The study explores how Saudi postgraduate students of Applied Linguistics express authorial stance when writing critique essays in English. It aims to investigate the linguistic resources these students use to construct stance and their knowledge about stance markers in both English and Arabic.
The research utilized a corpus-based approach, analyzing a corpus of 73 critique essays totaling 78,000 words written by Saudi MA students. The essays were examined using Hyland's (2005) model of stance, which comprises hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mentions. LancsBox corpus analysis software was used to generate frequencies and concordances. Additionally, an open-ended questionnaire was administered to 20 participants to gauge their knowledge about stance markers.
Key findings revealed that hedges were the most frequently used stance markers (878 instances), followed by attitude markers (741), boosters (650), and self-mentions (580). The study found that while students demonstrated some ability to articulate stance, many instances deviated from academic writing conventions, often appearing overly authoritative or direct. The questionnaire results indicated limited explicit knowledge about stance markers among participants, particularly in Arabic academic writing.
The author concludes that Saudi postgraduate students use all four components of stance, albeit without explicit training. However, their linguistic choices require refinement to align with expert academic writing conventions. The study recommends explicit instruction in authorial stance-taking, introduction of social engagement aspects in academic writing, and systematic feedback on students' stance-expressing resources to help emerging scholars develop more sophisticated academic voices.
This research contributes to understanding stance-taking strategies by postgraduate English users in a foreign language context, an area less explored compared to ESL settings. It highlights the need for targeted instruction and practice in stance articulation for EFL postgraduate students to enhance their academic writing skills.