Certainty across cultures: A comparison of the degree of certainty expressed by Greek and English speaking scientific authors

Abstract

Cultural values can be important determinants of academic authors’ rhetorical behavior. In particular, cultural characteristics such as uncertainty avoidance, power distance, and individualism / collectivism may affect the ways authors express their certainty and commitment to their claims and appeal to group solidarity and communal opinion with a view to soliciting readers’ acceptance of claims and community consensus.

This paper aims to illustrate the ways such cultural characteristics differentiate the degree of certainty and conviction to claims expressed by native speakers of English (NSE) and native speakers of Greek (NSG) in research articles from the fields of electronic and electrical, and chemical engineering. Three sets of data are analyzed: research articles written by NSE, NSG in English and NSG in Greek, a total of 49, published in journals and conference proceedings.

The findings indicate that Greek authors appear a great deal more certain and committed to their claims than native English speaking authors. This is shown to be a result of the high uncertainty avoidance, high power distance, and collective values that characterize Greek society.