A Corpusbased Functional Analysis of Reporting Verbs in the Literature Reviews of Sports Science Masters Theses

Abstract

Reporting verbs (RVs) serve as a fundamental element in academic writing, and they enable writers to attribute information to prior sources while simultaneously conveying both the reported research activities and their evaluations of the cited content.  The literature review part, as a core component of any thesis or the broader genre it belongs to, is typically the section where RVs are most frequently employed. However, regardless of whether students are native or nonnative speakers, they often face challenges in managing citations in their academic writing, particularly in understanding and applying the evaluative functions of RVs. Adopting a corpusbased approach, this study examines the use of RVs in 16 pieces of literature reviews from American master's theses in the sports science discipline. Drawing on Hylands   taxonomy of RVs, this study systematically analyzes the dual functions of RVs: their denotative capacities and evaluative potentials. The findings of this study indicate that all three categories of RVs are employed with varying frequencies in sports science master students' theses. In terms of frequency, discourse acts verbs appeared more frequently than research acts verbs and cognition acts verbs. In terms of evaluative functions, assurance and procedure verbs were the most frequently utilized to express their stances on the reported claims and present the procedures of prior sports research. While this study contributes to the existing body of literature, it also provides practical guidance on the appropriate selection and application of RVs in the sports science discipline, a relatively neglected field in academic writing.