Evaluative Meaning and Cohesion: The Structuring Function of Evaluative Meaning in Scientific Writing

Abstract

We present a diachronic study of evaluative meaning in scientific writing, focusing on evaluative expressions that possibly serve the interpersonal as well as the textual metafunction in terms of Systemic Functional Linguistics \(SFL\). These are expressions such as importantly or obviously used in sentence-initial position to evaluate what follows but which also establish a cohesive link with the adjacent discourse. For the analysis, the SciTex corpus, comprising nine scientific disciplines, was used. The data were analyzed in macro and micro-analytical steps combining quantitative and qualitative analyses. This allows us to observe generalizable trends as well as fine-grained distinctions.