The persuasive strategies in more and less prestigious linguistics journals: focus on research article abstracts

Abstract

Research article abstracts are widely recognized as a promotional genre since they aim to persuade the readers to read the rest of the articles. Hence, it is important for abstract writers to use effective persuasive strategies to achieve this promotional goal. The current study aimed to examine the use of persuasive strategies in more and less prestigious journals in the field of Linguistics. A total of 400 abstracts were extracted from eight journals, half of which were indexed in Web of Science (WoS) while the other half were not WoS-indexed. The abstracts were then coded manually in terms of their use of persuasive strategies as listed in a recent model of persuasion by Dontcheva-Navratilova et al. (2020). The results showed that logos strategies were the most frequently used in both types of journals, followed by ethos strategies. The results also showed that some strategies were used more frequently than others. The most frequently used strategies were logical reasoning and modulating claims. Additionally, a T-test was run to compare the use of persuasive strategies between the two types of journals. The results showed that while more prestigious journals (WoS-indexed) used a significantly higher number of the strategy of ‘showing involvement’ and ‘providing evidence’, the authors of less prestigious journals (non-WoS-indexed) employed several strategies more frequently; namely, using exemplification, providing statistics and facts, evoking emotions and expressing evaluation. The results are interpreted in light of the existing literature, and implications and directions for future research are proposed.

Keywords:

• Research article abstract
• persuasive appeals
• metadiscourse
• linguistics
• indexing databases

Reviewing Editor:

• Jeroen van de Weijer, College of International Studies, Shenzhen University, China

Subjects:

• Rhetoric
• Writing & Composition
• Language & Linguistics
• Language Teaching & Learning

Introduction

Researchers worldwide are increasingly required to publish in flagship journals for different reasons, including to get promoted and to contribute to the ranking of their universities (Diab, 2022; El-Dakhs, 2018b). In this context, flagship journals are often indexed in reputable databases, such as the Web of Science (WoS). Thus, it is important to discover how writing in these journals is different from writing in other refereed journals that are not indexed in such reputed databases. This knowledge will help novice writers to learn how to publish in more prestigious journals, thereby helping them achieve better recognition of their work while meeting the requirements of their institutions. The current study aims to explore the differences (if any) between more and less prestigious journals in the field of Linguistics with respect to the persuasive strategies they use while writing the abstracts of their articles. The more prestigious journals here are defined in terms of those journals that are indexed in WoS and the less prestigious journals are defined in terms of those journals that are not indexed in this database.

The focus in the current study on the writing of the research article abstract reflects the fact that ‘the abstract is generally the readers’ first encounter with a text, and is often the point at which they decide whether to continue and give the accompanying article further attention or to ignore it,’ (Hyland, 2002, p. 63). It is widely acknowledged that some quality articles may be disregarded by readers due to poorly written abstracts (Piqué-Noguera, 2012). Additionally, the dramatic rise in publications in recent years has granted abstracts further importance because they help readers decide what to read at a time of unprecedented information overload (Cross and Oppenheim, 2006). In this context, research article abstracts play an important promotional role, and thus need to persuade readers to read the rest of the articles. According to Hyland and Jiang (2018), persuasion in academic writing is extremely important since ‘persuading readers to accept a particular observation as a worthwhile contribution involves careful decisions about how best to contextualise results and embed them in disciplinary argument, affiliation and agreement-making,’ (p. 25). In fact, persuasion has been repeatedly found to be a difficult task for research writers, particularly novice ones (eg Ozfidan & Mitchell, 2020; Ozfidan & Mitchell, 2022). The current study aims to explore how similar and/or different the persuasive strategies employed in the abstracts of more prestigious journals are from the ones used in less prestigious journals.

The current study is significant for three reasons. First, abstracts are a very important part of research articles, particularly in our age of information overload. In fact, the abstract is known to be a promotional genre where researchers emphasize the value of their research to attract the readers’ attention (Bordignon et al., 2021). Second, the findings of the current study will be highly beneficial for scholars interested in examining persuasive writing since the present study employs a recent corpus-based model of academic persuasion (Dontcheva-Navratilova et al., 2020). The findings of the current study can thus encourage the proposal and use of similar models of persuasion in several genres. Additionally, the findings of the current study will be useful for novice writers and for those that face difficulty publishing in flagship journals. The findings will shed light on the most common persuasive strategies used in Linguistics abstracts and how these strategies differ between more and less prestigious journals. It is true that the choice of persuasive strategies could be related to the authors’ personal preferences. However, authors need to learn about the common persuasion practices in flagship journals to conform to the relevant writing conventions in these journals. Third, the current study fills an important gap in the literature since there is a notable paucity of research that examines the persuasive strategies employed in research article abstracts. Although a number of studies have examined persuasive writing in a variety of fields, such as newspaper discourse (eg Dafouz-Milne, 2008), policy documents (eg Ho, 2016), student writing (eg Ho & Li, 2018), political speeches (eg Kashiha, 2022), and corporate press releases (eg Liu & Zhang, 2021), very little research has been conducted on the use of persuasive strategies in the writing of research article abstracts as will be shown in the literature review section below. In particular, the current study will examine the following research questions:

1. What are the persuasive strategies employed in the abstracts of Linguistics journals?

2. Are there significant differences between the abstracts of more and less prestigious journals with respect to persuasive strategies?

