Reporting verbs associated with evidentiality in research article abstracts in applied linguistics and applied psycholinguistics

Reporting verbs associated with evidentiality in research article abstracts in applied linguistics and applied psycholinguistics Oleksandr Kapranov (NLA University College, Oslo) ABSTRACT The article presents aquantitative corpus-based study that aims to shed light on the frequency and distribution of reporting verbs (for instance, indicate, posit, etc.) associated with evidentiality that are found in research article abstracts (RAAs) in applied linguistics and applied psycholinguistics, respectively. Theoretically and methodologically, the study is informed by the literature (Söderqvist, 2020; Szczygłowska, 2022), which demonstrates that reporting verbs may mark evidentiality in scientific discourse. In order to establish the frequency of the occurrence of reporting verbs associated with evidentiality, acorpus of RAAs in applied linguistics and applied psycholinguistics was collected and, subsequently, analysed in software program AntConc version 4.0.11 (Anthony, 2022). The results of the quantitative analysis revealed that show and suggest were the most frequent reporting verbs associated with evidentiality in the corpus of RAAs in applied linguistics and applied psycholinguistics alike. KEY WORDS applied linguistics, applied psycholinguistics, evidentiality, reporting verbs, research article abstracts (RAAs) DOI https://doi.org/10.14712/18059635.2024.2.3 1 INTRODUCTION The article introduces and discusses aquantitative study that explores how reporting verbs associated with evidentiality are distributed in research article abstracts (henceforth— RAAs) in two cognate scientific disciplines, namely applied linguistics and applied psycholinguistics, as covered by two journals, Applied Linguistics and Applied Psycholingustics, respectively. Given that evidentiality is one of the critical construals in the study, it seems pertinent to consider it early in the article. As noted by Miche (2018, p.111), there are multiple definitions of evidentiality in linguistics. One of them, which has gained currency in the literature, refers to evidentiality as “acategory in its own right, and not asubtype of modality, tense, or mood” (Aikhenvald, 2007, p.211), and a“closed grammatical system whose use is obligatory” ( Aikhenvald, 2007, p.209) in the languages that contain explicit evidential markers. It is posited that evidentiality is manifested grammatically in languages with explicit evidential markers by means of visual (evidence via seeing), sensory (evidence via hearing, taste, touch), reported (evidence with no particular reference to the source), and quotative (evidence with aparticular reference to the source) categories (Aikhenvald, 2007). OPEN ACCESS 126 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 2/2024 From abroader perspective, however, evidentiality in linguistics is described in terms of the information source behind amessage (Carretero & Zamorano-Mansilla, 2015, p.146) and how the source is expressed grammatically, lexically, or, alternatively, implicitly (Ekberg & Paradis, 2009, p.5). Evidentiality is argued to be manifested by evidential markers, also referred to as “evidentials” (Brugman & Macaulay, 2015), which are defined as “words or phrases that allude to the existence or acquisition of evidence for or against the truth of aproposition” (Söderqvist, 2020, p.57). In other words, grammatical and/or lexical evidentials mark the source of evidence (Brugman & Macaulay, 2015, p.202). Seen through the lens of the broader approach, evidentiality is understood “as aconceptual domain, regardless of the grammatical vs. lexical status that the given linguistic device is ascribed to” (Cornillie et al., 2015, p.3). In English, evidentiality is considered to be non-obligatory and deemed not to be marked by grammatical means (Clark, 2010, p.140). Whilst the marking of evidentiality is not grammatical in English (Söderqvist, 2017), there are, however, lexical and pragmatic means that can convey it. In this regard, Aikhenvald (2007, p.209) indicates that English, just like any other language, possesses arange of means that refer to the information source, in particular, lexical verbs that are associated with claims, opinions, and reports. In English, reporting verbs (further— RVs) may mark evidentiality, especially when they are used in the context of academic discourse (Dontcheva-Navratilova, 2008; Szczygłowska, 2022). In the literature on academic writing, RVs are defined as verbs that refer to the opinion of other authors (Ilchenko & Kramar, 2022), or express the writer’s personal stance by appearing in combination with the first-person pronouns (Kapranov, 2021a, 2021b; Malmström, 2008). In particular, academic writers may employ RVs in the so-called “evidential strategy”, which involves the use of non-evidential lexical and grammatical forms that can develop evidential extensions (Aikhenvald, 2007; Warchał, 2015). There is asufficient bulk of prior studies that focus on RVs in academic discourse (Bloch, 2010; Dontcheva-Navratilova, 2018; Hyland, 2014; Shaw, 1992). However, there seems to be alack of the state-of-the-art research that examines the use of RVs as markers of evidentiality in RAAs (Yang, 2012). Moreover, there