The Effect Of Oral Task Type And Speaker Style On Chinese English Majors' Epistemic Stance-taking

The expression of epistemic stance is one of the core pragmatic skills in L2 speaking.As speaking,we are not only delivering the propositional information but also communicating a wide variety of subjective meanings.A close observation of this common pragmatic behavior could help us better understand how L2 speakers negotiate their positions in communication.Though many researchers have acknowledged the importance of epistemic stance-taking in L2 spoken production,few systematical studies have been conducted so far on its expressions.As a response to this situation,I would like to explore the epistemic stance-taking strategies employed by Chinese English majors.To be specific,two research questions are addressed:(1)Does there exist an effect of different oral tasks on Chinese English majors' use of epistemic stance markers(ESMs)?(2)Does there exist an evidence of speaker style in the use of the ESMs between different oral tasks?Based on a subset of Written and Spoken English Corpus of Chinese Learners which consists of data resulting from two speaking tasks:monologic speech task and interactive conversation one.The present study will focus on three major types of ESMs:adverbial,adjectival and verbal forms to examine the differences existing in oral tasks and caused by individual speaker styles.As a result of corpus-based quantitative and qualitative analysis,the major findings are as follows.First,the oral task type has a significant effect on the Chinese English majors' use of ESMs in the following three aspects:(1)As for the overall distribution,the frequency of ESMs resulting from role-playing as an interactive task is much higher than that from speech making as a monologic task.(2)The differences are also be found in terms of the frequencies of verbal and adverbial expressions and(3)some particular ESMs.Second,the evidence of speaker style in the use of ESMs can also be seen in the same three aspects:(1)in terms of the overall frequency,(2)the frequencies of verbal and adverbial expressions respectively as well as(3)some particular ESMs.By focusing on the language in use,this paper tries to offer some insights into the communicative competence of L2 speakers.Besides,it is also of significance to teachers,material developers and language testers who are interested in assessing L2 pragmatic ability.