To situate our article in the literature, the next two sections will explain the relevant theoretical models of persuasion and metadiscourse, and will survey earlier studies that mainly focused on the analysis of research article abstracts. This will be followed by explaining our methods, presenting our results, and providing pertinent interpretations. Finally, conclusions will be drawn, including directions for future research.

Theoretical background

The current study analyses the rhetorical persuasive strategies that are used in the abstracts of research articles. Studies on rhetorical strategies of persuasion originated with the work of Aristotle who ‘proposed that persuasion had three main ingredients: ethos (the nature of the communicator), pathos (emotional state of the audience), and logos (message arguments)’ (Perloff, 2010, p.28). The appeal of ethos relies on the credibility of the speaker’s information. The appeal of pathos relies on the use of emotions to persuade the reader. The use of logos is dependent on the provision of facts and logical content to persuade. While these persuasive appeals are used in various types of communication, there is a need for a more in-depth model of persuasion to expand on persuasive appeals in terms of specific persuasive strategies and relevant linguistic resources to realize these strategies.

This study utilizes a relatively novel persuasive-strategy model by Dontcheva-Navratilova et al. (2020). Drawing from corpus studies, the persuasion model compiles various rhetorical strategies under Aristotle’s three persuasive appeals. The strategies within the model differ depending on the type of discourse, including academic discourse, business discourse, religious discourse, and technical discourse. As explained by Dontcheva-Navratilova et al. (2020), academic discourse is a special discourse used in academic settings, with one of its most prominent genres being research articles. Business discourse is referred to as any form of communication in the world of business. This includes communication between business entities, clients, and customers. Religious discourse is described as texts that comment, interpret, or refer to religious texts, such as the Bible. Lastly, technical discourse deals with all means of disseminating knowledge and the latest technological advances to experts and audiences across the globe. The current study deals with academic abstracts from research articles in the field of linguistics. Therefore, this study employs the academic discourse model. A detailed description of the model is provided in the methodology section of this paper.

The persuasion model of Dontcheva-Navratilova et al. (2020) specifies a number of linguistic features that realize the strategies included in the model. These linguistic features are mostly metadiscourse markers which are lexical resources to organize the discourse, express attitude, provide evidence and connect the reader to the writer (Afzaal et al., 2022). A relevant model of metadiscourse is Hyland’s (2005) taxonomy of metadiscourse. According to Hyland, these linguistic features can be divided into interactive and interactional markers. The interactive markers aim to guide the reader through the test. These markers include logical connectives, frame markers, endophoric markers, evidentials and code glosses. As for the interactional markers, they primarily aim to involve the reader in the text. These markers include hedges, boosters, attitude markers, self-mentions and engagement markers. Table 1 shows Hyland’s (2005) taxonomy including its markers and relevant examples.

Table 1. Hyland’s (2005) taxonomy of metadiscourse.

Category	Function	Examples
Textual	Help to guide reader through the text	Resources
Logical connectives (Transitions)	Express relations between main clauses	and, but, in addition, however, thus
Frame markers	Refer to discourse acts, sequences or stages	My purpose is…, first, second, the findings are…, In conclusion
Endophoric markers	Refer to information in other parts of the text	mentioned above, as follows
Evidentials	Refer to information from other texts	according to…., X states that…
Code glosses	Elaborate propositional meanings	in other words, it means that…, such as…, eg for example
Interpersonal	Involve the reader in the text	Resources
Hedges	Withhold writer’s full commitment to statements	may, might, could, would, perhaps, some, possible
Boosters	Emphasize force or writer’s certainty	in fact, definitely
Attitude markers	Express writer’s attitude including significance, obligation to proposition	should, have to, agree, surprisingly
Self-mentions	Refer to author(s) explicitly	I, my, exclusive we, our
Engagement markers	Build relationship with reader explicitly	imperatives (eg Please note that…), You can see that…, inclusive We

Literature review

Due to the importance of abstracts in the world of academia, a multitude of scholars have examined the abstracts of research articles from different perspectives, such as their rhetorical structure (eg Can et al., 2016; Kaya & Yağiz, 2020; Saidi & Talebi, 2021) and their linguistic features (eg Huang, 2018; Tocalo, 2021; Tankó, 2017). Scholars have also examined different types of abstracts, such as thesis abstracts (eg Ebadi et al., 2019; El-Dakhs, 2018a; Majeed & Al-Jabbawi, 2021) and conference abstracts (eg Martín & Burgess, 2023; Povolná, 2016; Samar et al., 2014). However, this section will not survey these studies. Instead, we will focus on the studies that examined the use of persuasive strategies and metadiscourse markers in research article abstracts due to their relevance to our study.

