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Lingua 253 (2021) 103071
www.elsevier.com/locate/lingua

Stance expressions in academic writing:

A corpus-based comparison of Chinese students’
MA dissertations and PhD theses
Bin Wu a,b,1, Brian Paltridge c,d,*
a
School of Foreign Studies, Chang’an University, Xi’an, China
b
School of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
c
Department of English, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
d
Sydney School of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Received 14 May 2020; received in revised form 28 January 2021; accepted 27 February 2021
Available online 6 March 2021

Abstract
One of the approaches to exploring the interactional and persuasive nature of academic writing is through the use of stance features in
texts. Adopting a corpus-based analysis, this study compared how MA and PhD applied linguistics dissertations/theses in the Chinese
mainland differed in terms of stance making in their texts. Two corpora were built for the study, an MA dissertation corpus and a PhD
thesis corpus. The MA dissertations and PhD theses in each case were written by the same writers. The use of stance markers was
examined using Hyland's framework for analysis. It was found that compared to their MA dissertations, student writers with doctoral
training demonstrated some progress in stance making in their PhD theses. They employed fewer boosters, mastered a wider set of
attitude markers, and displayed an increased ability to assert positions and involve readers in their texts. These findings reveal a
developmental progression in the use of stance for these students which can hopefully inform academic writing training at the graduate
level for Chinese students writing in English.
© 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Stance; Corpora; Academic writing; Dissertations

1. Introduction

The stance that writers take has become an important topic in academic writing research. This research focusses, in
particular, on the interactional nature of academic writing and explores the mechanisms through which authors’ attitudinal
or epistemic positions are expressed (Biber, 2006; Hyland, 2000, 2005b; Hyland and Tse, 2005; Lancaster, 2016). Stance
generally refers to how writers express their feelings, levels of certainty and assessments concerning others’ and their
own propositions or claims (Biber, 2006). For all academic writers, the conscious attention to stance making is as
important as stating facts, results or findings in their texts. A number of studies have explored disciplinary variation in
stance features. The results of this research suggest that applied linguistics, as with other soft disciplines, exhibit great

* Corresponding author at: Department of English, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
E-mail address: wubin@chd.edu.cn (B. Wu).
1
School of Foreign Studies, Chang’an University, Nanerhuan Road, Yanta District, Xi’an, China.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2021.103071
0024-3841/© 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
2 B. Wu, B. Paltridge / Lingua 253 (2021) 103071

use of stance devices and this is an important feature of the discipline's rhetorical preferences (Hu and Cao, 2015; Hyland,
2005b; Jiang and Hyland, 2015). It has also been indicated that second language writers, even experienced ones, have
often not fully mastered the use of stance features in academic writing due to their level of language proficiency and L1
rhetorical transfer (Abdollahzadeh, 2011; Hu and Cao, 2011). As advanced language learners and developing members
of their disciplines, master's and doctoral students in EFL settings face huge challenges in terms of stance-making. The
development of their ability to use stance expressions, further, serves as an important indication of increased writing
proficiency and disciplinary enculturation (Abdollahzadeh, 2019; Dahme and Sastre, 2015; Hyland, 2004; Qiu and Ma,
2019). However, this developmental trajectory is under-explored in the current literature (Abdollahzadeh, 2019) and the
few studies that have explored student's development in the use of stance expression in their dissertation/thesis writing
have investigated student groups from either mixed disciplines (Hyland, 2004) or mixed linguistic backgrounds (both L1
writers and L2 writers of different native languages) (Qiu and Ma, 2019). In view of this, a more focussed examination of
stance development in terms of discipline in advanced writing contexts is warranted.
In the Chinese higher education sector, along with growing internationalization efforts and initiatives to boost China's
international reputation in this area, the demand for postgraduate students and faculty to write research articles in English
has been on the rise (Zheng and Gao, 2016). However, only limited numbers of postgraduate degree programmes require
students to write dissertations or theses in English while the vast majority still follow the traditional requirement of writing
dissertations or theses in Chinese. Applied linguistics is one of the few subjects which is reflective of the
internationalization trend, and students in many of the MA and PhD programs of applied linguistics in China are required to
write their dissertations and theses in English.
Despite the growing prominence of L2 dissertation writing, research into dissertations or theses in EFL contexts has
remained a neglected area of academic inquiry (Hyland, 2004), and even less is known concerning dissertation/thesis
writers’ development in the use of rhetorical features, particularly stance features in their writing (Abdollahzadeh, 2019).
For these reasons, the present study, through a corpus-based examination, compares stance features in MA dissertations
and PhD theses as well as attempts to provide a developmental trajectory of stance expression for applied linguistics
students in the Chinese mainland.

2. Literature review

2.1. Stance

Academic writing is increasingly regarded as being interactional in nature, reflecting writers’ perspectives, opinions
and assessments (Biber, 2006; Huston and Thompson, 2000; Hyland, 2000, 2005b; Martin, 2000). Instead of
impersonally stating facts, situations or findings, writers also consider their readers’ reactions and try to engage with them
through their texts (Biber, 2006; Biber and Finegan, 1989; Hyland, 2000, 2005b). Among the numerous studies on these
interactions, a key focus is on the use of stance (e.g., Biber, 1988, 2006; Hyland, 2000, 2005b; Hyland and Jiang, 2016,
2018). Stance, as defined by Biber (2006), refers to writers’ ‘‘personal feelings and assessments’’ and it concerns
‘‘attitudes that a speaker has about information, how certain they are about its veracity, how they obtained access to the
information, and what perspective they are taking’’ (p. 87). Hyland (2005b) argues that stance concerns ‘‘ways writers
present themselves and convey their judgments, opinions, and commitments’’ (p. 176). It is through their use of stance
that writers stamp themselves on their claims and propositions, and express the attitude they hold toward content and
ideas expressed in their text.
Concepts related to stance include evaluation (Hunston and Thompson, 2000), appraisal (Martin, 2000), and
metadiscourse (Hyland and Tse, 2004). Evaluation refers to the linguistic resources that realize speakers’ or writers’
attitudes during interactions (Hunston and Thompson, 2000) while appraisal provides a systemic functional exploration
into the interpersonal dimension of language, focusing on attitudinal positions through the categories of affect, judgement
and appreciation (Martin, 2000). Metadiscourse is an umbrella term for discourse features which includes stance, through
which writers project themselves into the academic discourse and engage with readers through the use of interactive
resources (transitions, frame markers, endophoric markers, evidentials, code glosses) and interactional resources
(hedges, boosters, attitude markers, engagement markers, self-mentions) (Hyland, 2005a; Hyland and Tse, 2004).
Hyland (2005b) and Biber (2006), in particular, have provided frameworks of linguistic resources available to writers which
have been used in automated annotation instead of the manual analysis that have been adopted in a number of previous
studies (Crosthwaite and Jiang, 2017).
Hyland's (2005b) framework of stance consists of four elements: hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-
mentions. Hedges indicate a writer's decision to avoid full commitment to a statement by using features such as almost,
appear, probably. By contrast, boosters express writers’ certainty towards propositions using items such as surely,
always, evidently (Hyland, 2005b). Attitude markers suggest writers’ affective attitude in what they say instead of
 B. Wu, B. Paltridge / Lingua 253 (2021) 103071 3

epistemic attitude as reflected in their use of hedges and boosters such as understandably, unfortunately, and
disappointing (Hyland, 2005b). Self-mentions employ first persons and their possessive adjectives to signal
‘‘propositional, affective, and interpersonal information’’ (Hyland, 2005b, p. 181). Writers might, for example, use self-
mentions to stress their personal role in the research (Hyland, 2005b).

