The scientific referee report: On attenuating courtesy and sex of the evaluator

Abstract

This article defines, from a theoretical perspective, the scientific arbitration report as discursive genre, located in a chain of genres with two recipients, the purpose being to contextualize why a mitigating courtesy strategy is activated. The objective of the research is twofold: firstly, it attempts to determine which are the specific resources to formulate linguistically the above mentioned strategy in a corpus of arbitration reports; secondly, it aims  to unveil whether the sex of the reports’ evaluators is a parameter that influences the impersonality strategy in order to minimize the presence of the subject of the statement. The method of analysis is based on sociocultural pragmatics and on a variationist perspective. Results confirm that four minimizing strategies are contemplated, and that the sex of the evaluators affects the use of an impersonality strategy and the configuration of an evaluative style, which is characterized by a conjunction of linguistic resources.