These include a variety of means aimed at influencing the addressee emotionally, building trust between the writer and the addressee and facilitating perception. The fundamental principle of rhetoric is identification: the writer identifies with the reader in order for his ideas to be shared and accepted. Below you will find some useful rhetorical devices which many researchers use to achieve this goal.
Ø Use of pronoun “we”
Sometimes “we” in academic writing denotes a group of researchers but it can also be used to denote the writer and the addressee together. The writer shares his observations with the addressee, making the latter his colleague and companion, encouraging him to accept the writer’s logic, e.g:
- As we have seen, theme, actor and modal subject are identical unless there is a good reason not to be. [M. Blokh 2000]
Ø Use of Active/Passive Voice
By the use of Passive Voice writers make their discourse more authoritative, theymake you believe that what they are writing about is generally accepted, that everyone thinks so. The attention of the addressee is drawn to the fact itself, not to the way how the knowledge about this fact was obtained, thus, the fact is recognized a priori. The knowledge about the fact is identified with something generally accepted, self-evident to each specialist. Compare: “ I know that …”/ “ It is known that…”.
The Passive Voice can be used in different constructions:
- It is generally accepted that this method has serious disadvantages.
- Disadvantages of this method are widely known.
- This method is believed to have many serious disadvantages.
Researchers commonly write about materials and methods in the passive voice: that is, using passive voice verbs. These verb forms emphasize the action, and remove emphasis from the doer of the action, but they often use more words than the corresponding active voice verbs. Many books written to advise researchers about improving their writing recommend that authors avoid the passive, and use active verbs as much as possible, because this makes the writing more direct and less wordy. We agree that the passive is often over-used in science writing in general.Yet, avoiding personal responsibility is not always a good choice; it can make your paper vague and inaccurate. Too many Passives also make the style bureaucratic and difficult to read. That is why editors tend to recommend using more active voice.
When we use an active verb, the grammatical subject of the verb (the answer to whom or what in front of the verb) actually does the action indicated by the verb.
For example:
· Subject + active verb + object
- The dog bit the man. [M.Cargill, P. O’Connor, p.37]
With a passive verb, the grammatical subject does not do the action of the verb (the biting, in this case). For example:
· Subject + passive verb + agent
- The man was bitten by the dog.[M.Cargill, P. O’Connor, p.37]
The agent is often omitted in passive sentences, which is why this form is popular when the action is more important than the actor.
Here is a list of factors influencing the choice of an active or passive verb given by Margaret Cargill and Patrick O’Connor in their guide “Writing Scientific Research Articles: Strategy and Steps”:
1) Does the reader need to know who or what carried out the action? If this information is unimportant, you may choose to use a passive verb. Consider the following example:
- The researchers collected data from all sites weekly. [M.Cargill, P. O’Connor, p.38]
It is not important who collected the data, so the sentence may be better in the
passive:
- Data* were collected weekly from all sites.[M.Cargill, P. O’Connor, p.38]
2)Does it sound repetitive (or immodest) to use a personal pronoun subject?
For example:
- We calculated least significant differences to compare means.[M.Cargill, P. O’Connor, p.38]
This may sound more appropriate in the passive:
- Least significant differences were calculated to compare means.[M.Cargill, P. O’Connor, p.38]
A note on use of active/passive voice:
Ø The need to avoid repetition can explain the almost complete absence of active voice sentences: in the active, the subject of nearly every sentence would be “we”.
Ø Does it help the information flow to choose either the active or passive voice? In English sentences, effective writers generally connect their sentences to each other by putting old information, which the reader already knows something about, before new information. Sometimes writers may choose a passive verb so that they can use this strategy.
Ø Active voice is usually clearer and more to the point. Write “I found” instead of “it was discovered”.
Ø And finally – find “your” voice. Do not be afraid to use either active or passive voice if it is clearer, after all it is your paper in which you share your opinion with academic and disciplinary community.
Ø Appealing to Authority
We often need to support our ideas by referring to some highly respected researcher. This is a normal practice, the progress of science is achieved by collective effort and we use various sources to confirm, ground or interpret our own results. Yet, sometimes mentioning a prominent name or quoting a number of names substitutes actual argumentation of the writer’s viewpoint. This kind of “exploitation of authority” should be avoided.
Authority is not restricted to names. We often speak about the importance of the research, its connection with advanced research projects, highlight novelty and practical importance of results, publications in refereed journals.
Here are some examples:
- The goals/deliverables of both projects were met or exceeded and the projects have generated a large number of working papers of which over 50% have already been published in refereed journals or conference proceedings. [from a workreport]
The writer of the report points out that the project has been successfully fulfilled and the results were published in authoritative sources.
- The purpose of the original ESA contract was to design a complete Near Earth and Deep Space antenna system. One major part of the system is the beam waveguide, which employs three FSS mirrors. The work presented in this paper has shown that these mirrors can be successfully manufactured and accurately measured. [from a workreport]
Here the writer demonstrates that his research is connected with a major international research project held by European Space Agency.
Note, that in certain kinds of research publications, like dissertations, presentation of topicality and novelty of the study has become commonplace and is an obligatory part of the Introduction.
