This study explores stance-taking strategies as employed by advanced L2 students when they write a critique essay. Lancsbox corpus analysis tool was used to analyze the data. The study found that direct critical expressions are frequently used as boosters, various hedges are used, attitude markers are employed in a very limited range, self-mention of personal pronouns is obviously common, and the degree of directness in expressing stance is high. The contribution of this research lies in its attempt to explore the type of language knowledge required to help in enhancing graduate students' integration into established academic writers' community.
This study explores stance-taking strategies as employed by MA Applied Linguistics students when they write a critique. The significance of this research lies in its attempt to examine academic writing of Saudi postgraduate students at the discoursal and authorial levels. This study aims at answering the following questions: What are the linguistic devices MA Applied Linguistics students frequently use to develop a sense of voice when they write a critique? To what extent does their writing comply with the norms of academic writers? Which aspects of their argumentative writing require special care so that they can develop their authorial skills? The study is corpus based. It investigates a corpus of 73 critique essays written by MA Applied Linguistics students as an assignment to practice writing an article critique. Lancsbox corpus analysis tool was used to analyze the data. Frequencies of hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mentions which constitute stance expressing devices (Hyland, 2005) were obtained and analyzed. The study found that direct critical expressions are frequently used as boosters, various hedges are used to mitigate writers' stance, attitude markers are employed in very limited range, self-mention of first personal pronoun is obviously common, and the degree of directness in expressing stance is high. To conclude, linguistic knowledge of appropriate social norms of academic writing among Saudi postgraduate students requires attention. The MA Applied Linguistics students need focused training in their Advanced Academic Writing course on the writing aspects beyond unity, coherence and sentence level issues to cover rhetorical, interpersonal, discoursal, authorial and pragmatic competence to help them integrate professionally into worldwide academic writing community.
