A corpus-assisted comparative analysis of self-mention markers in doctoral dissertations of literary studies written in Turkey and the UK

Can, Taner; Cangır, Hakan

doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2019.100796

Cited by 22 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…The similar pattern suggests that the PhD students may be aware of the rhetoric conventions to invest certainty in their claims, constructing negotiation dialogues and introducing research procedures with potential readers. However, when we closely examine the data, we find that student writers significantly use more self-mention with hedges than expert writers ( p < .05), which may be attributed to the difference in the writing guidelines the two groups of writers receive (Can & Cangır, 2019). Another reason is that student writers might feel less comfortable to project themselves into the writing, thus resorting to hedges to balance the intrusion caused by self-mention.…”

Section: Self-mention Used With Hedges and Boosters: Overall Resultsmentioning

confidence: 87%

Disciplinary Recognized Self-Presence: Self-Mention Used With Hedges and Boosters in PhD Students’ Research Writing

Wang

Zeng

2021

Sage Open

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Despite the existing extensive research on stance markers such as hedges, boosters, and self-mention in academic writing, few studies, however, examined the co-occurrence of these stance markers to help authors project their identities in writing. In this study, we examine how self-mention with boosters and hedges are used by writers of different groups to manifest authorial presence and what functions they realize in research writing. Two self-compiled corpora were constructed to compare the discursive practice between Chinese PhD students and journal article writers from four disciplines in hard applied and hard pure science. In general, student writers use fewer self-mention with boosters but more self-mention with hedges than expert writers. An examination of the rhetorical functions of these devices shows that both expert and student writers employ most self-mention with boosters for presenting research findings, but students are more inclined to invest self-mention with boosters than expert writers when describing research procedures or elaborating arguments. Meanwhile, self-mention with hedges are mostly used for elaborating arguments, but compared with expert writers, students seem to overly obscure their presence in this function.

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Section: Self-mention Used With Hedges and Boosters: Overall Resultsmentioning

confidence: 87%

Disciplinary Recognized Self-Presence: Self-Mention Used With Hedges and Boosters in PhD Students’ Research Writing

Wang

Zeng

2021

Sage Open

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“…The past decade has witnessed a growing interest in stance and stance markers in academic writing. Following this line of research are investigations of a variety of linguistic devices, such as boosters and hedges (Hyland, 2012), personal pronouns (Yang, 2016;Can and Cangir, 2019), reporting verbs (Hyland, 1999(Hyland, , 2002Peng, 2019), and engagement sources (Lancaster, 2014). The results have confirmed that academic writing, despite its expected objectivity, involves the expression of an authorial stance, including evaluation of previous studies, commitment to one's own claim, as well as attitudes toward one's own research.…”

Section: Stance In Academic Writingmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…Stance and stance markers play significant roles in academic writing but pose a challenge to academic writers. The author not only needs to guarantee the credibility of the research and make objective comments while reporting results or findings but also has to establish an authorial presence to interact with readers as well as acquire visibility in this field (Can and Cangir, 2019).…”

Section: Stance In Academic Writingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A corpus-based study on Chinese and American students' rhetorical moves and stance features in dissertation abstracts

Liu

2022

Front. Psychol.

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Dissertation is the most important research genre for graduate students as they step into the academic community. The abstract found at the beginning of the dissertation is an essential part of the dissertation, serving to “sell” the study and impress the readers. Learning to compose a well-organized abstract to promote one's research is therefore an important skill for novice writers when they step into the academic community in their discipline. By comparing 112 dissertation abstracts in material science by Chinese and American doctoral students, this study attempts to analyze not only the rhetorical moves of dissertation abstracts but also the lexical-grammatical features of stance in different abstract moves. The findings show that most of the abstracts include five moves, namely, Situating the research, Presenting the research, Describing the methodology, Summarizing the findings, and Discussing the research. However, fewer abstracts by Chinese students include all five moves. In addition, the choices of stance expressions by the two groups vary across the five abstract moves for different communication purposes. The results of this study have pedagogical implications for facilitating the development of academic writing skills for L2 writers.

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“…Personal pronouns refer to which the grammatical distinction of person applies (Huddleston & Pullum, 2007). Most researchers studying authorial presence in RAs focused on how the first-person pronouns in English revealed the way the authors showed themselves in RAs (e.g., Can & Cangır, 2019;Carciu, 2009;Chavez Munoz, 2013;Dontcheva-Navrátilová, 2013;Mur Dueñas, 2007). The first-person pronouns indicated the references to the speakers or in this case the authors.…”

Section: Personal Pronouns As Authorial References In Research Articlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Untitled

2020

LLT

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In this paper, we attempt to examine the identity of researchers in writing their research articles (RAs) by exploring the linguistic forms indicating the identity of the authors in English RAs, determining the functions these forms serve in the discourse, and revealing the socio-cultural aspects implied from the use of the authorial identity. We will identify the English first-person pronouns used by native and non-native authors in Scopus-indexed linguistics and education academic journal articles. This study applied the corpus linguistic method to collect the data and to draw conclusions about the authorial identity presented in the articles. Hopefully, this paper will help to not only comprehend the role and the importance of the authorial presence but also encourage researchers to represent their identity in their own RAs.

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A corpus-assisted comparative analysis of self-mention markers in doctoral dissertations of literary studies written in Turkey and the UK

Cited by 22 publications

References 15 publications

Disciplinary Recognized Self-Presence: Self-Mention Used With Hedges and Boosters in PhD Students’ Research Writing

Disciplinary Recognized Self-Presence: Self-Mention Used With Hedges and Boosters in PhD Students’ Research Writing

A corpus-based study on Chinese and American students' rhetorical moves and stance features in dissertation abstracts

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