2.2. Stance in academic writing

A considerable number of studies have demonstrated variation in stance making between and across disciplines (Hu
and Cao, 2015; Hyland, 2005b; Hyland and Guinda, 2012; Jiang and Hyland, 2015; Lancaster, 2016). For example,
Hyland (2005b) compared the use of metadiscourse features in research articles across eight disciplines and found that
soft disciplines (e.g., applied linguistics, sociology) used far more stance features than engineering and science subjects.
In view of the higher frequency in soft disciplines, Hu and Cao (2015) further explored variation in stance making among
three social science disciplines (i.e., applied linguistics, education and psychology). Their results indicated that applied
linguistics and education research articles exhibited a higher frequency of boosters and a lower incidence of self-mentions
than the psychology articles they examined. The difference, the authors explained, was due to knowledge-knower
structures dominating the disciplines.
The discipline of applied linguistics has, in particular, received considerable research interest. Previous research has
explored the influence of culture/languages on stance features in specific sections of published research articles, such as
the abstract (Hu and Cao, 2011), discussion (Chen and Zhang, 2017), and conclusion section (Abdollahzadeh, 2011), as
well as in the full text (Mu et al., 2015). Of particular relevance to the current study is the finding that the Chinese applied
linguistics authors hedged much less than their international counterparts when writing abstracts in English for academic
journals. In the authors’ view, this was mainly due to the writers’ inadequate English proficiency as English is a foreign
language in Chinese higher education and making stance in a second language necessitates a highly sophisticated
command of the language (Hu and Cao, 2011). Similar results were found in the comparison of hedging in discussion
sections in English-medium journals written by Chinese and Anglo-American applied linguists where the former used
significantly fewer hedges and overused or underused certain hedging items, compared with the latter (Chen and Zhang,
2017). The L2 writers’ incomplete mastery of stance features was also supported by Abdollahzadeh (2011) who
compared Iranian applied linguists and their Anglophone counterparts. Taken together, the discrepancy was attributed to
the L2 writers’ inadequacy of English proficiency (Hu and Cao, 2011), as well as the transfer of the native rhetorical
preferences (Connor, 1996), as cross-linguistic comparisons of stance features have shown marked differences between
stance making in the writers’ native language (i.e., Chinese) and in English (Hu and Cao, 2011; Mu et al., 2015).
In addition to stance making on the part of academic writers, how student writers employ stance devices in academic
writing has also gained scholarly attention (Aull and Lancaster, 2014; Crosthwaite et al., 2017; Hyland and Milton, 1997;
Hyland and Tse, 2005). Researchers have explored a number of factors affecting stance making in student writing:
professional enculturation (Crosthwaite et al., 2017; Hyland and Tse, 2005), native language transfer (Hyland and Milton,
1997), and writing proficiency (Aull and Lancaster, 2014; Lancaster, 2016). The results of this research suggest that
advanced level students in American universities employ fewer boosters and more hedging expressions than incoming
first-year students (Aull and Lancaster, 2014), that academic writers tend to use a narrower range of stance markers than
L2 student writers (Crosthwaite et al., 2017), and that L2 writers use more certainty markers, tend to be more assertive and
use a more authoritative tone than L1 writers (Hyland and Milton, 1997).
Master's and doctoral dissertations have also been examined from the perspective of stance (Abdollahzadeh, 2019;
Dahme and Sastre, 2015; El-Dakhs, 2018; Hyland, 2004; Kawase, 2015; Qiu and Ma, 2019). For example,
Abdollahzadeh (2019) and Dahme and Sastre (2015) compared master's dissertations with journal articles in the fields of
applied linguistics and biology. The results demonstrated that compared with writers of journal articles, master's students
hedged less and overly relied on certain hedging items (Abdollahzadeh, 2019). Also, they employed a lower frequency of
attitude markers in their writing (Dahme and Sastre, 2015). Two further studies have followed this comparison and
analyzed differences in stance features between PhD dissertations and research articles in applied linguistics (El-Dakhs,
2018; Kawase, 2015). It was found that the PhD dissertations demonstrated differences in the use of hedges, boosters
and attitude markers compared with journal articles. Taken together, the discrepancy regarding stance making between
master's or doctoral dissertations and published journals articles was ascribed to two factors: writing proficiency
(Abdollahzadeh, 2019; Dahme and Sastre, 2015), and genre differences (dissertations or theses as an educational genre
vs research articles as a professional academic genre) (El-Dakhs, 2018; Kawase, 2015). In particular, it was found that
student writers, as incoming members of their academic communities, lacked awareness and knowledge of the rhetorical
conventions of their disciplines (Abdollahzadeh, 2019; Dahme and Sastre, 2015), and their developmental trajectory
towards more academic enculturation entailed more appropriate use of stance expressions which conformed to their
disciplinary preferences.
4 B. Wu, B. Paltridge / Lingua 253 (2021) 103071

Such research efforts are limited in number, however except for Hyland (2004) and Qiu and Ma (2019). Hyland (2004)
compared the use of metadiscourse features in master's and PhD dissertations in six disciplines in the Hong Kong
context. He found that social science subjects, applied linguistics in particular, used more stance markers, especially
hedges and self-mentions, compared with natural science subjects. In terms of a developmental trajectory, PhD students
employed more stance and engagement features, particularly more self-mentions than master's candidates, despite their
belief that the use of self-mentions was against academic writing requirements. While Hyland (2004) investigated how
students progressed in terms of using metadiscourse features, the comparison between master's and doctoral
dissertations was conducted across subject areas, without focussing on each specific discipline. Given the marked
variation across disciplines in stance expression (Hu and Cao, 2015; Hyland, 2005b), it is then necessary to examine
students’ development of stance features in dissertation writing within specific disciplines. Qiu and Ma (2019) focused on
the discipline of applied linguistics, and explored students’ development in stance making by comparing master's
dissertations and doctoral theses. The results revealed that compared with master's students, doctoral students used
fewer hedges, boosters and attitude markers, and that their pattern of stance expressions evidenced better mastery of the
rhetorical conventions in applied linguistics. However, in Qiu and Ma's (2019) study, the dissertations that were examined
were written by a mixture of L1 and L2 writers, which posed difficulties in analysing factors related to stance making, such
as native rhetorical transfer, linguistic proficiency, and the writing context (Connor, 1996; Hu and Cao, 2011; Hyland and
Milton, 1997; Mu et al., 2015). This warrants a more rigorous investigation of stance-taking development in postgraduate
writing within more specific writing contexts.

