Reporting verbs in some articles on language research by english and vietnamese authors

2018-2020 (I)

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

ENGLISH LANGUAGE

M.A. THESIS
REPORTING VERBS IN SOME ARTICLES ON
LANGUAGE RESEARCH BY ENGLISH AND
VIETNAMESE AUTHORS
Động từ tường thuật trong một số bài báo nghiên cứu
về ngôn ngữ của các tác giả người Anh và người Việt
NGUYỄN THỊ THẢO

NGUYỄN THỊ THẢO

Field: English Language
Code: 8.22.02.01

Hanoi - 2020


MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A. THESIS
REPORTING VERBS IN SOME ARTICLES ON
LANGUAGE RESEARCH BY ENGLISH AND
VIETNAMESE AUTHORS
Động từ tường thuật trong một số bài báo nghiên cứu

về ngôn ngữ của các tác giả người Anh và người Việt
NGUYỄN THỊ THẢO
Field: English Language
Code: 8.22.02.01
Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phan Văn Quế

Hanoi - 2020


CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY
I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled
REPORTING VERBS IN SOME ARTICLES ON LANGUAGE RESEARCH BY
ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE AUTHORS submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Master in English Language. Except where the
reference is indicated, no other person‟s work has been used without due
acknowledgement in the text of the thesis.
Hanoi, 2020

Nguyễn Thị Thảo

Approved by
SUPERVISOR

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phan Văn Quế
Date:……………………

i


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to those who give me support
and assistance in completing this thesis. First and foremost, I am indebted to my
supervisor Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phan Văn Quế for his valuable guidance,
encouragement, insightful advice, and constructive feedback throughout the entire
period of writing the thesis. I‟m deeply grateful to my family who always give me
love, care, and unconditional support. I also wish to thank my colleagues at Nguyen
Duc Canh high school, in particular a special thanks to Mrs. Khanh, the Head
Master of the school who supported and encouraged me throughout the years. This
work would have never been possible without any of you.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Certificate of originality ............................................................................................... i
Acknowledgements .....................................................................................................ii
Table of contents ....................................................................................................... iii
Abstract ..................................................................................................................... .vi
List of tables and figures ...........................................................................................vii
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................. 1
1.1. Rationale ........................................................................................................... 1
1.2. Aim and objectives of the study ....................................................................... 2
1.3. Research questions............................................................................................ 3
1.4. Methods of the study ........................................................................................ 3
1.5. Scope of the study ............................................................................................. 3
1.6. Significance of the study .................................................................................. 4
1.7. Structure of the study ........................................................................................ 5
Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ..................................................................... 6
2.1. Previous studies on reporting verbs in academic writing ................................. 6
2.1.1. Studies focusing on categories of reporting verbs ..................................... 6

2.1.2. Studies focusing on tense usage of reporting verbs ................................. 10
2.1.3. Studies focusing on reporting verbs used in different disciplines ............ 12
2.1.4. Studies focusing on reporting verbs used by different groups of authors 13
2.1.5. Studies focusing on comparisons in the use of reporting verbs by English
native and non-native English authors ............................................................... 16
2.1.6. Studies focusing on reporting verbs in different languages in a
comparison with English .................................................................................... 17
2.1.7. Studies on reporting verbs in Vietnamese setting .................................... 18

iii


2.2. Reporting verbs ............................................................................................... 19
2.2.1. Definition of reporting.............................................................................. 19
2.2.2. Reporting verbs in academic writing ....................................................... 21
2.3. Patterns and denotation functions of reporting verbs ..................................... 22
2.3.1. Integral and non-integral citation patterns ............................................... 22
2.3.2. Denotation functions of reporting verbs................................................... 23
2.4. Summary ......................................................................................................... 25
Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY .............................................................................. 26
3.1. Research approach .......................................................................................... 26
3.2. Methods of the study ...................................................................................... 26
3.3. Data collection and data analysis .................................................................... 27
3.3.1. Data collection .......................................................................................... 27
3.3.2. Data analysis ............................................................................................. 28
3.4. Summary ......................................................................................................... 30
Chapter 4: REPORTING VERBS USED IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE
RESEARCH ARTICLES ....................................................................................... 31
4.1. Patterns where reporting verbs occur ............................................................. 31
4.2. Frequencies analysis of reporting verbs ......................................................... 33

