Evaluation in the Reporting Verbs Used in

Academic Papers

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GEOFF THOMPSON and YEYIYUN
University of Liverpool Tongji University, Shanghai

This paper discusses the results of a project to identify the kinds of verbs used in
citations in academic papers, as a basis for developing teaching materials for
non-native-speaker students who need to read or write academic papers.
Categories are suggested for classifying the verbs both in terms of their denota-
tion and of their evaluative potential, in order to illuminate the role that they
play in the evaluation that their presence entails. The ways in which denotation
and evaluative potential interact and some of the effects of the immediate
context (for example, negation) are examined. Particular attention is paid to
the ways in which the writer commits herself to or detaches herselffrom the
reported proposition to varying degrees. Finally, an idealized model of the
'layers of report' that may be involved in citations is presented as a means of
drawing together the various choices available. The model may serve as a
pedagogic image to help the students in understanding or choosing reporting
verbs and, beyond that, in interpreting or conveying evaluation in academic
papers.

1. INTRODUCTION
Following Swales's (1981) pioneering analysis, a great deal of attention has been
paid by EAP (English for Academic Purposes) practitioners to the introduction
sections of academic papers. Various pedagogic images—ways of visualizing the
function of these sections that are easily grasped and utilized by students—have
been suggested, including Swales's (1987, 1990) metaphor of 'creating a
research space' and adaptations of Hoey's (1983) problem-solution pattern;
and various textural threads1 running through the introduction sections (as well
as other parts of the papers) have been analysed: for example, theme choice
(Davies 1988a), verb forms (Tarone etal. 1981), authorial comment (Adams
Smith 1984), tense variation in reporting previous literature (Swales 1990), the
construction of complex noun phrases (Dubois 1982), and so on. Authors such
as Swales (1987) and Davies (1988b) have shown how these insights can be
incorporated into EAP teaching materials.
This focus on the different choices to be made (or interpreted) in the
organization and presentation of introduction sections is reflected in the EAP
reading and writing course being developed at Liverpool University within the
framework outlined in Davies (1988b). Our own research was conceived as part
of the development of this course, with the simple aim of identifying a specific
subset of the lexical items which we felt it would be useful for our students to
know: namely, the verbs used in citations.2
Applied Linguistics, Vol. 12, No. 4 © Oxford University Press 199)
366 EVALUATION IN THE REPORTING VERBS

The importance, in teaching EAP, of citations in introduction sections has

been emphasized by Swales (1981, 1987), and it is apparent from our
experience in working with non-native-speaker (NNS) students that citations
represent a feature which the studentsfinddifficult to handle effectively, both in

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reading and writing (see, for example, Adams Smith 1984; Davies 1988a; and
Hedge 1988). There is a strong tendency for NNS writers of academic papers to
overuse naive quotation without interpretation (Bruce 1989), or to introduce
evaluation in a somewhat crude way.3 It is a common experience for EAP
teachers to have great difficulty in identifying the point of view that a NNS writer
is intending to convey towards cited authors; or even to assume, on the basis of
apparently clear signals, that a certain point of view is being conveyed only to
find this view unexpectedly contradicted in a subsequent explicit evaluation.
That this kind of problem should present itself is not surprising, given the
complexity inherent in reporting. Since two people—the reporting writer and
the reported author—each with potentially different or even conflicting
purposes, are involved in any act of citation, it is clearly possible that difficulties
will arise for the writer infindinga form of expression which balances the need
to convey her own purposes with the conventional requirement (at least in
academic papers) to be reasonably faithful to the quoted author's original
purposes. An examination of the verbs used in reporting seems a concrete
starting point in unravelling the complexity.
Note that in the following discussion, for the sake of simplicity, we arbitrarily
but consistently use 'writer' to refer to the person who is reporting and 'author'
to refer to the person who is being reported.

2. COLLECTING THE DATA

The hundred or so papers from whose introductions we collected the reporting
verbs were taken from journals in diverse fields (including, for example, applied
linguistics, geology, public administration, engineering, and veterinary science),
partly because of the corresponding diversity of subjects studied by our students
and partly because of our intention to start with as wide a scope as possible in
order to search for general tendencies in the choice of reporting verbs. This
approach leaves us the option of subsequently examining whether significant
differences emerge in the verbs commonly used in the various subjects and in
various subgenres (for example, research reports vs. survey articles).
We began by collecting any sentences in which reference was made to another
author in what might be thought of as the 'canonical' citation form: a proper
name, followed by a date in brackets or a number in square brackets, function-
ing as Subject or 'by-Agent' in the clause. We also included verbs in clauses
following such a citation where the Subject was clearly the same quoted author
(for example, where the Subject pronoun referred back to the same author); and
possessive forms of the proper name (such as 'Richard Mead's (1980) account'
or 'Hitchcock's formula [4]'). Once we had found a particular verb used as a
reporting verb in this way, we gathered any other occurrences of that verb in
contexts where reporting was involved.
 G. THOMPSON AND YE YIYUN 367

The number of examples found for each lexical item ranged from 1 (for
example, 'articulate'; 'embark only'; 'relax', in the phrase 'relax this assumption')
to 36 ('show'). None of the verbs that might have been expected to occur were
missing, although some appeared less frequently than would probably have

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been predicted (for example, 'say', 9 occurrences, as compared with 'remark',
12 occurrences).
The sample is still too small to draw many definite conclusions as regards
frequency. What is shown by the data is that the number of verbs is larger than
we had expected: we have so far identified over four hundred. As will be seen
below, this number is not in fact surprising-nor is the list complete (or, indeed,
completable).

