Exploring Reporting Verbs in German Research Articles by Indonesian Writers

Abstract

Citation practices play a significant role in research articles. Reporting verbs enable writers to effectively incorporate sources into their writing and cite other authors’ work while expressing their own opinions. Nevertheless, the use of reporting verbs is frequently done without evaluation, particularly by non-native speakers, as seen in the overuse of the verb ‘say’ to present other people’s views thus making their work monotonous and repetitive. The present research aims to f ind how Indonesian writers cite and evaluate the thoughts of previous researchers through the use of reporting verbs in German research articles. This study employs a mixed-method design with a corpus-based approach. Reporting verbs found were identified in their frequency and distribution with the help of Sketch Engine. The findings of the study showed, that the most frequently used reporting verbs fell into the discourse acts, followed by cognition and research acts. This indicates that Indonesian writers tend to focus more on presenting and communicating information in the text. In addition, they explore almost all evaluative functions of each category of reporting verbs. However, they demonstrate a strong preference for Discourse Acts and show limited variation in evaluative stance. The results of this study might increase Indonesian writers’ understanding of the importance of reporting verbs and raise their awareness of using reporting in their writing that are more indicative of their stance towards the information being referred to.

Keywords

• distribution
• frequent
• evaluative function of reporting verbs
• German research article
• Indonesian writers

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