is ascarcity of recent publications that investigate their frequency and distribution in applied linguistics and applied psycholinguistics from adiachronic perspective. Seeking to generate new knowledge concerning the frequency and distribution of the RVs that are associated with evidentiality in diachrony, the present study aims at collecting and analysing acorpus of RAAs in applied linguistics and psycholinguistics published by the high-ranking journals Applied Linguistics and Applied Psycholinguistics from 2012 to 2022. In particular, the study addresses the following research questions (RQs): RQ 1: What are the most frequent RVs associated with evidentiality in RAAs published within the timeframe of ten years from 2012 to 2022 in Applied Linguistics and Applied Psycholinguistics? RQ 2: Are there disciplinary differences in the distribution of RVs associated with evidentiality in RAAs published in Applied Linguistics and Applied Psycholinguistics? OPEN ACCESS OLEKSANDR KAPRANOV 127 Further, the article is structured as follows. First, an outline of the prior studies on RVs in academic discourse is provided in section 2. Thereafter, the literature on RAAs in applied linguistics and applied psycholinguistics is dwelt upon in section 3. Following that, the present study is introduced in section 4. The article concludes with the summary of the findings in section 5. 2 RVS IN ACADEMIC DISCOURSE As previously mentioned in the introduction, RVs are one of the crucial components in academic writing (Manan & Noor, 2014, p.140) that are employed in order to refer to (i) the findings that are described in the research article (RA), (ii) external sources that are mentioned in the RA, and (iii) the writer’s personal stance (Ilchenko & Kramar, 2022; Malmström, 2008; Shaw, 1992). In academic writing in English, RVs are assumed to involve the so-called “argue” verbs (for instance, propose) that indicate communicative functions, “show” verbs (for example, demonstrate) that point to the communicative situation, “find” verbs (i.e., find) that describe the results, and “think” verbs (e.g., estimate) that manifest the process of thinking and/or reasoning (Charles, 2006, p.501). An alternative classification of RVs associated with evidentiality is found in afairly recent publication by Szczygłowska (2022), who distinguishes the following types of evidential RVs: (i) quotative (argue, indicate, note, propose, report, show, suggest); (ii) sensory (appear, notice, observe, seem, view); and (iii) narrative (attempt, seek). RVs in academic discourse, especially in English-medium academic writing, is awell-established area of scientific inquiry that focuses on investigating the distribution, frequency, and pragmatic roles of RVs (Bloch, 2010; Breeze, 2017; DontchevaNavratilova, 2008; Doró, 2014a; Hyland, 1999a; Ilchenko & Kramar, 2022; Kapranov, 2023a; Malmström, 2008; Yang, 2012). Judging from the literature, RVs are treated in the prior studies through the lenses of their reference to (i) citation practices, (ii) knowledge-stating, (iii) stance, and (iv) evidentiality (Bloch, 2010; Breeze, 2017; Dontcheva-Navratilova, 2008; Doró, 2014a; Hyland, 1999b, 2014; Ilchenko & Kramar, 2022; Malmström, 2008; Yang, 2012). Let us summarize the aforementioned research dimensions in more detail below. An evidential dimension of RVs in academic writing is manifested, in particular, by their passive forms, such as be said to, be believed to, be supposed to, be expected to, be reported to, and be thought to (Breeze, 2017). The passive forms of RVs (e.g., be said to) are argued to assign reported information to an indirect and often, anonymous source that, nevertheless, provides the statement with acertain degree of evidentiality (Breeze, 2017). It is suggested that the pragmatic use of the passive forms of RVs as evidentials facilitates the author’s credibility in the eyes of the readership and scientific community (Yang, 2012) by referring to asource without actually naming the source of information (Breeze, 2017). As far as knowledge-stating is concerned, RVs as knowledge-stating lexical devices are thought to be paramount in academic writing in English (Malmström, 2008). Given that academic discourse involves the communication of knowledge, it OPEN ACCESS 128 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 2/2024 is expected in the scientific community that knowledge dissemination is concomitant with an academic author’s accountability (Malmström, 2008). In its turn, the authorial accountability presupposes some form of evidential grounding of information in the academic text (ibid.). Supposedly, such RVs as assume, argue, believe, claim, maintain, propose, and suggest can acquire an evidential dimension that, however, refers not only to evidence per se, but to assertion, as well as knowledge-stating (Malmström, 2008). As mentioned above, RVs are thought to be associated with the manifestation of the academic authors’ stance (Bloch, 2010; Dontcheva-Navratilova, 2008; Doró, 2014a; Hyland, 2014; Ilchenko & Kramar, 2022). In particular, the authorial stance may express an academic author’s attitudes to knowledge-stating in their own text as well as in academic texts written by other researchers (Aull & Lancaster, 2014). In this regard, Hyland (2014, p.128) argues that, for instance, the