The stance of stance: A critical look at ways stance is expressed and modeled in academic discourse

As work on how evaluation is expressed in academic discourse proliferates, it is easy to fall into the methodological trap of assuming that all descriptions lead in the same direction, that one need simply combine and implement existing categories and models. This paper raises a number of methodological questions about the universality of commonly applied linguistic categories by offering a critical reading of the adverbial evidently as it appears in a corpus of contemporary research articles. The adverbial is analysed from three general vantage points: its position or function as hedge or booster; the way it intervenes and/or gets caught up in the overall 'meta-textual' strategy; the way it intervenes and/or gets caught up in the overall 'meta-pragmatic' strategy. A number of conclusions are drawn about the relevance of such findings in/for academic discourse. © 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.