The Evolution of Authorial Stance in NIH And NSF Grant Proposal (Or Abstract) Writing: A
Corpus-Based Analysis of Epistemic Commitment Across Two Decades
Abstract
This research paper explores the changes that occurred over time in epistemic stance as
manifested in NIH and NSF grant abstracts between 2000 and 2024. In total, the dataset
comprises 120 abstracts equally divided into three different time intervals and disciplines.
Hedges, boosters, and author self-mention serve as measures of authorial stance in the
research corpus. While there are some variations in epistemic stance in the use of hedges,
boosters, and author self-mention, they do not affect the stability of the genre as a whole. The
plural pronoun we is always prevailing in self-mention, which testifies to a consistent
inclination towards the collective authorial identity. There is little difference between
different disciplines, which indicates high genre specifications influenced by institutional
demands.
Keywords
Epistemic stance
Metadiscourse
Grant writing
Corpus linguistics
Diachronic analysis
Research funding discourse
, Science communication
, Introduction
The research funding landscape has grown increasingly competitive over the last
twenty years, especially among large United States funding agencies including the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). This has increased
competition between researchers, who must not only show scientific merit but also provide
their ideas in a rhetorically convincing way due to increasing numbers of applications,
combined with limited funding allocations (National Science Foundation, 2022; National
Institutes of Health, 2021). New statistics indicate the intensity of such competition. To
illustrate, the amount of NIH R01-equivalent grant applications rose by about 37,478 in 2024
to over 42,000 in 2025, whereas the number of awards dropped by a significant margin,
resulting in a drop in success rates since 18.7% in 2024 to only 13.0% in 2025. Some reports
indicate that the total NIH success rates dropped to approximately 17 percent, the lowest in
almost 30 years, with less than one in five applicants getting funded. Equally, although the
rates of NSF funding are still relatively high, they are indicative of high competition, with
certain directorates only awarding approximately 23 percent of the proposals submitted to it.
This constrained funding climate implies that scientists have to compete with an increasing
number of applicants over a decreasing fraction of awards.
The abstract of the grant is critical in this context and it acts as a brief but powerful
embodiment of a suggested project. It has to convey meaning, novelty, and viability and meet
funding priorities and reviewer expectations. This has made lingual decisions in abstracts to
be more strategic. Language of persuasion is thus the key to funding success, not only do the
applicants have to come up with ideas that are good but also they need to package them
attractively in an extremely competitive evaluation process. Recent studies show that
effective grant abstracts use rhetoric techniques (promotional language, expressions of
, certainty) to highlight impact and novelty (Millar et al., 2022; Wang, 2025). These plans are
implemented using epistemic stance markers, such as hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and
self-mention which enable writers to strike the right balance between caution and confidence.
With such a competitive funding environment where only a small percentage of proposals
succeed, strategic allocation of stance is critical and determines how reviewers will perceive
the believability, importance, and possible impact of the proposed research.
Authorial stance has been a topic of vast discussion in academic discourse, whereby
such stance has been conceptualized as a tool with which writers indicate their degree of
commitment to propositions and also interact with their audience. Corpus-based research has
shown that stance markers are at the heart of the construction of disciplinary identity and
negotiation of knowledge claims (Afzaal, 2025; Chen, 2025). Hedges enable authors to
indicate doubt, whereas boosters enable them to show confidence. Likewise, self-mention
also helps authors to create a presence in the text, placing them in the context of their
research and their audience (Wang, 2021). These language tools help in the interpersonal
aspect of academic writing.
Although a lot of research has been conducted about stance in academic writing, most
studies have been conducted on research articles and student writing. Very little focus has
been directed towards grant abstracts that have different communicative conditions. In
contrast to research articles, where the research is already done, grant abstracts need to
project the results of the work and convince the reviewers of the usefulness of the suggested
research. Such a perspective of the future usually necessitates more promotional rhetoric
(Wang, 2026). Additionally, there is little literature that has looked at the dynamics of these
practices over time. Diachronic research has demonstrated that the use of language may
change under disciplinary and institutional pressure (Rezaei, 2021), but there are few studies
investigating grant discourse in a similar manner.
