Abstract
This chapter relates a study of the reception, by a range of Elsevier Science Direct journals, of a 2015 report by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which incorporated red meat in Group 2A carcinogens (probably carcinogenic to humans) and processed meat in Group 1 (carcinogenic to humans).
For this study, we have built a 384,491 words corpus, fully POS-tagged, and partially parsed using a systemic functional grammatical formalism, to explore interpersonal meaning and analyze the negotiation of roles (IARC, scientific community, general public) in the discursive construction of meat carcinogenicity. We rely on the notions of Attitude, Engagement and stance, in terms of both Appraisal theory and interactional metadiscourse, concentrating specifically on attitudinal Values, Graduation, comment Adjuncts, modal verbs and personal pronouns.
The results show that the scientific literature exemplified in this corpus does not aim to settle the meat/cancer controversy once and for all, but rather to persuade other members of the relevant discourse communities of the scientific acceptability of the studies being presented. Therefore, the discursive construction of meat carcinogenicity should not be seen only in terms of relating objective facts and hard data about the levels of risk involved, but also as dialogism, which appears – at least from this corpus – to be equally, if not more important to reach a shared interpretation of scientific facts.
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- 1.
“Ecolinguistics is the study of the impact of language on the life-sustaining relationships among humans, other organisms and the physical environment. It is normatively orientated towards preserving relationships which sustain life” (Alexander and Stibbe 2014: 105).
- 2.
For an account of the features of Tenor, and its relation to the interpersonal metafunction and semantic configurations more generally, see Lukin et al. (2008: 199–201).
- 3.
Critical Reviews in Oncology/ Hematology is the official journal of the European School of Oncology (ESO) and has as its main concern the publication of research reviews on cancer and blood diseases; Environmental Research is primarily interested in the effects of chemicals on environmentally induced illnesses; Maturitas is the official journal of the European Menopause and Andropause Society (EMAS), focusing on midlife and elderly health.
- 4.
The sections of the PETA website that were analyzed are those entitled: Issues, Living, and Blog. In addition, posts related to the IARC report elsewhere in the website, and other texts about meat eating and cancer were retrieved through a query on the website search engine.
- 5.
The System Networks built in the UAM Corpus Tool to annotate Appraisal can be visualized in the program, following the path Layers/ Edit Scheme, after user selection of the applicable scheme(s) (Appraisal/ Attitude/ Engagement). However, even the smallest of these networks (Engagement) is too large to show on a page of this book – a fact that is in itself revealing of the degree of complexity of the Appraisal system.
- 6.
This automatic corpus analysis is based on a dictionary built in the UAM Corpus Tool, which associates each lexical item with its typical attitudinal Value and Graduation. However, not being able to consider the context of occurrence, this automatic process is only intended to give users a very general idea of the interpersonal meanings expressed through the identified lexis.
- 7.
Despite its partial form-function correlation and lower level of delicacy in comparison with Appraisal, Hyland’s model should not be interpreted too rigidly. For example, even in interactional metadiscourse theory, adverbials of the kind mentioned here can also have the meaning potential to work within Engagement, typically in contexts where they appeal to shared reader/writer knowledge (Hu and Cao 2015: 15).
- 8.
Ascertaining whether this can be generalized to medical and/or scientific discourse would require a much bigger corpus, and could in fact provide an interesting research question to pursue in a further study of this relatively understudied feature of interpersonal meaning.
- 9.
- 10.
The remaining 2.3% is given by Existential uses of to be and progressive forms.
