Stance in article highlights: The promotion of Covid-19 research

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Zou, Hang (Joanna) and Hyland, Ken (2024) Stance in article highlights: The promotion of Covid-19 research. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 34 (2). pp. 466-483. ISSN 0802-6106

[thumbnail of highlights IJAL submission] Microsoft Word (OpenXML) (highlights IJAL submission) - Accepted Version
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Abstract

Covid-19 was the greatest public health crisis of a century, accounting for millions of deaths and initiating an urgent surge of published biomedical research. In this climate of social anxiety, researchers scrambled to publicize their work and achieve a medical breakthrough. The use of journal highlights, a brief bullet pointed list summarising the novel results of a study, is an important tool in this promotional endeavour. In this study we focus on the stance taken by authors in this genre by examining 300 highlights dealing with the virus and comparing them with 300 from articles in the same 16 journals on other issues. Our results show significantly greater use of stance markers in the Covid highlights with hedges, boosters and self-mention particularly marked. Our study offers both a description of stance in highlights and an understanding of the potential impact of the intense, high-stakes competition generated by the pandemic in biomedical publishing. We believe this offers a valuable contribution to the literature on stance, academic discourse and rhetorical persuasion.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Funding Information: This work was supported by the Chinese Ministry of Education of Humanities and Social Science project 22YJC740111, Shanghai Pujiang Program 21PJC039, Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities 2021ECNU‐YYJ004 and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation 2021M691037.
Uncontrolled Keywords: biomedical publishing,covid research,highlights,promotion,stance,language and linguistics,linguistics and language,sdg 3 - good health and well-being ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1200/1203
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Education and Lifelong Learning
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Language in Education
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Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 21 Nov 2023 02:06
Last Modified: 30 Apr 2024 11:30
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/93656
DOI: 10.1111/ijal.12502

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