A great deal of research has now established that written texts embody interactions between writers and readers. A range of linguistic features have been identified as contributing to the writer's projection of a stance to the material referenced by the text, and, to a lesser extent, the strategies employed to presuppose the active role of an addressee. As yet, however, there is no overall typology of the resources writers employ to express their positions and connect with readers. Based on an analysis of 240 published research articles from eight disciplines and insider informant interviews, I attempt to address this gap and consolidate much of my earlier work to offer a framework for analysing the linguistic resources of intersubjective positioning. Attending to both stance and engagement, the model provides a comprehensive and integrated way of examining the means by which interaction is achieved in academic argument and how the discoursal preferences of disciplinary communities construct both writers and readers. Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications

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This text is a highly accessible and authoritative approach to the theory and practice of teaching writing to students of English. This book is an accessible and authoritative approach to the theory and practice of teaching writing to students of English. It sets out the key issues in second language writing instruction to offer both pre-service and in-service teachers a guide to writing instruction grounded in current theory and research. The author takes the stance that student writers not only need realistic strategies for drafting and revising, but also a clear understanding of genre to structure their writing experience according to the demands and constraints of particular target contexts. This book will be extremely useful to prospective and practicing teachers alike.

Metadiscourse is self-re¯ective linguistic material referring to the evolving text and to the writer and imagined reader of that text. It is based on a view of writing as social engagement and in academic contexts reveals the ways that writers project themselves into their discourse to signal their attitude towards both the propositional content and the audience of the text. Despite considerable interest in metadiscourse by teachers and applied linguists, however, it has failed to achieve its explanatory potential due to a lack of theoretical rigour and empirical confusion. Based on an analysis of 240 L2 postgraduate dissertations totalling 4 million words, we oer a reassessment of metadiscourse, propose what we hope is a more robust model, and use this to explore how these students used metadiscourse. Essentially our argument is that metadiscourse oers a way of understanding the interpersonal resources writers use to present propositional material and therefore a means of uncovering something of the rhetorical and social distinctiveness of disciplinary communities.Applied Linguistics 25/2: 156±177

Hedging is a well-documented feature of spoken discourse as a result of its role in qualifying categorical commitment and facilitating discussion Its use in academic writing has received less attention, however, and we know little about the functions it serves in different research fields and particular genres Hedging is a significant communicative resource for academics since it both confirms the individual's professional persona and represents a critical element in the rhetorical means of gaining acceptance of claims Hedges allow writers to anticipate possible opposition to claims by expressing statements with precision, caution, and diplomatic deference to the views of colleagues Based on a contextual analysis of 26 articles in molecular biology, this paper argues that hedging in scientific research writing cannot be fully understood in isolation from social and institutional contexts and suggests a pragmatic framework which reflects this interpretive environment