Stance Adverbs Research Articles

Whose stance is it, anyway? A corpus-based study of stance expressions in science news articles

Communicating scientific research to the public is as important as ever. Several studies have investigated the ways that science writers communicate personal feelings and assessments, otherwise known as stance, in their writing, reporting somewhat mixed results. In this study, I examine the grammatical stance marking of science news articles. I compare the ways that writers and the researchers that they quote uniquely contribute to the overall expression of stance in these articles. Results reveal that the researchers’ talk substantially contribute to the overall stance of science news articles compared to their writers, indicated by a greater use of modal verbs, stance verbs and adjectives controlling that complement clauses, and stance adverbials, including a greater use of ‘boosters’. This study suggests that researchers’ talk in science news articles co-participate in the newsworthiness of science and offer an alternative perspective on academic research uncommon in research writing.

Certainty Stance Adverbs in Chinese Linguistic Academic Writing: A Corpus-based Study

This study delves into the intricate usage of certainty stance adverbs in the academic writings of the Chinese. The object of this study is to conduct a contrastive analysis of certainty stance adverbs between Chinese linguistic MA novices and linguistic experts. The subject of this study is to explore the similarities and differences in the use of these adverbs within the academic discourse of the two groups mentioned. In addressing these disparities, the study seeks to analyze them from the perspective of interlanguage and interpersonal function, with the ultimate goal of enhancing the production of high-quality academic papers by the Chinese. The study employs two key methods: the contrastive analysis method and the corpus-based method. The novelty of the study lies in its contrastive examination of certainty stance adverbs between Chinese linguistic MA novices and experts. Through an in-depth analysis of theoretical frameworks and linguistic data extracted from the MA theses of Chinese linguistic novices and research articles of linguistic experts, the study underscores the importance of considering the similarities and differences in the use of certainty stance adverbs within the realm of second language acquisition and pragmatic studies. This consideration aims to refine learners’ syntactical and pragmatic command of certainty stance adverbs to align with expert academic discourse, ultimately fostering effective interpersonal communication in academic writing. The findings of this research offer valuable insights into the specific linguistic challenges encountered by the Chinese, thereby laying a solid groundwork for the development of targeted pedagogical strategies to bolster their academic writing skills.

A Report on the E-C Translation of Stance Adverbs with Suffix -ly in Academic Text Teacher-Made Assessment

This paper selects the first, second, and third chapters and some parts of Chapter Four and Seven of the book Teacher-Made Assessment as the material for translation practice, aiming at summarizing and analyzing the translation strategies of -ly stance adverbs in the academic text. Academic texts are mainly used to convey information and are characterized by professionalism, objectivity, interactivity, and conciseness. They are formal, precise, and concise in wording, clear in expression, strong in logic with many complex and long sentences. This paper analyzes three categories of -ly stance adverbs: epistemic, attitudinal, and style adverbs. Epistemic stance adverbs emphasize accuracy, confidence, seriousness, and persuasiveness. Translation techniques include grammatical adjustment and semantic enrichment, showing the accuracy of academic texts. Attitudinal adverbs are a means of value judgment and emotional expression. Their translations reflect the interactive and explicit characteristics of the academic text. Two translation techniques, namely selection of proper attitudinal words and split of sentences, are adopted. Style stance adverbs refer to how information is given. Their translations reflect the professional and standard characteristics of the academic text. Translation techniques of omitting -ly stance adverbs and using formulaic expression are adopted. This paper furthers the investigation into the translation of academic text from the new perspective of -ly stance adverbs. This paper is expected to provide references for translators and readers of academic texts, and to deepen peoples understanding of -ly stance adverbs.

Changing patterns of the grammatical stance devices in medical research articles (1970–2020)

While the grammatical marking of stance in academic writing is dynamic and susceptible to change over time, relatively few studies have tracked the changing patterns of stance expressions in contemporary medical academic writing. Based on 480 medical research articles published in top medical journals between 1970 and 2020, this study investigated the use of three major types of stance devices (modals, stance adverbials, and that-complement clauses) from a diachronic perspective. Results showed that the three types of stance devices and their functional/syntactic categories displayed a clear downward trend. In terms of stance markers within functional/syntactic categories, results demonstrated that stance markers indicating certainty declined in use, whereas stance markers conveying uncertainty increased. The results indicate that medical academic writing tends to become less interpersonal and more informational over time. In addition, medical writers are inclined to make more cautious and tentative knowledge claims across the years. These changes may be related to the development of medical science and have important pedagogical implications.

