| In recent years,the researches into authorial stance have increasingly attracted more and more attention from researchers.The researchers in English as native language countries mainly focus on the contrastive study of stance,while English language learners are the main targets of research in English as EFL or ESL countries.Besides,in comparison with the western countries,the researchers at home on stance markers hardly take gender factor into consideration.This paper borrows the framework of stance put forward by Hyland(2005)to investigate the similarities and differences in the usage features of English major postgraduates.This research needs two corpora for the contrastive study: one is for male writers;the other for female writers.The author manually enters the chosen stance markers.With the help of the software,the data is collected.This paper aims to answer the following questions:(a)What are the similarities and differences between male and female writers in their use of stance markers?(b)What are the possible reasons for these similarities in their use of stance markers?(c)What are the possible reasons for these differences in their use of stance markers?After the collection of the results of the two corpora,on the macro-level,it is found that there exist a great number of similarities:(1)Among the four types of stance markers,only few self-mention markers come from the main body part;(2)The number of boosters is higher than that of hedges and attitude markers are the least used type of stance markers;(3)In comparison with the English native writers,stance markers are comparatively scanty,and writers tend to use modals to express their stance in this study.The reasons of above similarities can be summarized as follows.Firstly,EFL writers not having a systematic study of stance markers in academic writings are the targets of the research.Therefore,their linguistic competence is not so proficient and their ways of expressing stance are simplified and unvaried.Secondly,under the influence of traditional belief of academic research,writers should try to avoid subjective expressions in papers in order to achieve the principle of objectivity.Thirdly,considering the fact that the nature of academic paper is to persuade readers to accept the author's ideas,EFL learners wrongly believe that boosters regardless of correctness can increase the credibility of the paper and hedges can decrease the credibility of the paper.However,through study of each type of authorial stance markers,on the micro-level,males and females exhibit a great number of differences.These differences can be generalized as follows:(1)Females have higher frequency of using stance markers than males;(2)Females tend to select more neutral and objective words in a certain type of stance markers,while males tend to select more assertive and subjective words;(3)Females' stance-taking word bank seems to be more large and plentiful,and males' stance-taking word bank seems to be more narrow and limited;(4)Males have more frequency of using epistemic stance markers and self-mention markers from the main body part,while females have higher frequency of using attitude markers,especially in expressing neutral attitude or future expectations.Wardhaugh(2000)found that gender differences may associate with biological differences,social organizational differences,and different social upbringings.As biological difference is innate,under the influence of the Social Constructivism,gender differences mainly originate from social factors.In the meantime,it is likely that gender differences in language will change or diminish(Trudgill,2000).As society is changeable,so is language.Under the background of the interactive function of the reader,although the traditional influence exists,the new influence is on the way.This research from the perspective of gender provides some implications and references for the improvement of non-native English writers' use of authorial stance markers. |
PDF Full Text Request