3. EVALUATION IN CITATIONS
We have mentioned that the aspect of citations which causes most problems for
NNS writers (and readers) is the evaluation that they carry or imply. The
relationship between reporting and evaluation is well established. As Tadros
(1985) points out, the citing of another author predicts (if it does not itself carry)
an evaluation of that author—the writer is, as it were, under a conventional
obligation to justify mentioning the author in the present context.
In order to provide a context for the following discussion of reporting verbs, it
may therefore be useful at this point to summarize and illustrate some of the
relevant aspects of evaluation.
The awareness of the importance of evaluation fits in with a general move
towards viewing text essentially as goal-oriented, interactive, and dynamic
(Sinclair 1985), and as interpretable in sociological terms (see, for example,
Halliday 1978 and Myers 1989). That is, the writer of an academic paper (as of
any other text) has a purpose in constructing her text, a purpose which is con-
veyed both by the choice of information that she presents and by the choice of
the manner in which she presents it. To concentrate only on the information
given—to take it at its face value—would in many cases be to miss or mis-
interpret the purpose. Evaluation in text is the signalling of this purpose.
In the present context, evaluation may be simply defined as the conveying of
the writer's view of the status of the information in her text. Evaluation is an
extremely complex textural thread, which can be visualized rather as Halliday
(1970:331) sees modality, as 'a strand running prosodically through the clause'.
However, evaluation is best seen as working at the discourse level of text rather
than at the grammatical level of the clause: it may hold over relatively long
stretches of text (including over a complete text); it is often cumulative rather
than clearly signalled at any one point in the text; and it may depend crucially on
context (including position within the text). It can be seen as a separate layer of
meaning potential, which, in academic papers at least, is typically realized not by
discrete elements in the text but by utilizing features of elements already present
(or by the absence of expected elements; see below).
To illustrate these points, let us take part of the opening section of Swales'
(1987) paper on the teaching of research paper writing.
368 EVALUATION IN THE REPORTING VERBS

For one thing, these instructors see research-paper teaching as bedeviled with
uncontrollable and abstruse content and enmeshed in disciplinary cultures (Becher
1981) or discourse communities (Herrington 1985) of diversely alien character. And
certainly, given the fissiparous tendencies within late twentieth century graduate

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education, diversity is apparent enough (Bazerman 1981). (Swales 1987:41)

There are terms in this extract which are clearly evaluative: 'bedeviled',
'uncontrollable', 'alien', etc. are all strongly negative, indicating that research-
paper teaching is problematic. It is likely that many NNS readers will pick up the
clearly-signalled negative evaluation and take this as the viewpoint that is being
propounded, as the purpose for which this part of the text has been written.
However, there are also less obvious signals that this is not actually Swales's
view: 'these instructors' suggests that the writer himself is not part of the group
who hold this opinion; 'And certainly' is potentially concessive (with the
possibility of a stronger 'but' to follow). And indeed once the wider context is
given, it becomes apparent that Swales is in fact citing these authors in order to
contradict their view, that his purpose is to indicate, in his own terms, the 'gap in
previous research' (Swales 1981) that his paper will attempt to fill:

THE CASE FOR TEACHING THE RESEARCH PAPER

Teaching the research paper to nonnati ve-speaker (NNS) graduate students and staff is
not, in my experience, a responsibility that all university-employed ESL instructors
embrace with noticeable relish and confidence. Around the world there must be many
instructors who feel that such teaching must somehow be an arcane activity largely
beyond their professional preparation and competence. For one thing, these
instructors see research-paper teaching as bedeviled with uncontrollable and abstruse
content and enmeshed in disciplinary cultures (Becher 1981) or discourse com-
munities (Herrington 1985) of diversely alien character. And certainly, given the
fissiparous tendencies within late twentieth-century graduate education, diversity is
apparent enough (Bazerman 1981). Today, Milton's 'grove of academe' increasingly
resembles an arboretum rather than a forestry plantation. A further typical source of
disquiet lies in the perceived difficulty of handling issues of research methodology and
research rhetoric at an appropriate level of sophistication. If we add to these twin
apprehensions the fact that few instructors will have had any direct training in teaching
the research paper (it is not discussed in either Kennedy and Bolitho 1984 or
McDonough 1984) and the clear sense in the field of English for academic purposes
(EAP), that undergraduates comprise the priority target population, then it is easy to
see why teaching the research paper has retained Cinderella status.
Even if such anxieties and demurrals are real and understandable, equally pressing
are the responsibilities of those charged with providing an adequate range of ESL
services in major universities and other research institutions. (Swales ibid.)

