Reformulation and its markers in unpublished research articles: Some evidence on the rhetorical patterns of written academic ELF

Abstract

This paper intends to contribute to the description of written academic English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) from an endonormative perspective (Seidlhofer, 2011). Reformulation markers (that is, that is to say, in other words, namely and i.e.) fulfil an interactive metadiscourse function (Hyland, 2007) and have been considered indicators of certain rhetorical aspects of different languages, specifically, whether expansions, clarifications, adjustments, etc. are frequent or not (Cuenca, 2003). Here I examine the frequency, functions, and (non-) parenthetical uses of these markers in the components of a corpus of unedited ELF research papers (the SciELF corpus, University of Helsinki). The findings indicate that the frequency of reformulation markers varies in the different L1 groups, with high rates in the Romance languages. The results also point to other ELF-related trends such as simplification/ specialization of the use of one marker (i.e.), and discourse explicitation, closely associated to the functions specification and explanation. Other outcomes may be related to a global academic context (with different disciplinary areas), of which ELF forms part (and they would not be ELF-specific). In conclusion, formal written academic ELF seems to constitute an “endorhetorical” use of the language.