use of the RVs demonstrate and prove constitutes arhetorically important discursive means that allows academic writers to manifest (i) their agreement with the prior studies and (ii) certainty in their own claims and findings. In contrast, however, the use of such RVs as suggest and imply enables an academic writer to be more cautious in relation to (i) their own research and (ii) the prior studies conducted by other scientists (ibid.). Finally, it should be explained that RVs are amply used in academic discourse in conjunction with the author’s citation practices (also known as “citation behaviour”), which often require aparaphrasis of the original stretch of discourse with the help of an RV (Doró, 2014a, p.32). The literature indicates that the use of RVs in the citation behaviour of an academic writer depends on the writers’ proficiency in English and the mastery of genre-appropriate conventions of academic writing in English (Kapranov, 2023d). For instance, novice academic writers and, in particular, undergraduate student writers utilize alimited range of RVs (for instance, explain, know, say, etc.) in their citation practices in contrast to those of postgraduates, who typically employ amore extensive and genre-appropriate repertoire of RVs, such as admit, assert, imply, etc. (Dontcheva-Navratilova, 2008). Summarising the literature, it can be posited that academic writers take advantage of RVs in signalling citation and referencing, evidentiality, knowledge-stating, and stance. They resort to using RVs in order to (i) report the findings and methods/ procedure, (ii) present their reasoning and/or discussion of the results, and (iii) organize the RA discursively (Hyland, 1999b, p.349). 3 RAAS IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS AND PSYCHOLINGUISTICS RAAs are defined as atextual piece that provides the reader with an exact and concise description of the full article and/or afactual summary of the full article (Bhatia, 1993, p.78). RAAs constitute atypical feature of written academic discourse (Bhatia, 1993; Gillaerts & Van de Velde, 2010; Samraj, 2005; Swales, 1990), which is expected and, very often, mandated by peer-review outlets in their article submission guidelines (see, for instance, the author’s guidelines by the journal Applied Linguistics (2022)). OPEN ACCESS OLEKSANDR KAPRANOV 129 Given that abstracts (i.e., RAAs) are “an essential and inalienable part of research articles” (Tseng, 2011, p.27), they have been studied extensively in academic writing, scientific discourse, and applied linguistics (Samraj, 2005, p.141). It should be noted that there is aline of research that considers RAAs apart-genre (Samraj, 2005; Swales, 1990) due to their function either as acondensed version of the complete article or as an extension of the article’s title (Gillaerts & Van de Velde, 2010). However, taking into account their well-defined purpose and structural organisation (Swales, 1990), RAAs are argued to constitute aseparate genre (Gillaerts & Van de Velde, 2010), which is characterized by aset of peculiarities associated with grammar, lexis, and rhetorical structure, which is often analysed through the prism of “moves” (Swales, 1981), i.e. functional units that facilitate the communicative purpose of the text written in aparticular genre, for instance, in the genre of academic research article (Cortes, 2013, p.33). In applied linguistics, RAAs are argued to involve such obligatory moves, as (i) the study aim, (ii) research methodology, and (iii) the summary of the results (Dos Santos, 1996; Golebiowski, 2009; Pho, 2008; Tseng, 2011), which seem to correlate with afairly standard sequence “introduction-purpose-methods-results-discussion” (Bhatia, 1993; Can et al., 2016; Hyland, 1999a; Jiang & Hyland, 2017). Similarly, RAAs in applied psycholinguistics and theoretical psycholinguistics quite often encompass aset of moves that consists in (i) instigating the reader’s interest in the topic, (ii) presenting the focus of the article, (iii) outlining the study design, (iv) providing the major findings, and (v) pointing out to the general conclusions and further research (Saidi & Khazaei, 2021). From the vantage point of grammatical peculiarities, RAAs in applied linguistics are typically characterized by the prevalence of simple present tense, with simple past being epiphenomenal and associated with the presentation of methodology and/ or results (Doró, 2014b; Tseng, 2011; Wang & Tu, 2014). Additionally, the prior research indicates that the major bulk of verbs that are used in RAAs in applied linguistics is represented by finite verbs (Doró, 2014b) and nouns (Malah, 2015), which usually are employed by the authors to ensure cohesive textual ties (Ebrahimi & Chan, 2015; Malah, 2015). In summary to this section of the article, it is possible to observe that whilst there are multiple studies that pay attention to the rhetorical structure and lexico-grammatical peculiarities of RAAs in applied linguistics, there is insufficient research that focuses on RAAs in the cognate scientific field of applied psycholinguistics. Whilst there is apaucity of published studies that specifically address the issue of evidentiality and its linguistic manifestation by RVs in RAAs in applied linguistics and applied psycholinguistics, there is no state-of-the-art