Abstract
In parallel with the recognition of the importance of writer presence in academic texts, there has been an increasing interest in writer stance. Yet, very little of this research has been devoted to the construction of stance through retrospective labels. Driven by this need, this study aims to investigate the construction of stance through retrospective labels by American and novice Turkish writers in their texts. Using a corpus-based methodology comprising of quantitative and qualitative procedures, this study analyzes the frequency counts of stance through retrospective labels and the functions associated with them. The results of this corpus-based research have revealed similarities as well as some marked differences between the two corpora. It seems that in addition to proficiency in English, educational background of novice Turkish academic writers have an impact on their construction of stance through retrospective labels. I suggest that the strategic employment of retrospective labels to create stance is a valuable rhetorical strategy for academic writers to construct convincing arguments.
Highlights
In the last two decades or so, we have witnessed a notable upsurge of interest in stance, especially writer stance, as a result of the ever-increasing recognition of the importance of writer-reader relationship and writer presence and involvement in academic texts
This study aims to investigate the construction of stance through retrospective labels by American and novice Turkish writers in their texts
The first one is that novice Turkish academic writers’ (NWs) employed a lot more of these structures than academic writers’ (AWs), which is not surprising given the voluminous size of MA thesis
Summary
In the last two decades or so, we have witnessed a notable upsurge of interest in stance, especially writer stance, as a result of the ever-increasing recognition of the importance of writer-reader relationship and writer presence and involvement in academic texts. A considerable amount of literature has focused on nouns which allow writers to incorporate interpersonal meanings in the texts (Bazerman, 1988; Barton, 1993; Biber & Finegan, 1988, 1989; Conrad & Biber, 2000; Hoey, 2000; Hunston, 1989, 1993, 1994; Hyland, 1999, 2000; Swlaes, 1990; Thetela, 1997; Thompson & Ye, 1991; Winter, 1982), the use of nouns, especially sentence initial nouns preceded by deictics, to construct stance in academic writing has so far attracted little attention. The nouns which have been employed to construct lexical cohesion have been labeled differently: anaphoric nouns, advance/retrospective labels (Francis, 1986, 1994); signaling nouns (Flowerdew, 2003, 2006); general elt.ccsenet.org
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