2.3. Focus of the study

As discussed above, applied linguistics, as a typical soft discipline, exhibits a rich repertoire of stance expressions in
written texts (i.e. undergraduate student essays, doctoral theses, published research articles, book chapters), and the
abundance of stance making remains a major feature of the rhetorical conventions of the subject (e.g. Aull and
Lancaster, 2014; Crosthwaite et al., 2017; Hu and Cao, 2015; Hyland, 2004; Hyland, 2005b; Jiang and Hyland, 2015;
Kuhi and Behnam, 2011; Lancaster, 2016). Making stance appropriately in the disciplinary community, however, poses
enormous challenges to writers, especially L2 writers, who have to struggle with language proficiency and L2 rhetorical
conventions (Abdollahzadeh, 2011; Connor, 1996; Hu and Cao, 2011; Mu et al., 2015). As developing members of their
academic community as well as advanced second language learners, L2 postgraduate students majoring in applied
linguistics in the ESL/EFL context have been found to deviate from disciplinary rhetorical preferences (Abdollahzadeh,
2019; Dahme and Sastre, 2015; El-Dakhs, 2018; Hyland, 2004) and studies exploring students’ development in stance
making are much needed (Abdollahzadeh, 2019; Hyland, 2004). The few studies examining postgraduate students’
development of stance features in master's dissertations and PhD theses either relied on a mix-subject corpus (Hyland,
2004) or analysed student writers from a mixture of linguistic backgrounds (Qiu and Ma, 2019). Given the current
literature, a more focussed exploration of stance progression in Chinese students’ thesis and dissertation writing in
English is, thus, needed.
The Chinese MA in applied linguistics is a three-year degree program. It is research-based, and the program
consists of coursework and research (usually in the form of a master's dissertation). The goal of MA programs in
applied linguistics for most universities is to lay a foundation of both knowledge and research skills in applied
linguistics. Courses in Chinese MA applied linguistics programs are mainly theory-driven and aim to enhance
students’ scholarly knowledge and research skills. These courses are usually offered in the first year of the MA
program. In the second and third year, MA students are required to complete an empirical research project, under the
guidance of supervisors. The research project is assessed through examination of the dissertation and an oral
defense by committee members in the discipline. When the dissertation and oral defense are passed, the MA degree
is conferred on students. The PhD applied linguistics program in China is usually 3 to 5 years and is similar to the MA
program in terms of program design. This means that PhD students can obtain the degree after successfully
completing coursework and a PhD thesis. One difference, however, is that PhD students are required to undertake
many fewer courses than MA students and are mainly evaluated based on their research output; that is, their doctoral
thesis. As with other higher education contexts, requirements and expectations for doctoral theses are much higher
than for MA dissertations in all aspects.
Against the backdrop of internationalization and globalization in higher education, universities in EFL contexts such as
the Chinese mainland, South Korea and Japan increasingly require students and faculty members who have relatively
limited exposure to English, to complete reports, papers and other academic publications in English (Cho, 2009;
Crosthwaite et al., 2017; Zhou and Liu, 2015). Despite this, as mentioned above, very few universities in the Chinese
mainland require students to write their theses and dissertations in English with the vast majority being written in Chinese.
One of the disciplines where theses and dissertations are written in English is applied linguistics, the focus of this paper. It
 B. Wu, B. Paltridge / Lingua 253 (2021) 103071 5

remains unexplored, however, how research student writers in the Chinese mainland, where English is a foreign
language, cope with the linguistic and rhetorical challenges of L2 thesis and dissertation writing and develop in their
command of disciplinary rhetorical conventions (Crosthwaite, 2016; Kuteeva and Negretti, 2016). Considering the lack of
stance studies focussing on specific disciplines and investigating more specific contexts (Hyland, 2004; Qiu and Ma,
2019), the current study addressed this gap by analysing stance features in master's and PhD applied linguistics theses
and dissertations written in Chinese mainland universities. Specifically, the study adopted a corpus-based approach to
comparing stance expression in MA dissertations and PhD theses produced by the same group of applied linguistics
students in the Chinese mainland context. The comparison of the two corpora (the MA dissertation corpus and the PhD
thesis corpus), thus explored developmental movement in the students’ use of stance with the hope of offering insights
into how EFL applied linguistics thesis and dissertation writers develop their ability to employ these rhetorical conventions
in their writing. Therefore, the following questions were explored:

(1) How do Chinese MA and PhD student writers differ in the expression of stance in their dissertation/thesis writing?

(2) What progression can we see in terms of the expression of stance in the students’ master's and PhD dissertation/
thesis writing?

3. The study

3.1. Corpora used in the study

The study built two corpora -- a MA dissertation corpus and a PhD thesis corpus, respectively referred to as the MA
Corpus and the PhD Corpus. The MA Corpus was compiled from MA dissertations in applied linguistics retrieved from
China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), the largest and most comprehensive database provider of academic
work in China. Likewise, the PhD Corpus consisted of doctoral theses from the same discipline, also obtained from the
CNKI. The sampling criteria were as follows. First, both MA dissertations and PhD theses had to have been written by the
same Chinese authors. Second, both of their MA dissertations and PhD theses had to have been written in English and
belong to the discipline of applied linguistics. Third, both levels of dissertations had to have been completed between 2000
and 2019. Fourth, the dissertations needed to be available electronically.
We commenced our data collection by looking for PhD applied linguistics theses in the top three universities in China in
the subject of Foreign Language and Literature according to the 2019 Academic Ranking of World Universities published
by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy (http://www.zuihaodaxue.com). Among the top three institutions, however, only one
university met all the sampling criteria so our data collection started with that university. We collected PhD theses from that
university and then searched for MA dissertations written by the same students. Half of the MA dissertations we collected
were written at the same university and half of the MA dissertations had been submitted at other universities. The fact that
the students had been admitted to the PhD programme at the high ranking university suggests that the students who came
from other universities had written high quality MA dissertations as entry to the university is extremely competitive and only
a few of the students who apply are admitted to the PhD program there. In total, twenty MA dissertations and twenty PhD
theses written by the same students were collected for the study (see Appendix A for the titles of the dissertations and
theses). The total number of words in the MA corpus was 335,975 and 1,074,571 in the PhD corpus (see Table 1 for
details).
When building the corpora, the parts of the texts that were in Chinese (i.e., cover page, declaration of academic
integrity, Chinese abstracts), the tables of contents, acknowledgements, tables and figures, references and appendices
were removed as they typically do not contain features of academic stance. The word counts in Table 1, thus, did not
include these sections of the texts.

