Title: Attitude markers in L2 learners' academic writing : a case study of master's theses by Czech students compared to L1 students' writings
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2023, vol. 49, iss. 1, pp. 5-31
Extent
5-31
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2023-1-1
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/digilib.78896
Type: Article
Language
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
Rights access
open access
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
Writer-reader interaction is considered a crucial component of a well-written academic text, largely achieved through the use of metadiscourse resources. This paper investigates the frequency and range of 'attitude markers', i.e. one of the five sub-categories of interactional metadiscourse resources (Hyland and Tse 2004) in two learner corpora composed of Czech (L2) and native speaker (L1) university students' academic texts. The survey has shown that research-oriented attitude markers are preferred over topic-oriented ones in both corpora, with the former being used mainly to evaluate the writer's own research and its findings. Attitudinal adjectives were identified as the most frequent and most varied category in both corpora, followed by attitudinal nouns, adverbs, and verbs in their respective order. The results also indicate some interesting differences, for example, that Czech students, unlike L1 students, tend to overuse attitudinal adverbs in the sentence initial position. By highlighting the similarities and differences in the use of attitude markers in L2 and L1 student writing, the study may be of value to both students and their tutors and help to raise students' awareness of the dialogic and interactional character of academic texts.
Note
This study was supported by the Czech science foundation grant 21-12150S Intercultural variation in writer-reader interaction in English-medium academic discourse by Czech and Anglophone novice writers.
References
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[33] Mauranen, Anna (1993) Contrastive ESP rhetoric: Metatext in Finnish-English economics texts. English for Specific Purposes 12, 3-22. https://doi.org/10.1016/0889-4906(93)90024-I
[34] Mu, Congjun, Zhang, Lawrence Jun, Ehrich, John and Hong, Huaqing (2015) The use of metadiscourse for knowledge construction in Chinese and English research articles. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 20, 135–148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2015.09.003
[35] Mur-Dueñas, Pilar (2007) 'I/we focus on…': A cross-cultural analysis of self-mentions in business management research articles. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 6, 143–162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2007.05.002
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[37] Mur-Dueñas, Pilar (2011) An intercultural analysis of metadiscourse features in research articles written in English and Spanish. Journal of Pragmatics 43, 3068–3079. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2011.05.002
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[2] Ädel, Annelie (2006) Metadiscourse in L1 and L2 English. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
[3] Biber, Douglas (2006) Stance in spoken and written university registers. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 5, 97–116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2006.05.001
[4] Bunton, David (1999) The use of higher level metatext in PhD theses. English for Specific Purposes 18, 41–56. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0889-4906(98)00022-2
[5] Connor, Ula (2004) Intercultural rhetoric research: beyond texts. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 3, 291–304. https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2022.132039
[6] Crismore, Avon, Markkanen, Raija and Steffensen, Margaret S. (1993) Metadiscourse in persuasive writing: a study of texts written by American and Finnish university students. Written Communication 10 (1), 39–71. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088393010001002
[7] Crosthwaite, Peter and Jiang, Kevin (2017) Does EAP affect written L2 academic stance? A longitudinal learner corpus study. System 69, 92–107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2017.06.010
[8] Crosthwaite, Peter, Cheung, Lisa and Jiang, Feng K. (2017) Writing with attitude: Stance expressions in learner and professional dentistry research reports. English for Specific Purposes 46, 107–123. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2017.02.001
[9] Dontcheva-Navratilova, Olga (2016) Cross-cultural variation in the use of hedges and boosters in academic discourse. Prague Journal of English Studies 5 (1), 163–184. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/pjes-2016-0009
[10] Dontcheva-Navratilova, Olga (2021) Engaging with the reader in research articles in English: Variation across disciplines and linguacultural backgrounds. English for Specific Purposes 63, 18–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2021.02.003
[11] Dontcheva-Navratilova, Olga, Jančaříková, Renata, Hůlková, Irena and Schmied, Josef (2020) Theme choices in Czech university students' English-medium master's theses. Lingua 243, August 2020, 102892. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2020.102892
[12] Gholami, Javad, Nejad, Sara Rafsanjani and Pour, Jahanbakhsh Looragi (2014) Metadiscourse markers misuses: A study of EFL learners' argumentative essays. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 98, 580–598. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.03.454
[13] Gilaerts, Paul and Van de Velde, Freek (2010) Interactional metadiscourse in research article abstracts. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 9, 128–139. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2010.02.004
[14] Guziurová, Tereza (2020) Discourse reflexivity in written academic English as lingua franca: Code glosses in research articles. Discourse and Interaction 13 (2), 36–54. https://doi.org/10.5817/DI2020-2-36
[15] Harris, Zellig S. (1959) The transformational model of language structure. Anthropological Linguistics 1 (1), 27–29.
