Moulding interpersonal relations through conditional clauses: Consensus-building strategies in written academic discourse

Syntactic and lexical development in an intensive English for Academic Purposes programme

“…As pointed out by Warchal (2010), conditional clauses can perform a wide range of functions, and they are especially important in academic writing tasks that require logical argumentation and problem solving. As noted by Biber et al (1999), prepositional phrases are the most common type of noun postmodifiers in academic discourse and their frequency in students' essays was also assessed in our research.…”

Conditional clauses in novice academic English: A comparison of Norwegian learners and native speakers

“…As noted in Section 4.1, a major difference between the corpora is what seems to be a massive overuse of conditionals among the learners compared to the native speakers. It is reasonable to link the overuse to the interpersonal functions of conditionals (Carter-Thomas 2007;Warchal 2010). Previous studies of other interpersonal features, e.g.…”

On the function of stance-neutral formulations: Apparent neutrality as a powerful stance constructing resource

“…Hoey (2001 : 43) compared the reader and writer to "dancers following each other's steps" and emphasized the importance of the writer's taking "the trouble to anticipate what the reader might be expecting." Taking into account the reader's reception was previously emphasized as a crucial skill in constructing successful academic texts (Coffin & O'Halloran, 2005;Hyland, 2010;Thompson, 2001;Warchał, 2010). Importantly, one way of achieving this, as the present observations have affirmed, is by making a strategic choice between the deployment of "acknowledge" or evaluation-charged resources.…”

“…These observations I have made confirm what Duszak (1997) and Lor es-Sanz (2011) emphasized d the importance for an academic writer of being recognized as a credible academic who has a specialist's knowledge of the research community. This recognition allows him or her to remain in a dialogue of partnership and eventually reach a consensus with readers (Hunston, 2005;Warchał, 2010). Thus, the possible negative responses of the reader are negotiated so that they become nonproblematic, which enables the academic writer to remain in a partnership with the readers with diversity of views existing in the discipline, which further helps justifying the new research.…”