Investigating Writer's Stance in University Academic Group Discussions

Online group discussion is a typical learning activity in academic English lessons at universities. Students exchange research ideas and evaluate each other's work. However, many non-English major undergraduates experience challenges in expressing their opinions and developing arguments during this discussion process. Stance analysis is a crucial linguistic tool for obtaining an understanding of how participants express their ideas. Using the stance framework proposed by Biber (2006), the aim of this study was to examine the main grammatical markers and relevant semantic categories found in written online group discussions. We intended to investigate the expressions of the writer's stance (such as stance adverbials, stance nouns, stance adjectives, and stance verbs) in academic group discussions by analyzing a corpus of texts from an online discussion within a university setting from a forum. A total of 34 online group discussions with a combined word count of 199,559 contributed by 187 Hong Kong Chinese undergraduate students comprised the dataset. To pinpoint stance lexical items that appeared in particular grammatical frames, the frequencies and roles of stance expressions were calculated and thoroughly examined. The results demonstrated that the most widely used grammatical stance expressions in these academic discourses to convey attitudes and opinions were stance adverbials and stance verbs. By examining the linguistic resources used by non-English major students to express their perspectives and attitudes, as well as how stance is manifested in the context of academic online discussions, this study provides insights for both linguistics and education.

Discourse Markers Used by Non-Native Speakers in Good Morning America Talk Show

Discourse markers have been studied extensively in linguistics and communication studies. Its use is very helpful in understanding the message conveyed, both in formal and informal situations. This study examines the discourse markers used by non-native speakers in Good Morning America Talk Show. Unveil the types and their functions, this study uses a qualitative descriptive method in identifying the use of discourse markers. The data were taken from conversations of non-native speakers using Biber et al (1999) theory to determine the types and functions of discourse markers. The results of this study showed that there are ten types of discourse markers interjection, greetings and farewells, linking adverbials, stance adverbials, vocatives, response elicitors, response forms, hesitators, various polite speech-act formulas and expletives. Those markers have variations functions as marker of information management, marker of response, marker of connectives, marker of cause and effect, marker of temporal adverb and marker of information participation. This study has shown that the use of discourse markers varies across languages and cultures. Moreover, the use of discourse markers can also vary depending on the context of the communication.

Specific functions of stance adverbs in interaction: "obviously" in Sherlock Holmes

Much research has studied stance markers, but little does detailed analysis on specific stance functions of a epistemic adverb apart from its classified basic function. This research does a corpus-study on the different stance functions of one epistemic adverb "obviously" in three seasons of Sherlock Holmes. The results are generated using Antconc software. Three practical functions are induced and some implications on learning and teaching stance markers are further discussed.

A Corpus-based Study of Stance Adverbs in TED Scientific Talks

As an important part of interpersonal communication, stance adverbs are used to express the speakers’ opinions, attitudes and style of delivery. However, stance adverbs in spoken registers have not received enough attention. This study analyzed the stance adverbs in TED scientific talks, with a particular focus on the most common certainty stance adverb really. This research is based on a self-built corpus composed of 80 TED talks in science and technology categories from 2017 to 2022, with a total number of 161,523 words. The findings indicated that epistemic stance adverbs, particularly certainty adverbs, were the most frequently employed category. The results also revealed that speakers of TED scientific talks tended to adopt really in the medial position in the clause. Meanwhile, really was mainly used to emphasize and express factual truth. The purpose of this study is to complement the existing research on stance adverbs in the spoken registers and provide suggestions for public speaking in academic discourse.

