges and boosters, attitude markers are also of an evaluative nature, but what makes them different is that they mark emotional evaluation, which makes them appropriate for a different category (45 and 46). 3.1.12. Self-mentions (47) In fact, we now know that . . . Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry (48) We use all . . ., but we also . . ., and we report . . . we found . . .. Social Science and Medicine (49) Additionally, I examine . . .. Social Science Research Self-mentions are used to linguistically project the writer from behind the written lines, presumably to remind readers that the lines are produced by a colleague (47–49). In an obvious rebellion against the researcher/research duality, which is staunchly adhered to in positivism, the trend is widely gaining ground. 3.1.13. Engagement markers (50) Note that the variability over trials is reduced with . . .. Biological Psychology (51) The dosing regimes employed were . . . (see Section 2.1). Food and Chemical Toxicology (52) We know that many behaviors in families are . . .. Social Science Research Engagement markers are based on recognition of the audience as colleagues (and, sometimes, their cognitive constraints!). They are mostly employed to caution (50), to direct (51) and to draw in (52). When used in the first sense, it mostly precedes a statement to clarify the propositional argument. 3.1.14. The cooperation category and the overall orientation of attitude markers, self-mentions and engagement markers The final three strategies are used to make participants and feelings visible through the writer’s choice to promote rapport. They are valuable rhetorical means whereby different academic identities can be presented (Abdi, 2002). In spite of the fact that the research paradigm of positivism sniffs at the visibility of participants in academic writing, and that natural sciences are often said to follow that model, the convention was found to be equally at work in both natural and social sciences in our corpus, according to the results of our quantitative section.

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Table 3 A model of the cooperative principle in the employment of metadiscourse strategies based on disciplinary and generic culture (the case of research articles). Metadiscourse strategy

Maxims

Cooperation category

Overall orientation

Endophoric markers

1. Make your contribution as informative as is required. 2. Refer the audience to other parts of the text to avoid repetition. 3. When repetition is inevitable, acknowledge it to avoid inconvenience.

Quantity

Collapsers

Avoid undue repetition by using proper referents.

Avoiding prolixity to make the text manageable and friendly

Transitions

1. 2. 1. 2. 1. 2.

Manner

Clarifying steps and concepts to make the text comprehendible

Frame markers Code glosses

Evidentials Hedges

Boosters

Disclaimers

Attitude markers Self-mentions Engagement markers

Properly signpost the move through arguments. Be perspicuous. Be orderly. State your act explicitly. Avoid ambiguity. Avoid obscurity of expression.

1. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. 2. Cite other members of the community to qualify your propositions. 1. Do not say what you believe to be false. 2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. 3. Mark if evidence is not enough. 4. Do not use hedges in widely accepted or supported propositions. 1. Do not say what you believe to be false. 2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. 3. Mark if evidence is notable. 4. Do not use emphatics if evidence is not enough. 1. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. 2. Outline the framework within which you would like your propositions to be interpreted. 3. Explicitly distance yourself from untenable interpretations.

Quality

Express your feelings or avoid them, according to norms and conventions. Enter your text or sidewalk it, according to norms and conventions. 1. Draw the audience in or ignore them, according to norms and conventions. 2. Give directions to your readers to follow when appropriate.

