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Discussion
The guiding question aimed to identify how presuppositions and assertions in usage related to attitude markers may reflect how the academic community views ethnic minorities and POC in their research. To note, the use of attitude markers was more common in the ‘70s and ‘80s, but began to trend away from usage unless in a succinct, subtle manner. Regardless of the language used to describe POC or ethnic minorities, the use of attitude markers in most papers typically reinforced the author’s stance on the importance of the work being completed, or emphasizing the continuation of relevant research. For example, in McGreavy et al. (2021) there is emphasis to “continue to challenge discourses about what counts as formal knowledge in academic institutions,” and Kretchmer et al. (1971) discuss the importance of lactose intolerance as “worldwide and not uncommon,” because it can lead to “severe consequences in a poorly nourished population.” In research articles published in later years that trend away from more obvious attitude markers, there were also more clarifications being made for study groups, with more frequent use of assertions rather than use of presuppositions, as well as more neutral and widely accepted and neutral language to describe POC and ethnic minorities.
Surprisingly, there was one article that followed the trend identified by Hyland and Jiang’s (2016) reference to Atkinson’s (1999) “gentleman scientist” approach to orchestration, and this becomes apparent with the use of presuppositions and assertions. Dubowitz et al. (1981) approaches the subject more like a narrative compared to the other research articles, and in tandem with heavy use of assertions to establish context, can make it appear that assumptions about the study group have been made. There is a mention of excluding “the possibility of ethnic or environmental factors” on the populations of both “Coloured” and “White” infants, but the authors fail to elaborate what these are in either the introduction or discussion. Furthermore, presuppositions were made in tandem to the study group of “Coloured” infants, more so than “White” infants. With all of these factors in consideration paired with the “gentleman scientist” approach, it comes off as though the only reasons POC were being studied in this paper was to be a comparison, or baseline, for “White” infants. A similar phenomenon occurs in an earlier paper where presuppositions are applied to specific ethnic groups in Western Africa, where there are “characteristics” used to tell two groups apart alongside imagery, but these characteristics are never explored or clarified (Kretchmer et al., 1971). It is assumed another expert in the field would understand what these characteristics are, and that they are apparently accepted as criteria to distinguish these two groups of people apart.
The limitations of this study of language use regarding POC in scientific articles include the constrained size of the corpus and highlighting representative articles to describe the output of an entire decade. Examining years individually across a decade might allow for more subtle changes in language use to become apparent. But this study provides a possible “snapshot” of the types of linguistic changes in use from decade to decade. A follow-up study might gather research articles according to both year and region. This would more precisely reflect the differences in regional attitudes towards ethnic minorities and POC that may be more prevalent to the area of study. For example, attitudes held by White Americans about African Americans over time may be unique to the United States, and there are obviously differences between countries and what would be defined as a “POC” or “ethnic minority.”