Graduation Resources in Medical Case Reports Written by Native and Non-Native Medical Writers

Abstract

The Appraisal Theory includes three subsystems of evaluation; Attitude, Engagement, and Graduation. This study  focuses on Graduation subsystem which  is used by writers to amplify or diminish the scope of these two subsystems. It consists of Focus and Force options. Focus expressions are usually non-gradable they tend to sharpen or soften the utterances.  Force, on the other hand modulates gradable expressions; which can be emphasized or downtoned the writer's utterances in terms of Intensification and Quantification. This pilot test is conducted to characterize the Force: Graduation of the heteroglossic resources in 20 MCR written in English by NS and NNS (Malaysian) medical writers. MCR is a medical genre that has proven recently to be very important in the advancement of medical researches and in serving pedagogical purposes to offer a description to the practical strength of the clinical decision-making. Many incidents of Force: Graduation are collected for the purpose of analysis. The analysis includes investigating   the gradable heteroglossic resources in the MCRs of both groups of writers and examining the differences in employing these resources. The results indicate a little bit more frequent occurrence in the NS medical writers MCRs gradable heteroglossic expressions compared with those of NNS medical writers. Additionally, the use of these resources in the discussion sections of both groups is higher than in the other sections for both writers.

Keywords: graduation resources, appraisal theory, corpus-based research