Investigating Moves, Types, and Positions of Stance Adverbials Used in Each Move in Online English Newspaper Editorials Published in Thailand

Investigating Moves, Types, and Positions of Stance Adverbials Used in Each Move in Online English Newspaper Editorials Published in Thailand

Stance-Modal and Semi-Modal Verbs: A Corpus-Based Study

This research examines the role of linguistic components in the chosen corpus in respect of written and spoken English. The main objective was to investigate the effectiveness in addressing and corpus-based examination of modal, semi-modal verbs, and stance adverbs. This is a way to better understand the proper use of modals. To conduct this study computational techniques and design were used. Using the quantitative approach, the data were quantified in various ways, including statistical analysis. Only ten Englishlanguage and linguistics publications were considered for inclusion in this study. AntConc 3.2.4. software was used to deal with the corpus. The study concludes the corpus analysis is a quick and helpful method for gaining significant linguistic insights. The frequency of modals varies from each other depending upon the writer’s use. The study suggests that one way to better understand the proper use of words is to scan corpora for explicit contexts and consult important books and dictionaries.

Analysing the Coruña Corpus: Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity Markers

This paper aims to analyse the concepts of subjectivity and intersubjectivity in scientific writing through the use of stance adverbs perhaps and possibly. These adverbs act as markers of the authors’ presence expressing their views, and a covert relationship between these authors and their corresponding readership. The material used for this study includes four sub-corpora of the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing: CETA (Corpus of English Texts on Astronomy), CEPhiT (Corpus of English Philosophy Texts), CHET (Corpus of English History Texts), and CELiST (Corpus of English Life Sciences Texts). Two of these represent the so-called soft sciences, and the other two the hard sciences, which will allow for comparison. The results might argue against the generally-assumed tendency in the history of scientific writing that this discourse has moved from being author-centred to object-centred. Perhaps it is simply impossible for writers of science to disappear completely from their texts.

Stance Adverbials in Spoken English Interactions: Insights from Corpora of L1 and L2 Elicited Conversations

Abstract This paper adopts corpus-based methods to investigate how adverbial stance markers are used in the Swedish and in the Italian EFL LINDSEI sub-corpora and in the L1 English LOCNEC comparable corpus (Gilquin et al. 2010). Inspired by research on corpus pragmatics, conversation analysis, learner corpus research and EFL pedagogy, the quantitative and qualitative investigations focus on stance adverbials in turn-initial and final position. The results reveal that the Italian learners use such markers significantly less frequently than the native speakers and the Swedish learners in both positions. However, differently from the Swedish and the Italian groups, the L1 group employs the adverbials mainly in final position and makes use of a wider repertoire of them to make more meanings. The study also explores how stance adverbials can contribute to discourse management in combination with other linguistic elements, and discusses implications of these and other findings for EFL pedagogy.

Move Structures and Stance Adverbials in Editorials From The Bangkok Post and The New York Times

Apart from the fact that there are no fixed rules for writing newspaper editorials, there is no single study incorporating both analyses of moves and stance adverbials in online English newspaper editorials from The Bangkok Post in comparison to those from an international online English newspaper from another country. The aims of the present study include 1). exploring the move structure of editorials from The Bangkok Post and The New York Times, 2). finding stance adverbials in each move, and 3). identifying the positions of the stance adverbials found in each move. 60 editorials from 2017 to 2019 with the length of 550-700 words whose purpose is to call for action were selected from each newspaper archive. A list of stance adverbials and a proposed move structure were employed for identifying the moves and stance adverbials. ANTCONC was used as a tool for counting the frequencies (converted into percentages and normalized frequencies afterwards) and identifying the positions of stance adverbials. In both corpora, most of the editorials contain the sequence of Move 1-Move 2-Move 3-Move 4 (1234 or MS1). Furthermore, other outstanding move sequences include Move 1-Move 2- Move 3- Move 2-Move 3- Move 4 (123234 or MS2) and Move 1-Move 3- Move 2- Move 3- Move 4 (13234 or MS3). Epistemic stance adverbials were found two times more frequently than attitudinal stance adverbials and about seven times more frequently than style stance adverbials. The most prevalent sub-categories of epistemic stance adverbials are doubt/certainty, source of knowledge, and actuality, whereas the most outstanding attitudinal stance adverbials are importance and evaluation. Those showing importance were more frequently used in The Bangkok Post than those showing evaluation, but this is reversed in The New York Times. Whether these findings were influenced by the L1 of the writer, cultural differences, and institutional practices could be carried out in additional research.