Interaction

Building on evidence to make the propositions tenable

Making people and feelings visible to promote rapport

It is worth noting that in Grice’s model, interactional/interpersonal factor is not considered (Davies, 2007). By contrast, Lindblom (2001) argues that an account of the CP that describes discourse not only as utterance, as originally meant, but also as social interaction as well as social context is more promising (see Spencer-Oatey and Jiang, 2003 for a discussion of sociopragmatic interactional principles (SIPs)). Thus, we add interaction as yet another category to our cooperative model in order both to serve our purpose here and to materialize Lindblom’s conceptualization. 3.2. The CP-based model of metadiscourse marking What has been said so far can be illustrated and summarized in Table 3. In addition, the table contains the maxims that, we think, should be at work in helping authors to appropriately take advantage of valuable metadiscursive resources. Along with Davies (2007), we believe that the maxims (i.e., the explicit guidelines to materialize the CP) are supposed to be a logical driving force behind any decision made at metadiscourse level. Note that boldfaced maxims have been added to complement Gricean maxims for our current purpose. This model, besides providing a framework for the use of metadiscourse markers, shows a different theoretical conceptualization of metadiscourse which, we hope, will be developed through feedback and future research. As appears in Table 3, some overlaps can be seen in the maxims of some strategies that belong to the same category of the CP. For example, the maxim ‘‘do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence’’ applies to all four strategies of quality metadiscourse. As explained in section 3.1.10 above, all these metadiscourse strategies are bound to the amount of evidence upon which a proposition is based. So, what helps the writer to determine the appropriate strategy and then to choose a formal item would be his/her scholarly judgment on the amount and the strength of evidence. Furthermore, some metadiscourse strategies seem to have the potential to function in more than one category of the CP. For instance, the strategy of disclaiming is put under the category of quality, while it seems feasible to apply it to manner as well, when it is used to prevent misinterpretation of an ambiguous term. Similarly, the strategy of endophoric marking might be said to indirectly contribute to interactional relationship by saving the reader the effort to seek for relevant information. Moreover, some maxims apparently disallow saying something by asking, for example, ‘‘do not say what you believe to be false’’, while it is normally the case when we compare and\or report opposing ideas. It should be noted that such maxims refer to the main point that writers are trying to finally get across. Thus, false or problematic ideas (as conceived by the writer) might be included in research articles to be investigated and rejected.

