Modern conscience: Modalities of obligation in research genres

Despite growing evidence of its social and rhetorical aspects, research writing still has a reputation for impersonal neutrality and ‘facelessness'. This study revisits that neutrality by investigating expression of moral obligation—deontic modals and related expressions—in 105 research articles in three disciplines: Forestry, Social Psychology, Urban Geography. In all three disciplines, deontics express obligation to pursue knowledge, these expressions composing disciplined cohorts of researchers. In all three disciplines, but with varying frequency, deontics express obligations to take action in the world, these expressions imagining arenas of professional and public responsibility to act on research-attested knowledge. Urban Geography is unique in quoting, in some cases, deontically modalized statements from worldly sources and thereby implicating rather than directly prescribing action. Modal mergers—pragmatic blends of deontic and dynamic modality—found in Forestry and Social Psychology are described as epitomizing the reciprocity of research-attested knowledge and ratified action. Deontic expressions appear to be a discursive resource for representing knowledge and orienting it to social sectors—research communities and public systems. Findings are interpreted as evidence for the cooperation of neutrality and sociality in research writing—a modern basis for conscientious action.