One thing that becomes clear on reading the extract sentences in a fuller (though
still not complete) context is the way in which the strongly negative signals
mentioned above—and the other negative signals that occur throughout the first
paragraph—are, as it were, bracketed off into a lower order of significance. At
the same time, the less obvious signals of writer distance (such as the reporting
verb 'see') gain prominence from their place in the major thread of evaluation
 G. THOMPSON AND YE YIYUN 369

that runs from the message of the title itself to 'Cinderella status' (with its
suggestion of the Fairy Godmother's imminent arrival) to 'equally pressing'
(which is both overtly evaluative and, by marking off a second point of view,
implicitly relegates the 'anxieties and demurrals' to a subsidiary position in the

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discourse, in effect undermining the 'equally') and beyond.
One feature of this extract worth examining in detail in the present context is
the way in which the citations are introduced. The references to Becher and
Herrington are parenthetical, but in essence they are very close to 'canonical'
citations, since they link back to 'these instructors' and there is a reporting verb
('see'). This means that 'evaluative space' is opened up in which the writer can
report the propositions without being committed to their validity and can thus
prepare for the contrast between the general view and his own. In the reference
to Bazerman, on the other hand, the reported proposition is not explicitly
ascribed away from the writer: it is indeed presented in a way which, apart from
the author's name given in brackets, is formally indistinguishable from a
proposition put forward by Swales himself. The evaluation here is conveyed by
omission: the writer's choosing not to use a reporting verb indicates that Swales
agrees, albeit concessively, with Bazerman—or perhaps we should say that
Bazerman is presented as agreeing with Swales. The references to Kennedy and
Bolitho and McDonough are introduced by a reporting verb ('discussed'), but
the negation of the verb adds a complication which is discussed in Section 4.3
below.
There are many other features which contribute to the thread of evaluation;
but enough has, we hope, been said to give an idea of the complex ways in which
evaluation runs through often extensive stretches of text. If we add to this the
related complexity introduced by the writer's need to fit the quoted author's
purposes into her own, the difficulty of teaching the recognition and expression
of evaluation in citations to NNS readers and writers becomes predictable. As
one of the clearest signals of the presence of evaluation is a reporting verb, the
relationship between these verbs and evaluation seems worth exploring.

4. THE CLASSIFICATION OF REPORTING VERBS

4.1 Denotation
We carried out the analysis of the reporting verbs under two main headings:
denotation and evaluative potential. Both factors must be taken into account in
understanding the reasons for which writers choose a particular verb; and the
interaction between them is complex, although not always as clear-cut as might
be hoped for analytical purposes.
In this first analysis of denotation, it quickly became evident that many of the
verbs referred to three more or less distinguishable groups of processes: textual,
mental, and research.
Textual: verbs referring to processes in which verbal expression is an obligatory
component; for example, state, write, term, challenge, underline, point out,
name, deny.
370 EVALUATION IN THE REPORTING VERBS

Mental: verbs referring primarily to mental processes (which are, of course,

expressed in the author's text); for example, believe, think, focus on, consider,
prefer.

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Research: verbs referring primarily to the mental or physical processes that are
part of research work (and to the author's descriptions of those processes); for
example, measure, calculate, quantify, obtain, find.
These categories are, of course, not watertight—nor do they need to be. There is
'bleeding' from one category to another. For example, 'analyse' could be
classified as either a mental or a research process, or both, depending to some
extent on what the author is reported as analysing—a problem (mental), the
composition of a mineral (research), or some findings (mental and research).
Similarly, a verb such as 'agree', although not necessarily involving verbal
expression, does strongly imply it, especially in the context of reporting; and can
therefore be seen as intermediate between mental and textual.
What all the verbs have in common is that they involve the existence of the
author's text, to a more or less explicit degree. Normally, responsibility for the
process is ascribed to the author, perhaps indirectly via his text or his research
(the exceptions are mostly impersonal constructions such as 'It is often claimed
that...' followed by references in parentheses, where the parenthetically cited
authors are portrayed as representative of those who make the claim). For this
reason, we classify all these verbs under the heading 'Author acts'.
However, there is another, smaller, group of reporting verbs which, in them-
selves, do not refer to the author's acts but rather to processes for which
responsibility is ascribed, as it were, covertly to the reporting writer. An example
of this group (references in square brackets following examples give the source
of the example4) is:
Berman's main thesis, that syntax presents difficulties to the FL reader, would seem to
contradict one of Cooper'sfindings,namely that neither practised nor unpractised
readers were strong on syntax ... [Alderson and Urquhart 1984:157]
In this case, it is clear that the contrast between Berman and Cooper expressed
in the verb 'contradict' is being made by the writer rather than by either of the
authors cited. The verbs in this group are therefore described as 'Writer acts'.
Writer act verbs can be divided into two sub-groups: comparing and
theorizing.
Comparing: verbs which indicate the writer's placing of the author's work in a
certain perspective, usually by means of comparison or contrast; for example,
correspond to, accord with, anticipate, contrast with.
Theorizing: verbs which indicate the use made by the writer of the author's work
in her own developing argument; for example, account for, explain, support.
Further examples of each of these categories may help to clarify the notion of
Writer acts.
 G. THOMPSON AND YE YIYUN 3 71

