Stance Adverbs In Materials Science English Research Article Introductions By Chinese And Western Scholars

Stance adverb is one of the most important carriers for authors to express their attitudes,emotions or judgments in academic discourse.It plays an essential role in making propositions,enhancing the credibility of academic arguments,and establishing the interpersonal interaction between the author and the reader.The proper use of stance adverbs in research articles(RAs)can not only improve the quality of academic writing,but also enhance the persuasiveness of the article and make the reader accept the significance of the research.The introduction section of RA has multiple functions,such as introducing the research purpose,reviewing the research background and capturing the attention of the reader,which makes it rich in stance-taking and interpersonal resources.Although many previous studies have discussed the stance-taking phenomena in RA introduction,few scholars have carried out multi-dimensional comparative studies on the semantic,lexico-grammatical and rhetorical functions of stance adverbs.This study is centered on the following research questions:(1)How are the different categories of stance adverbs(hedge,booster,attitude marker)distributed in materials science RA introductions by Chinese and western scholars?(2)What are the lexicogrammatical features of stance adverbs in materials science RA introductions?(3)How are the different categories of stance adverbs distributed in the rhetorical moves/steps of RA introductions? What rhetorical functions do the different groups of stance adverbs fulfil in RA introductions?(4)What are the similarities and differences between Chinese and western scholars in the use of stance adverbs in RA introductions?This study self-compiled Western Scholar Corpus of Materials Science Rsearch Article Introductions(WSC),Chinese Scholar Corpus of Materials Science RA Introductions(CSC),and used the UAM Corpus Tool to manually annotate the move structure of introductions,as well as the semantic category,syntactic function and clausal placement of stance adverbs.Data extraction,statistics and analysis were carried out on the basis of annotation.The main findings of this study are:(1)the total frequencies of stance adverbs in WSC and and CSC were similar.Western scholars employed more hedges,while Chinese scholars used more boosters;there was no significant difference in the use of attitude markers between Chinese and western scholars.(2)In both WSC and CSC,nearly threequarters of stance adverbs,mainly approximators,evidentialities,degree and frequency adverbs,were adjunct adverbs;some modalities,evidentialities and attitude markers were used as disjunct adverbs.(3)Stance adverbs in the two corpora were mainly used in Medial position,followed by Initial position and End position.Stance adverbs used by Chinese scholars were more frequently found in Medial2 position(between auxiliary and verb),while stance adverbs used by western scholars occurred more frequently in Medial3position(between verb and other components).This difference was related to the use of sentence patterns by Chinese and western scholars: Chinese scholars frequently employed passive sentence pattern have been/be +adv.+done,in which the placement of adverb was annotated as Medial2 position,while western scholars preferred the sentence pattern be +adv.+adj./n.and be done+ adv.+ to-clause,in which the adverb placement is Medial3 position.(4)A large number of stance adverbs occurred in Move 1 <Establishing the territory>,especially in Step 2 <Providing general background>,followed by Step 1<Claiming centrality> and Step 3 <Reviewing previous research>.In this move,western scholars used hedges more frequently,while Chinese scholars used boosters more frequently.This difference can be explained by the different rhetorical functions the hedges and boosters achieved in the introductions by western and Chinese scholars:hedges used by western scholars served more rhetorical functions,and Chinese scholars used boosters to achieve similar rhetorical functions but with much more frequency.This study presents a detailed description of stance adverbs in RA introductions from the aspects of semantics,lexico-grammatical functions and distributional features in move structure.To a certain extent,this study enriches the stance adverb study in academic discourse,and the research findings are expected to provide inspiration for EAP classroom,as well as scholars involved in academic writing.