Is stylistics a hard science? Intersubjective positioning in Language and Literature research article abstracts...

The extent of authorial intervention in research writing is partly a personal expression of individuality but largely an attempt to demonstrate disciplinary affiliation and attain disciplinary recognition in the form of publication and citation. To reach this goal, writers draw upon discourse practices and rhetorical patterns that circulate within the discourse community. Using Hyland's model of interaction in academic discourse, the present study explores patterns of personal and interpersonal intrusion (aka stance and engagement) in abstracts of research article by stylisticians. The objective is to examine whether stylisticians' textual and rhetorical choices intersect more with the disciplinary practices of the soft or hard disciplines. To this end, I use the LancsBox corpus analysis tool to compile a corpus of 181 research article abstracts drawn from the Language and Literature journal, which publishes theoretical and empirical research in stylistics, and search for frequencies of stance markers and engagement features in the corpus. Findings from the corpus-assisted analysis are set against frequent patterns of academic interaction in the soft and hard disciplines in order to determine if stylistics can be claimed to be a hard science.