[16] Heuboeck, Alois, Holmes, Jasper and Nesi, Hilary (2008) The BAWE Corpus Manual. Accessed on 2 November, 2022. https://www.reading.ac.uk/internal/appling/bawe/BAWE.documentation.pdf
[17] Ho, Victor and Li, Cissy (2018) The use of metadiscourse and persuasion: An analysis of first year university students' timed argumentative essays. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 33, 53–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2018.02.001
[18] Hu, Guangwei and Cao, Feng (2015) Disciplinary and paradigmatic influences on interactional metadiscourse in research articles. English for Specific Purposes 39, 12–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2015.03.002
[19] Hyland, Ken (1998) Persuasion and context: The pragmatics of academic metadiscourse. Journal of Pragmatics 30, 437–455. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(98)00009-5
[20] Hyland, Ken (2001) Bringing in the reader: Addressee features in academic articles. Written Communication 18 (4), 549-574. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088301018004005
[21] Hyland, Ken (2004a) Disciplinary Discourses. Social Interactions in Academic Writing. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
[22] Hyland, Ken (2004b) Disciplinary interactions: Metadiscourse in L2 postgraduate writing. Journal of Second Language Writing 13, 133–151. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2004.02.001
[23] Hyland, Ken (2005) Metadiscourse. Exploring Interaction in Writing. London and New York: Continuum.
[24] Hyland, Ken (2008) Persuasion, interaction and the construction of knowledge: Representing self and others in research writing. International Journal of English Studies 8 (2), 1–23.
[25] Hyland, Ken (2017) Metadiscourse: What is it and where is it going? Journal of Pragmatics 113, 16–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2017.03.007
[26] Hyland, Ken and Jiang, Feng K. (2016) "We must conclude that…": A diachronic study of academic engagement. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 24, 29–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2016.09.003
[27] Hyland, Ken and Jiang, Feng K. (2017) "We believe that …': Changes in an academic stance marker. Australian Journal of Linguistics, published online in December 2017, 139–161. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2018.1400498
[28] Hyland, Ken and Jiang, Feng K. (2018) "In this paper we suggest": Changing patterns of disciplinary metadiscourse. English for Specific Purposes 51, 18–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2018.02.001
[29] Hyland, Ken and Tse, Polly (2004) Metadiscourse in Academic Writing: A Reappraisal. Applied Linguistics 25 (2), 156–177. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/25.2.156
[30] Kilgarriff, Adam, Rychly, Pavel, Smrz, Pavel and Tugwell, David (2004) The Sketch engine. Proc Eleventh EURALEX International Congress. France: Lorient.
[31] Koutsantoni, Dimitra (2004) Attitude, certainty and allusions to common knowledge in scientific research articles. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 3, 163–182. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2003.08.001
[32] Lancaster, Zak (2016) Expressing stance in undergraduate writing: Discipline-specific and general qualities. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 23, 16–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2016.05.006
[33] Mauranen, Anna (1993) Contrastive ESP rhetoric: Metatext in Finnish-English economics texts. English for Specific Purposes 12, 3-22. https://doi.org/10.1016/0889-4906(93)90024-I
[34] Mu, Congjun, Zhang, Lawrence Jun, Ehrich, John and Hong, Huaqing (2015) The use of metadiscourse for knowledge construction in Chinese and English research articles. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 20, 135–148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2015.09.003
[35] Mur-Dueñas, Pilar (2007) 'I/we focus on…': A cross-cultural analysis of self-mentions in business management research articles. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 6, 143–162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2007.05.002
[36] Mur-Dueñas, Pilar (2010) Attitude markers in business management research articles: A cross-cultural corpus-driven approach. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 20 (1), 50–72. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1473-4192.2009.00228.x
[37] Mur-Dueñas, Pilar (2011) An intercultural analysis of metadiscourse features in research articles written in English and Spanish. Journal of Pragmatics 43, 3068–3079. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2011.05.002
[38] Povolná, Renata (2013) On some variation in the use of discourse markers by Czech and German students of English. Discourse and Interaction 6 (2), 41–60. https://doi.org/10.5817/DI2013-2-41
[39] Quirk, Randolph and Greenbaum, Sidney (1990) A Student's Grammar of the English Language. Harlow: Longman.
[40] Rayson, Paul, Berridge, Damon and Francis, Brian (2004) Extending the Cochran rule for the comparison of word frequencies between corpora. In: Purnelle, C., Fairon, C. and Dister, A. (Eds) Le poids des mots: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Statistical Analysis of Textual Data (JADT 2004). Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses universitaires de Louvain, 926–936.
[41] Stotesbury, Hilkka (2003) Evaluation in research article abstracts in the narrative and hard sciences. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 2, 327–341. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1475-1585(03)00049-3
[42] Thetela, Puleng (1997) Evaluated entities and parameters of value in academic research articles. English for Specific Purposes 16 (2), 101–118. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0889-4906(96)00022-1
[43] Thompson, Geoff (2001) Interaction in Academic Writing: Learning to Argue with the Reader. Applied Linguistics 22 (1), 58–78. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/22.1.58
[44] Thompson, Geoff and Thetela, Puleng (1995) The sound of one hand clapping: The management of interaction in written discourse. Text 15 (1), 103–127. https://doi.org/10.1515/text.1.1995.15.1.103
[45] Vande Kopple, William J. (1985) Some exploratory discourse on metadiscourse. College composition and communication 36, 82–93. https://doi.org/10.2307/357609
[46] Wei, Jing, Li, Yan, Zhou, Ting and Gong, Zhiwei (2016) Studies on metadiscourse since the 3rd millennium. Journal of Education and Practice 7 (9), 194–204.
[47] Williams, Joseph M. (1981) Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace. Northbrook, Illinois: Scott, Forsman and Company.
[48] Yoon, Hyung-Jo and Römer, Ute (2020) Quantifying disciplinary voices: An automated approach to interactional metadiscourse in successful student writing. Written Communication 37 (2), 208–244. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088319898672