“Long-term effects of Covid-19 are poorly understood”: Attitude in medical journal abstracts and highlights

Zou, Hang (Joanna) and Hyland, Ken (2025) “Long-term effects of Covid-19 are poorly understood”: Attitude in medical journal abstracts and highlights. English for Specific Purposes, 80. pp. 60-73. ISSN 0889-4906

Microsoft Word (OpenXML) (abstracts and highlights R3) - Accepted Version Restricted to Repository staff only until 9 July 2027. Request a copy

Abstract

Studies of authorial stance are now a staple of the discourse analytic literature. Less studied, however, are the more personal, affective attitudes authors take towards their material and how these contribute to persuading an academic audience. In this paper, we employ Hyland’s (2005) metadiscourse model to examine the role of affect in two of the most explicitly rhetorical genres in the academy: abstracts and highlights. Despite differences, these genres share the promotional purpose of announcing research and seeking to attract an audience for it. Based on the abstracts and corresponding highlights from 261 articles in high profile medical journals addressing Covid-19 research, we show how attitude markers are used to strategically manage this purpose in different ways. The results indicate that academics routinely express attitudes to promote their research, with proportionately more features in the highlights. Variations in markers and their functions underscore their importance. Our study contributes to the literature on attitude markers and rhetorical persuasion, particularly in Covid-related discourse.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Data availability: Data will be made available on request. Funding: This work was supported by the Chinese Ministry of Education of Humanities and Social Science Project (Recontextualization of New Media Scientific Discourse from the Perspective of Enhancing Emergency Language Competence, Grant number: 22YJC740111).
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Education and Lifelong Learning
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Language in Education
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	29 Sep 2025 09:30
Last Modified:	11 Oct 2025 15:34
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/100475
DOI:	10.1016/j.esp.2025.06.002

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