4.3. Denotation functions of reporting verbs ......................................................... 38
4.3.1. English verbs used in denotation functions .............................................. 38
4.3.2. Vietnamese verbs used in denotation functions ....................................... 41
4.3.3. Comparison between English and Vietnamese verbs in denotation
functions ............................................................................................................. 44
4.4. Summary ......................................................................................................... 48
Chapter 5: CONCLUSION .................................................................................... 49

iv


5.1. Recapitulation ................................................................................................. 49
5.2. Concluding remarks ........................................................................................ 50
5.3. Limitation of the research ............................................................................... 50
5.4. Recommendations and suggestion for further research .................................. 51
REFERENCES ........................................................................................................ 52
APPENDICES ............................................................................................................ I
A. Categories of common reporting verbs according Hyland‟s (2002) framework . I
B. Corpus of the study .............................................................................................II

v


ABSTRACT
This study analyzes similarities and differences in the use of reporting verbs in
research articles between Vietnamese and English authors in their native language
in terms of frequency and denotation functions of reporting verbs following
Hyland‟s (1999) framework. The corpus of the study consists of thirty research
articles in Linguistics written by English and Vietnamese authors in the period from
2010 to 2015. Fifteen of the articles were written in English, by native English

speakers and published in Journal of English for Academic Purposes. The other
fifteen articles were written by Vietnamese authors in Vietnamese and published in
Language & Life Magazine. 93 different verbs with 415 instances in the English
corpus and 67different verbs recorded 183 occurrences in the Vietnamese corpus
are found. Generally speaking, both English and Vietnamese authors are fully aware
of functions of reporting verbs in academic writing. However, English authors use
more reporting verbs than Vietnamese authors. Regarding denotation functions of
reporting verbs in Hyland‟s (1999) framework, reporting verbs from Research Acts
category are employed more frequently in the English corpus than in the
Vietnamese corpus, but Cognitive Acts verbs occur in the Vietnamese corpus more
frequently. Findings of this study can be used as a basis for investigating why
Vietnamese learners of English use reporting language differently compared with
native speakers of English, and also can shed light on pedagogical implication of
teaching academic writing to Vietnamese learners of English.

vi


LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
Table 2.1: Common reporting verbs in Research Acts category ..............................23
Table 2.2: Common reporting verbs in Cognition Acts category .............................24
Table 2.3: Common reporting verbs in Discourse Acts category .............................24
Table 3.1: Details of the two corpora ........................................................................27
Table 3.2: Word and citation counts in the two corpora ...........................................28
Table 4.1: Frequency of reporting verbs in the two corpora .....................................34
Table 4.2: Top reporting verbs in the two corpora ...................................................34
Table 4.3: Reporting verbs occurred only once in the two corpora ..........................38
Table 4.4: Distribution of English verbs in denotation function ..............................39
Table 4.5: Distribution of Vietnamese verbs in denotation function ........................41
Table 4.6: Comparison in the use of English and Vietnamese verbs ........................44

Table 4.7: Distribution of English verbs in other studies .........................................45
Table 4.8: Comparison in the use of Chinese and Vietnamese verbs .......................47

Figure 2.1: Classification of reporting verbs by Thompson & Ye (1991) ..................8
Figure 2.2: Classification of reporting verbs by Hyland (2002) ...............................10

vii


Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale
Nowadays, although much of the research throughout the world is carried out
by researchers who are not native English speakers, their scientific findings are
mostly reported in this language. As a result, English academic writing is a skill
much needed by many researchers who are not only non-native English speakers
but also native ones. It is proposed that academic writing follows a certain
rhetorical, grammatical, and stylistic patterns for developing the general semiotic
system to have effective scientific discourse. In the last few decades, there has been
a great amount of interest in the study of academic writing whose focus covers the
studies of genre, content, grammatical complexity, lexical diversity to more specific
language features such as modality, redundancy. In academic writing it will often be
necessary to refer to the research of other authors and to report on their findings.
This process of referring to previous studies is called citation. Citation is a
rhetorical device that plays a key role in academic writing. It indicates that the
author understands the previous works, makes the author as a member of the
disciplinary community, and helps the author to promote his/her research. In order
to do citation, researchers have to use reporting verbs which is considered as one of
the most crucial components in citation process.
The difficulty with using reporting verbs is that there are many different verbs,
and each of them has slightly different and often subtle shades of meaning. As the

theory implies, the variation of the use of reporting verbs indicates that reporting
verbs used in research articles carry out different function and communicative
purposes. The appropriate choice of reporting verbs in citation is crucial not only in
establishing the author‟s own claims but also in situating these claims within
previously published research. Hyland (1999, 2002) considered reporting verbs as
one of the lexical devices that researchers need for expressing their stance in an
academic paper and aligning themselves with readers. In this perspective, reporting
verbs in academic writing might be seen as rhetorical attributions that are used to
help authors‟ convince readers that authors‟ claims are significant and reasonable.
Moreover, by learning how to use reporting verbs in citing works of other authors
properly, it can help authors to avoid plagiarism.

