Variation Patterns Of English Epistemic Stance Marking Across Academic Registers

Epistemic stance refers to the positioning of the speaker/writer with respect to knowledge concerning the realization of the event(Arrese,2011).Using epistemic stance markers appropriately is an important guarantee for the interpersonal and interactive purposes.While the general uses of epistemic stance markers have been investigated and characterized(Fordyce,2009;K?rkk?inen,2003;Biber,2004),the variation features of the pragmatic markers of this sort have not been given adequate attention so far.This study,using a corpus-based approach characteristic of a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis,examines the variation patterns of epistemic stance markers across written academic registers.Particular attention is paid to the variation in frequencies,structures,semantic features and pragmatic functions.Efforts have been made to identify the usage patterns of typical epistemic stance markers favored by each register.Academic registers examined include research articles,book reviews and textbooks.Epistemic stance markers are classified into four categories of stance adverbials,stance complement clauses,modals/semi-modals and stance noun + prepositional phrases,by virtue of grammatical structures,and five categories of certainty,likelihood,necessity,possibility,and prediction according to semantic features.The study reveals the significant variation patterns of epistemic stance markers across written academic registers.Firstly,when the overall frequency is concerned,epistemic stance markers are used most frequently in textbooks,least in research articles,with book reviews in-between.Secondly,writers rely heavily on stance noun + prepositional phrases in book reviews and modals/semi-modals in textbooks.Furthermore,the number of epistemic stance markers increases with the rise of the degree of clarity of structural categories.Thirdly,as far as the semantic features are concerned,writers tend to use epistemic stance markers to express the meanings of necessity and prediction in textbooks,but likelihood in book reviews,with can,will,must,know and sort of frequent in textbooks,would,may,likely,think and kind of in book reviews and may,likely,will and would in research articles.The study also reveals the variation of think/know,kind of/sort of,will/would in pragmatic features across different registers.The findings of this study are helpful to enrich the related studies on corpus linguistics,promote further explorations on the development of language variation,and improve English writing ability of scholars and learners of English.