A CROSS-LINGUISTIC AND CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF STANCE MARKERS IN RESEARCH ARTICLES IN ENGLISH AND KOREAN

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to quantitatively and qualitatively analyze ways in which writers construct an authorial stance toward a proposition, drawing on corpora of published research articles on applied linguistics written in English and Korean. The research in this study is based on two sets of corpora in two languages: a corpus of English applied linguistics of 50 research articles, and a corpus of Korean applied linguistics of 50 research articles. From a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic perspective, this study examines the differences and similarities in the use of stance markers between the English and Korean research articles in the field of applied linguistics. By utilizing a quantitative method, the statistical differences and similarities between the English and Korean data are presented. In addition, this study qualitatively explores the linguistic features of stance markers and the cultural rationale behind them in the English and Korean applied linguistics communities. This study focuses on relationships between the linguistic realization and cultural values shared by members of the two academic discourse communities. Adopting Hyland’s (2005b) interactional model of academic discourse as a framework, this study examines (1) quantitative and qualitative differences and similarities in the use of stance markers between English and Korean academic discourse in the field of applied linguistics, (2) linguistic devices and discoursal functions of four stance markers (hedges, boosters, attitude markers and self-mention), (3) grammatical and structural features of stance markers, and (4) cultural motivations and rationales behind the similarities and differences between stance markers employed by members of the English and Korean applied linguistics communities. The findings of this study contribute to a better understanding of English and Korean metadiscourse in terms of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic perspective between the academic communities of the two languages. This study also provides insight into pedagogical practice for new members of the Korean applied linguistics community and into future research on cross-cultural and cross-linguistic study of the use of metadiscourse in academic writing.