Whose stance is it, anyway? A corpus-based study of stance expressions in science news articles

Abstract

Communicating scientific research to the public is as important as ever. Several studies have investigated the ways that science writers communicate personal feelings and assessments, otherwise known as stance, in their writing, reporting somewhat mixed results. In this study, I examine the grammatical stance marking of science news articles. I compare the ways that writers and the researchers that they quote uniquely contribute to the overall expression of stance in these articles. Results reveal that the researchers’ talk substantially contribute to the overall stance of science news articles compared to their writers, indicated by a greater use of modal verbs, stance verbs and adjectives controlling that complement clauses, and stance adverbials, including a greater use of ‘boosters’. This study suggests that researchers’ talk in science news articles co-participate in the newsworthiness of science and offer an alternative perspective on academic research uncommon in research writing.

Keywords

• Science communication
• Stance
• Register
• Corpus linguistics
• Popular science