A Comparative Corpus-based Study Of Stance Adverbs Used In The Introduction Section Of Chinese And English Native Scholars’ Research Articles

Stance adverbs are one of the most common means of stance expression.The rational use of stance adverbs in academic discourse can help the author convey his/her attitude and emotion towards the content and form of propositional information to the readers.However,the use of stance adverbs has always been regarded as a major difficulty in second or foreign language academic writing.Under such circumstances,this study explores the systematic differences between Chinese and English native scholars in the use of stance adverbs in academic discourse,so as to help Chinese scholars face up to the shortcomings and improve the accuracy of language production.Taking the discipline of applied linguistics as an example,this study respectively selects 140 research papers from Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics and Applied Linguistics.Based on the extraction of the introduction section,Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics Corpus(CJALC)and Applied Linguistics Corpus(ALC)are established to investigate the frequency distribution,collocation sequence preference and position difference of stance adverbs in the introduction section of Chinese and English native scholars’ research articles.The results show that: 1)In terms of the total frequency of stance adverbs,Chinese and English native scholars both use epistemic stance adverbs most frequently,attitudinal stance adverbs the second frequent,and style-of-speaking adverbs the least frequent.The total frequency and the subcategory frequency used by Chinese scholars are lower than those of English native scholars,and there are fewer categories of stance adverbs used by Chinese scholars than by native scholars,and to some extent,there is a problem of overusing or underusing certain stance adverbs.2)In terms of the collocation sequence of stance adverbs,Chinese scholars prefer to use epistemic stance adverbs mainly with auxiliary verb be and past participles of verbs,while English native scholars prefer to use collocation with verbs,prepositions,auxiliary verbs and past participles of verbs.In the use of attitudinal stance adverbs typically,although both of them prefer to use it with auxiliary verb be and past participle of verbs,English native scholars still tend to use it with nouns and verbs.In terms of style-of-speaking adverbs,both prefer to use the adverb specifically with commas followed behind.Different from English native scholars,although using different kinds of stance adverbs in academic writing to express their own judgments,emotions and evaluations on the content of proposition,Chinese scholars still have certain writing difficulties,especially in the epistemic stance adverbs.For Chinese scholars,the use of stance adverbs is relatively less,which is reflected in their inaccurate grasp of the degree of certainty of the content of the proposition,the use of too much or too little reinforcement and weakening,and the inappropriate or even misuse of the tone.3)In terms of the position distribution of stance adverbs,Chinese and English native scholars prefer to place them in the middle of the sentence,followed by the beginning of the sentence,and finally the end of the sentence.Both Chinese and English native scholars prefer to put epistemic,attitudinal and style-of-speaking stance adverbs in the middle of sentences,but English native scholars use these three types of stance adverbs more frequently and show more diversity in the use of stance adverbs than Chinese scholars.In addition,Chinese scholars are not very good at expressing different stances according to the different syntactic positions of stance adverbs.By examining the usage features and positional preferences of Chinese scholars’ stance adverbs,this study helps deepen our understanding of second language academic writing.Not only can Chinese EFL teachers apply the research findings to remind students of using stance adverbs appropriately in academic writings,but also Chinese scholars can examine the differences in the use of stance adverbs and improve their chances of publishing research articles that comply with international academic language norms,and gain recognition from academic circles and enhance their academic influence.