Thus Neisser makes reference to 'anticipatory schemata' which correspond to the

scenarios of Sanford and Garrod. [Widdowson 1984:224] (Writer act, comparing)
Paulston and Bruder's (1976) work exemplifies the second position, which anticipates

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greater interference from cultural knowledge. [Steffensen and Joag-Dev 1984:49-50]
(Writer act, theorizing)
We can now summarize the various categories that have so far been set up for
the classification of reporting verbs as shown in Figure 1.

reporting

author acts writer acts

I
I
textual mental
I
research
I
comparing
I
theorizing

Figure 1

We should point out, however, that the neat division which has been set up
between Author acts and Writer acts is somewhat misleading. Theorizing
process verbs may also be used to describe Author acts (although the same is
not true of most comparing process verbs)—compare the example of'exemplify'
as Writer act, theorizing, given above, with:
A longer list of feasible levels of questions is exemplified by Adams-Smith (1981),
using the Bloomian taxonomy. [Alderson and Urquhart 1984:xvii] (Author act,
textual)

In addition, we shall see later that many verbs which can be classified as
Author acts are to be interpreted as Writer acts if negated or if used in the report
with a modal verb.
On a different point, it can be argued that Writer acts do not in fact involve
reporting verbs—that in most cases the citation is entirely encapsulated within
the nominal groups in the clause. Although this is certainly a valid alternative
way of viewing these verbs, there are two main reasons for including them
nevertheless as reporting verbs. First, they help to complete the continuum, to
which we shall return in Section 4.5, from recording through reporting to
theorizing. Second, and more important, the choice between Author and Writer
acts is a central factor in evaluation (no less so because the distinction is often
blurred). Much of what goes on in reporting can be more economically analysed
if we have available these two basic categories.

4.2 Evaluation in reporting verbs

In analysing the evaluative potential of reporting verbs, we found it necessary to
consider three largely separate factors: author's stance, writer's stance, and
372 EVALUATION IN THE REPORTING VERBS

writer's interpretation. The first element in these distinctions, author vs. writer,
serves as a reminder of the two parties involved; while the second, stance vs.
interpretation, reflects two basic modes of evaluation which are simultaneously
open to the writer.

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It is worth emphasizing before looking at each of these factors in detail that
the 'inherent' evaluative potential may be neutralized in, we believe, all cases by
the evaluative charge of other elements in the context. What is given as the
inherent potential for any particular verb must be regarded as merely the
unmarked case (although it is true that the vast majority of our examples are in
this sense unmarked cases). Grammatical factors such as negation and tense
also play a varying role in modifying the evaluative potential: some of these will
be discussed at the relevant point below. Although the categories which we have
set up are not always easy to apply in detail, we feel reasonably certain that the
basic three-layer approach does capture many essential features of evaluation in
reporting verbs.
Author's stance is the most straightforward of the three factors. This is the
attitude which the author is reported (in Author act verbs) as having towards the
validity of the reported information or opinion. There are three more or less
distinct options:
Positive: the author is reported as presenting the information/opinion as true/
correct; for example, accept, emphasize, hypothesize, invoke, note, point out,
posit, reason, subscribe to.
Negative: the author is reported as presenting the information/opinion as false/
incorrect: for example, attack, challenge, dismiss, dispute, divergefrom,object
to, oppose, question, reject.
Neutral: the author is reported as presenting the information/opinion as neither
true nor false at that point in his work; for example, assess, examine, evaluate,
focus on, pose, quote, tackle, undertake.
In Writer's stance, three options can again be identified, although in practice
one of the options is rarely chosen.
Factive: the writer portrays the author as presenting true information or a
correct opinion; for example, acknowledge, bring out, demonstrate, identify,
improve, notice, prove, recognize, substantiate, throw light on.
Counter-factive: the writer portrays the author as presenting false information
or an incorrect opinion; for example, betray [ignorance), confuse, disregard,
ignore, misuse.
Non-factive: the writer gives no clear signal as to her attitude towards the
author's information/opinion; for example, advance, believe, claim, examine,
generalize, propose, retain, urge, utilize.
The option in this category that is rarely chosen is Counter-factive verbs: the list
of examples given above includes all those found in our data, accounting for a
total of only 7 occurrences in all—and, of these, 2 occurrences of'ignore' are in
 G.THOMPSON AND YE YIYUN 373

fact not clearly counter-factive, for reasons which will be discussed below, while
two of the other verbs ('confuse' and 'misuse') appear in the same citation. It thus
seems that negative evaluation concerning the truth or correctness of what the
author is reported as saying is not normally overtly carried by the reporting

