A Contrastive Study Of Stance Markers In Spoken English Between Different Gender English Majors

In the process of communicating propositional meaning,speakers or writers inevitably expose their personal feelings,attitudes,value judgments,or assessments,which contributes to the formation of their stance.In the present study,the words or the combination of words used to express stance and attitudes by the speakers are called stance markers.Recent years have witnessed the increasing studies on stance and attitude expression,and the studies on stance markers have gradually become a hot spot in the linguistic study.Studies on stance markers abroad have been mainly conducted from the perspective of contrast and lexis as well as syntax.By contrast,domestic studies mainly focus on the contrastive studies on stance markers between Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers.In addition,compared with stance markers researches overseas,those at home pay less attention to the influence of gender on the use of stance markers.Given this situation,the author combines stance theoretical framework from Biber et al(1999)with that from Hyland(2005a)to conduct a contrastive analysis on stance markers used by Chinese English majors in spoken English from the perspective of gender.Specific research questions include:(1)What are the general similarities and differences in the use of stance markers between male and female English majors in spoken English?(2)What are the similarities and differences in the use of major stance markers between male and female English majors in spoken English?(3)What are the possible reasons for the above similarities and differences?This research,based on the spoken data from SECCL 2.0,conducts the quantitative and qualitive analysis.The major findings are as follows.There are some similarities in the use of stance markers between male and female English majors:(1)From the perspective of semantic categories,the frequencies of stance markers used by male and female English majors are decreasing from self-mention stance markers,epistemic stance markers,attitudinal stance markers to style stance markers,and males and females tend to use adverb phrases to form their style of speaking stance;(2)Among seven kinds of linguistic devices,pronouns are used most frequently,followed by verbs,modals,adverbs,adjectives,nouns and phrases successively;(3)Overuse and underuse exist in both Males’ corpus and Females’ corpus,suchas can,should,think,would and could.Besides these similarities,some differences also appear in the process of contrastive study between genders:(1)Female English majors are inclined to use hedging,affect and self-mention stance markers,while male English majors are prone to use evidentiality and style stance markers;(2)In the use of linguistic devices,pronouns,adverbs and adjectives are more favored by females than by males;(3)Females’ words marking stance are more plentiful and various,and male English majors’ words marking stance are fewer and single;(4)In the same category of stance markers,female English majors are prone to use neutral and positive stance markers,while male English majors tend to use subjective and assertive stance markers.Meantime,the possible reasons for these above similarities and differences are discussed,including language proficiency,second language input and output,the influence of the first language,and the factors causing gender differences in language.