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Finally, an important point regarding the above model is that most maxims are not self-contained and clear in and of themselves, but rather require external frames of reference. For instance, the maxims of quality are dependant on understanding evidence and judging whether it is hardly enough, enough or more than enough. Such a judgment requires a great deal of practice and experience. To cite another example, the maxims in the interaction category require writers to act according to the norms and conventions. Again, finding out about such norms in the genre of research articles in the academic discourse community requires specific knowledge that might come from the results of quantitative studies. In section 3.3 some tentative suggestions are provided on how to acquire the relevant abilities. Overall, the model we have proposed only scratches the surface of what it claims to serve and, therefore, requires further investigation to verify (or not) the plausibility of its claims. 3.3. Tentative suggestions on how the maxims can be acquired Obviously, any choice on the part of a writer while composing a research article in general, and the employment of metadiscourse in particular, is so complicated that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to come up with some maxims of directive tones in the hope of accounting for the writers’ decision making process. However, hypothesizing on the underlying rationale that assumingly controls the metadiscursive choices of writers while authoring research articles, is an attempt to approach a more efficient methodology of teaching metadiscourse marking. Therefore, the above maxims and the following tentative suggestions are to be taken as an attempt to materialize such an intention. As observed in Table 3, it appears that each category of our CP-based model requires a different approach in order to be mastered. For instance, understanding and appropriately employing the maxims of quantity in the genre of research articles in the academic discourse community seems to be possible through explicit teaching and active practice. Finer details could be acquired through raising consciousness while reviewing discipline-specific articles. Quantitative studies reports can help develop an intuition as to judge how much of these markers are natural. For, it is commonly accepted that overdosing the text with collapsers and even endophoric markers might cause inconvenience, embarrass and confuse the audience. As a matter of fact, some journals require their authors to be sparing with abbreviations. Making clear (i.e., following the manner maxims) is essentially an activity that can remarkably vary with the type of audience in mind. That is, difference in the use of metadiscourse strategies of manner across genres can be widely seen (Ilie, 2002). Acquiring manner seems to be a general ability in writing and thus not confined to research articles, especially in the case of transitions and frame markers. However, the ability is further fine tuned by understanding generic norms and audience analysis. In the case of research articles, understanding the precision of scientific method is of considerable importance. It is evident that neither qualitative nor quantitative generic studies can sufficiently provide a guide for a newcomer to understand the appropriate use of these strategies. However, qualitative studies may prove useful in developing an understanding of readers since, as Kumpf (2000) presumes, a considerate text will result in part from a thorough audience analysis. For example, in one of the uses of code glosses, it is being in the mainstream that gives a member an account of what is new and requires glossing and what is to be taken as known. Thus, the appropriate use of code glosses will be largely guaranteed if newcomers gain the threshold conceptual and terminological knowledge. The category of quality, and accordingly the employment of relevant metadiscourse strategies, easily lends itself more than other categories to various conceptualizations in different speech communities (Dahl, 2004; Vassileva, 2001). The answer to the question ‘‘how much evidence is or is not enough?’’, which constitutes the core of the appropriate use of evidentials, hedges and boosters, can be culture-bound. The commitment scale can be a result of visualizing an evidencebased continuum in which at one end there is no evidence at all, thus leading to a disclaimer, and at the other a plethora of indisputable evidence is available, supporting naked propositions. What falls in between is finding a little evidence, leading to use hedges, and then notable evidence, leading to the use of boosters. Such a continuum accounts for the use of weaker (e.g., we might say) and stronger (e.g., quite possibly) hedges and weaker (e.g., almost indisputably) and stronger (e.g., there is not doubt) boosters. Developing an intuition reasonably close and acceptable to a discourse community seems to be a challenge to the quality category of cooperation. The process of gaining entry into such a community sometimes involves a departure from the norms of speech communities and understanding the conventions adopted by it. Such a trend might vary, depending on the width of the gap between the norms of speech and discourse communities. Therefore, it can be argued that studies reporting the frequency of these markers cannot be of much help to new members. Instead, understanding the convention of the discourse community regarding the appropriate answer to the above question, that can be achieved through extensive active participation as a reader and reviewing qualitative study reports, might be a better preparation in order to be identified with the community. Finally, unlike the strategies that were discussed in relation to the quality category, frequency studies might be a better guide as finding out the conventions of a discourse community and the genre in the use of interactional strategies. Finding out about the typical intrusion of other members of discourse community through quantitative study reports and/or personal consciousness might help a newcomer to make a more appropriate decision in employing these strategies. 4. Conclusion Arguably, any act of communication takes place through cooperation, that is, by keeping rational (you might consult Davies, 2007 to see how she supports rationality as the meaning of cooperation in Grice’s CP model) and working together.

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Therefore, we thought that a CP framework could be visualized to be at work in the appropriate employment of metadiscourse strategies in different genres of communication in discourse communities. An attempt is made to hypothesize about such a framework in the genre of research articles in the academic discourse community by building on Grice’s idea, which is realized through a novel classification of metadiscourse and introducing some new maxims. The study also led to introduce two metadiscourse strategies of collapsers and disclaimers. Yet, we admit that the model introduced here is a tentative one and we hope that further investigations will lead to the development of a more comprehensive model that can incorporate nuances, some of which just touched on in section 3.3 above. Our approach, besides being a model for teaching and learning metadiscourse, supports interesting conclusions. First and foremost, following Ifantidou (2005), who eloquently argues for the contribution of metadiscourse to the propositional and pragmatic content of utterances, a deeper integrity between discourse and metadiscourse can be imagined, in that the CP can be assumed to feed into all decisions made throughout the total enterprise of writing for communication at both discourse and metadiscourse levels. Second, such an approach can justify different realizations of a single activity (i.e., metadiscourse marking) including lexical, graphic, punctuational and so on (see Kumpf, 2000). That is, the obligation for a writer would not be to use metadiscourse in a certain manner; rather it would simply be a call to be cooperative. Studies of metadiscourse, then, would serve to make writers aware of several resources available to achieve cooperation. 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