In terms of persuasion, although several studies have investigated the use of persuasive strategies in different genres (eg Al-Momani, 2014; El-Dakhs, 2022; Hill, 2020; Krishnan et al., 2020; Lamichhane, 2017; Zhiyong, 2016), we found only two studies that examined persuasion in research article abstracts. The first was conducted by Breeze (2009) regarding the persuasive strategies of abstracts in the field of Law. The author examined 200 abstracts from four journals. The results revealed several findings regarding the different moves of the abstracts. In the introductory move, legal authors attempted to persuade readers of the significance of their work by drawing attention to the background of their research, emphasizing its difficulty or highlighting the urgent need for studies to fill a particular gap. In the issue move, the authors showed a strong tendency to express the problem, which constitutes the focal part of the paper, in the form of nominalization in order to make their provisions compact and precise. This was followed by the use of direct and indirect questions to engage the readers with the problem of the study. In the findings move, the authors preferred to hedge their findings and conclusions to create a sense of cautious judicial recommendations. They also preferred to use positive attitude markers to indicate the importance of the results or arguments.

The second study was conducted by Mohamad (2022) who compared the use of persuasive strategies in the abstracts written by native speakers of English versus Malaysian second-language (L2) speakers of English. The author examined 480 Linguistics and Education abstracts, divided equally between the abstracts written by native speakers of English and those written by Malaysian L2 writers. The results showed that the native speakers of English used significantly fewer rhetorical devices related to logos and pathos than the Malaysian writers. As for pathos, no significant differences were noted in the use of the relevant rhetorical devices. Additionally, the results revealed that the rhetorical devices from the lexical-phrasal, sentential and textual levels predicted the use of rhetorical appeals. For example, the use of emotive phrases from the lexical-phrasal level, passive voice constructions from the sentential level and the sentiment degree from the textual level statistically predicted the emotional tone dimension, measuring the appeal to pathos.

As for metadicourse markers, some studies examined a specific type of metadiscourse; namely, interactive or interactional metadiscourse. For example, Liu and Huang (2017) examined the interactional markers used in economics research article abstracts written in English by Chinese writers over a period of 10 years. A total of 289 abstracts were analyzed based on Hyland’s (2005) model. The results showed varied cultural, economic and genre-influences on the use of interactional markers. For example, the Chinese tended to use an increasing number of hedges over the years to harmonize with their English counterparts who are known to use a tentative style in their academic writing. This tentative style reflected the Anglo-American cultural principles of allowing alternative interpretations and counterarguments in academic discourse. As for the use of self-mentions, the Chinese heavily used these markers to reflect the growth of economic, and hence, scientific capital in China over the last decade. Regarding the use of engagement markers, they remained at a low level throughout the years. This was explained in terms of genre-specific features. The length constraints imposed by journals on writing abstracts makes authors emphasize their stance and promote their work much more frequently than allowing engagement with readers.

Likewise, Boginskaya (2023) conducted a comparative analysis of the interactional markers used in Linguistics research article abstracts that were written in English by Russian and Spanish scholars. To this end, a total of 96 abstracts were analyzed following Hyland’s (2005) model. The results showed that the most frequently used marker in the two corpora was hedges which were employed to express reservations about the truth of assertions and to allow alternative interpretations to claims. However, the use of hedges was less in the Russian corpus, which reflects that the Russian authors did not seem to acknowledge the provisional nature of their findings to the same degree as their Spanish peers. The results also showed that the Spanish used significantly more boosters than the Russians. This reflected that the Spanish sometimes made more assertive claims than the Russians. Additionally, both corpora included a relatively high number of attitude markers. This showed the authors’ commitment to express their viewpoints while presenting their research work.

More studies examined the use of both interactive and interactional markers in research article abstracts. For example, Ashofteh et al. (2020) aimed at examining the rhetorical structure of Applied Linguistics research article abstracts and exploring the relevant metadiscourse used in the different moves. Concerning the metadiscourse, the analysis was conducted based on Hyland’s (2005) interpersonal model of interactive and interactional metadiscourse. The results showed that transition markers, followed by code-glosses, were the most frequently used interactive markers while the use of hedges, followed by attitude markers, were the most commonly used interactional markers. The frequent use of transition markers may reflect the importance Applied Linguists attach to the organization of discourse and the establishment of logical relations among its parts. The frequent use of code-glosses reflects Applied Linguists’ need to add further information for clarification purposes. As for the use of hedges, which were markedly used more often than boosters, this reflects the provisional nature of Applied Linguistics studies and the scholars’ preference to show low commitment to their propositions and allow others to challenge their interpretations. The frequent use of attitude markers reflects the authors’ interest in expressing their viewpoints.

Likewise, Gustilo et al. (2021) examined the rhetorical structure and metadiscourse use of 300 abstracts from 4 disciplines; namely, Applied Linguistics, Business, Engineering and Medicine. The analysis, which was based on Hyland’s (2005) model, revealed that Applied Linguistics abstracts had the greatest number of interactive markers. The most frequent interactive markers used across all disciplines were transition markers, particularly the addition and comparison markers. Again, it seems that the cohesion of abstracts lies at the center of the authors’ attention. The use of code-glosses and frame markers was relatively limited in Applied Linguistics abstracts. As for interactional markers, it was obvious that the medical abstracts used the lowest number of markers. The use of hedges was particularly prominent in Applied Linguistics while the use of boosters and self-mentions was rare. Again, Applied Linguists seemed to attempt to make their commitment to propositions less categorical through hedging.

