Identity Construction And Stance Markers In The Academic Writing Of Chinese Germanists In German As A Foreign Language

Academic writing is an important form of academic activities,and its purpose is to present,preserve and disseminate academic knowledge without time and space restrictions.In recent years,academic writing is no longer regarded as a static transmission of knowledge,but as a dynamic social interaction.In this interaction,the author inevitably introduces personal positions,attitude and emotions,making academic writing no longer an absolutely objective,neutral and depersonalized behavior.Based on the framework of Hyland’s model of stance markers,this article selects35 linguistic papers by Chinese Germanists and German linguists in the mid-1980 s and mid-2010 s.Through a corpus-based quantitative research,the distribution of stance markers is analyzed from both the perspectives of vertical comparison and horizontal comparison.Combining the innovative concept “degree of author visibility” and the model of stance markers,the relationship between usage of stance markers and construction of writer identity is discussed.And then two case studies will be done to verify and supplement the conclusions of the quantitative research.This article focuses on the following issues: What are the general features of the distribution and use of different types of stance markers in German academic papers in linguistics? In comparison to academic papers by German linguists,are there any significant differences in the use of stance markers and author visibility in papers by Chinese Germanists in the 1980 s and 2010s? What kinds of writer identities and writer roles are constructed through the usage of stance markers in academic papers?Through quantitative research,it is found that epistemic stance markers are the most often used,and attitudinal stance markers are the least.From the perspective of vertical comparison,compared with texts in the 1980 s,the attitudinal stance markers and singular first-person pronouns(ich)used in the academic papers of Chinese Germanists in the 2010 s have increased.From the perspective of horizontal comparison,the use of stance markers in texts of German Linguists is obviously more than that in texts of Chinese Germanists.In addition,based on Steinhoff and Fl(?)ttum’s classification of academic writer roles,this article considers that the use of stance markers participates in the construction of four types of writer roles: writer,researcher,evaluator and narrator.Among them,the researcher role is the most important and can be presented by all the types of stance markers.This conclusion is verified in the following case studies.The significance of this research is mainly reflected in the following aspects: First,it explores the possibility of the connection between stance markers and the construction of writer identity in academic papers.Second,it points out the features and inadequacy of the use of stance markers in academic papers by Chinese Germanists.Third,it is necessary to know trends of the use of stance markers in papers of German linguists and Chinese Germanists in the past 30 years,which helps Chinese Germanists better grasp the use of stance markers,keep the balance of degree of author visibility in academic writing and achieve the construction of more persuasive writer identity and writer roles in a cross-lingual and cross-cultural context.