Disciplinary and Cross-Cultural Variation of Stance and Engagement Markers in Soft and Hard Sciences Research Articles by Native English and Iranian Academic Writers: A Corpus-based Analysis

Abstract

Drawing on a corpus-based approach, this study analyzed two different sub-corpora including Non-Native English-Speaking (NNES) and Native English-Speaking (NES) sub-corpus. There were 60 research articles from soft sciences including Applied Linguistics, Sociology, Economics and hard sciences including Chemical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Biology. To examine the frequency of stance and engagement markers in the two sub-corpora separately, MAXQDA software was utilized. Several Chi-square tests were run to investigate the differences found in the frequencies of the two groups. The results demonstrated that writers of different fields of study and from different cultural backgrounds exerted varying degrees of authorship and interaction in their texts. Regarding disciplinary variation, it was found that the researchers in soft disciplines used more stance and engagement markers than the ones in hard disciplines. With regard to cross-cultural variation, native academic writers preferred to draw more on interactional markers than non-native Iranian academic writers. The findings of the present study offer implications to academic writers from different fields of study and different cultural backgrounds so that they become cognizant of their own presence in texts and their interaction with readers based on the use of stance and engagement markers. The results can also be implemented in EAP/ESP courses and syllabi.