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Regarding their importance in academic writing, a great number of studies on
reporting verbs have been conducted from various disciplines as well as their use by
different groups of researchers. To the best knowledge of the author, most of the
studies on reporting verbs were done abroad and they focused on international
settings. There is a lack of studies done in the Vietnamese context related to
reporting verbs, except the papers by Nguyen & Pramoolsook (2015a, 2015b,
2016), Nguyen (2014, 2017), and unpublished master thesis by Hoang (2018).
Nguyen & Pramoolsook (2015a, 2015b, 2016) and Nguyen (2014, 2017) focused on
analyzing reporting verbs used by Vietnamese master students while Hoang (2018)
studied signal functions of reporting verbs in English and Vietnamese based on
English novel “The Lost Symbol” and its Vietnamese translated version. From here,
it can be seen that more research in reporting verbs, particularly in English
Language Studies needs to be done in Vietnamese setting. Deriving from the above
listed reasons, the present study was an attempt to compare the use of reporting
verbs by Vietnamese authors and English authors in their native language in the

field of language teaching and applied linguistics. In this thesis, it is not our
ambition to provide a thorough analysis on the use of reporting verbs in Vietnamese
research articles and English articles, but rather to bring certain insight into this
field.
1.2. Aim and objectives of the study
This study aims to analyze the use of reporting verbs in linguistics research
articles written by English and Vietnamese authors in their native languages in
order to find out similarities and differences in the structures where reporting verbs
occur and denotation functions of reporting verbs. In order to obtain this particular
aim, we highlight the specific objectives of this study below:
 to explore the patterns where reporting verbs occur in linguistics research
articles written by English and Vietnamese authors;


to investigate what reporting verbs are used and their frequencies in
linguistics research articles written by English and Vietnamese authors;
 to find out the similarities and differences of denotation functions of
reporting verbs used in linguistics research articles written by English and
Vietnamese authors.

2


1.3. Research questions
Based on the above aim and objectives, this study seeks answers to the
following research questions:


What are the patterns where reporting verbs occur in linguistics research
articles written by English and Vietnamese authors?

 What are the reporting verbs used and their frequencies in linguistics
research articles written by English and Vietnamese authors?
 What are the similarities and differences in the denotation functions of
reporting verbs in linguistics research articles by English and Vietnamese
authors?
1.4. Methods of the study
In order to identify, describe, interpret, and analyze the data the current study
uses qualitative research approach. The corpus consists of thirty papers published in
linguistics journals. Fifteen of the articles were written in English by native English
authors and published in Journal of English for Academic Purposes. The other
fifteen papers were all written in Vietnamese and published in Language & Life
Magazine (Tạp chí Ngơn ngữ và Đời sống). These two corpora were then analyzed
by the author to find any reporting verbs which were used to refer to previous
works. The verbs were tallied, recorded, and then classified in terms of denotation
functions of reporting verbs according to Hyland‟s (1999) framework. In the next
step, the author employed description and contrastive technique to highlight main
features in using reporting verbs by Vietnamese and English authors from which the
similarities and significant differences in using reporting verbs in two groups of
authors were drawn. Finally, the obtained results are compared with already known
results to generalize the conclusions and implications in teaching and learning.
1.5. Scope of the study
Scope of the present study situates in similarities and differences in using
reporting verbs between English and Vietnamese authors to make reference to
previous works in their academic writing of their own languages in terms of
frequency, and signal functions of reporting verbs. In regard of frequency we will
point out which reporting verbs are mostly used and evaluate the use of them.
Concerning the functions of reporting verbs, we focus on denotation categories
based on the indicator given by Hyland (1999). According to the type of activity
they referred to, authors can use three types of reporting verbs: Research Acts,

