Reporting and Stance in Second Language Academic Writing
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Yongbing Liu
Abstract
This paper reports on an inquiry into the construction of stance in finite reporting that-clauses. The data were drawn from two corpora of academic papers from a journal in the discipline of Applied Linguistics written by different language users: native speakers of English and Chinese writers using English as L2. By drawing on Sinclair’s distinction between “averral” and “attribution,” as well as Martin and White’s notion of extra-vocalization, this paper sets up a framework for analyzing the sources in reporting clauses in order to examine how the writers construe their stances as visible, hedged or concealed. The study found that for self-sourced reports, the L2 writers are inclined to avoid direct self-mention which shows the greatest writer visibility, but instead use hidden averral with internal attribution. As for other-sourced reports, L2 writers prefer reporting verbs which are strong in the strength of attitude to make a much more definite and stronger claim, while native writers tactically use the moderate verbs and boosting expressions to construct more flexible stances. These discrepancies are likely to result from the disciplinary characteristics which are both community-based and context-situated.
©2014 Walter de Gruyter, Berlin Munich Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Second Language Research on Recasts: A Critical Review in Response to an Ongoing Debate
- Chinese EFL Leamers’ Comprehension of English Idiom Variants: Effects of Variation Type and Proficiency Level
- An Empirical Study of Chinese EFL Classroom Teaching: A Cognitive Linguistic Approach
- Reporting and Stance in Second Language Academic Writing
- A Contrastive Perspective on the Appraisal Strategies of English Writing of Chinese and Western Reviewers
- Effects of Study Abroad on EFL Teachers’ Self-perceptions
- Teachers’ Self-Development in Applying Information Communication Technology
- Chinese Abstracts
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Second Language Research on Recasts: A Critical Review in Response to an Ongoing Debate
- Chinese EFL Leamers’ Comprehension of English Idiom Variants: Effects of Variation Type and Proficiency Level
- An Empirical Study of Chinese EFL Classroom Teaching: A Cognitive Linguistic Approach
- Reporting and Stance in Second Language Academic Writing
- A Contrastive Perspective on the Appraisal Strategies of English Writing of Chinese and Western Reviewers
- Effects of Study Abroad on EFL Teachers’ Self-perceptions
- Teachers’ Self-Development in Applying Information Communication Technology
- Chinese Abstracts
