Ibérica (Apr 2010)
A contrastive analysis of the use of modal verbs in the expression of epistemic stance in Business Management research articles in English and Spanish
Abstract
In the present paper an intercultural quantitative and qualitative analysis of the use of modal verbs as epistemic stance markers in SERAC (Spanish-English Research Article Corpus), a corpus of research articles (RAs) in different disciplines, is carried out. The corpus selected for this research consists of 48 Business Management research articles. Special emphasis is laid on the introduction and discussion sections of RAs, where stance devices are most frequently located to pursue convergence with the readership. This kind of intercultural analysis has been achieved through both a bottom-up research approach and a top-down research approach. The results obtained in this study point in the direction that there are obvious differences between the use of modal verbs by native writers and the use of modal verbs by non-native Spanish writers. The most remarkable aspect is that Spanish writers show a deviant handling of hedges and boosters. Therefore, they have difficulties in establishing a proper tenor when they write in English.