3


Cognitive Acts, and Discourse Acts which are corresponding to three
distinguishable processes: Reporting something the cited author did, Reporting the
cited author‟s opinion, reporting something the cited author stated.
1.6. Significance of the study
Although previous works contribute a lot to the study of reporting verbs in
academic writing, the majority of these studies only focus on English-language.
Few studies made a thorough comparison between how other-language authors and
English-language authors use reporting verbs in their native language from
perspectives of reporting structure, reporting forms, reporting signals, and reporting
functions. To the best knowledge of the author, there exists no research on reporting
verbs based on linguistics research articles written by Vietnamese authors.
Therefore, the present work plays a certain role in both theoretical and practical
aspects in the field of linguistics in the Vietnamese setting.
Theoretically, this study brings a certain insight into in the field of study on
citation in academic writing in Vietnamese setting. More precisely the current
research gives an overview of how Vietnamese authors use reporting verbs in their
research papers and clarify the similarities and differences in using reporting verbs
between Vietnamese authors and English authors in their native language. Findings
of this study can be used as a basis for investigating why Vietnamese learners of
English use reporting language differently compared with native speaker of English.
Practically, to students, using correct reporting verbs in appropriate context is
a difficult target to achieve in academic writing. There are a number of reporting
verbs that can be utilized in writing the claims, which carry their own effects on the
statements concerned. In fact, there are lists of reporting verbs that serve the same
functions for the students to use to vary their writing, while different reporting verbs
serve different functions, and hence, they have different effects on their academic
writing. Hence, using reporting verbs appropriately is a crucial skill for students, in

particular for those in academic purpose program. The suggestion to consider is to
equip the master students with the knowledge of using reporting verbs in a Research
Methodology course. Thanks to the results of this research, some notifications will
be identified to help students to focus more on the meaningful elements of reporting
and avoid the frequent mistakes made in wring their thesis and other academic
reports later. Moreover, results of this research can be served as a reference for

4


teachers and instructors in designing their material in Research Methodology
course.
1.7. Structure of the study
This thesis consists of five chapters. The Introduction chapter introduces
rationale of the research, clarifies the aim and objectives as well as formulates
research questions and outline of the thesis. In the next chapter Literature Review
we summarize some previous studies on reporting verbs in academic writing in
various directions. Then the definitions of reporting, reporting verbs and their use in
academic writing are recapitulated. In the last part of this chapter we recall
Hyland‟s (1999) classification of reporting verbs in terms of their denotation
functions which are chosen as the theoretical framework for analyzing reporting
verbs in this current research. Methodology of this study is introduced in Chapter 3,
which describes research approach, research method, data collection, and data
analysis in detail. Afterwards, Chapter 4 focuses on the results of this study and
discussion of related findings. In this chapter, answers to research questions raised
in the introduction chapter are provided. In the final Chapter 5 conclusions are
drawn to general findings of this study, limitations of this study stated, suggestions
to teaching and learning addressed and recommendations put forward for the future
research.

5


Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Previous studies on reporting verbs in academic writing
The study of reporting verbs in citation analysis from an applied linguistic
perspective has developed into several directions and attracted a lot of interest in the
last few decades, starting with the seminal papers by Swales (1986, 1990).
Afterwards, many authors have contributed to the study on reporting verbs from
classification of reporting verbs, tense usage of reporting verbs to the use of
reporting verbs in various disciplines such as linguistics, social sciences, medicine,
chemistry, information science, English for specific and academic purposes, as well
as their use by different groups of authors including master students, doctoral
students, researchers or English speaking and non-English speaking authors. Some
studies that are to be highlighted are Thompson & Ye (1991) and Hyland (1999,
2002) which play as theoretical framework for other researchers. In this section we
review those studies of reporting verbs in the following aspects:
 Studies focusing on categories of reporting verbs
 Studies focusing on tenses of reporting verbs
 Studies focusing on reporting verb used in different disciplines
 Studies focusing on reporting verbs used by different groups of authors
 Studies focusing on comparison in the use of reporting verbs by English

native and non-native authors
 Studies focusing on reporting verbs in different languages in a comparison
with English,
Besides that we also review studies of reporting verbs in Vietnamese settings
which have a close relation to our investigation. We would like to emphasize that,
there are some overlaps between the above mentioned directions, for example, there
are some studies on the use of reporting verbs by master students based on a certain

discipline or multi-disciplines.
2.1.1. Studies focusing on categories of reporting verbs
Most researchers focus on the categories of reporting verbs in connection with
their functions in expressing writers‟ process or stance. For simplicity, in this
section the term “author” is used to refer to the person who is reporting and
“author” to refer to the person who is being reported. Thompson and Ye were the
pioneers to the categorization of reporting verbs. Considering the role of reporting