Table 1
Description of the corpora.

Corpus No. of texts Total no. of words Average text length

MA Corpus 20 335,975 16,799

PhD Corpus 20 1,074,571 53,729
6 B. Wu, B. Paltridge / Lingua 253 (2021) 103071

3.2. Data analysis

As discussed above, stance is lexically realized by Hyland's (2005a) model, which divides stance expressions into
hedges, boosters, attitude markers and self-mentions. In addition, a list of the linguistic items which express stance is
found in Appendix B.
There were four steps in the analytic procedure. First, the data in the two corpora were converted into text files to enable
automatic annotation by AntConc (v. 3.5.0, Anthony, 2011), the software used in the study. Second, targeted searches of
the four types of annotated stance markers (Hyland, 2005a) were conducted using the software program. In the process,
both British and American English spellings were checked. Then, raw frequencies of the items were drawn and converted
into frequencies per 1000 words. Paired samples t-tests with SPSS (version 26.0) were conducted to check whether there
were significant differences in the four types of stance features between the two groups (i.e., MA dissertations and PhD
theses). Given the multiple tests conducted for statistical significance, we adjusted the alpha value by using the Bonferroni
method to prevent error inflation (Bland and Altman, 1995; Field, 2018). Specifically, the significance level is divided by the
number of comparison tests, which is 0.0125 (0.05/4) in our case (Bland and Altman, 1995; Field, 2018).
In addition, a manual reading of stance expressions in the text was carried out for a qualitative analysis of the data
which explored a possible developmental path in the use of stance expressions. To ensure inter-rater reliability, the first
author invited a colleague outside of the research team to act as second rater. The second rater was an experienced
instructor of second language writing and also a scholar who had published in international journals. A one-hour training
session was conducted for the second rater in which stance definitions, constructs and examples were explained and the
coding scheme was described. Both raters independently coded 5% of the data and achieved an inter-rater reliability of
93.5%. Given the satisfactory level of agreement in coding, the first author then coded the remaining data.

4. Results and discussion

Table 2 demonstrates the distribution of stance markers in the MA corpus and PhD corpus with the mean normalized
frequencies regarding the four stance features, and the values of statistical significance tests. The normalized frequencies
make it easier for comparison since the two corpora differ in size.
As mentioned above, with the Bonferroni adjustment, each of the comparisons between the corpora is statistically
significant when the p value is less than 0.0125 (Bland and Altman, 1995; Field, 2018). As Table 2 illustrates, there is no
statistically significant difference between the two corpora in terms of the four types of stance markers.
Some minor differences, however, existed in terms of frequencies between the two corpora. As for hedges, both the
MA and PhD corpora displayed similar normalized frequencies (less than 15 per 1000 words), with slightly more hedges
for the PhD theses. Likewise, the PhD theses used slightly more attitude markers (less than 3 per 1000 words in both
corpora) than the MA dissertations. However, students at the MA level used many more boosters, with around 8 per 1000
words than students at the doctoral level (7 per 1000 words). Lastly, in terms of self-mentions, there was a modest decline
from MA dissertations to PhD theses. The following sections examine the use of these linguistic devices in detail.

4.1. Cross-corpus comparison of hedges

Fig. 1 shows the frequency of hedges in all the English components of the MA dissertations and PhD theses (i.e., the
abstract, introduction, literature review, method, results and discussion, and conclusions sections). Results indicate that,
in general, there is not much variance in the frequency of hedges between the MA dissertations and PhD theses across
sections of the texts, except for some differences in the abstract and conclusion sections.
This is further supported by analysis of the choice of hedging expressions. Table 3 compares the frequency and
proportion of the four types of hedges, following the taxonomy of hedges adopted in Hu and Cao (2011). It was seen that

Table 2
Comparison of stance markers.

Feature MA PhD p
(Normalized Frequency per 1000 words) (Normalized Frequency per 1000 words)

Hedges 14.38 14.77 0.625

Boosters 7.91 7.00 0.034
Attitude markers 2.37 2.46 0.681
Self-mentions 6.21 5.49 0.503
 B. Wu, B. Paltridge / Lingua 253 (2021) 103071 7

Fig. 1. Frequency of hedges in MA and PhD corpus.

Table 3
Comparison of hedges by type.

Hedge type MA Corpus PhD Corpus

Normalized Frequency Proportion Normalized Frequency Proportion

Modal auxiliaries 4.83 32.69% 5.21 33.68%

Epistemic lexical verbs 3.30 22.32% 3.56 23.02%
Epistemic adjectives and adverbs 6.48 43.84% 6.48 41.85%
Miscellaneous 0.17 1.15% 0.23 1.46%

students at the MA and PhD levels used all four types of hedges to withhold commitment or show uncertainty over
assertions, and that their preference for hedging items did not change as they progressed from their master's to their
doctoral writing, as evidenced by the similar distribution of the four types of hedges in the two corpora.
The specific choice of words is further explored in Table 4, which reveals the most frequently used hedges in the data.
As can be seen, students at the two stages of academic training (MA and PhD), thus, hedged in roughly the same pattern,
with the top 6 hedges being may, about, should, would, could and might. Students, further, frequently relied on certain
modal verbs (may, should, would, could and might) to express conditional epistemology. The following data extract
illustrates this.

Therefore, learners with higher language proficiency may not only be able to notice more about the linguistic feature of
their own output as they compose, but they may also be better equipped to notice the gap between their writing and the
feedback or the revisions given by the teachers [PhD16.txt].

Besides, enough attention should be paid to language errors and their correction [PhD10.txt].

Outside the classroom, individuals may also face some negative consequences when they practice their second
language [MA17.txt].

Table 4
Commonly used hedges in the corpora.

MA Corpus PhD Corpus

Linguistics term Proportion Linguistic term Proportion

may 11.69% may 11.22%

about 9.38% about 10.59%
should 8.92% should 7.91%
would 4.41% would 6.43%
could 4.20% could 5.63%
might 4.16% might 3.26%
8 B. Wu, B. Paltridge / Lingua 253 (2021) 103071

Both linguists and English teachers should admit one fact: the biggest obstacle which hinders learner from expressing in
English is actually language form, at least at present [MA12.txt].

