'Such a reaction would spread all over the cell like a forest fire': A Corpus Study of Argument by Analogy in Scientific Discourse

In the context of recent research on academic discourse, argumentation has often been pointed out as a central cross-disciplinary dimension of research articles, where the rhetorically convincing presentation of findings plays a crucial role in the transformation of empirical data into widely accepted scientific facts. In an attempt to provide a contribution to the integration of argumentation studies with corpus linguistics, this chapter discusses the use of discursive resources behind a widespread form of argument such as analogy. In light of this, the primary aim of the paper is to integrate Van Eemeren et al.’s (2007) rich account with a more systematic study of linguistic resources activating analogical reasoning. Analogy was identified as a means to reinforce the writer’s argument by overcoming the potentially exceeding fragmentation of specific findings presented in Results sections. From this viewpoint, analogy can be seen as a strategy designed to counterbalance the rhetorical effort to incorporate as much information as possible into research papers: as a matter of fact, analogy makes sure that proper links are established between data, however specific and detailed their display may be. In addition, the study of argumentative indicators of analogy in Discussion sections has shown that this argument form is a useful tool assisting the writer in the consolidation of the research space occupied by the paper, most of all by laying strong emphasis on the news value of the study in comparison with relevant research.