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Appendices
Appendices
2.1.1 Appendix 1: Comment Adjuncts
Comment adjunct | Frequency | Context | |
|---|---|---|---|
1. | Accordingly | 6 | Accordingly , evidence already exists… |
2. | Alarmingly | 1 | Alarmingly , 15% of the youth (age group 13–15 years) use tobacco… |
3. | Approximately | 3 | Approximately , 70% of the Indian cancers are caused by potentially modifiable and preventable risk factors… |
4. | Certainly | 1 | Certainly , for the lowest temperature of 55 C whereby ln β decreased steadily… |
5. | Clearly | 3 | The idea of establishing a new institution, clearly , has been judged interesting… |
6. | Commendably | 1 | Commendably , all the included cohort studies modified this… |
7. | Commonly | 2 | Commonly , greater attention has been paid to the risk factors for chronic diseases… |
8. | Encouragingly | 2 | Encouragingly , health and discovering new tastes were seen as the most important motives… |
9. | Evidently | 1 | Evidently, all measures to reduce the formation of PAH and HAA during processing and household cooking of meat should be encouraged… |
10. | Generally | 5 | Generally , our findings were similar to the overall pooled estimates… |
11. | Ideally | 1 | That’s the reason why, ideally , producers would like to select cattle… |
12. | Importantly | 16 | Importantly , and at variance with the widespread perception… |
13. | Intriguingly | 2 | Intriguingly , induction of ACF only occurred at doses ≥50 ppm… |
14. | Infamously | 1 | Infamously, chronic and systemic immunosuppression by human immunodeficiency virus is a risk factor… |
15. | Interestingly | 39 | Interestingly, and in contrast to the statement of the IARC... |
16. | Intuitively | 1 | Rather intuitively , these definitions are not inclusive of all dietary sources… |
17. | Normally | 1 | Normally , the intestinal epithelium produces several antimicrobial peptides… |
18. | Notably | 13 | Notably , red and processed meat consumption may increase PC risk in men but not in women... |
19. | Obviously | 2 | Obviously , the important decision of the IARC reached not only the scientific community and other stakeholders, but also the general population… |
20. | Occasionally | 2 | Occasionally , with a proximal tumor, 5 cm proximal margins are often not attainable… |
21. | Oddly | 1 | Oddly, IARC reviewers have chosen to dispute the findings of the EFSA process… |
22. | Possibly | 1 | Possibly, these wide variations implicate potentially controllable variations in lifestyle factors… |
23. | Remarkably | 2 | Remarkably , this pattern can be prevented in a germ-free environment… |
24. | Strikingly | 2 | Strikingly, no mutations were found in KRAS (Kirsten rat sarcoma viral oncogene homolog)… |
25. | (Not) surprisingly | 4 | Not surprisingly, processed meat contains on average 50% more nitrates than unprocessed… |
26. | Unfortunately | 11 | Unfortunately, most of the studies of fertility and the effects of an increased soy-containing diet do not extend past 3 months of observation… |
27. | Usually | 1 | Usually, 2–3 composite samples were prepared for the analysis of each environmental contaminant… |
Total | 125 |
2.1.2 Appendix 2: Modal Verbs
Modal verb | Frequency | Most frequent modalized/ modulated verbs | |
|---|---|---|---|
1. | can | 500 | be, lead, occur |
2. | could | 276 | be, have, contribute |
3. | may | 530 | be, have, lead |
4. | might | 89 | be, contribute, induce |
5. | must | 48 | be, keep (in mind) |
6. | should | 188 | be, eat (less meat), include |
7. | will | 148 | be, have, increase |
8. | would | 234 | be, have, like |
Total | 2013 |
2.1.3 Appendix 3: Personal Pronouns
Pronoun | Frequency | Most frequent usages | |
|---|---|---|---|
1. | I | 6 | Used only in questionnaire survey |
2. | me | Ø | Ø |
3. | my | 11 | my colleagues/ my lecture/ reporting answers from questionnaire |
4. | we | 400 | We have considered/ described/ seen (typically at the end of the abstract/ in the conclusions) |
5. | us | 10 | allow us to (general us, not referring either to writer or reader) |
6. | our | 200 | our results show/ to (the best of) our knowledge/ our laboratory has shown |
7. | you | 40 | If you eat/ drink/ follow (a certain diet) |
8. | your | 30 | bad for your health/ well-being; increase/ raise your chances |
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Fusari, S. (2019). “Logically, We Quite Agree with the IARC”: Negotiating Interpersonal Meaning in a Corpus of Scientific Texts. In: Banks, D., Di Martino, E. (eds) Specialized Discourses and Their Readerships. The M.A.K. Halliday Library Functional Linguistics Series. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8157-7_2
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