research that examines adiachronic dimension of their distribution. Aiming to address the current gap in the literature, the study, which is further presented in the article, explores the frequency and distribution of RVs in diachrony within the timeframe of ten years from 2012 to 2022 in the corpus of RAAs in the aforementioned disciplines. OPEN ACCESS 130 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 2/2024 4 THE PRESENT STUDY The present study is acorpus-based exploration that aims at shedding light on the frequency and distribution of RVs that are associated with evidentiality in RAAs published in the United Kingdom (the UK) by the high impact factor journals Applied Linguistics and Applied Psycholinguistics within ten years (2012–2022). Theoretically, the study is informed by the view of evidentiality as adistinct category in its own right that lacks aspecific form of manifestation in English, in which it could be expressed by lexical verbs, in particular RVs, which refer to the information source (Aikhenvald, 2007; Shaw, 1992). More specifically, however, the study embraces the so-called broad construal of evidentiality that regards it as the information source behind amessage (Carretero & Zamorano-Mansilla, 2015; Ekberg & Paradis, 2009). Furthermore, the study is advised by Szczygłowska’s (2022) classification of RVs associated with evidentiality. According to her classification, the study considers the following types of RVs associated with evidentiality: (i) quotative (e.g., show), (ii) sensory (e.g., notice), and (iii) narrative (e.g., attempt). In line with such understanding of evidentiality, two RQs are formulated in the study (see introduction). In concord with the RQs, the specific aims of the study consist in (i) collecting acorpus of RAAs published in Applied Linguistics and Applied Psycholinguistics, (ii) establishing the frequency and distribution of the RVs associated with evidentiality in diachrony (2012–2022) and finding out their most frequent types in accordance with the classification by Szczygłowska (2022), and (iii) examining whether or not there are disciplinary differences in the distribution of RVs associated with evidentiality in the corpus. Following the RQs and specific research aims, the procedure of corpus collection and its subsequent analysis have been conducted. 4.1 CORPUS As previously mentioned, the corpus was comprised of RAAs published in Applied Linguistics (AL) and Applied Psycholinguistics (AP) from 2012 to 2022 (i.e., 10 years). The corpus was collected on the official websites of the journals, specifically https:// academic.oup.com/applij (AL) and https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/applied-psycholinguistics (AP). Taking into account AL’s and AP’s focus on the applied research dimension in linguistics and psycholinguistics, their contents deemed to be comparable for the purposes of the study. Following Kapranov (2017), the period of time of ten years was considered sufficient and representative as far as the corpus cut-off was concerned. Hence, the corpus was comprised of the RAAs published in AL and AP from 2012 to 2022. Notably, all other parts of RAs (for instance, keywords, titles, authors’ affiliation, references, and the texts of RAs), as well as the texts labelled “extract” were excluded from the corpus collection. The RAAs found on the official websites of AL and AP were downloaded, saved as Word files and processed in the statistical program Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.0 (IBM) in order to compute the descriptive statistics of the corpus (see Table 1 below). OPEN ACCESS OLEKSANDR KAPRANOV 131 #Descriptive Statistics AL AP 1Total number of words 61,423 89,169 2Mean words 5,583.9 8,106.3 3Standard deviation words 1,207.1 1,892.8 4Minimum words 3,865 4,997 5Maximum words 6,974 10,786 6Total number of abstracts 384 534 7Mean abstracts 34.9 48.5 8Standard deviation abstracts 6.5 9.1 9Minimum abstracts 23 34 10 Maximum abstracts 43 59 Table 1.The Descriptive Statistics of the Corpus of RAAs Published in AL and AP from 2012 to 2022 It should be observed that the corpus appeared unbalanced in terms of the total number of words as well as the total number of RAAs (see Table 1) due to the following factors: (i) the difference in the number of journal volumes and issues per year between AL and AP and (ii) the differences in the number of articles per issue in AL and AP, respectively. 4.2 METHODS Methodologically, the study was grounded in the broad approach to evidentiality postulated by Carretero and Zamorano-Mansilla (2015) and Ekberg and Paradis (2009). The approach was extended by the view of RVs as potential markers of evidentiality (Söderqvist, 2020) that in the present study are referred as “RVs associated with evidentiality”. Given that English could be described as alanguage with no explicit lexico-grammatical markers of evidentiality (Aikhenvald, 2007), the study further employed the construal “RVs associated with evidentiality” rather than “the marker of evidentiality”. Based upon the aforementioned considerations, the corpus was searched for the RVs associated with evidentiality in the following manner. First, the corpus was examined manually for the presence of RVs associated with evidentiality in order to compile alist of them. Second, the