As shown in Fig. 1, Table 3 and Table 4, the frequency of and item choice in hedges in both the MA dissertations and
PhD theses demonstrate similar patterns and suggest that postgraduate students at both levels of training hedged
similarly without obvious progression. Compared with the frequencies of hedges in previous studies, the authors found
that the overall frequency of hedges in the present study was higher than that in Hyland's (2004) and Hyland and Tse's
(2004) postgraduate dissertations of applied linguistics in the Hong Kong ESL context (14.38/14.77 vs 11.14 per 1000
words). While Hyland's (2004) and Hyland and Tse's (2004) studies revealed frequencies of hedging in postgraduate
applied linguistics dissertations, an analysis of progression of hedging from master's to doctoral writing in the discipline
was not carried out. In Qiu and Ma's (2019) study, hedging frequencies in master's and doctoral applied linguistics
dissertations showed a decreasing trend. Since their study collected postgraduate dissertations written by L1 and mixed-
background L2 writers, however, it is difficult to infer whether a decreasing tendency to hedge in postgraduate writing is a
feature of the Chinese EFL context. The results of the present study, therefore, differ from Hyland (2004) and Hyland and
Tse (2004) in terms of hedging frequency, and Qiu and Ma (2019) in terms of hedging progression. Further, the present
study analysed the predominance of certain hedging items in dissertations (see Table 4), which have not been explored in
previous studies. The results however show a similar pattern between MA dissertations and PhD theses. One possible
explanation for the similar pattern of hedging in MA and PhD dissertations is that postgraduate students have already
developed the awareness of avoiding absolutism, withholding commitments and displaying appropriate levels of
tentativeness in their writing, which is emphasized in most academic writing courses for postgraduate students and
textbooks or manuals for advanced academic writing (e.g., Swales and Feak, 2012). Given the marked difference in
hedging between Chinese and English academic texts (Hu and Cao, 2011), EFL postgraduate students seem to take
extra care to soften or moderate claims and this tendency has continued to their PhD study. Yet how postgraduate
students hedge in dissertations in the EFL context compared with L1 students’ postgraduate writing is something that still
needs to be explored in future research.

4.2. Cross-corpus comparison of boosters

Fig. 2 compares how boosters were used in the MA and PhD corpora. The comparison test reveals that students at the
master's stage used more boosters than at the doctoral stage. This trend is evident across all sections of dissertations
(7.91 vs 7.00 per 1000 words). Examples of master's students’ use of boosters are shown below:

Both theory and practice outcomes prove that cooperative learning is undoubtedly an effective teaching approach, as long
as it is utilized properly [MA01.txt].

The first part aims at providing a clear, multi-dimensional definition for vocabulary knowledge, and the proposition of
learning vocabulary in corpus-based context, based on which the rest of the paper will develop [MA06.txt].

Based on the taxonomy of boosting devices in Hu and Cao's study (2011), distributions of the four types of boosters
were compared (see Table 5). Judging from the proportions of specific types of boosters, students at the doctoral level
tended to use more verbs and fewer adjectives and adverbs for boosting than at the master's level.
Despite the decrease in the overall frequency of boosters between MA dissertations and PhD theses, and the
difference in the use of specific boosting types, there seems to be a similar pattern in terms of popular boosting items.

Fig. 2. Frequency of boosters in MA and PhD corpus.

 B. Wu, B. Paltridge / Lingua 253 (2021) 103071 9

Table 5
Comparison of boosters by type.

MA Corpus PhD Corpus

Normalized frequency Proportion Normalized frequency Proportion

Modal auxiliaries 0.39 4.76% 0.32 4.29%

Epistemic lexical verbs 4.90 59.34% 4.76 63.98%
Epistemic adjectives and adverbs 2.79 33.77% 2.17 29.23%
Miscellaneous 0.18 2.13% 0.19 2.50%

Table 6
Commonly used boosters in the corpora.

MA Corpus PhD Corpus

Linguistic term Proportion Linguistic term Proportion

show/shows/shown 16.13% find/found 16.28%

find/found 14.73% show/shows/shown 13.61%
certain 6.46% certain 6.81%
know 5.10% think 6.66%
clear 4.54% know 5.08%
think 3.95% clear 3.63%

Table 6 compares the most used boosters between the two corpora. It can be seen that the master's and doctoral students
predominantly relied on two boosting devices: show/shows/shown, and find/found, with overall frequencies of around
35%. Further, close analysis suggests that the occurrences of clear/clearly are slightly fewer in the PhD corpus than in the
MA corpus. Also, the two corpora demonstrate occasional uses of the following two epistemic adverbs: certainly, and
definitely.
The following are examples of commonly used boosters in the corpus:

This will also be further explained in detail in Chapter 2 to show the difference between the two languages in temporal
expressions and the influence of the native language on the choices of the two tenses from L1 transfer perspective
[MA15.txt].

It can be easily found that Chinese writing courses are in a rather awkward situation: inadequate in teaching time and input
and lacking innovative teaching pedagogy [PhD02.txt].

Clearly, more information is needed on the effectiveness of listening study in the WSLE in developing and improving
students’ autonomous learning ability [MA11.txt].

Just as Huang and Yang pointed out, very little empirical word on backwash effects had been conducted in China,
although it was acknowledged that such an influential test as NMET would definitely exert tremendous impact on
language teaching and learning in China's high schools [MA05.txt].

It is certainly true that local struggles, intellectual developments, and institutional convenience ensure that boundaries are
never stable or objects of study immutable [PhD07.txt].

The noticeable decrease in boosters in the PhD corpus indicate that PhD students, after having received certain
amounts of academic training, boosted less frequently compared to when they were MA students. This finding is
supported by a previous study which compared master's and doctoral applied linguistics students’ use of boosters (Qiu
and Ma, 2019). The decline in boosting, as Qiu and Ma (2019) argue, points to more disciplinary enculturation and is part
of the developmental trajectory towards more skilled and proficient writing in the academic community (Crosthwaite, 2016;
Crosthwaite and Jiang, 2017). In addition, the doctoral students tended to use more verbs and fewer adjectives or adverbs
in their boosting. This is in line with previous findings (Biber, 2006; Hyland, 2005) which assert that advanced writers tend
10 B. Wu, B. Paltridge / Lingua 253 (2021) 103071