A Comparative Study of Stance Adverbs Used in the Introduction Section of Chinese and English Native Scholars’ Journal Articles

The research aims to examine stance adverbs in the introduction section of Chinese and English native scholars’ journal articles. The corpus-based analysis reveals that Chinese and English native scholars use epistemic stance adverbs most frequently, attitudinal stance adverbs next, and style-of-speaking adverbs last, and that Chinese scholars use lower frequency and variety of stance adverbs than their native counterparts. It is also found that the frequency of the collocates mainly used by Chinese scholars is dramatically higher than that of English native scholars. It also indicates that Chinese scholars can reasonably use attitudinal stance adverbs frequently used by English native scholars, but their awareness of using attitudinal adverbs still needs to be improved. English native scholars are more inclined to put stance adverbs in the sentence-medial. Furthermore, both Chinese and English native scholars tend to use epistemic and style-of-speaking stance adverbs in the sentence-medial position, and they are more likely to place attitudinal stance adverbs in the sentence-initial and medial position.

A Comparative Study on Stance Adverbs in Abstracts of Doctoral Dissertations by Chinese and Americans — A Case Study in Petroleum Engineering

Stance adverbs are one of the main means to express the author's attitude and views on proposition information. This study bases on self-built corpus, taking the English abstracts of Chinese and American doctoral dissertations in the field of petroleum engineering as the corpus and analyzing the characteristics of stance adverbs used by Chinese and their American counterparts. The results show that: 1) there is no statistically significant difference in the overall frequency of stance adverbs between Chinese and American doctors, and both of them show a tendency of "epistemic stance adverbs > attitude stance adverbs > style-of-speaking stance adverbs"; 2) There is no significant difference in the frequency of using epistemic stance adverbs between Chinese and American doctors, but Chinese doctors significantly use more boosters, a subcategory of epistemic stance adverbs, showing the rigid traces of English writing style. Chinese doctors significantly use certain hedges, the other subcategory of stance adverbs; 3) There was no statistically significant difference in the frequency of using attitude stance adverbs between Chinese and American doctors, but Chinese doctors use more attitude stance adverbs to express affect than evaluation; 4) There is no significant difference in the frequency of style-of-speaking stance adverbs between them, and the fact that the use of this kind of stance adverbs is used least may be affected by the stylistic characteristics of the English abstract.

A corpus-aided study of stance adverbs in judicial opinions and the implications for English for Legal Purposes instruction

This article reports a corpus-aided analysis of stance adverbs within published judicial opinions from the 12 geographically-apportioned districts of the United States (US) Federal Courts of Appeals. The study first analyzes stance adverbs previously investigated in US Supreme Court decisions in order to more comprehensively explore these interactional features across multiple levels of the judicial system. Following this initial analysis, the study then examines variation in the use of stance adverbs between majority and dissenting opinions in Courts of Appeals opinions to identify salient similarities and differences in frequency and function in the two opinion types. The initial analysis reveals divergence in stance adverb use between the Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court and between legal writing and other registers, indicating the prevalence and importance of stance adverbs within legal writing. Additionally, the study notes variation in stance adverbs between majority and dissenting opinions. This article details the variation of stance adverbs across these aforementioned contexts, discusses how the variation noted in the corpus analysis at times conflicts with the advice of legal writing style guides, and offers pedagogical implications of these findings for English for Legal Purposes instruction.

