| In academic writing,authors use various language resources to express their personal position and construct a specific authorial identity.Authors can use engagement resources of Appraisal Theory to adjust and control the dialogic space,negotiate and interact with readers,express their attitudes and stance,thus constructing their own identities.As a new academic genre,academic blogs(ABs),have attracted the attention of scholars.However,at present,the discussion of authorial identity constructed through engagement resources is not sufficient,and so far,there is no research on comparative analysis of authorial identity construction in research articles(RAs)and ABs from a cross-generic perspective.Based on Martin and White’s(2005)engagement system and the classification framework of authorial identity constructed through engagement resources proposed by Jiang and Yang(2018),this study compares and analyzes authorial identity in RAs and ABs.This study collected 30 RAs and 30 ABs from applied linguistics,built a small corpus for in-depth quantitative and qualitative analysis,and tried to answer two questions:(1)What are the similarities and differences of engagement resources in research articles and academic blogs?(2)How are authorial identities of research articles and academic blogs similar and different through engagement resources?The findings are as follows: Firstly,in the use of engagement resources,the authors of both academic genres tend to use contraction instead of expansion.The most frequently used resource in dialogic expansion is entertain,while the most frequently used resource in dialogic contraction is deny.And both academic genres seldom use distance resources.Secondly,the general trend of authorial identity construction in the two academic genres is similar,with the opinion holder being the most frequently constructed,followed by the researcher and the frequency of the evaluator is the lowest.Specifically:(1)When constructing authorial identity of opinion holders,the RAs authors tend to use counter resources to represent implicit opinion holders,while ABs authors tend to use deny resources to construct direct opinion holder identity.(2)When constructing the authorial identity of researchers,the authors of both academic genres prefer to use entertain resources rather than pronounce resources.RAs authors are more inclined to choose reasoning type of pronounce resources and low-value modal auxiliaries of entertain resources to construct reliable and humble researcher,while ABs authors tend to use mental projections in pronounce resources and evidence in entertain resources to represent as clear-cut and open researchers.(3)When constructing authorial identity of evaluators,RAs authors tend to use endorse resources to construct positive evaluator;the ABs authors are more inclined to use acknowledge resources to construct neutral evaluator identity.The main reason for the differences is that the context and readers /audiences of the two academic genres are different,so the interaction and the authorial identities constructed through the engagement resources may also be different.The similarities also indicate that the writing habits and language choices of international journal publication and academic blog posting can be consistent,influenced by disciplinary norms.This study explores the relationship between the engagement system and authorial identity construction at a more microscopic level,and further enriches the lexical-grammatical realizations of engagement system,as well as the cross-genric comparative study of authorial identity.On the practical level,this study has certain pedagogical implications and reference value for selecting proper language resources and constructing appropriate authorial identity in academic English writing in different contexts. |