6


verbs in the citation process, Thompson & Ye (1991) made a specific contribution
by scrutinizing reporting verbs used in academic settings which can guide writers to
evaluate their choices and subsequently categorize them. They adopted a corpus
approach to their research of over a hundred journal introductions in diverse fields,
and afterwards classified the reporting verbs in terms of their semantic differences,
which they argue perform the functions of denotation and evaluation. With respect
to the denotation of reporting verbs, Thompson & Ye (1991) categorized them
under two broad categories depending on who the responsibility of process is
attributed to. The first one refers to those verbs which report the author of the text
being quoted; hence it is labeled “author acts”. This category includes three
subcategories: textual, mental, and research verbs concerned with three activities
writing, thinking, and finding. The second category is “writer acts” which shows the
writers position to the topic being investigated while referring to previous works.
This category is also composed of two main subcategories: “Comparing” verbs and
“Theorizing” verbs. “Comparing” verbs such as “correspond to” and “contrast with”
attribute the study of the author with a given point of view. “Theorizing” verbs, on
the other hand, benefit writers through providing them with gaining the advantage
of the author‟s study in developing their arguments.
On the other part, Thompson & Ye (1991) classified evaluation reporting verbs

into three subcategories; writer‟s stance, author‟s stance, and writer‟s interpretation.
The distinction is made at two levels; the distinction between the author and the
writer and the distinction between stance and interpretation. Author's stance is the
attitude which the author is reported as having towards the validity of the reported
information or opinion including positive, negative, and neutral. There are also
three options can again be identified in writer‟s stance: factive, non-factive, and
counter factive. Both author's stance and writer's stance are concerned basically
with the truth/correctness or otherwise of the reported proposition. Writer's
interpretation, on the other hand, is concerned with various aspects of the status of
the proposition. Thompson & Ye (1991) identified four main options open to the
writer: author's discourse interpretation, author's behavior interpretation, status
interpretation, and non-interpretation. Classification of reporting verbs by
Thompson & Ye (1991) is illustrated in Figure 2.1.

7


Reporting
verbs
Denotation

Writer
Acts

Writer
Acts

Evaluation

Author‟s

Stance

Author‟s
Stance

Author‟s
Interpretation

Textual

Comparin
g

Positive

Factive

Author's
Discourse

Mental

Theorizing

Negative

Counterfactive

Author's
Behavior

Neutral

Nonfactive

Status

Research

Non

Figure 2.1: Classification of reporting verbs by Thompson & Ye (1991)
Subsequent research studies following Thompson & Ye (1991) have, to
different extents, adapted the framework (Thomas & Hawes, 1994; Hyland, 1999 &
2002). Hyland (1999), for instance, investigated eighty research articles from eight
diverse fields in search of disciplinary differences in the field of citation. His
classification of reporting verbs is not of a great difference but simpler than that of
Thompson & Ye (1991). Hyland (1999) also classifies reporting verbs into two
major categories “Denotation” and “Evaluation”. Regarding to the denotation
functions, in Hyland‟s (1999) framework reporting verbs are divided into three
groups according to three types of activities they refer to. However, he uses the
terms “Discourse” and “Cognition” for “textual” and “mental” verb categories in
Thompson & Ye‟s (1991) classification, respectively. On the other side;
“Evaluation” reporting verbs are classified into: “Factive”, “Counter-factive” and
Non-factive” verbs. In the last category, writers have to choose among four clear
8


options: positive, tentative, critical, or neutral. Hyland‟s (2002) study even makes
more delicate classification by exploiting the evaluative within the process

categories writers made, i.e., each of the process categories of reporting verbs was
sub-divided into evaluative categories. Within the Findings category of Research
Acts, writers can show their stance of the authors‟ result which is factive, counterfactive, or non-factive. Verbs referring to procedural aspects of the writer‟s
investigation are found to carry no evaluation in themselves but simply report the
research procedures neutrally. Cognition Acts in Hyland‟s (2002) framework, on
the other hand, allows writers can attribute a particular attitude to the cited author:
positive, tentative, critical, or neutral. With regard to Discourse Acts verbs,
Hyland‟s (2002) framework indicated that when writers use them, they allow the
writers to either take responsibility for their interpretation of the information by
conveying their uncertainty or assurance of the correctness of the claims reported or
attribute a qualification to the cited author. Discourse verbs which express writers‟
view directly are divided into doubt and assurance categories. Those expressing
doubt about the reported claims can be further divided into Tentative reporting
verbs (e.g. postulate, hypothesize, indicate, intimate, suggest) and Critical reporting
verbs (e.g. evade, exaggerate, not account, not make point). Unlike the Doubt verbs,
Assurance reporting verbs serve two main purposes. Firstly, they can be used to
report the author position neutrally (Non-Factive Reporting verbs). Verbs such as
state, describe, discuss, report, answer, define, and summarize are used in this
regard. Also, writers may use some Assurance reporting verbs (Factive Assurance)
to support their own views. Verbs that fall in this category include argue, affirm,
explain, note, point out, and claim. The last subcategory of Discourse Acts verbs is
the Counters. This sub-category of Discourse Acts verbs allows writers to attribute
the objections or reservations to the original author instead of taking responsibility
for the evaluation. Examples of such verbs include deny, critique, challenge, attack,
question, warn, and rule out. Classification of reporting verbs by Hyland (2002) is
given in Figure 2.2.