영어 -ly 유형 인식견지부사의 담화표지 기능 이해도 분석: 한국인 EFL 학습자와 원어민 화자를 대상으로

영어 -ly 유형 인식견지부사의 담화표지 기능 이해도 분석: 한국인 EFL 학습자와 원어민 화자를 대상으로

The interplay of complexity and subjectivity in opinionated discourse

This paper brings together cutting-edge, quantitative corpus methodologies and discourse analysis to explore the relationship between text complexity and subjectivity as descriptive features of opinionated language. We are specifically interested in how text complexity and markers of subjectivity and argumentation interact in opinionated discourse. Our contributions include the marriage of quantitative approaches to text complexity with corpus linguistic methods for the study of subjectivity, in addition to large-scale analyses of evaluative discourse. As our corpus, we use the Simon Fraser Opinion and Comments Corpus (SOCC), which comprises approximately 10,000 opinion articles and the corresponding reader comments from the Canadian online newspaper The Globe and Mail, as well as a parallel corpus of hard news articles also sampled from The Globe and Mail. Methodologically, we combine conditional inference trees with the analysis of random forests, an ensemble learning technique, to investigate the interplay between text complexity and subjectivity. Text complexity is defined in terms of Kolmogorov complexity, that is, the complexity of a text is measured based on its description length. In this approach, texts which can be described more efficiently are considered to be linguistically less complex. Thus, Kolmogorov complexity is a measure of structural surface redundancy. Our take on subjectivity is inspired by research in evaluative language, stance and Appraisal and defined as the expression of evaluation and opinion in language. Drawing on a sentiment analysis lexicon and the literature on stance markers, a custom set of subjectivity and argumentation markers is created. The results show that complexity can be a powerful tool in the classification of text into different text types, and that stance adverbials serve as distinctive features of subjectivity in online news comments.

The diachrony of stance constructions with ‘no’ chance and ‘no’ wonder

This paper starts from the functional and structural similarity of stance constructions with ‘no’ wonder and ‘no’ chance in Present-day English, and sets out to compare their diachronic development. Synchronically, these two ‘no’ + semiotic noun strings take part in the same formal types of grammatical stance construction, i.e. as main clauses, with the propositions in their scope coded as complement clauses, and as stance adverbials, with the propositions in their scope coded as independent clauses. Another similarity is that the clausal patterns show two types of use, i.e. lexical and grammatical use. While grammatical uses of ‘no’ wonder strings convey mirative qualification, those of ‘no’ chance strings express epistemic qualification. Study of corpus data reveals differences in the availability of structural types – within clausal and adverbial patterns – between the two strings studied, as well as in polarity preferences, which follow naturally from the differences observed in their respective diachronic development. While negative polarity triggered the development of grammatical – mirative – meaning in the ‘no’ wonder strings, it did not serve this role in the development of dynamic-epistemic (and later on purely epistemic) meaning in the chance data. This explains why wonder occurs predominantly with negative polarity in Present-day English, while no such preference is observed for chance.

Modelling stance adverbs in grammatical theory: tackling heterogeneity with Functional Discourse Grammar

In many linguistic approaches and theories, a distinction is made between adverbs that are propositional (representational, ideational, referential) and adverbs that are non-propositional (interpersonal, (inter)subjective, evaluative, parenthetical); i.e. between what is said (the proposition expressed) and a speaker’s stance on what is said (e.g. the speaker’s attitude towards, evaluation of, or commitment to the message conveyed). As is well-known, however, the latter group, including such diverse adverbs as briefly, frankly, sadly, allegedly, hopefully, probably, obviously and cleverly, differ substantially in terms of their discourse-pragmatic or semantic function, truth-conditionality and syntactic and prosodic behaviour. This paper addresses the question of whether, given this functional and formal heterogeneity, it is helpful, or even possible, to recognize a category of stance adverbs. It is argued that our understanding of these adverbs will benefit from a stricter application of very specific functional and formal criteria, allowing for the distinction of a number of well-defined subclasses of adverbs with partly overlapping, but nevertheless defining functional and formal properties. Subsequently, it is demonstrated how the theory of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG), a theory characterized by a “form-oriented function-to-form” approach (Hengeveld and Mackenzie, 2008: 38–39), making use of different levels and layers of linguistic analysis, can be used to bring out both the similarities and the differences between the various subclasses of stance adverbs without having to resort to a single dichotomy (e.g. ideational vs. interpersonal; truth-conditional vs. non-truth-conditional, propositional vs. non-propositional; parenthetical vs. non-parenthetical). In addition, it is shown how important concepts and distinctions in the literature on (inter)subjectivity, such as the distinction between semantic and pragmatic subjectivity, and between subjectivity and intersubjectivity, can be dealt with within the framework of FDG.