Stance in successful grant application abstracts: Trends across disciplinary domains

Stance, i.e., the expression of attitudes, judgements, and degrees of commitment, is a central feature of academic discourse. Yet its role in promotional communication within high-stakes genres such as grant proposals and their related subgenres remains relatively underexplored in EAP research. This study investigates the use of 193 features in a 2.7-million-word corpus of 12,187 abstracts from successful grant applications across five disciplinary domains, awarded by the Swedish Research Council between 2011 and 2022. Notably, the analysis reveals only moderate change over the 12-year period, despite broader trends toward increasingly promotional rhetorical styles in academic communication. A gradual rise in assertive modal verbs ( will, can ) and a decline in tentative ones ( would, may ) suggest a subtle shift toward greater rhetorical certainty. While a core repertoire of stance features is broadly shared across five disciplinary domains, hard science fields tend to favor more assertive and evidential expressions, whereas soft science fields more often employ hedging and interpretive stance, consistent with previous findings. Further variation is observed in how novelty, methods, and significance are promoted, providing more nuanced insights into disciplinary conventions of persuasion. These findings inform EAP pedagogy by supporting discipline-specific stance awareness and encouraging reflective, responsible self-promotion.