9

Reporting
verbs
Research
Acts

Findings

Procedures

Cognitive
Acts

Positive

Discourse
Acts

Doubt

Counters

Assurance

Factive

Critical

Tentative

Factive

Counterfactive

Tentative

Critical

Nonfactive

Nonfactive

Neutral

Figure 2.2: Classification of reporting verbs by Hyland (2002)
2.1.2. Studies focusing on tense usage of reporting verbs
Another important area of reporting verbs that has been studied by previous
researchers is the tense usage of English reporting verbs, focus mainly on the past,
present simple, and present perfect tense (Lackstrom, Selinker & Trimble, 1972;
Oster, 1981; Malcolm, 1987; Swales, 1990; Weissberg & Buker, 1990; Shaw, 1992;
Thomas & Hawes, 1997; Swales & Feak, 2004). Oster‟s (1981). It has been proved
that the choice of tense is determined by various elements rather than simply by
time. With a small corpus of only two articles from chemical engineering, Oster
(1981) analyzed tense usage associated with the nature of the claims being made
about the previous literature. She proposes the principal hypotheses of tense use as
follows: The present tense is used primarily to refer to quantitative results of past
literature that are supportive of or non-relevant to the work in the current article.
The Past tense is used when it refers to quantitative results of past literature that are
non-supportive of some aspects of the work described in the technical article. The
10

present perfect tense is primarily used to indicate continued discussion of some of
the information in the sentence in which the present perfect tense occurs, and
secondarily used to claims generality about past literature (Oster 1981, p.77).
In contrast with Oster‟s findings, some studies have shown that tense usage of
reporting verbs depends on different levels of generalization of the reporting
statements. Lackstrom, Selinker & Trimble (1972), for instance, conclude that
present tense indicates a general claim; past tense claims lack of generality and
present perfect tense gives a good generalization about past events. Malcolm (1987)
shared similar ideas by analyzing tense choice in twenty research articles from
context-independent temporal meanings and context-dependent rhetorical uses. She
found that generalizations tend to occur in present tense, reference to specific
experiments in the past tense and reference to areas of inquiry in the present perfect
tense. Later, Swales (1990) points out that there is an increasing degree of
generality from the past tense, to the present perfect, to the present tense, i.e., the
statements in which the respective tense occurs make references to a particular
study, to the area of inquiry, and finally to a broader and more general domain.
Thomas & Hawes (1997) suggest similar findings based on the tense choices
associated with the main verbs in the reporting sentences from 11 medical research
articles.
Another aspect to look at tense is to take into account particular rhetorical ends
the author wants to achieve with such usage. Weissberg & Buker (1990) analyzed
tense usage of reporting verbs in terms of prominence: The past tense is used in the
findings of individual studies closely related to you own; The present tense is used
in the information prominent citations when the cited information is generally
accepted as scientific fact; The present perfect tense is used in weak author
prominent citations and general statements which describe the level of research
activity in an area. Furthermore, Weissberg & Buker (1990) indicate correlation of
attitude and tense in the reported findings: Past tense is used in the findings which
you believe are restricted to the specific study you are citing but not be acceptable

as true in all cases; Present tense is used in the findings which you believe are fact.
Later, Shaw (1992) investigated how tense of reporting verbs is used in doctoral
dissertations and explores the reasons of correlation of tense and sentence function.
Shaw points out topicalization and topic change should be considered when
analyzing the tense of reporting verbs. A similar finding was obtained Swales &

11


Feak (2004). Compared to Swales & Feak‟s (2004) patterns, Weissberg & Buker‟s
patterns are more comprehensive and elaborate.
In summary, all above-mentioned researches on tense uses of reporting verbs
imply that past tense is used when referring to a specific study or experiment which
may be close to writer‟s current study, and the findings of the study or experiment
are limited to the cited study. Present perfect is often used in generalization of
research activity in an area or used to indicate continued discussion in the current
study. Present tense is used in the findings which are believed as fact or supportive
of the current study.
2.1.3. Studies focusing on reporting verbs used in different disciplines
The main purpose of studies on reporting verbs in this direction is to clarify
how researchers in a certain discipline use reporting verbs in their research articles
compared with other disciplines. It has been indicated in the studies of Thompson &
Ye (1991), Hyland (1999, 2002, 2009) that the distribution of reporting verbs show
broad disciplinary differences. Hyland (2002) studied the use of reporting verbs in
research articles in eight disciplines including molecular biology, physics,
mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, philosophy, sociology, marketing,
and applied linguistics with the corpus of 80 papers. He found that writers in
biology, marketing and physics relied on a more restricted range of items, with the
most preferred five or six forms accounting for over 40% of all cases. In particular,
his analysis shows a fairly clear division in the process categories which again

