Evaluative Strategies in Iranian and International Research Article Introductions: Assessment of Academic Writing

Abstract

Despite a spate of interest in the study of the Introductions of scholarly articles, the<br />focal genre of knowledge construction, research is yet to reach conclusive answers on<br />the nature of this genre. Thus, the present study analyzed research article<br />Introductions, aiming to explore how the process of knowledge construction is<br />achieved by Iranian and international writers of English research articles. The research<br />investigated the ways by which Iranian writers apply evaluative stance as they<br />construct an argument for their own research. To this end, the researchers, initially,<br />analyzed 80 research article Introductions to find the instances of explicit Attitude and<br />then to spot the Graduation resources that grade explicit Attitude. The results<br />conspicuously revealed that the international writers, compared to the Iranian writers,<br />tended to apply a greater proportion of explicit Attitude and Graduation resources.<br />Lack of variety to grade explicit Attitude in the process of constructing an argument<br />within the Introduction section of the Iranian English articles might indicate that, at<br />least, some of these articles did not completely conform to the conventions of<br />discourse community.