Negociando certeza e incerteza em escrita acadêmica em inglês

Abstract

Expressing claims with an adequate degree of certainty and uncertainty is one of the major setbacks for foreign language students writing academic essays in English. In order to differentiate beliefs from facts and evaluate statements in satisfactory and persuasive ways authors have to make use of epistemic comments which exert a crucial role in academic writing. However, regardless of its significance, little is known about how foreign language learners present their claims in their writing. This article compares exponents of doubt and certainty in the essays of 67 Brazilian speaking university students writing in English with those of 52 British and American learners of similar age and educational level in a corpus of about 68,000 words. A meticulous analysis of the essays reveals that the Brazilian writers deviate considerably from their native speaker counterparts in employing a more restricted variety of items, being much more assertive in relation to their propositions and demonstrating greater difficulties in transmitting an exact degree of assurance. This paper stresses a number of issues raised by the study and makes some pedagogical recommendations for developing skills in this central pragmatic area.