Expressing criticality in the literature review in research article introductions in applied linguistics and psychology

•I examine the expression of criticality in research article literature reviews.•Criticality is expressed through moves, attitude markers and contrasting propositions.•The three elements appear to be used in combination to express criticality.

In order to shed further light on the writing of literature reviews in research-reporting texts and, in particular, writer stance in this type of text, this study examines the expression of criticality in the literature review that occurs in the Introduction sections of academic journal articles in two social science disciplines: applied linguistics and psychology. Using the social genre/cognitive genre model of the author to frame the investigation (Bruce, 2008a), the literature reviews that occur in the Introduction sections of 15 academic journal articles from each discipline are examined for ways in which they communicate a critical viewpoint. The findings show systematic use of three generic elements to establish this type of stance: recursive use of content-structuring moves, the metadiscourse device of attitude markers and a concessive contrast relation between propositions. There are differences between the two samples in the frequency of occurrence of the latter two elements. Overall, what emerges is that the expression of criticality through the literature reviews of these texts appears to draw upon the discourse competence and specifically the genre knowledge of expert writers.