corpus was searched for RVs associated with evidentiality from the compiled list in the computer software AntConc version 4.0.11 (Anthony, 2022). The search involved the software’s function “words” that yielded the frequency of the occurrence of the searched-for word per file. It should be explained that each file, which was processed in AntConc, was comprised of RAAs per year per journal. For example, all RAAs published in AL in 2012 were merged into one file and processed in AntConc by searching for all RVs associated with evidentiality. Importantly, the search in AntConc involved all forms of an RV associated with evidentiality. For instance, the program searched for to argue, argues, argued, and arguing. Afterwards, all values associated with the verb forms were merged into one numerical representation per RV per journal and per year. All RVs associated with evidentiality were processed in the identical manner as described above. Finally, the most frequent RVs associated with evidentiality were manually examined for their fit into Szczygłowska’s (2022) classification of the RVs. OPEN ACCESS 132 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 2/2024 Having obtained the non-normalized frequency data in AntConc (Anthony, 2022) per year and per journal, the data were processed in SPSS (IBM, 2011) in order to (i) calculate the means (M) and standard deviations (SD) of the RVs associated with evidentiality and (ii) normalize the frequency of the occurrence of the RVs per 10,000 words. The normalisation of the raw (i.e., non-normalized) frequencies was deemed necessary due to the differences in the subcorpora of RAAs published by AL and AP (see Table 1). The results of the descriptive statistics are further presented and discussed in subsection 4.3. #RVs *12 *13 *14 *15 *16 *17 *18 *19 *20 *21 *22 1 Acknowledge 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2Add 11001000010 3 Appear 0 1 4 0 2 4 2 2 2 2 3 4 Argue 7 5 6 4 8 6 3 3 9 9 4 5Assume 10001000000 6Attempt 31100121002 7Claim 11010010100 8 Consider 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 9 Contrast 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 10 Describe 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 11 Emphasize 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 12 Explain 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 13Find 01010001000 14Imply 10001001101 15 Indicate 3 4 3 2 2 7 4 3 4 4 8 16 Mention 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 17Note 01011003011 18Notice 05010010000 19 Observe 0 0 0 0 1 3 0 1 0 0 3 20 Propose 2 4 0 1 5 3 3 3 4 4 6 21 Report 3 1 7 5 5 6 15 17 7 7 4 22 Reveal 10121101111 23Seek 30012320210 24Seem 10200223111 25 Show 11 12 10 10 12 20 19 23 18 18 14 26State 11100000000 27 Suggest 6 8 8 3 14 4 9 8 12 12 6 28 Underline 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 29 Understand 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 30 View 221433264 0 4 Table 2.RVs Associated with Evidentiality in RAAs in AL (2012–2022) OPEN ACCESS OLEKSANDR KAPRANOV 133 4.3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The results are comprised of the frequency of the occurrence of RVs associated with evidentiality in non-normalized values in the corpus (see Tables 2–3), as well as their means and standard deviations (see Table 4). It should be observed that the years of publication are given in their shortened forms in Tables 2–3 (e.g., *12 instead of 2012). #RVs *12 *13 *14 *15 *16 *17 *18 *19 *20 *21 *22 1 Acknowledge 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 2Add 00110000000 3 Appear 4 2 3 1 2 1 0 3 5 4 2 4 Argue 1 5 2 4 3 2 1 1 5 3 0 5Assume 01100000000 6Attempt 41011100000 7Claim 21010010001 8 Consider 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 9 Contrast 1 1 0 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 10 Describe 0 2 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 11 Emphasize 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 12 Explain 1 1 1 2 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 13Find 01010001110 14Imply 00100010000 15 Indicate 8 5 7 15 16 10 18 12 9 13 10 16 Mention 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 17Note 01000000000 18Notice 00050001000 19 Observe 6 6 3 3 5 5 6 1 6 10 3 20 Propose 1 0 1 3 5 3 3 4 1 3 2 21 Report 7 7 7 3 4 6 5 7 4 7 0 22 Reveal 11112121111 23Seek 00000010110 24Seem 11003010010 25 Show 22 21 18 20 19 20 24 28 37 18 33 26State 00002000100 27 Suggest 13 21 15 25 29 19 25 26 27 30 9 28 Underline 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 29 Understand 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 30 View 00421391221 Table 3.RVs Associated with Evidentiality in RAAs in AP (2012–2022) OPEN ACCESS 140 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 2/2024 and AP. It follows from Figure 3 that the quotative type of the RVs associated with evidentiality occupies the niche of the by-default manifestation of evidentiality in applied linguistics and applied psycholinguistics, at least as far as the RAAs in these two cognate disciplines are concerned. These findings are, perhaps, not at all unexpected, given that the quotative RVs show and suggest are highly frequent both in AL and AP. Moreover, it has been established that the RVs show and suggest that belong to the quotative type are significantly more prevalent in AP, thus indicating that the quotative RVs associated with evidentiality are far more common in RAAs in applied psycholinguistics, where their frequent occurrence is reflective of the disciplinary discursive practices. Concluding the discussion of the results, it seems possible to generalize that whereas RAAs in both AL and AP involve the quotative type of RVs associated with evidentiality, we may distinguish quite separate discipline-related tendencies of using highly frequent RVs in order to manifest evidentiality. As shown by the statistical analysis, these tendencies involve asignificantly frequent use of propose and report in RAAs in applied linguistics and argue, indicate, observe, show and suggest in RAAs in applied psycholinguistics. 