corresponds to the traditional division between hard and soft disciplines.
Philosophy, sociology, marketing, and applied linguistics displayed a preference for
Discourse Acts verbs (averaging 61% of the total for the four disciplines), and the
engineering and science papers largely employed Research-type verbs (50%).
Cognition verbs were infrequent in almost all disciplines and were rarely used in the
engineering and physics papers, which together contained only 6% of the total. The
variations in terms of choosing reporting verbs are due to variability of research
performance across disciplines. As Hyland (2009) proposed, authors in different
fields would choose different groups of reporting verbs to refer to others‟ results or
to report their own statements. The variation of the use of reporting verbs somehow
implies that reporting verbs used in different contexts in academic research may
carry out different communicative purposes writers intend to have. In particular,
Hyland (2009) indicates that writers in soft disciplines, such as social science, tend

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to use reporting verbs discuss, argue, and, suggest which shows weak attitude
towards their claims, while writers in hard disciplines, such as natural science,
prefer to use reporting verbs, such as find, to maintain a strong stance to their
results.
In the field of medicine, based on a corpus of 11 research articles on
psychosomatic medicine, Hawes & Thomas (1994) studied the reporting verbs used
in reporting statements and their role in the discourse. They focus on the semantic
categories of reporting verbs and identify function of reports with each category.
They categorize denotation of reporting verbs in terms of experimental: Real-World
Verbs, Discourse Activity Verbs, and Cognition Activity Verbs. This classification
is similar to Thompson & Ye‟s classification of research, mental and textual verbs.
Their findings showed that Real-World Verbs were the most widely used, with 52%
of total reporting verbs, while Cognition Activity Verbs were used least, only 9%.

This investigation also indicated that there is a correlation between choice of verb
type and the function of the report in which the verb occurs. However, their corpus
is relatively small and is restricted to one discipline and the modified categories of
denotation are basically same as Thompson & Ye‟s (1991).
In another study on a corpus from the field of biology, Swales (2014)
examined citation practices of graduate and undergraduate students from a number
of perspectives, including the distribution of integral versus parenthetical citations,
the choice of reporting verbs, the effect of citing system, and the occurrence of
selected features such as the use of citees‟ first names. From his findings he claimed
that there is no significant difference between the undergraduate and graduate
papers in integral and parenthetical citations.
There are also various studies on reporting verbs based on corpus in linguistics
written by students as we will observe in the next section. Beside that there have
been a huge numbers of researches on citation on different disciplines.
2.1.4. Studies focusing on reporting verbs used by different groups of authors
The study on the use of reporting verbs by postgraduate students has attracted
a lot of interest in recent years. These studies aim to identify how postgraduates use
reporting verbs in their theses and dissertations from which explicit instructions
should be provided to help novice writers familiarize the meanings of reporting
verbs within the context in academic writings. Bloch (2010) aimed to create
instructional materials about the role of reporting verbs in academic writing by the

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use of concordance. He used a sample of articles from a leading scientific journal to
create two small corpora. He chose 27 common reporting verbs and a sample of 540
sentences for analyzing. For each reporting verb in this sample, a randomized
sample of sentences was created. Each sentence in the randomized sample was
classified into six categories based on syntactic form and rhetorical purpose. In

addition, he used writing samples from students and created the third corpus to
compare the reporting verbs used by students to those used by published writers. In
the end, he concluded that by exposing students to authentic samples and showing
the process of how an author decides to write, we can familiarize learners with
language use. He also used his findings to design an online database of sentences
that enables teachers and material developers to form instructional materials for an
academic writing course.
Nanyue (2013), in her master thesis, carried out a case study with two Chinese
students during their studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom with
the aim to investigate their development of use of reporting verbs in essay writing
over the course of one academic year. Multiple data sources including a corpus of
six assignments (three from each student), semi-structured interviews with the
students, and questionnaires for a panel of two experts to judge on the level of
appropriateness were collected. Findings of the study indicated that the two Chinese
students showed no sign of improvement over time in terms of the appropriate use
of reporting verbs. In addition, the evaluative aspect of these rhetorical devices was
not yet made clear to them. From this result, she strongly recommended that
students to be made aware of the rhetorical functions of reporting and to be
sensitive to their lexical choices when introducing citations. For instructors and
teachers, they should provide more instruction and support on source use for nonnative English students. As to the curriculum designers, they should make sure that
effective teaching and learning take place over the course of any English for
Academic Purposes writing program.
In another study, Manan & Noor (2014) used Hyland‟s (1999) framework to
investigate the use of reporting verbs by Masters students in terms of frequency of
the reporting verbs used, the impact(s) of the reporting verbs employed in the
theses. Six theses completed in 2012 were selected randomly, and they were written
by local, Malaysian students who did their Masters in the English learners program
in University Kebangsaan Malaysia. Manan & Noor (2014) showed that those