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verb. This is obviously part of the general reluctance identified and analysed by
Myers (1989) to disagree explicitly in public with a fellow researcher. Disagree-
ment can be expressed through the reporting verb—for example, by the use of
negation—but, as we shall see in Section 4.3, it is very often expressed in a way
which tends to mitigate the confrontation by leaving ambiguous the extent to
which the responsibility for a 'mistake' is being attributed to the author.
Both Author's stance and Writer's stance are concerned basically with the
truth/correctness or otherwise of the reported proposition. Writer's inter-
pretation , on the other hand, is concerned with various aspects of the status of
the proposition. We have identified four main options open to the writer:
Author's discourse interpretation: the writer presents an interpretation of how
the reported information/opinion fits into the author's text; for example, add,
comment, continue, detail, mention, note, recast, repeat, remark, sketch.
Author's behaviour interpretation: the writer presents an interpretation of the
author's attitude or purpose in giving the reported information/opinion; for
example, admit, advocate, assert, criticize, hint, emphasize, favour, hypothes-
ize, insist, reiterate, remind, warn.
Status interpretation: the writer indicates the functional status within her own
framework of the reported information/opinion; for example, account for,
bringout, confirm, conformto, overcome, establish,popularize,prove,solve.
Non-interpretation: the writer presents the report as objective; for example,
adopt, apply, calculate, employ, map, observe, provide, recount, say, see, use,
write.
The options under Writer's interpretation seem somewhat heterogeneous; but
we group them together because they appear to be mutually exclusive in most
cases. In support of the analysis suggested here, it can be noted that there are a
number of cases where it allows us to handle neatly differences in closely-
related items. For example, 'repeat' merely indicates that information appears
more than once in the author's text, whereas 'reiterate' conveys the author's
purpose in repeating information (to emphasize it). Similarly, 'emphasize' refers
to the author's intention, while 'bring out' indicates that the intention has been
successfully realized, in that the writer signals her agreement with the emphasis
given.

4.3 Disguised Writer acts

If we now turn to the links between the two major groups of categories that have
been set up—denotative and evaluative—we can begin by examining the way in
which the primary distinction between Author acts and Writer acts works in
context. We shall do this by exploring the role of negation and modality.
374 EVALUATION IN THE REPORTING VERBS

In the following example, the writer comments explicitly on the absence of an

act that might have been expected from the authors:
However, the authors did not specifically compare the bilingual child's ability in one

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language with his/her ability in the other. [Alderson 1984:9]
The writer's choosing to comment on the absence is evaluative (compare
Swales's reference to Kennedy and Bolitho and McDonough in the extract given
earlier). These cases represent Writer acts masquerading as Author (non-)
acts—hence the name 'disguised Writer acts'. Author's stance is by-passed (not
simply negated), and Writer's stance is conveyed indirectly.
On the other hand, there are cases in which the negation does not have this
effect, and which are presented as Author acts.
Ulijn (1978) presents evidence which contradicts Cowan's theory ... He did not find
that points of linguistic contrast caused comprehension difficulties or slower reading
rates. [Alderson 1984:11-12]
This use occurs most clearly with a small number of research processes
(especially 'find') where the fact that the researcher's results are negative is
significant and is reported as being explicitly stated by the researcher (often, as
here, because they contradict another researcher's findings or predictions). It is
worth noting that negated research act verbs tend to refer to conscious Author
acts; negated reporting verbs implying criticism (disguised Writer acts) tend to
come from the categories of textual and mental acts. A similar tendency for the
author's text to be treated as more open to possibly critical interpretation than
his research is discussed in Section 4.4.2 below.
In the majority of cases, however, it is not completely obvious which of these
two options is intended. Even in the two examples given above, it is only with the
help of the context that it can be firmly established that Alderson is criticizing
'the authors' for inadequate methodology, but not criticizing Ulijn for in-
adequate findings. There is in fact a cline from clear Writer act to clear Author
act, with relatively few examples occurring at the extremes. The cline involves
not only grammatical but also lexical negation: for example, certain catenatives,
notably 'fail' and 'purport', enter the cline, as do the verbs listed under Writer
stance: Counter-factive.
As we have seen, this ambiguity between an Author act and a Writer act arises
in cases where there is the possibility of negative evaluation of the author's views
or information; and it arises because it may often not be clear whether the
absence of the act referred to by the reporting verb is a conscious decision on
the part of the author or not. It seems likely that this ambiguity can be deliber-
ately exploited by a writer as a kind of hedge, in order to avoid direct criticism of
a fellow-researcher. However, the writer's view of what the author has (or has
not) done, in any case of reporting, may not accord with the author's own view;
and therefore this ambiguity can be seen as merely a relatively clear instance of
the ambiguity that is inherent in all reporting.
The question of Author act vs. Writer act is also raised by the use of modality
 G. THOMPSON AND YE YIYUN 375

in reporting. It might be supposed that modality, as a major carrier of evaluation,

would play an important part in conveying Writer's stance. In fact, we have
found extremely few cases in which an Author act reporting verb is accom-
panied by a modal verb when used in citation. Modality is, however, frequently