5 CONCLUSIONS The article discusses acorpus-based study that aims at investigating the frequency of the occurrence of RVs associated with evidentiality in RAAs in AL and AP published between 2012 and 2022. The study has established that the majority of RVs associated with evidentiality belong to the quotative type (for instance, argue, show, suggest, etc.) that appears to be dominant in the diachrony. This finding indicates that, to an extent, an evidential dimension of this type of RVs is manifested by the recurrent and routinized lexico-discursive means of expressing evidentiality by pointing to or quoting the sources of evidence (cf., show + that clause, data + show, results + show, and findings + show). Figure 3.The Types of the RVs Associated with Evidentiality (in Percent) in AL and AP from 2012 to 2022 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 Narrative Quotative Sensory AL AP OPEN ACCESS OLEKSANDR KAPRANOV 141 Another conclusion that arises from the findings demonstrates that whilst RAAs in both AL and AP involve, predominantly, the quotative type of RVs associated with evidentiality, there are several discipline-related tendencies of using highly frequent RVs in order to manifest evidentiality. Specifically, the RVs associated with evidentiality propose and report are significantly more frequent in the RAAs in AL, whereas argue, indicate, observe, show and suggest occur significantly more frequently in the RAAs in AP. It can be generalized that these findings provide an insight into the frequency of the occurrence of RVs associated with evidentiality in the discursive practices in applied linguistics and psycholinguistics. From abroader theoretical perspective, the findings feed into the current research on evidentiality in English, which, as previously explained, does not possess morpho-syntactic evidential markers (Aikhenvald, 2007). In this regard, the study has uncovered additional evidence that points to anumber of RVs (for instance, show and suggest) that are frequently used in order to indicate the quoted source of evidence in RAAs in applied linguistics and psycholinguistics. Additionally, the study sheds light onto aless researched area of psycholinguistic discourse as far as lexico-discursive manifestations of evidentiality are concerned. Given thepaucity of the state-of-the-art studies on psycholinguistic discourse, the study can be used as abenchmark for further research in the discourse of RAs and RAAs in psycholinguistics and in future studies aimed at investigating evidentiality in academic writing in psycholinguistics. It should be noted that the study has several limitations. In particular, the study could have benefitted from arhetorical analysis of moves in the sense postulated by Swales (1981). Arguably, the analysis of the Swalesian moves in conjunction with the distribution of the RVs associated with evidentiality could provide adeeper insight into the markers of evidentiality in academic writing in applied linguistics and psycholinguistics. Furthermore, the study design could have been enhanced by amore representative corpus. Hopefully, the shortcomings of the study will be remedied in the future investigations. Acknowledgements The author is grateful to the editors of Linguistica Pragensia and to the two anonymous reviewers, whose comments and suggestions on the draft of this article are greatly appreciated. PRIMARY SOURCES Applied Linguistics. https://academic.oup.com/ applij Applied Psycholinguistics. https://www.cambridge. org/core/journals/applied-psycholinguistics REFERENCES Aikhenvald, A.Y. (2007). Information source and evidentiality: What can we conclude. Rivista di Linguistica, 19(1), 209–227. Anthony, L. (2022). AntConc (Version 4.0.11). Tokyo, Japan: Waseda University. Retrieved from https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software. OPEN ACCESS 142 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 2/2024 Applied Linguistics (2022). Notes to Contributors. Retrieved from https://academic.oup.com/ applij/pages/General_Instructions. Aull, L.L., & Lancaster, Z. (2014). Linguistic markers of stance in early and advanced academic writing: Acorpus-based comparison. Written Communication, 31(2), 151–183. https://doi. org/10.1177/0741088314527055. Bhatia, V.K. (1993). Analyzing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. London: Longman. Bloch, J. (2010). Aconcordance-based study of the use of reporting verbs as rhetorical devices in academic papers. Journal of Writing Research, 2(2), 219–244. https://doi. org/10.17239/jowr-2010.02.02.7. Breeze, R. (2017). Exploring evidential uses of the passive of reporting verbs through corpus analysis. In J.I.Marín-Arrese, M.Carretero, & G.Haßler (Eds.), Evidentiality Revisited. Cognitive Grammar, Functional and Discourse-Pragmatic Perspectives (pp.297–313). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Brugman, C.M., & Macaulay, M. (2015). Characterizing evidentiality. Linguistic Typology, 19(2), 201–237. https://doi. org/10.1515/lingty-2015–0007. Can, S., Karabacak, E., & Qin, J. (2016). Structure of moves in research article abstracts in applied linguistics. Writing for Academic Publications, 4(3), 1–16. https://doi. org/10.3390/publications4030023. Carlet, A., & Cebrian, J. (2022). The roles of task, segment type, and attention in L2 perceptual training. Applied Psycholinguistics, 43(2), 271–299. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0142716421000515. Carretero, M., & Zamorano-Mansilla, J.R. (2015). Evidentiality as conversational implicature: Implications for corpus annotation. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 212, 146–150. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.11.312. Charles, M. (2006). The construction of stance in reporting clauses: Across-disciplinary study of theses. Applied Linguistics, 27(3), 492–518. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/ aml021. Clark, C. (2010). Evidence of evidentiality in the quality press 1993 and 2005. Corpora, 5(2), 139–160. https://doi.org/10.3366/ cor.2010.0103. Cornillie, B., Marín Arrese, J.I., & Wiemer, B. (2015). Evidentiality and the semanticspragmatics interface: An introduction. Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 29(1), 1–18. https://doi. org/10.1075/bjl.29.001int. Cortes, V. (2013). The purpose of this study is to: Connecting lexical bundles and moves in research article introductions. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 12(1), 33–43. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jeap.2012.11.002. Dontcheva-Navratilova, O. (2008). Reporting verbs as indicators of stance in academic discourse. In M.Silye (Ed.), Porta Lingua 2008. Szakember, szaktudás, szaknyelv (pp.97–104). Debrecen: Szaknyelvoktatók és Kutatók Országos Egyesülete. Dontcheva-Navratilova, O. (2018). Intercultural and interdisciplinary variation in the use of epistemic lexical verbs in linguistics and economics research articles. Linguistica Pragensia, 28(2), 154–167. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.esp.2021.02.003. Doró, K. (2014a). Citation practices in EFL undergraduate theses: Afocus on reporting verbs. In J.Dombi, J.Horváth, & M.Nikolov (Eds.), UPRT 2013: Empirical Studies in English Applied Linguistics (pp.32–42). Pécs: Lingua Franca Csoport. Doró, K. (2014b). Verb tenses and hedging in published and unpublished applied linguistics research paper abstracts. In J.Horváth & P.Medgyes (Eds.), Studies in Honour of Marianne Nikolov (pp.356–369). Pécs: Lingua Franca Csoport. Dos Santos, M.B. (1996). The textual organization of research paper abstracts in applied linguistics. Text & Talk, 16(4), 481–500. https://doi.org/10.1515/ text.1.1996.16.4.481. Ebrahimi, S.F., & Chan, S.H. (2015). Research article abstracts in applied linguistics and economics: Functional analysis of the grammatical subject. Australian Journal of OPEN ACCESS OLEKSANDR KAPRANOV 143 Linguistics, 35(4), 381–397. https://doi.org/10.1 080/07268602.2015.1070660. Ekberg, L., & Paradis, C. (2009). Evidentiality in language and cognition. Special Issue of Functions of Language, 16(1), 5–7. https://doi. org/10.1075/fol.16.1.02ekb. Gillaerts, P., & Van de Velde, F. (2010). Interactional metadiscourse in research article abstracts. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 9(2), 128–139. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jeap.2010.02.004. Golebiowski, Z. (2009). Prominent messages in education and applied linguistic abstracts: How do authors appeal to their prospective readers? Journal of Pragmatics, 41(4), 753–769. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. pragma.2008.10.009. Hyland, K. (1999a). Disciplinary discourses: Writer stance in research articles. In C.Candlin & K.Hyland (Eds.), Writing: Texts, Processes and Practices (pp.99–121). New York: Longman. Hyland, K. (1999b). Academic attribution: Citation and the construction of disciplinary knowledge. Applied Linguistics, 20(3), 341–367. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/20.3.341. Hyland, K. (2009). Academic Discourse: English in aGlobal Context. London: Continuum. Hyland, K. (2014). Activity and evaluation: Reporting practices in academic writing. In J.Flowedew (Ed.), Academic Discourse (pp.125–140). London/New York: Routledge. IBM. (2011). IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, version 20.0. New York: IBM Corp. Ilchenko, O., & Kramar, N. (2022). Reporting verbs argue, claim and believe in Linguistics research articles: Acorpus-based study. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 18(1), 203–213. Jiang, F.K., & Hyland, K. (2017). Metadiscursive nouns: Interaction and cohesion in abstract moves. English for Specific Purposes, 46, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2016.11.001. Kapranov, O. (2017). Adiachronic corpusassisted study of climate change discourse in annual reports by British Petroleum. In K.Broś & G.Kowalski (Eds.), Discourse Studies— Ways and Crossroads. Insights into Cultural, Diachronic and Genre Issues in the Discipline (pp.191–205). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/b12713. Kapranov, O. (2020). Self-mention in argumentative essays written by pre-service teachers of English. Beyond Philology. An International Journal of Linguistics, Literary Studies and English Language Teaching, 17(2), 97–128. https://doi.org/10.26881/ bp.2020.2.05. Kapranov, O. (2021a). Self-mention in research sections of university websites in Estonia and the United Kingdom. BAS British and American Studies, 27, 57–69. Kapranov, O. (2021b). Self-mention in academic writing by in-service teachers of English: Exploring authorial voices. In M.Burada, O.Tatu & R.Sinu (Eds.), Exploring Language Variation, Diversity and Change (pp.76–100). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Kapranov, O. (2023a). Evidentiality in argumentative essays by upper-intermediate EFL students. Language: Codification, Competence, Communication, 1(8), 66–82. https://doi.org/10.2478/lccc-2023-0004. Kapranov, O. (2023b). “Would” in research article abstracts across three disciplines. In M.Skorasinska (Ed.), Modal Verbs and Modality: From Literary to Non-Literary Texts (pp.29–58). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Kapranov, O. (2023c). The discursive presence of digital technology in research articles in psycholinguistics: Asystematic analysis. Analele Universităţii Ovidius din Constanţa. Seria Filologie, 34(1), 46–71. Kapranov, O. (2023d). Citation and referencing practices in argumentative essay writing by upper-intermediate EFL students. Studia Anglica Resoviensia, 20, 71–87. https://doi. org/10.15584/sar.2023.20.4. Malah, Z. (2015). Lexical cohesion in academic discourse: exploring applied linguistics research articles abstracts. Research Journal of English Language and Literature, 3(4), 291–299. Malmström, H. (2008). Knowledge-stating verbs and contexts of accountability in linguistic OPEN ACCESS 144 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 2/2024 and literary academic discourse. Nordic Journal of English Studies, 7(3), 35–60. Manan, N.A., & Noor, N.M. (2014). Analysis of reporting verbs in Master’s theses. ProcediaSocial and Behavioral Sciences, 134, 140–145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.04.232. Miche, E. (2018). Evidentiality, deonticity and intensification in Internet forum language. In C.Figueras Bates & A.Cabedo Nebot (Eds.), Perspectives on Evidentiality in Spanish. Explorations across Genres (pp.107–123). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Pho, P.D. (2008). Research article abstracts in applied linguistics and educational technology: Astudy of linguistic realizations of rhetorical structure and authorial stance. Discourse Studies, 10(2), 231–250. https://doi. org/10.1177/146144560708701. Saidi, M., & Khazaei, Z. (2021). Genre analysis of research article abstracts in applied linguistics: exploring sub-disciplinary variations. International Journal of English Language and Translation Studies, 9, 34–40. Samraj, B. (2005). An exploration of agenre set: Research article abstracts and introductions in two disciplines. English for Specific Purposes, 24(2), 141–156. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. esp.2002.10.001. Shaw, P. (1992). Reasons for the correlation of voice, tense, and sentence function in reporting verbs. Applied Linguistics, 13(3), 302–319. https://doi.org/10.1093/ applin/13.3.302. Söderqvist, E.B. (2017). Evidentiality across age and gender: acorpus-based study of variation in spoken British English. Research in Corpus Linguistics, 19(1), 17–33. https://doi. org/10.32714/ricl.05.02. Söderqvist, E.B. (2020). Informational and relational functions of evidentiality in interaction. Studia Neophilologica, 92(1), 56–73. https://doi.org/10.1080/00393274.2020.172 4823. Swales, J.M. (1981). Aspects of Article Introductions. Birmingham: The University of Aston, Language Studies Unit. Swales, J.M. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Szczygłowska, T. (2022). Lexical verbs of epistemic modality in academic written English: disciplinary variation. Linguistica Silesiana, 43, 91–111. https://doi.org/10.24425/ linsi.2022.141219. Tseng, F.-P. (2011). Analyses of move structure and verb tense of research article abstracts in applied linguistics journals. International Journal of English Linguistics, 1(2), 27–39. https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v1n2p27. Wang, S.-P., & Tu, P.-P. (2014). Tense use and move analysis in journal article abstracts. Taiwan Journal of TESOL, 11(1), 3–29. Warchał, K. (2015). Certainty and Doubt in Academic Discourse: Epistemic Modality Markers in English and Polish Linguistics Articles. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego. Yang, L. (2012). Acomparative study of evidentiality in RAs in applied linguistics written by NS and Chinese writers. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 2(4), 140–146. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojml.2012.24018. Oleksandr Kapranov English Department Faculty of Education, NLA University College Linstows gate 3, 0130 Oslo, Norway ORCID ID: 0000-0002-9056-3311 oleksandr.kaprano[email protected] OPEN ACCESS