to use verbs to boost their or others’ claims whereas less proficient writers are inclined to highlight information via such
adjectives or adverbs as clear/clearly.
Despite the development in terms of boosters, students at the PhD level, just like at the master's level, still overused some
boosters (e.g., certain/certainly, definite/definitely) and overly stressed certainty towards their and others’ propositions. This
does not conform to writing norms, as advanced writers typically avoid overgeneralized and forceful stance features (Aull and
Lancaster, 2014). This could be due to a lack of awareness or conscious practice, as in the EFL context, students’ exposure to
English academic discourse is relatively lower compared to English medium instruction contexts or L1 contexts. Chinese
postgraduate students would read research articles and monographs published in Chinese as well as in English, and many of
them may choose Chinese-medium journals to submit manuscripts to (Lei and Jiang, 2019). Thus, even though they are
exposed to certain amounts of academic discourse, doctoral students, as novice writers, still face the insufficiency of reading
and writing practice in order to appropriately interact with the international disciplinary community. Another possible reason
might be the influence of Chinese academic rhetorical transfer (Hu and Cao, 2011). Chinese academic discourse features
authority and truth assertion instead of knowledge negotiation, and even experienced Chinese applied linguistics writers
publishing in English-medium journals might display a tendency to use more boosters than their Anglo-American counterparts
(Hu and Cao, 2011). In this regard, the postgraduate students, as developing members of the academic community, are
vulnerable to rhetorical transfer and might boost inappropriately in their dissertations.

4.3. Cross-corpus comparison of attitude markers

As shown in Fig. 3, the occurrences of attitude markers between the MA dissertations and PhD theses are similar
across each section of the text (roughly between 2 and 3 per 1000 words), with MA dissertations demonstrating slightly
more attitude markers in most sections except the results and discussion, and conclusion. This is in line with Qiu and Ma's
study (2019), which suggests that PhD theses employ significantly fewer attitude markers than MA dissertations.
Despite similar frequencies between the corpora, the students’ choice of lexical items shows, however, a different
picture (see Table 7). The MA dissertations predominantly employed three terms: important, appropriate, and expected,
which account for nearly 54% of all occurrences. In comparison, the three items in the PhD theses account for 45%,
making for a small drop in the PhD corpora. This suggests that the PhD theses relied on a slightly wider set of attitude
markers although the two corpora shared the most used terms.
The following are examples of commonly used attitude markers in the two corpora.

It is very important for the students, especially English majors to revise it by himself as well as with the help of the teacher
and peers after the first draft. The most important factor in this process is the revision of the passage [MA07.txt].

Fig. 3. Frequency of attitude markers in MA and PhD corpus.

Table 7
Commonly used attitude markers in the corpora.

MA Corpus PhD Corpus

Linguistic term Proportion Linguistic term Proportion

important 32.77% important 25.29%

appropriate 11.40% appropriate 11.04%
expected 9.59% expected 8.67%
53.76% 45%
 B. Wu, B. Paltridge / Lingua 253 (2021) 103071 11

This analysis is appropriate when the mean values of two independent groups are to be compared [PhD17.txt].

However, it is essential for such assessments to be given in an atmosphere of support and warm solidarity, so that they
feel that the teacher's motive is honestly to promote and encourage their learning, not to push them down [PhD18.txt].

Compared with students at the master's level who relied on a limited range of vocabulary items to express attitude,
students at the PhD level chose a slightly wider range of such linguistic devices. Also, it was found that stance markers
which enabled the writers to express their attitude towards propositions were principally used in the results and discussion
and conclusion sections to signal attitudes towards their findings or contributions of their study, and to imply limitations of
the present study and directions for further research work. However, as opposed to Qiu and Ma's (2019) research, which
found that master's students predominantly used attitudinal expressions in their literature review section to reinforce
other's views in order to demonstrate knowledge and align with their academic community, the current study found that
Chinese students at both stages of academic training showed a similar focus with regards to dissertation sections. This
cross-corpus comparison reveals a developmental trajectory from MA to PhD in terms of attitude expression, suggesting
that students gradually learn to make appropriate statements or evaluations concerning claims or research findings, and
to conform to academic writing norms as they progress (Crosthwaite and Jiang, 2017; Hyland, 2005a).

4.4. Cross-corpus comparison of self-mentions

A comparison of self-mentions is shown in Fig. 4. It can be seen that there is an overall decreasing trend in the use of
self-mentions from MA dissertations to PhD theses, which suggests that students at the doctoral level employed fewer
self-mentions than they did at the master's level. The only exception to this is the results and discussion sections, where
PhD student writers used more self-mentions than MA writers. It is also interesting that in MA dissertations self-mentions
were mostly found in methods, results and discussion and conclusion sections whereas the PhD student writers, after
several years of doctoral training, tended to employ self-mentions in the results and discussion section.
This finding contrasts with previous research (Hyland and Tse, 2004; Qiu and Ma, 2019), which asserts that as writers
become more proficient, they are more comfortable in self-assertion through the use of self-mentions. However, stance
making, as a crucial part of the writers’ rhetorical knowledge and practice, is deeply influenced by the writers’ language
proficiency, writing skills, context of writing, and native rhetorical transfer (e.g., Connor, 1996; Hyland, 2002; Hu and Cao,
2011). Different native language backgrounds (Qiu and Ma, 2019) and writing contexts (Hyland and Tse, 2004) are all
possible factors in the divergence in students’ progression in terms of self-mentions, and further detailed analysis of the
use of self-mentions is still needed.
Table 8 indicates that both corpora concentrated on the use of I and exclusive we in self-mentions, with over 60 percent
of self-mention occurrences in each corpus. Yet it could be seen that when students progressed from the MA to the PhD,
they tended to rely less on the exclusive we (26.56% vs. 20.71%) and more on the use of I (35.56% vs. 42.93%). This
progression regarding the use of I and exclusive we is echoed in Qiu and Ma's (2019) study. Additionally, the over reliance
and misuse of we has also been found in dissertation writing (Lee and Casal, 2014; Qiu and Ma, 2019) and research article
writing (Junnier, 2020; Wang and Lu, 2017).
Below are examples of self-mentions in the two corpora:

When I asked them to tell me about their experiences as English learners, it turned out that they had a lot in common
[MA16.txt].

Fig. 4. Frequency of self-mentions in the MA and PhD corpora.

12 B. Wu, B. Paltridge / Lingua 253 (2021) 103071

Table 8
Commonly used self-mentions in the corpora.

MA Corpus PhD Corpus

Linguistic term Proportion Linguistic term Proportion

I 35.56% I 42.93%
we 26.56% we 20.71%
the author 9.64% the author 8.47%

As we have mentioned earlier, there were 593 students participating in the experiment. But when we administered the
questionnaire survey, 13 students were absent from class. Consequently, 582 questionnaires were given out and
collected in class time. The researcher got back 555 valid questionnaires [MA11.txt].

Specifically, we present the conclusions of the study in section 7.1. Section 7.2 provides some implications for
pedagogical purposes. Finally, in section 7.3, we talk about the limitations and suggestions for further research [MA10.txt].

