Investigating Stance Adverbs In Chinese English Majors’ Theses

Stance refers to the ways in which writers convey their feelings,attitudes,evaluation and commitment with regard to the propositional content.The ability to manifest an appropriate stance is a key feature of successful academic writing.Unfortunately,little research focuses on stance adverbs used by Chinese English learners,especially those of different educational levels.By adopting a corpus-based approach,the present study aims to investigate the use of stance adverbs in 50 undergraduate,master and doctoral theses written by Chinese English majors with reference to 55 research articles written by native English writers in the field of applied linguistics so as to better portray Chinese English learners’ acquisition of these words.It was found that:(1)Compared with native expert writers,Chinese English majors significantly underused stance adverbs in total.As for different educational levels,master students employed stance adverbs more frequently than undergraduates and doctoral students.Significant difference was also found between undergraduates and master students.(2)Compared with native expert writers,Chinese English majors significantly underused hedging and certainty adverbs but no significant difference was found in evidentiality adverbs.Moreover,hedging and evidentiality adverbs were employed more and more frequently with the increase of educational levels.(3)Compared with native expert writers,Chinese English majors significantly underused evaluation and affect adverbs,and they rarely employed affect adverbs.Evaluation and affect adverbs were used more and more frequently with the increase of educational levels.(4)Compared with native expert writers,Chinese English majors significantly underused style stance adverbs,which were used more and more frequently with the increase of educational degrees.The study has implications for academic writing,its pedagogy and compilation of textbooks.