Corpus-Based Analysis of Epistemic Commitment Across Two Decades
Abstract
This research paper explores the changes that occurred over time in epistemic stance as
manifested in NIH and NSF grant abstracts between 2000 and 2024. In total, the dataset
comprises 120 abstracts equally divided into three different time intervals and disciplines.
Hedges, boosters, and author self-mention serve as measures of authorial stance in the
research corpus. While there are some variations in epistemic stance in the use of hedges,
boosters, and author self-mention, they do not affect the stability of the genre as a whole. The
plural pronoun we is always prevailing in self-mention, which testifies to a consistent
inclination towards the collective authorial identity. There is little difference between
different disciplines, which indicates high genre specifications influenced by institutional
demands.
Keywords
Epistemic stance
Metadiscourse
Grant writing
Corpus linguistics
Diachronic analysis
Research funding discourse
, Science communication
, Introduction
The research funding landscape has grown increasingly competitive over the last
twenty years, especially among large United States funding agencies including the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). This has increased
competition between researchers, who must not only show scientific merit but also provide
their ideas in a rhetorically convincing way due to increasing numbers of applications,
combined with limited funding allocations (National Science Foundation, 2022; National
Institutes of Health, 2021). New statistics indicate the intensity of such competition. To
illustrate, the amount of NIH R01-equivalent grant applications rose by about 37,478 in 2024
to over 42,000 in 2025, whereas the number of awards dropped by a significant margin,
resulting in a drop in success rates since 18.7% in 2024 to only 13.0% in 2025. Some reports
indicate that the total NIH success rates dropped to approximately 17 percent, the lowest in
almost 30 years, with less than one in five applicants getting funded. Equally, although the
rates of NSF funding are still relatively high, they are indicative of high competition, with
certain directorates only awarding approximately 23 percent of the proposals submitted to it.
This constrained funding climate implies that scientists have to compete with an increasing
number of applicants over a decreasing fraction of awards.
The abstract of the grant is critical in this context and it acts as a brief but powerful
embodiment of a suggested project. It has to convey meaning, novelty, and viability and meet
funding priorities and reviewer expectations. This has made lingual decisions in abstracts to
be more strategic. Language of persuasion is thus the key to funding success, not only do the
applicants have to come up with ideas that are good but also they need to package them
attractively in an extremely competitive evaluation process. Recent studies show that
effective grant abstracts use rhetoric techniques (promotional language, expressions of
, certainty) to highlight impact and novelty (Millar et al., 2022; Wang, 2025). These plans are
implemented using epistemic stance markers, such as hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and
self-mention which enable writers to strike the right balance between caution and confidence.
With such a competitive funding environment where only a small percentage of proposals
succeed, strategic allocation of stance is critical and determines how reviewers will perceive
the believability, importance, and possible impact of the proposed research.
Authorial stance has been a topic of vast discussion in academic discourse, whereby
such stance has been conceptualized as a tool with which writers indicate their degree of
commitment to propositions and also interact with their audience. Corpus-based research has
shown that stance markers are at the heart of the construction of disciplinary identity and
negotiation of knowledge claims (Afzaal, 2025; Chen, 2025). Hedges enable authors to
indicate doubt, whereas boosters enable them to show confidence. Likewise, self-mention
also helps authors to create a presence in the text, placing them in the context of their
research and their audience (Wang, 2021). These language tools help in the interpersonal
aspect of academic writing.
Although a lot of research has been conducted about stance in academic writing, most
studies have been conducted on research articles and student writing. Very little focus has
been directed towards grant abstracts that have different communicative conditions. In
contrast to research articles, where the research is already done, grant abstracts need to
project the results of the work and convince the reviewers of the usefulness of the suggested
research. Such a perspective of the future usually necessitates more promotional rhetoric
(Wang, 2026). Additionally, there is little literature that has looked at the dynamics of these
practices over time. Diachronic research has demonstrated that the use of language may
change under disciplinary and institutional pressure (Rezaei, 2021), but there are few studies
investigating grant discourse in a similar manner.