In the same vein, Işık Kirişçi and Duruk (2022) examined the interactive and interactional markers used by Turkish and English native speakers. To this end, they compared the writing of native speakers of English, native speakers of Turkish and Turkish speakers of English. A total of 300 abstracts in the field of Special Education and Preschool Education were analyzed based on Hyland’s (2005) model. The results showed that transition markers were the most frequently used interactive markers while hedges were the most frequently used interactional markers across the three groups. Chi-square tests revealed that Turkish writers used frame markers and boosters significantly more frequently than English writers. This reflects that the Turkish are more concerned with marking the organization of their abstracts and emphasizing the certainty of their findings. On the contrary, Chi-square tests showed that English native speakers used code-glosses, hedges and self-mentions significantly more frequently than the Turkish writers. These results reflect the Anglo-American culture that makes writers responsible for clarifying the content of writing, encourages softening claims and allowing counterarguments and urges writers to highlight their identity and claim ownership of their findings.

The only study that examined the use of both interactive and interactional markers in more and less prestigious journals, similar to our current study, is El-Dakhs (2018b). The study aimed at comparing the use of metadiscourse between more and less prestigious journals in Linguistics. A total of 400 abstracts were analyzed based on Hyland’s (2005) model of metadisocurse. The results showed that transition markers were the most frequently used markers in the two types of abstracts. Statistical comparisons revealed that abstracts from the less prestigious journals included a significantly higher number of transition markers, frame markers and evidentials. This reflected the writers’ attempts to frequently use chunks and fixed expressions in the language while the writers in more prestigious journals wrote their abstracts using more variety and lucidity. The results also showed that writers of more prestigious journals used a significantly higher number of code-glosses, hedges, boosters and self-mentions. This reflects that the writers of more prestigious journals paid more attention to clarifying the content of their abstracts, managing to manipulate markers of tentativeness and certainty to a good effect and caring about highlighting their identity and taking credit for their own findings.

The current survey of literature highlights the paucity of research with respect to the persuasive strategies used in research article abstracts. The survey also shows the scarcity of studies that compared the use of persuasive strategies/metadiscourse to compare the writing in more and less prestigious journals. This is the gap that the current study aims to fill by comparing the use of these strategies and markers across 400 Linguistics abstracts, half of which were published in less prestigious journals while the other half were published in more prestigious journals. We will specifically examine the persuasive strategies employed in the abstracts of these Linguistics journals, and then compare the use of these persuasive strategies across more and less prestigious ones.

Methods

Data collection

The second and third authors manually collected 400 abstracts from Linguistics journals for the purpose of the current study. The abstracts were copied from the online websites of relevant journals into word documents to prepare them for data coding. Half of the number came from prestigious journals that are indexed in the Web of Science – the Social Sciences Citation Index (namely, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Language Sciences, Applied Linguistics and Journal of English Linguistics). The other half were extracted from less prestigious journals that are not indexed in Web of Science (namely, British Journal of English Linguistics, International Journal of English Linguistics, International Journal of Linguistics, Open Journal of Modern Linguistics). Reliance on indexing in Web of Science to classify journals is a common practice in the literature (eg El-Dakhs, 2018b; Franceschet, 2010; Meneghini et al., 2008). The abstracts in the two groups of journals were published between 2017 and 2023. They all came from empirical research articles. We decided to exclude other types of articles, such as literature surveys and position papers, to ensure the validity of the comparison.

Data coding

The persuasive strategies employed in the current study belong to an adaptation of a persuasion typology for academic discourse by Dontcheva-Navratilova et al. (2020) (see Appendix A). The original typology included a classification of strategies under Artistotle’s three appeals of persuasion; namely; ethos, logos and pathos. Under each appeal, a list of strategies along with relevant linguistic resources are mentioned. In our adaptation (see Appendix B), the same classification was maintained. However, the strategies were provided with definitions to ensure consistency of coding and clarity to the reader. Additionally, some linguistic resources based on the data were added to the adapted typology. The ethos appeal was realized through eight strategies, namely, showing involvement, sharing personal views, modulating commitment to claims, reference to authority/expertise, providing credentials, claiming common grounds, sense of community and reference to expert opinion. The logos appeal was realized through five strategies which are logical reasoning, reference to statistics and facts, experimental proof, proof by exemplification and providing evidence. The pathos appeal was realized through three strategies, namely, evoking positive/negative emotions, expressing evaluation and creating an atmosphere of collegiality.

The second and third authors coded the data manually and independently. Each of them coded the abstracts based on Dontcheva-Navratilova et al.’s (2020) model. Thus, they assigned a specific strategy under ethos, pathos or logos to each relevant part of the abstracts as shown in the illustrative examples below:

1. SLA researchers in a variety of theoretical traditions [(Ethos) reference to expert opinion] have argued that interaction is essential [(Pathos) expressive evaluation – evaluative lexis] to supporting learner L2 (second/foreign language) development.