In this chapter, I will summarize the major findings and make observations to recap the main arguments put forward in the
dissertation. And I will offer some reflections on the key arguments of the dissertation and comment briefly on the
pedagogical implications and some possible future directions [PhD07.txt].

We can summarize by saying that mother tongue transfer does exit; however, while we are in favour of linguistic creativity,
we take the view that we should not neglect positive transfer which facilitates foreign language learning, nor focus too
much nor too often on negative L1 transfer, which will result in a distressing environment for foreign language learning
[PhD17.txt].

The master's students used we in numerous contexts to refer to the researcher. However, there seems to be a
tendency of misuse, especially in methods and conclusion sections. This is shown in the second excerpt above, where the
first we and the second we offer confusing information, referring to both readers and unknown researchers besides the
author. The third excerpt adds to the evidence of master students’ misuse of we. As dissertations and theses are normally
conducted individually, the use of exclusive we in dissertations and theses, especially in methods and conclusion
sections, is somewhat misleading and should be taken care of to avoid confusion. As is indicated in previous cross-
cultural and cross-linguistic comparisons of self-mentions (Çandarlı et al., 2015; Hyland, 2002; Lee and Casal, 2014;
Wang and Lu, 2017), L2 student writers tended to avoid the first person singular pronoun (I) in order to be less assertive in
their writing and resort to the exclusive we. One potential reason is that L2 students are taught in their academic writing
courses not to use I in English essays, and that they resort to the exclusive we in their writing as a result of classroom
instruction or peer communication (Çandarlı et al., 2015; Lee and Casal, 2014; Wang and Lu, 2017). Another possible
explanation is that students, especially those with a lack of confidence in self-assertion, perceived low status in academia
and less disciplinary enculturation, tended to avoid the use of I (Tang and John, 1999). As a result of their insufficient
writing skills to hide the authorial voice in their writing, and possible native rhetorical transfer, they make the inappropriate
decision to use we instead (Biber, 2006; Tang and John, 1999).
In contrast, at the PhD level, student writers are generally able to avoid the exclusive we and pay attention to the use of I
as shown in the fourth excerpt above. Even though student writers at this stage still make occasional mistakes, as shown
in the fifth excerpt, the general trend is that with doctoral training, they have developed the awareness of avoiding the
misuse of the exclusive we. In addition, the higher frequency of I seems to suggest that student writers have become more
comfortable in using I to reinforce authoritativeness (Hyland, 2004; Qiu and Ma, 2019).
In addition, as shown in Table 2 and Fig. 4, MA dissertations employed a higher frequency of self-mentions than
doctoral theses across all sections except for the results and discussion sections. The overall less use of self-mention
markers in the PhD corpus suggests that, as argued by Crosthwaite and Jiang (2017), with more academic training, thesis
writers are less likely to include overt self-mention devices in their writing than MA students. This finding is also supported
by studies comparing student writers and experienced writers (Crosthwaite et al., 2017; Hyland, 2002) and studies
comparing L2 and native writers (Lee and Casal, 2014). One possible reason for this is that PhD students, being more
aware of their lower position on the academic ladder and more sensitive to the potential readers of their work (i.e. their
thesis examiners), strive to downplay their role in writing and avoid speaking as an authority (Hyland, 2002; Tang and
John, 1999). Yet one minor point is that in the results and discussion section, the doctoral theses demonstrated a higher
frequency of self-mention markers than the MA dissertations. Writing the results and discussion sections necessitates the
 B. Wu, B. Paltridge / Lingua 253 (2021) 103071 13

presence of authorial voice as writers need to report results, evaluate and interpret findings, and claim scholarly
contribution to the disciplinary community (Cotos et al., 2016; Junnier, 2020). In the Chinese educational context, such
expectations are much higher for PhD theses as doctoral students are required to write more detailed and refined results
and discussion sections so as to demonstrate the novelty of their research, their ability to conduct in-depth analysis, and
their contributions to knowledge advancement and human practice. In contrast, many MA dissertations in China primarily
focus on the validity and reliability of the empirical study, requiring less investment in thorough discussion regarding the
theoretical perspectives of the research. This may explain the higher frequency of self-mentions in the PhD theses.
Despite this, the overall trend is that the doctoral students tend to hide overt authorial positioning in writing, as is the
practice for some experienced writers (Crosthwaite et al., 2017; Hyland, 2002; Junnier, 2020; Lee and Casal, 2014).
In sum, the study analysed stance making between MA dissertations and PhD theses. It was found that, compared to
their MA dissertations, student writers with doctoral training demonstrated modest progress in stance making.
Specifically, they boosted less in their doctoral theses, but still showed inappropriate uses of boosting items. Furthermore,
in terms of attitude markers, the MA dissertations and PhD theses shared similar frequencies, but instead of overly relying
on limited markers, PhD theses chose from a wider set of linguistic resources to express their attitude towards
propositions. The findings in general, then, are in line with previous research (Aull and Lancaster, 2014; Biber, 2006;
Thompson and Hunston, 2000). Analysis of the use of self-mentions, however, suggests that Chinese PhD student writers
demonstrate an increased ability to reinforce authoritativeness (Hyland, 2004).

5. Conclusion

The study described in this paper built two corpora (an MA corpus and a PhD corpus) to investigate how student writers
employ stance feature in PhD theses compared with their MA dissertations in the Chinese context, and endeavoured to
capture the developmental trajectory from MA program to PhD study in this regard. It was found that, compared with their
MA dissertations, students at the PhD stage demonstrated modest progress in stance making. They employed fewer
boosters and displayed a wider set of attitude markers in their doctoral writing. Additionally, PhD students demonstrated
an increased ability to assert positions.
One limitation of the study, however, is the scope of the data. Despite efforts made to collect pairs of MA and PhD
dissertations, a limited number of pairs were obtained due to students having changed their majors and the small numbers
of PhD theses available on the database (China National Knowledge Infrastructure). In addition, some of dissertations
accessed via China National Knowledge Infrastructure were completed some years ago and the most recent ones were
limited in number. This runs the risk of not fully reflecting the latest development in students’ writing skills and instruction.
Future studies are recommended to include a larger and more representative sample size to explore stance features in
Chinese students’ thesis and dissertation writing. Another limitation of the study is that the influence of revision and
supervision on students’ stance making was not explored. As stance making may be more attributable to the revision
process than academic preparation and supervisors may also influence the use of stance in the revision process, future
studies are recommended to include drafts and finalised versions and to investigate such influence on stance making in
postgraduate writing.
The present research has implications for academic writing instruction in the Chinese context, in our view. It is
suggested that academic advisors or writing instructors raise student writers’ awareness, explain relevant concepts in
class, and offer feedback concerning stance making (Crosthwaite et al., 2017; Crosthwaite and Jiang, 2017; Hyland,
2005a). Specifically, academic writing instructors could incorporate the concept of stance into their teaching syllabus and
explicitly explain the concept of stance and how stance is made in academic texts. In addition, as stance making can be
influenced by cultural, linguistic and disciplinary differences (e.g., Hu and Cao, 2001; Hyland, 2002), second language
instructors are encouraged to consider the student group and compare such rhetorical differences in class through
lectures, tutorials and student activties. It is argued that with such knowledge of rhetorical conventions in their specific
disciplines, and the difference in stance making between their home publications and international publications, EFL
student writers can better make informed decisions in choosing stance features and produce writing which is rhetorically
appropriate in their own disciplines.

