Stance-taking linguistic markers in literary-analysis papers used by undergraduate students of a Philippine state university

• Main Author: Ryan Glenn C. Conda
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Department of English, Faculty of Arts and Letters, University of Santo Tomas 2019-12-01
• Series: Asian Journal of English Language Studies (AJELS)
• Subjects: academic writing; authorial presence; linguistic markers; metadiscourse; stance markers
• Online Access: https://ajels.ust.edu.ph/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/6_Stance-taking-linguistic-markers-in-literary-analysis-papers-used-by-undergraduate-students-of-a-Philippine-state-university.pdf

Stance-taking is one aspect of academic-writing conventions that college students need to attend to in order to improve their scholarly writing. Stance includes the ways writers express their value judgments and attitudes to forward a proposition and be aligned with other authors in the field (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999; Du Bois, 2007). This study aims to describe the ways students establish their stance in their literary-analysis papers. While most researchers on stance-taking followed Hyland’s (2005, 2010) framework, it cannot be denied that nuances appear in the ever-evolving dynamics of writing as a social act from authors. While Hyland’s framework is heavily informed by a bulk of data involving advanced and published researchers only, the present study followed Aull and Lancaster’s (2014) framework as this is informed by rather inclusive research data from amateur to advanced writers. The researcher examined the stance-taking linguistic markers used in the literary-analysis papers through the following: expressing commitment (use of hedges and boosters), reformulating and exemplifying (use of code glosses), and expressing concession and contrast (use of adversative or contrast connectors). Nine recorded interviews and 58 literary-analysis papers written by college students from a Philippine state university served as research data. Findings revealed that students used more boosters to express commitment to their claims, which would increase their authorial presence in the essays. Most of the time, the students used code glosses, boosters, and adversative or contrast markers to evidentialize their claims and refer to other authors in order to align themselves and eventually reveal their position on the topic(s) they discuss. The students, however, have limited understanding of the functions of stance-taking as they reasoned that these are only used to sound more convincing and persuasive. The study recommends the explicit instruction of linguistic markers of stance and their functions so that students can expand their rhetorical options for academic writing.