2. Therefore [(Logos) logical reasoning – transition marker], questionnaire data were collected from 647 South Korean university students attending emergency remote online classes [(Logos) reference to statistics and facts].

3. Recent studies [(Logos) providing evidence] found [(ethos) modulating claims - booster] linguistic positivity bias in academic writing

4. Standard varieties are often [(Ethos) modulating claims - hedge] perceived as morally superior compared with nonstandard varieties [(Ethos)reference to expert knowledge - citation].

5. It is well known [(Ethos) claiming common ground - appeals to shared knowledge] that successful second language (L2) learners are motivated individuals.

6. Finally, [(Logos) logical reasoning - transition marker] the study recommends that the learning tasks should [(Logos) logical reasoning- modal of obligation] address students’ language needs and interests

7. After applying the test to the sample, the researcher concluded [(ethos) modulating commitment to claims- booster] that the students used the direct strategies to thank almost [(Ethos) modulating claims - hedge] all the time and [(Logos) logical reasoning – transition marker] they even left some of the strategies (especially the indirect one) [(Pathos) Creating an atmosphere of collegiality - aside] unused.

After the independent data coding was completed, a comparison between the two coding versions was conducted. The comparison revealed 91% agreement along the two versions. Then, the two coders discussed the areas of difference and unified the coding for the remaining part (9%) based on their discussion. Thus, inter-coder reliability was achieved.

Data analysis

To answer the first research question regarding the type of persuasive strategies employed in the abstracts of Linguistics journals, descriptive statistics were used. The frequency of occurrence and percentages of persuasive strategies were examined as shown in the results section below. As for the second research question regarding whether significant differences were found in the use of persuasive strategies in the abstracts of more and less prestigious journals, a T-test was run to identify the potential significant differences between the two types of abstracts. It must be noted that the data were normalized before running the T-test through comparing ratios of the frequency of the coded persuasion strategies and the total number of words of abstracts. Thus, the statistics are indicators of the frequency of persuasion strategies in relation to the length of the abstracts.

Results

This section is divided as per the research questions:

1. What are the persuasive strategies employed in the abstracts of Linguistics journals?

As shown in Table 2, a similar pattern of persuasive strategies was used across the two kinds of journals. The appeal to logos was the most highly used, followed by the appeal to ethos and finally pathos. It must be noted that the use of pathos was notably minimal (ie 6% for more prestigious journals and 8% for less prestigious journals).

Table 2. Use of persuasive appeals in more and less prestigious journals.

Appeal	More prestigious journals		Less prestigious journals
	Number	Percentage	Number	Percentage
Ethos	901	40%	712	31%
Logos	1186	54%	1426	61%
Pathos	118	6%	189	8%

Looking more in-depth into the appeal of ethos, Table 3 shows that the strategy of modulating claims is the most used strategy, followed by showing involvement and reference to expert knowledge. All the other strategies were minimally used since none of these strategies represented more than 2% of the total number of strategies under the appeal of ethos.

Table 3. Use of Ethos strategies in more and less prestigious journals.

Appeal	Top-tier journals		Low-tier journals
	Number	Percentage	Number	Percentage
Showing involvement	227	25.2%	79	11.1%
Sharing personal views	6	0.7%	2	0.3%
Modulating claims	577	64%	533	74.9%
Reference to authority	7	0.8%	14	2.0%
Providing credentials	0	0.0%	0	0.0%
Claiming common grounds	12	1.3%	13	1.8%
Sense of community	1	0.1%	5	0.7%
Reference to expert knowledge	71	7.9%	66	9.3%

As for the appeal of logos (see Table 4), the most frequently used strategy is logical reasoning, followed by experimental proof for the two types of journals. However, the other strategies showed some differences. While less prestigious journals used statistics and facts almost equally to proof by exemplification, more prestigious journals used proof by exemplification almost three times the number of their use of statistics and facts.

Table 4. Use of Logos strategies in more and less prestigious journals.

Appeal	Top-tier journals		Low-tier journals
	Number	Percentage	Number	Percentage
Logical reasoning	902	76.1%	991	69.5%
Statistics and facts	33	2.8%	91	6.4%
Experimental proof	149	12.6%	241	16.9%
Proof by exemplification	73	6.2%	88	6.2%
Providing evidence	29	2.4%	15	1.1%

For the appeal of pathos (see Table 5), the strategy of expressive evaluation was the most frequently used in the two types of journals. In second place was the creation of an atmosphere of collegiality for the more prestigious journals and evoking emotions for the less prestigious journals. In the final position came the strategy of evoking emotions for more prestigious journals and the strategy of creating an atmosphere of collegiality in less prestigious journals.

Table 5. Use of Pathos strategies in more and less prestigious journals.

Appeal	Top-tier journals		Low-tier journals
	Number	Percentage	Number	Percentage
Evoking emotions	2	1.7%	14	7.4%
Expressive evaluation	98	83.1%	163	86.2%
Creating an atmosphere of collegiality	18	15.3%	12	6.3%

Are there significant differences between the abstracts of more and less prestigious journals with respect to persuasive strategies?

