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Part of
Advances in Corpus-based Research on Academic Writing: Effects of discipline, register, and writer expertise
Edited by Ute Römer, Viviana Cortes and Eric Friginal
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 95] 2020
► pp. 255–278

Stance in unpublished student writing

An exploratory study of modal verbs in MICUSP’s Physical Science papers

| Iowa State University
| National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology

This exploratory study investigates modal verbs as stance features in the Physical Sciences sub-corpus of the Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Papers (MICUSP). The study adopts Biber’s (2006) stance framework, including modal verbs in three categories: possibility, necessity, and prediction. Focusing on one feature within one sub-corpus afforded closer consideration of the units of analysis (discipline, level of study, nativeness, and register) that could contribute to variation in the use of modals as stance features. The findings show that possibility and prediction modals are the most common in the Physical Sciences sub-corpus. The study provides a description of student academic writing and considers future research directions and pedagogical implications of stance in Physical Science disciplines, student levels, nativeness, and registers.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Studies about stance
    • 2.1Stance in student writing
    • 2.2Modal verbs as stance markers in academic writing
  • 3.Methods and materials
    • 3.1Corpus
    • 3.2Data analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Possibility modals
    • 4.2Prediction modals
    • 4.3Necessity modals
    • 4.4Disciplinary variation
    • 4.5Student level
    • 4.6Nativeness
    • 4.7Registers
  • 5.Discussion and pedagogical implications
  • 6.Future directions
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 20 February 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.95.11bec
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