STANCE AND CULTURE: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ENGLISH AND PERSIAN AUTHORIAL STANCE IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS RESEARCH ARTICLES

Mohammad Reza Hashemi,Hosna Hosseini

doi:10.20535/2410-8286.123284

Abstract

This study tended to investigate the effect of culture, as depicted in language, on the use of stance in the applied linguistics research articles of two groups: native speakers of Persian, and native speakers of English. The two corpora comprising the discussion sections of forty research articles from reliable journals were compared for amounts and types of stance. In order to find the cultural differences between native Persian and English researchers, the subtypes of stance devices adapted from Hyland’s (2005b) model were used. Results showed that the groups used stance markers differently; more specifically, they employed hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mentions differently. Furthermore, culture affects stance features as the meta-discourse devices employed by the researchers in writing the research article genre. The findings have implications for EFL learners and novice non-native writers to know the conventions and patterns as thinking devices for effective writing in academic communities of articles.

Highlights

Academic writing was for some time considered to be an impersonal presentation of information
There is no significant difference between native speakers of Persian and native speakers of English in their use of attitude markers in the discussion sections of their applied linguistics research articles written in Persian and English respectively
In order to investigate the null hypotheses and to compare the frequency of stance markers used in research articles written in Persian and English respectively, Chi-square tests were carried out

Summary

Introduction

Academic writing was for some time considered to be an impersonal presentation of information. It is rather maintained that academic discourse embodies interaction between writers and readers (Hyland, 2005a). Writing in this regard is considered as engagement between the writer and the reader (Hyland & Tse, 2004). It represents the writer’s voice or identity via employing stance markers as rhetorical devices. The issue of the authorial voice or the expression of the writer’s attitudes towards a proposition has not been the focus of most previous studies of research articles in discussion sections.

Objectives

Results

Conclusion