To address the second research question, a T-test was run to explore the significant differences between the abstracts of the more and less prestigious journals. As shown in Table 6, a number of statistical differences were found between more and less prestigious journals regarding their use of persuasive appeals. First, more prestigious journals used a significantly higher number of the ethos appeal. This was due to the significantly higher use of showing involvement in more prestigious journals than less prestigious ones. Second, less prestigious journals employed a significantly higher number of logos strategies than more prestigious journals. This particularly applies to the strategies of reference to statistics and facts and experimental proof which were used significantly more in less prestigious journals than more prestigious ones. On the contrary, the logos strategy, providing evidence, was used significantly more frequently in more prestigious journals than in less prestigious ones. Finally, less prestigious journals used significantly more pathos strategies than more prestigious ones, particularly in relation to evoking emotions and expressive evaluation.

Table 6. T-test results comparing more and less prestigious journals.

	Top–tier	Low–tier	t	p
	Mean ± SD	Mean ± SD
Ethos	0.036 ± 0.022	0.028 ± 0.019	3.675*	>.001*
Showing Involvement	0.009 ± 0.014	0.003 ± 0.008	5.177*	>.001*
Sharing Personal Views	0 ± 0.001	0 ± 0.001	1.429	.154
Modulating Commitment to Claims	0.023 ± 0.014	0.021 ± 0.014	1.295	.196
Reference to Authority	0 ± 0.002	0.001 ± 0.003	1.239	.216
Providing Credentials	0 ± 0	0 ± 0	–	–
Claiming Common Ground	0 ± 0.002	0.001 ± 0.002	0.198	.843
Sense of Community	0 ± 0.001	0 ± 0.001	1.422	.156
Reference to Expert Knowledge	0.003 ± 0.008	0.003 ± 0.007	0.274	.784
Logos	0.047 ± 0.022	0.057 ± 0.025	4.118*	>.001*
Logical Reasoning	0.036 ± 0.021	0.040 ± 0.021	1.685	.093
Reference to Statistics and Facts	0.001 ± 0.003	0.004 ± 0.006	4.905*	>.001*
Experimental Proof	0.006 ± 0.006	0.010 ± 0.007	5.892*	>.001*
Proof by Exemplification/testing	0.003 ± 0.004	0.004 ± 0.006	1.223	.222
Providing Evidence	0.0012 ± 0.003	0.0006 ± 0.002	2.138*	.033*
Pathos	0.005 ± 0.006	0.008 ± 0.009	3.564*	>.001*
Evoking Positive/Negative Emotions	0 ± 0.001	0.001 ± 0.002	2.903*	.004*
Expressive Evaluation	0.004 ± 0.006	0.007 ± 0.008	3.590*	>.001*
Creating an atmosphere of collegiality	0.001 ± 0.003	0 ± 0.003	0.833	.406

t: Student t-test; SD: Standard deviation.

p: p value for comparing between the studied groups.

*Statistically significant at p ≤ .05.

Discussion

The current study aimed to examine the use of persuasive strategies of the abstracts of more and less prestigious journals in Linguistics. The first research question inquired about the frequency of the strategies used in these journals. The data analysis revealed a number of findings. One important finding is that both types of journals used logos strategies most frequently, followed by ethos strategies. However, they used the pathos strategies to the minimum. This reflects the importance linguists give to the logical organization of their abstracts and also to their credibility and the credibility of the information they present. As for pathos, the constraints journals impose on the length of the abstracts do not often allow for enough space to appeal to emotions. A similar influence for the constraints on length was noted by Liu and Huang (2017) who found that authors minimize their engagement with the readers due to the relatively short nature of abstracts.

Another important finding comes in relation to the use of ethos strategies. Three strategies were most frequently used. The first most frequently used strategy across the two journals was modulating claims, which includes the use of hedges and boosters. This finding comes in line with earlier studies (eg Ashofteh et al., 2020; Boginskaya, 2023; Gustilo et al. 2021; Liu & Huang, 2017) that emphasized the importance of modulating claims, particularly in the form of hedges, in Linguistics abstracts. In fact, the strategy of modulating claims allows writers to either show the provisional nature of their claims and encourage counterarguments and disagreements from the reader through the use of hedges, or to show assertion about their claims through the use of boosters. Either metadiscourse marker helps authors express how they view their claims and positions. Consequently, the findings of this study verify the existing literature from Hyland (1998), who asserts that boosters and hedges are two metadiscourse markers of credibility, helping authors to negotiate their claims in academic writing. While hedges often act like downtoners (Holmes, 1984) and emphasize the author’s detachment of arguments (Vassileva, 2001), boosters strengthen the illocutionary force of the utterance (Livytska, 2019). The second most frequently used ethos strategy was showing involvement. This strategy allows authors to strengthen their stance, highlight their identity and emphasize their ownership of claims through the frequent use of self-mentions. This finding verifies the existing literature by Hyland (2002) who postulated that the explicit use of personal pronouns helps writers to show their identities, involve themselves in the discourse community and create interaction with their readers. The third most frequently used strategy was referring to expert knowledge. This strategy allows authors to strengthen their arguments through reference to credible experts in the field.