Ø Use of dialogue
To convince the reader we want to establish contacts with him, to start a personal conversation. This can be achieved by several ways:
1) Use of personal pronoun “you”. With this pronoun we can directly address the reader:
- If you change the order of these modifiers you will get a non-English sequence.[M. Blokh 2000]
- Suppose you read this headline “German teachers visit Greensborough”. Would you take this to mean teachers of German or teachers from Germany? [from a workreport ]
2) Use of imperative sentences. By these the author can encourage the reader to notice certain facts or start thinking about certain aspects of the problem:
- Notice the change in the stress pattern in these two utterances.[M. Blokh 2000]
3) Use of direct and indirect questions as well as so called ignoratives – sentences informing about the absence of certain information. The purpose of this is to make the reader start thinking about a problem, arouse his interest, draw his attention to something. The example below is from an introduction of a dissertation. The writer sets several questions to be answered later:
- The purpose of this thesis is to build a corpus theory development environment– to discuss its design, its use, and its implementation. To do this properly, I shall have to ask a number of important questions: What is a corpus text? What is a corpus theory? What does it mean to develop a corpus theory? But first of all, I shall have to motivate my plans for the existence of yet another ‘environment’ or ‘workbench’. Is this something that the linguist really needs, in addition to (or in replacement of traditional corpus tools and grammar development environments? I think so.[https://www.ling.gu.se/~lager/Thesis.pdf]
Here are some more examples encouraging the addressee to find answers and solutions together with the writer:
- Very little is known about the origin of these people and where they came from, yet, the study of the manuscripts could give us some clue. [from a workreport ]
- In some cases there may be genetic factors involved, predisposing the person in a certain disfunctional was, but is there always some brain malfunction involved? [from a workreport ]
Ø Advertising
The aim of any advertisement is to create a positive image of a product. In academic papers we may also need to advertise a certain approach, method, instrument or the field of research. Here we concentrate on parameters which the reader will appreciate – importance, interest, possible perspectives, novelty. The finance of academic research is always limited, so cost efficiency may also be an attractive parameter (both low cost of the research itself and the economic benefits it can bring).
In the example below the writer points out the originality of his approach and the possibilities it gives:
- Heretofore, narratologists working on Homeric poetry have paid little attention to non-direct modes of speech representation, which this paper argues can best be understood as complementary to direct speech with their own distinct functions in the overall structure of the poems.
[https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/apa/summary/v138/138.2.beck.html]
Here are some more examples:
- Several benefits result from linear analysis.[from a workreport]
- The atlas will contain affirmative evidence of substandard speech in quantity. That is to say the evidence will be there and will not have to be guessed. [from a workreport]
In order to convince the readers of a certain position, the writers balance a credible presentation of fact with an appropriate amount of emotional appeal. Rhetorical strategies enable them both to transmit knowledge, and at the same time, to provoke an emotional response from the reader.
Ø Explaining things
If you want people to share your views and ideas, the first task is to help the readers understand them. Even though the readers of a research paper are usually well prepared you have to bear in mind that you are going to tell them something new and complicated. You have gone a long way thinking your results all over and formulating your ideas. What is obvious for you now may not be obvious for your readers. Feel yourself in their place and do your best to help them.
Explanatory strategies are diverse but, essentially, they are based on repetition, reformulating, saying the same in a different way. This is often introduced with i.e. or that is:
… with no change of form, i.e. with no addition or subtraction. [from a work report]
Giving examples, as well as use of non-verbal means, such as formulae, graphs or photos serves the same goal. Examples are often introduced with for example, for instance, consider the following examples. Non-verbal illustrations are usually accompanied by descriptions, which may be introduced with as observed, as shown, as we can see. Help the reader follow your thought, explain why you give particular examples or illustrations, what they demonstrate.
The relevance of newly found data or “discovery” is wholly dependent on its meaning as an idea or theory. Numbers, charts and data plots alone do not enable the free outward flow of scientific information. Only the interpretation and credible presentation of these elements encourages a reader to accept them as truth. If authors are able to present ideas clearly and effectively, then their audience can be directly influenced by their writing. This is the ultimate aim of any academic author within the spectrum - to influence and persuade the reader of the validity of his or her argument.
By publishing advanced papers based on scientific data, authors present their research to their peers and aim to convince them of its validity. These authors should give an objective and logical presentation of their ideas and must structure their arguments and evidence carefully. Without this structure, their evaluation of sheer data - hypothesis, conjecture and theory development - is lost in the midst of huge amounts of meaningless noise. In order for the author to effectively relay important information to his or her peers, the paper must have a “persuasive purpose” and be formatted in a way that makes this purpose clear.
Sometimes researchers subject the validity of their claims to the ability of experimental data to fit a formulated mathematical model. They suggest the implications of their findings and base their theories on the way that conventional analytical methods explain observed phenomena. Although these interpretive methods seem purely scientific and not at all subjective, they are actually forms of rhetoric. Figures, observations and other data do not independently demonstrate their significance. The researcher must do this through his own description of the data.
Scientific analysis and tools are simply the first step in the transformation of observed fact to interpreted conclusion by the researcher. Statistical data that is drawn out and organized in a model helps researchers develop their hypotheses. Researchers employ this method of analysis and interpretation in their texts. Although the modulation of pure fact in these texts is incredibly subtle and objective, it clearly illuminates the author’s conclusions. When the portrayal of a certain theory is effective, the theory’s validity is more generally received.