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Malaysian master students were more familiar with the reporting verbs from the
research acts category, as compared to cognition acts and discourse acts. Their
findings also revealed that the verbs found from the research acts category are the
most widely used, while states from the discourse acts category are the most
frequently repeated. Based on their findings, they suggested that the Masters
students should be equipped with the knowledge of using reporting verbs in a
Research Methodology course.
Berhail (2017) in her master theses addressed how reporting verbs are used in
Literature Reviews of master thesis written by postgraduates of Language Sciences
and Anglo-American Studies in the Department of English in Larbi Ben M‟hidi
University, Algeria. The corpus consists of 10 master theses that were selected from
both streams at the department of English the University of Oum El Bouaghi.
Reporting verbs were collected and tallied using AntConc and SPSS software. After
that, they were classified using Hyland‟s (2002) classification of reporting verbs.
Her analysis has revealed that Language Sciences and Anglo-American Studies
students tend to use different types of reporting verbs which can be addressed to the
nature of their fields. However, most of the verbs used belong to the same category
according to Hyland‟s (2002) classification. Discourse Acts verbs were prominent,
followed by Cognition Acts verbs and Research Acts verbs. The investigation also
shows that these students‟ use of limited number of reporting verbs. In addition to
that, it was found that, in terms of reporting verbs‟ evaluative potential, students
limited themselves to non-factive verbs. Their mistakes and non-idiomatic
expressions used in reporting previous studies could reflect their deficit of
vocabulary and their low level of language proficiency as indicated by Hyland
(2002).
Amrullah, Munir & Suharsono (2017) recently investigated the rhetorical
functions of reporting verbs employed in the author prominent citations of research
papers written by graduate students. Different from the work of Manan & Noor

(2014), the authors showed that the students tended to use reporting verbs in
discourse act category instead of research act and cognitive act categories.
Moreover, the students‟ problems were found on the misuses verb choice, tense
choice, and syntactic pattern of the reported sentences, in particular the overuse and
misuse the verb „state‟ without fully understanding its functional meaning within

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the context. In conclusion, they stated that these students are likely to be unaware of
the functional use of reporting verbs in cited sentences.
The study on the use of reporting verbs in research articles by other groups of
writers such as lecturers or researchers also attracts a lot of attention. By used
Hyland‟s (2002) classification of reporting verbs as the theoretical framework,
Agbaglo investigated the use of reporting verbs in research articles written by
lecturers in the Department of English in University of Cape Coast, Ghana. The
study revealed that Discourse Acts type of reporting verbs are mostly used by these
lecturers, as compared to Research Acts category of reporting verbs and the
Cognitive Acts category of reporting verbs.
2.1.5. Studies focusing on comparisons in the use of reporting verbs by English
native and non-native English authors
The main focus in this direction is the comparison in using reporting verbs by
native English writers and non-native English writers from which suggestion is
provided to non-native English writers to improve their academic writing. In a study
by Jafarigohar & Mohammadkhani (2015), the authors compared differences in
using reporting verbs in applied linguistics research articles written by non-native
English writers and their native counterparts. The findings showed significant
differences in the choices writers made in using reporting verbs, in particular in the
higher use of direct quotations by native writers.
In a similar setting, Yeganeha & Boghayeri (2015) conducted an investigation

on the frequency and function of reporting verbs in research articles written by
native Persian and English native speakers. In their study, Introduction and
Literature Review sections of 60 research articles, 30 by native English writers
published in international journal and 30 by Persian published in national journals,
were selected and analyzed. The results indicated that reporting clauses with a thatclause complement in reporting others‟ research were considerably used. Although,
there are some evidences of differences in grammatical subject and verb choice, the
most frequently occurring pattern is common to the two corpora: an integral
citation.
Yilmaz & Ozdem Erturk (2017) have conducted a study comparing native
Turkish and native English writers on the use of reporting verbs in terms of
frequencies, functional and positional differences, and syntactic patterning of the
first three overused reporting verbs. They used two corpora of 160 English teaching

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