Writing with attitude: Stance expression in learner and professional dentistry research reports

Abstract

Medical students often lack key skills in academic writing, yet good academic writing is often a prerequisite for employment, promotion and enculturation into the profession. This article focuses on the rhetorical strategies used for the presentation of academic stance by student writers of dentistry research reports. Adopting a contrastive, corpus-based approach, we compare student writing with that of comparable professionally-written research reports for evidence of hedging, boosting, self-mention and attitude markers. Our findings indicate that professional reports exhibit a narrower set of linguistic devices than used by student writers, who tend to use a much wider range of the four stance feature types analysed for discussion of both others' and their own personal stance, both across whole texts and by section. We discuss pedagogical implications for ESP professionals working to more closely align student writing with that of professional norms.

The Impact of Attitude Markers on Enhancing Evaluation in the Review Article Genre

“…One main reason for the different frequency may be referred to the authors' evaluation moves and move elements being involved in the Conclusion sections. In consensus with other researchers' (Crosthwaite, Cheung & Jiang, 2017;Yang, 2016) findings regarding the analysis of attitude markers in academic discourses, attitude markers were found to be more frequent in the Discussion and Conclusion sections where the authors intrude into the argument, take a stance and express their attitude towards the findings and views. The attitude markers were used more frequently in these sections than other analytical sections.…”

A model of rhetorical markers competence in writing academic research articles: a qualitative meta-synthesis

“…An author's influential stance helps him to argue for a position and claim solidarity with the readers, evaluate the other writers' work, and acknowledge alternative views (Hyland, 2004). APMs have been the area of concern in some recent studies (e.g., Crosthwaite, Cheun, & Jiang, 2017;Harwood, 2005;Hyland, 2002aHyland, , b, 2003Molino, 2010;Sheldon, 2009).…”

Tracking Interpersonality in Research Article Abstract: A Diachronic Study of Dynamic Nature of Genre

“…Introduced by Harris (1959) as a guide to monitor possible responses of the intended recipients of the written/spoken discourse, metadiscourse has been attracting the research focus in academic register (Crosthwaite, Cheung & Jiang, 2017;Hyland, 2017;Hyland & Jiang, 2018;Qin & Uccelli, 2019). Metadiscourse, attesting to the interpersonal nature of discourse, offers a persuasive way for writers to project themselves through their rhetorical choices to achieve their communicative ends.…”