In terms of logos, the most frequently used strategy was logical reasoning. This comes in line with earlier studies (eg Ashofteh et al., 2020; Gustilo et al., 2021; Işık Kirişçi and Duruk, 2022) that often showed that transition markers are most frequently used in Linguistics abstracts. This reflects the authors’ care for the organization of their texts and the logical connections among its parts. The second most frequently used strategy was the use of experimental proof. This reflects the empirical nature of the selected abstracts. The third most frequently used strategy was exemplification followed by the provision of statistics and facts for more prestigious journals and the same strategies but in the reverse order for the less prestigious journals. The current finding regarding the frequent use of exemplification in Linguistics abstracts aligns with the existing literature (eg Ashofteh et al., 2020) which emphasized the importance of exemplification to clarify information and, thus, become more reader responsible. As for the use of statistics and facts, they could be used frequently due to the empirical nature of the abstracts in the current study.

Regarding the pathos strategies, which were used to the minimal in both types of journals, they were largely dominated by the use of expressive evaluation which allows authors to express their attitudes towards propositional knowledge (Hyland, 2005). This frequent use of expressive evaluation confirms earlier findings by Ashofteh et al. (2020) and Boginskaya (2023) who noted a high frequency of use of attitude markers, in particular. The other two pathos strategies were rarely used due to the length constraints on writing abstracts.

The second research question aimed to compare the use of strategies between more and less prestigious journals. The T-test results revealed a number of findings. The authors of more prestigious journals used a significantly higher number of ethos strategies, particularly the showing involvement strategy which is often realized with the use of self-mentions. This finding, which was also found in El-Dakhs (2018b), reflects that the authors in more prestigious journals tend to show their scholarly identity to gain credit for their studies. Additionally, this reflects the authors’ confidence in their findings and the novelty of their contributions. These findings, thus, align with the existing literature by Hyland (2002) who described self-mentions as a powerful means by which writers assert their claims and speak as an authority. They are valuable rhetorical strategies which can help construct a credible image for academic writers.

Three other statistically significant differences between the two types of journals were noted in the logos category. While the authors of more prestigious journals used the strategy of providing evidence significantly more often than the authors of less prestigious journals, the latter used the strategies of reference to statistics and facts and experimental proof significantly more often than the authors of more prestigious journals. This reflects that the authors of less prestigious journals were more concerned with reporting the results of their experiments and including statistics in their abstracts while the authors of more prestigious journals paid more attention to comparing their findings with earlier results to show the novelty of their findings and highlight their contribution to the literature.

Two final statistically significant differences between the two types of journals were related to the pathos category. The authors of less prestigious journals used the strategies of evoking emotions and expressive evaluation significantly more frequently than the authors of more prestigious journals. This reflects that the authors of less prestigious journals are more concerned with expressing their attitudes towards the propositional knowledge in the abstracts and triggering the audience’s emotional reactions and support. This comes against the standard practices in Linguistics abstracts (eg El-Dakhs, 2018b; Liu & Huang, 2017) in which the length of the abstracts restricts the use of emotive language. The authors of more prestigious journals seem to prefer to use the limited space of abstracts to highlight their findings and showcase the novelty of their work.

In summary, the current study has filled an important gap in the literature. As mentioned earlier, there is a notable scarcity of research on the use of persuasive strategies in research article abstracts. This scarcity needs to be addressed particularly because abstracts represent an important promotional genre in the domain of scientific research (eg Xie & Mi, 2023) and, thus, it is important to explore how expert writers effectively use persuasive strategies to achieve the promotional goal of this genre. The current study represents an important attempt to examine how persuasion is realized in the abstracts of more and less prestigious journals in the field of Applied Linguistics. The results of the study will inform further research in this generally neglected area as well as provide important implications for abstract writers.

Conclusions

The current study aimed to compare the use of persuasive strategies in more and less prestigious journals. The data analysis revealed several findings. One important finding is that out of the three persuasive appeals, logos is the most frequently used strategy among both types of journals. On the contrary, the findings showed that the majority of authors tended to stray away from using pathos strategies in their abstracts. Moreover, this study reported significant differences between the uses of persuasive strategies in more and less prestigious journals. Prestigious journals were found to use more ethos strategies, while less prestigious journals were found to incorporate more logos and pathos strategies.

Based on these results, we can propose a number of suggestions for novice writers. In addition to learning how to structure the research article abstracts in terms of relevant moves, our study shows that authors need to carefully consider other elements while writing their abstracts. For example, showing involvement with the use of self-mentions plays an important role in boosting authors’ stance and allowing them to emphasize ownership of claims. It is also important to be able to use hedges and boosters effectively in order to soften or emphasize claims as needed. Additionally, novice writers need to learn how to provide evidence adequately to support their claims, and how to highlight their findings rather than simply focus on their methods. Novice writers also should allow more space to discuss their contributions instead of using several pathos techniques.