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present in Writer acts or in 'self-reporting', where reporting verbs are used to
refer to the writer's own work or views. Indeed, in impersonal structures or
agentless passives, the presence of a modal verb is normally a signal that the
writer is the understood agent;5 for example:
Hosenfeld's approach to the teaching of reading may be characterized as psycho-
linguistic ... [Alderson and Urquhart 1984:246] (Writer act, Comparing)
// must be admitted, however, that recently reading courses have tended to be very text-
oriented, with minimal emphasis on the contribution of the reader. [Alderson and
Urquhart 1984:45] (Impersonal, self-reporting)
Compare these with the following:
In her study of reading in second-language learners, Hosenfeld (1977b) has character-
ized 'taking chances' as the readiness to skip words... [Cooper 1984:134] (Author act,
Textual)
It is now almost universally accepted that frequent fixations and regressions are
symptoms of poor comprehension, rather than causes of it (see M. and E. De Leeuw
1965). [Alderson and Urquhart 1984:xx] (Impersonal Author Act, Mental)
In the following example, which appears at first sight to be a 'canonical' citation,
the modal indicates that the term in question was not actually applied to this
case by Yorio himself but is presumably being suggested as appropriate by
Alderson:
Thus he claims that confusion in reading in a foreign language often results from the
predictions that are made by the reader being based on the strategies associated with
the native language of the reader (what Yorio (1971) might call native language inter-
ference). [Alderson 1984:10)
The scarcity of modality accompanying Author act verbs can no doubt be
attributed in part to a mixture of politeness and pride: the use of a modal verb
expressing probability would suggest either that the author had not put over his
ideas clearly or that the writer had not been fully able to understand the author's
point; while a modal verb expressing obligation would suggest that the author
was not in control of his own work. To convey any of these views is a conceiv-
able option, but it would be a very marked one. It can therefore be taken as a rule
that the presence of a modal verb will generally signal that a reporting verb
should be classified as a Writer act rather than an Author act.
This constant option of shifting between a Writer act and an Author act in
citation is clearly a useful tool in the conveying of evaluation. If the writer
chooses to present the report in the guise of a Writer act, she excludes the
detachment which is involved in an Author act and is therefore committed to the
validity of what she writes (although she may simultaneously hedge by using a
376 EVALUATION IN THE REPORTING VERBS

modal verb). If she chooses an Author act, she establishes her detachment from
what is reported and thus allows herself'evaluative space', opening up a number
of other options in the system of evaluation. She can also choose not to make a
clear-cut choice, particularly if she wishes to mitigate negative evaluation, and

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instead to hover deliberately between the two extremes.

4.4 Denotation and evaluation

At a more detailed level, the links between the various evaluative options and
between denotation and evaluative potential show fewer signs of patterning,
although certain regularities do appear: we have already mentioned, for
example, the tendency of negation to be associated with a different function
depending on which type of Author act is negated.

4.4.1. Denotation and stance. If we look at various combinations of the Author

act categories of denotation with the two sets of stance categories, there appear
to be no clear correlations. There are restrictions on combinations of the two
stance categories: for example, neutral Author's stance does not combine with
factive Writer's stance (it is difficult to imagine what such a verb might be).
However, these restrictions do not seem to be related to the categories of
denotation.
It is true that we have not found a textual process verb unambiguously
expressing counter-factive Writer's stance—the nearest is an occurrence of
'allege' in a context which makes it quite clear that the author's allegation is
believed by the writer to be wrong. However, this also does not seem to be
connected with any particular features of textual process verbs: we have, for
example, collected a citation introduced by the noun 'misattribution', which
suggests that 'misattribute' might be found in a larger corpus. The apparent gap
should probably be related rather to the general scarcity of counter-factive
evaluation in reporting verbs.

4.4.2 Denotation and interpretation. When we turn to Writer's interpretation,

the picture becomes somewhat clearer. Author's discourse interpretation is, of
course, restricted to textual process verbs. One useful function of this category
is to provide the writer with the opportunity to introduce a flavour of inter-
pretation in a non-controversial area (the form of the author's text rather than its
content) while still keeping her evaluative options open. She can thus indicate
that she has not been an entirely passive recipient of the author's message,
without committing herself at that point to judging the validity of the content of
what is reported.
The same is largely true of Author's behaviour interpretation, although the
focus here shifts from the author's text to the author's motives, and thus involves
both the form and the content to some extent. The majority of verbs in this
category also refer to textual processes. This preponderance of textual act verbs
perhaps springs again from the relatively unthreatening nature of commenting
on the author's text rather than the author's message. This view of the relation-
 G. THOMPSON AND YE YIYUN 377

ship between writer and author is supported by the fact that the Non-
interpretation category has a high proportion of research act verbs: to evaluate
the author's research is potentially more face-threatening (Brown and Levinson

