Certainty and Uncertainty in the Abstract Section of Mechanical Engineering Research Articles

Abstract

The study of epistemic modality in research articles (RAs) has been found in many papers. However, the investigation of epistemic modality in the abstract section of RAs viewed from Systemic Functional Linguistics is rarely conducted, especially in mechanical engineering RAs. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the roles of epistemic modality in the abstract section of mechanical engineering RAs. A number of 50 abstracts were collected from Scopus Q-1 journal of mechanical engineering entitled “International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture” in the period of 2016-2020. The data were analyzed using the Systemic Functional Linguistics framework focusing on epistemic modality markers in terms of orientation and values. The results reveal that the writers of mechanical engineering RAs tend to use epistemic modality markers as objective implicit and explicit orientation only since there is no subjective implicit or explicit orientation found in the data. Furthermore, the findings also show that the writers apply epistemic modality markers mostly with low values instead of median or high values. These results may be used to improve the academic writing ability of mechanical engineering writers, especially in writing abstract sections.