Stance Markers in Expert versus Novice English Academic Writing in Applied Linguistics

Abstract

Stance, as a category of metadiscourse, involves a writer-oriented dimension in which writers express a textual voice to convey their judgments and commitments to potential readers. The present study investigates the use of stance markers in English academic writing with a focus on the degrees of academic expertise. The study has compiled two corpora, one consisting of novice writing (i.e., master’s theses written by Korean graduate students) and the other consisting of expert writing (i.e., published research articles) drawn from the discipline of applied linguistics, and has analyzed both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of stance practices within these corpora. The quantitative findings indicated that Korean novice writers employed significantly fewer stance markers than expert writers. The two groups of writers also made different choices in the employment of stance devices in different sections of research articles. Meanwhile, the qualitative analysis revealed that Korean novice writers often used inappropriate combinations of hedges and boosters, thereby failing to make an effective appeal to readers about their arguments. In addition, self-mentions were used differently by novice and expert writers, with only the latter group exploiting this category to maximize the perceived significance of their own research in the academic field. These findings are discussed in terms of pedagogical implications for EAP writing.