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1987) than to discuss the author's text, since it brings one very close to the
content of the author's message and thus to his academic standing. It is not, of
course, that such evaluation is not made—indeed, at some point, it has to be
made; but to make the evaluation constantly through the choice of reporting
verb could become repetitive. In addition, negative evaluation tends, as has been
noted, to be conveyed in more indirect ways; and the variation provided by
Authors discourse and Author's behaviour interpretation verbs opens
evaluative space for possible negative evaluation without restricting the writer
to a bland stream of Non-interpretation verbs.
With Status interpretation, the focus shifts completely to the content of the
reported proposition. This category includes, by definition, all Writer acts
(including the evaluatively negated Author acts discussed earlier); but it also
brings together those verbs from all three categories of Author acts which
express the perlocutionary effect of the act. Examples of such verbs are: 'bring
out' (textual); 'solve' (mental/research); 'demonstrate' (research). The under-
stood 'Patient'—the one who is affected by the perlocutionary force—is
normally the writer (one possible exception is 'popularize', where the writer may
well not be including herself amongst those who have been influenced by the
author's act). Thus the verbs in this category undermine the notion of 'writer
distance' normally associated with reporting, since the writer is involved in the
process, either as understood Actor (in Writer acts) or as understood Patient.
This means that the verbs under Status interpretation cannot come from the
category of non-factive Writer's stance: the writer cannot show the status of the
reported proposition in her text without simultaneously signalling her attitude
towards its truth value.
The interaction between the various categories is therefore to some extent
unpredictable, but does show a degree of patterning. The main distinction that
has been set up, between Writer and Author acts, has a crucial role to play in
evaluative options. The choices in the Author act categories seem to place only
slight constraints on evaluative choices regarding stance, but play a more
important part in choices in interpretation, thus helping to justify the separation
of stance and interpretation in analysing the evaluative choices available.

4.5 Layers of report

In order to bring together in a relatively straightforward way the factors that
have been discussed, it is necessary to shift the perspective from which we view
the act of reporting. If we think of the main stages that have been gone through
by the two participants involved in the reporting process, we can see them in the
idealized, simplified chronological sequence shown in the diagram in Figure 2.
We find it more satisfying to arrange the stages in this way, even though they
are in reverse chronological order, since this arrangement takes as its point of
reference the reporting act (1) and moves backwards in time to the most remote
378 EVALUATION IN THE REPORTING VERBS

1 2 3 4 5 6
writer writer writer author author author
writes evaluates reads writes thinks researches

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Figure 2

acts (6). Of course, the separation and relative ordering of author's research (6)
and author's thinking (5) is artificial, but takes into account the kinds of bleeding
that occur between textual and mental verbs and between mental and research
verbs (but not generally between textual and research verbs), and thus expresses
what is presumably a feature of our perception of the processes involved. The
diagram cannot show all the information relating to the type of evaluation
(stance or interpretation), but it does handle clearly the categories of denota-
tion, the crucial distinction between Writer act and Author act, and the choice of
whether or not to introduce explicit evaluation in the reporting verb itself.
Potentially, any combination of the stages can be highlighted by the choice of
reporting verb. We visualize the stages rather like gauze backdrops on a stage:
by a skilful use of lighting, any of the layers of gauze can be brought into focus;
the other layers are still there, but their presence is relatively unnoticed. To give
some examples of verbs expressing different combinations (numbers in
brackets represent layers which are implied but not focused on):
X states that... = 3-4
X believes that... = 3-4-5
X analyses ... = 3-4-5-6
X measures ... = 3-4-6
X measured ... = 3-(4)-6
X adds that... = 2-3-4
X hypothesizes that... = 2-3-4-5-6
X does not mention ... -2-3-(4)
X proves that... = 2-3-4-6
X proved that... = 2-3-(4)-6
X's model accounts for... =1-2-3-4-5
X's claim corresponds to ... =1-2-3-4
The bracketing of 4 where the verb is in the past tense ('X measured' and 'X
proved') is intended to indicate, by contrast with the unbracketed 4 where the
same verb is in the present tense, one effect of tense choice in Author act verbs.
If a writer writes, 'Smith analyzes the results ...', the choice of present tense
indicates, amongst other things, that the writer is referring to the author's text,
since it is a convention that the contents of a text can be reported using the
present tense no matter what the tense used in the original text. This indication is
missing from the verb itself if the past tense is used.
Earlier, we said that the category of reporting verbs was in principle
impossible to delimit. The 'layers of report' diagram and the discussion of tense
 G. THOMPSON AND YE YIYUN 379

choice suggest why this should be so. The verbs which can report an author's
writing or thinking are, conceivably, enumerable; but it is clear from the diagram
that any verb referring to any action which can be involved in research may
potentially be used as a reporting verb. It could be argued that it would be

