Authorial Stance-taking In Academic Discourse:a Dialogic Account

With increasing attention paid to interpersonal dimension of academic discourse, more and more scholars realize that academic writing is not merely the impersonal representation of external reality, but an interactive and persuasive endeavor involving interaction between the writer and the reader. Stance, an essential concept in this respect, has been widely studied. Most prior research approached stance from the individual addressor’s perspective, defining it as lexical or grammatical devices by which writers express their attitudes, feelings, or judgments of the propositional content of a message. This perspective, however, informs us little of the intersubjective nature of stance-taking and how academic writers engage with readers when projecting stance. Besides, previous studies seldom interpreted stance-taking in relation to generic structure of academic discourse and targeted at Chinese EFL learners at the postgraduate level.By integrating Du Bois’stance triangle theory, Martin and White’s engagement system and Swales’move model, the current paper attempts to propose a new theoretical framework for the study of authorial stance-taking in academic texts by Chinese EFL learners and English expert writers. Inspired by Bahktin’s dialogue theory, Du Bois (2007) establishes his stance theory that reveals the intersubjectivity of stance-taking. Drawing on both Halliday and Bahktin, Martin and White (2005) refine the engagement system of their appraisal theory. The current research proceeds from Du Bois’stance theory and examines how academic writers position themselves in relation to other opinions and align with other subjects with Martin and White’s engagement framework. Considering introductory sections of academic discourse involve more complex rhetorical maneuverings and are difficult to write, the paper focuses on this part and applies Swales’(1990) CARS model to explore cross-move variation of authorial stance-taking.On the basis of qualitative and quantitative analysis of thirty introductions, the researcher finds that stance-taking by Chinese EFL learners displays both similarity and difference as compared with that by native expert writers. The resemblance may be attributed to similar generic structures of MA theses and research articles. On the whole, engagement resources are less adequately and less appropriately deployed by EFL learners to project an effective stance, especially in the first two moves of introductions. In Move1, EFL writers use less acknowledge and endorse, but more monogloss and pronounce, which undermines the authority and credibility of authorial stance. In Move2, their authoritative stance is weakened as resources of counter, deny and pronounce are inadequately utilized to indicate gaps or problems of prior researches. As the rhetorical purpose of the third move is relatively simple, EFL writers confront no difficulty in taking an effective stance in this move. Moreover, though the general distribution of engagement resources is similar in the two types of texts, stances taken by English expert writers are more effective with respect to realizing rhetorical purposes of academic texts. Improper or inaccurate instances of stance-taking are evident in EFL texts.With the newly constructed three-component theoretical framework, the present research reveals the intersubjective nature of stance-taking and the importance of projecting an effective stance in academic writing. It will not only promote stance research, but also provide guidance for the writing and teaching of academic discourse.