The results of the current study need to be interpreted with some caution for two reasons. First, a small number of abstracts were analysed because the abstracts were coded manually by the authors. Future studies could try to analyse more abstracts through applying corpus-based techniques. Second, the current study focused only on Linguistics, so the results cannot be generalized to other disciplines. It is recommended that future researchers venture into other disciplines aside from abstracts of Linguistics. It is also recommended to analyse persuasive strategies within abstracts in a diachronic comparison.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Prince Sultan University for funding this research project under the Applied Linguistics Research Lab grant [RL-CH-2019/9/1].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dina Abdel Salam El-Dakhs

Dina Abdel Salam El-Dakhs is the Chair of the Linguistics and Translation Department and the Leader of the Applied Linguistics Research Lab at the College of Humanities and Sciences, Prince Sultan University. Her research interests are Psycholinguistics, Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics and Second Language Learning. She has several publications in flagship journals.

Laila Mardini

Laila Mardini, equipped with a bachelor’s degree in Applied Linguistics, focuses her passion and expertise on the study of discourse analysis and pragmatics. With several research publications, she aims to make substantial strides in advancing research within the field of Applied Linguistics.

Lutfia Alhabbad

Lutfia Al-Habbad is an IT Specialist at Prince Sultan University. She graduated from Princess Noura bint Abdul Rahman University with a BA in Applied Linguistics. Her research interests are in Discourse Analysis, Computational Linguistics and NLP.

Appendix A.

Typology of persuasive strategies in academic discourse by Dontcheva-Navratilova et al. (2020)

Ethos

Showing involvement (self-mentions)

Sharing personal views (self-mentions; attitude markers)

Commitment to claims (hedges; boosters)

Reference to authority/expertise (citations; text directives)

Providing credentials (self-citations)

Claiming common grounds (reader reference; appeal to shared knowledge)

Sense of community (self-mentions; appeal to shared knowledge)

Reference to expert opinion (citations; text act directives)

Logos

Logical reasoning (transition markers; cognitive directives)

Reference to statistics/facts (intratextual reference to data and visuals)

Experimental proof (reporting experimental results)

Proof by exemplification/testing (reporting statistical tests and sample analysis)

Providing evidence (referring to facts and other evidence)

Pathos

Evoking positive/negative emotions (reader reference; evaluative lexis)

Expressive evaluation (evaluative lexis; attitude markers)

Creating an atmosphere of collegiality (reader reference; appeal to shared knowledge; questions; asides)

Appendix B.

Adapted typology of persuasive strategies in academic discourse by Dontcheva-Navratilova et al. (2020)

Table

Strategy	Definition	Examples/Linguistic Resources
Ethos
Showing involvement	Showing active participation in the text	self-mentions (eg I, we, our, us)
Sharing personal views	Expressing one’s opinions and thoughts	self-mentions (eg I, we, our, us); attitude markers (eg interestingly, unexpectedly)
Modulating commitment to claims	Exerting a modifying influence on the writer’s claims	hedges (eg kind of; a bit) and boosters (eg very; extremely)
Reference to authority/expertise		eg citations; text act directives (eg see, refer to, take a look at)
Providing credentials	Writers refer to their former publications to enhance the credibility of their arguments	self-citations
Claiming common grounds	Referring to areas that the writer and the reader share and/or mutually identify	reader reference (eg you, your); appeals to shared knowledge (eg we know, needless to say, obviously, of course)
Sense of community	A sense of community and alliance with the audience may be achieved by acknowledging the reader’s presence, building shared common ground, and proximity of values and goals	Self-mentions (eg I, we, our, us); appeals to shared knowledge
Reference to expert opinion	Writers refer to the opinions of some experts to enhance the credibility of their arguments	Citations; text act directives (eg see, refer to, take a look at)
Logos
Logical reasoning	Presenting premises that lead to the drawing of certain conclusions that are entailed by the premises or providing explanations/ causes for an action	Transition markers (eg however, furthermore); cognitive directives (eg imperatives; modals of obligation)
Reference to statistics and facts	Reference to data provided in the text, in other visual representations or outside the text	intratextual reference to data and visuals
Experimental proof	Reporting experimental results	The results showed; the findings of the experiment revealed
Proof by exemplification/testing	Reporting statistical tests and sample analysis	A T-test was conducted; The interviews were analyzed qualitatively
Providing evidence	Referring to facts and other evidence	Previous studies showed; Based on the literature survey
Pathos
Evoking positive/negative emotions	Triggering the readers’ emotions whether positively or negatively	reader reference (eg you, your); evaluative lexis (eg sustainable growth, good quality, novel, valuable)
Expressive evaluation	Expressing the author’s assessment of claims, facts and opinions mentioned in the text	evaluative lexis (eg sustainable growth, good quality, novel); attitude markers (eg valuable, significant, important)
Creating an atmosphere of collegiality	Highlighting the need for companionship and cooperation while sharing responsibility	reader reference (eg you, your); appeal to shared knowledge (eg we know, needless to say, obviously, of course); questions; asides (eg as you would agree)