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preferable to analyse many of the verbs referring to research as recording the
research rather than as reporting the author's description of that action—but it
would be difficult to explain at what point the recording became reporting. The
'reporting verb' in the following example is one that would probably not be
predicted as falling into that category:
Hunkins (1969) had sixth-graders study social study material ... [Royer et al.
1984:76]
and yet this is essentially similar to:
Chihara, Oiler, Weaver and Chavez-Oiler (1977) compared native speakers of English
and Japanese learners of EFL... [Alderson 1984:14]
The point might be made that certain research process verbs cannot (or can only
very rarely) be used in the 'text-referring' present tense to report another
researcher's acts. This is true to a certain degree: the diagram indicates,
however, that it is more accurate to say that (amongst other things) the choice of
past tense places the focus on the research process rather than on the author's
textual description of that process.
It would seem that with cases such as 'had' and 'compared' above we are on
the borderline of reporting. However, if these verbs were excluded from the
category of reporting verbs, we would also have to exclude, for example, 'find',
which is one of the commonest verbs used to introduce a report in our data but
which refers to a research process and which we have not found used in the
present tense in a citation. It is clear, therefore, that the line at which reporting
becomes recording is impossible to identify. Fortunately, it is not necessary to
do so, as long as the principle of'potential reporting verb status' is recognized.
To go a step further, it is clear that the term 'reporting verb' is misleading. Any
verb recording a research act has the potential to be used in reporting. Also, as
was pointed out earlier, the division between Author acts and Writer acts is not
one that is reflected in lexis: the same verbs can in most cases be used for either.
But equally there is no clear-cut division between Writer acts which involve
citation and those which do not. In other words, reporting verb status, in the
sense in which we are using it here, is not something inherent in the verb itself: it
is dependent on the context of use. Moreover, the degree to which a verb has
reporting verb status in any particular context must be represented on a cline:
there are some cases where the status is more clearly indicated than in others (by
tense choice, for example). In the appropriate context, however, the other
factors discussed above are triggered; verbs used in reporting do show specific
features which can be analysed as outlined in this paper. As long as this context-
dependence is borne in mind, 'reporting verb' can therefore be used as con-
venient shorthand.
380 EVALUATION IN THE REPORTING VERBS

5. CONCLUSION
We began our work on this project with the vague preconception that we would
be able to identify a certain number of verbs as reporting verbs (and we already

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had what we thought was a fairly complete list in our minds). We also tended to
think in fairly simplistic terms (no doubt encouraged by the 'idealizations'
necessary in the language classroom) of the way in which the verbs carried
evaluation.
We have tried in this paper to give an idea of the complexity of the way in
which verbs in reporting structures in academic papers actually operate, and to
indicate possible analyses that may help us to deal with the complexity. We have
concentrated on the verbs themselves, but, as discussed earlier, the thread of
evaluation in a whole reporting structure and, beyond that, in a whole paper
draws on many other elements in the text. By worrying away at one area that is
relatively easy to delimit (up to a point), we hope to identify certain factors that
may be applicable to a wider range of evaluative features.
There are possibilities for further analysis which immediately suggest them-
selves: in particular, an examination of the ways in which the evaluative factors
identified here interact with the functional choices described by Swales (1986),
and a closer search for potential differences in the way the factors operate in
various sub-genres (for example, research papers vs. survey articles) and in
various subject areas.
The two points that emerge most clearly for us from our research so far are
the varied kinds of verbs that are available for use in reporting and the effects of
focusing on different layers of report. The first of these points must obviously be
taken into account when looking at the form of reporting structures as a whole;
but it seems possible to us that the concept of layers of report and potential
evaluation may provide a useful way of linking evaluation in report structures
with the overall realization of evaluation in academic papers. That, however,
remains to be seen.
(Revised version received January 1991)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We are grateful to Florence Davies for providing both the initial stimulus to
undertake this research and support in carrying it through.

NOTES
1
For the concept of texture in text, see for example Halliday and Hasan (1989:70-96).
2
A concrete pedagogic result of this research project is a dictionary of reporting verbs
currently in preparation.
3
One of our NNS students had evolved a simple system: if he disagreed with the quoted
author, he generally wrote 'X says/states ...' (or a similar neutral reporting verb),
sometimes going on to say explicitly that the reported opinion was incorrect; if, on the
other hand, he agreed with the author, he wrote 'X rightly says/states...'. He was happy to
explore with us the possibilities of a more varied range of techniques for conveying his
evaluation.
 G. THOMPSON AND YE YIYUN 381
4
To simplify matters for readers who might wish to look at the examples in context,
virtually all the examples in this paper are taken from one source rather than spread over
the hundred or so sources from which we collected our data.
5
There are also intermediate cases with impersonal and agentless passive structures

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where the writer sets up an imaginary (though plausible) opponent in order to dismiss his
'reported' ideas, as in: 'It might be objected that both kinds of specification include
elements of linguistic and communicative skill... [Widdowson 1983:34].' The use of the
modal here can perhaps be seen as reflecting the writer's role in setting up the objection—
an objection which is not ascribed away from the writer to someone else, but is also not
ascribed to the writer. Once again, therefore, this is a kind of disguised Writer Act.

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APPENDIX
Sources
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6. Widdowson, H. G. 1983. Learning Purpose and Language Use. Oxford: Oxford
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