Appendix A. List of dissertation and thesis titles

PhD theses

1. New horizons in MALL pedagogy: Exploring tertiary EFL teachers’ beliefs and practices in the hinterland of the
People's Republic of China
2. Automated essay scoring in the formative assessment of Chinese EFL college students’ writing -- An exploratory study
14 B. Wu, B. Paltridge / Lingua 253 (2021) 103071

3. A study examining the interculturalness of university adjustment: Insights into and dimensions of college stress and
adjustment of Chinese students
4. On the local grammar of overall evaluation in English movie reviews
5. A study on the washback effects of TEM
6. Validation of a computer adaptive reading test
7. Critical stance and evaluation in Chinese students’ L2 English and Anglo-American dissertations: A contrastive
academic discourse study
8. Assessment construct in foreign language teaching: The case of Chinese assessors of high-stake exam essays
written in English
9. A study on the relationship between language learning anxiety and learning strategy use of university students in the
computer-based environment
10. A study of Chinese FL learners’ English vocabulary development in oral production
11. Towards a pedagogy for learner autonomy among Chinese tertiary EFL learners through self-access
12. Developing learner autonomy and language speaking proficiency through LAP class -- A project-based research at a
secondary school in China
13. On effectiveness of CBI in improving maritime major students’ English proficiency and learning motivation -- A
research based on the survey in Dalian Ocean University
14. Getting started with learners: A study of the relationship between personality traits, language learning strategies and
language performance
15. Form-meaning connections in SLA and the determinants -- Evidence from Chinese learners’ use of the simple past tense
16. The efficacy of grammar error correction on the writing of Chinese EFL learners: An empirical study
17. Study on Chinese advanced EFL learners’ language: Formulaic language and linguistic creativity
18. The interlanguage pragmatic competence of English majors and its development model in ethnic universities -- A case
study of Beifang Ethnic University
19. The constructional changes of English marginal auxiliaries
20. Questioning sequences and the extension of learning space: Action research in an English majors’ intensive reading
class

Master's dissertations

1. Cooperative learning applied in helping college students cultivate and develop their autonomous learning -- Case
studies of freshmen majoring in science
2. Exploring scoring methods in assessing different types of writing tasks
3. Investigating the intercultural adaptation of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan students studying in Shanghai's
universities
4. Representational deficits in L2 Morphosyntax: Evidence from English Subject-verb Agreement
5. National Matriculation English Test and its backwash effects
6. An empirical study on the corpus-based strategy of vocabulary learning in a second language
7. The study of Chinese English majors’ compositions -- From a perspective of cultural transfer
8. A corpus-based contrastive study on hedging in international English learners’ written language -- A study on English
learners from six different mother tongue backgrounds
9. An investigation of students’ English learning anxiety in Chinese senior middle schools
10. The development of Chinese EFL learners’ productive vocabulary
11. An investigation into students’ learning strategies and learning outcomes in the web-based self-access learning
environment -- An experiment on college English listening reform
12. A study on oral English teaching on elementary level based on behaviorist learning theory
13. Genre analysis on abstracts from systemic-functional approach
14. A study on null subjects in Chinese speakers’ acquisition of English
15. Chinese learners’ acquisition of two English tenses and the effects of temporal expressions on the use of the two
tenses
16. Grammar error correction in Chinese students’ English writing
17. On learning strategy teaching in developing non-English majors’ spoken English proficiency
18. Metacognitive strategy instruction in English vocabulary learning
19. A corpus-based panchronic study on semi-auxiliaries
20. Applications of prototype theory in lexical analysis
 B. Wu, B. Paltridge / Lingua 253 (2021) 103071 15

Appendix B. Typical stance items (Hyland, 2005a)

Attitude markers Boosters Self-mention Hedges

Admittedly Actually I About
Agree Always We Almost
Agrees Believe Me Apparent
Agreed Believed My Apparently
Amazed Beyond doubt Our Appear
Amazing Certain Mine Appeared
Amazingly Certainly Us Appears
Appropriate Clear The author Approximately
Appropriately Clearly The author's Around
Astonished Conclusively The writer Assume
Astonishing Decidedly The writer's Assumed
Astonishingly Definite Certain amount
Correctly Definitely Certain extent
Curious Demonstrate Certain level
Curiously Demonstrated Claim
Desirable Doubtless Claimed
Desirably Establish Could
Disappointed Established Couldn’t
Disappointing Evident Doubt
Disappointingly Evidently Doubtful
Disagree Find Essentially
Disagrees Found Estimate
Disagreed In fact Estimated
Dramatic Incontestable Feel
Dramatically Incontestably Felt
Essential Incontrovertible Frequently
Essentially Incontrovertibly From our perspective
Even X Indeed Generally
Expected Indisputable Guess
Expectedly Indisputably In general
Fortunate Know In most cases
Fortunately Known In most instances
Hopeful Must (possibility) In our view
Hopefully Never Indicate
Important No doubt Indicated
Importantly Obvious Largely
Inappropriate Obviously Likely
Inappropriately Of course Mainly
Interesting Prove May
Interestingly Proved Maybe
Prefer Realize Might
Preferable Realized Mostly
Preferably Really Often
Preferred Show On the whole
Remarkable Shown Ought
Remarkably Sure Perhaps
Shocked Surely Plausible
Shocking Truly Plausibly
Shockingly True Possible
Striking Undeniable Possibly
Strikingly Undeniably Postulate
16 B. Wu, B. Paltridge / Lingua 253 (2021) 103071

Surprised Undisputedly postulated

Surprising Undoubtedly Presumable
Surprisingly Without doubt Probable
Unbelievable Believes Probably
Unbelievably Demonstrates Relatively
Understandable Finds Roughly
Understandably Proves Seems
Unexpected Realizes Should
Unexpectedly Shows Sometimes
Unfortunate Showed Somewhat
Unfortunately Think Suggest
Unusual Thinks Suggested
Unusually Thought Suppose
Usual Suspect
Tend to
Tends to
Typical
Typically
Uncertain
Uncertainly
Unclear
Unclearly
Unlikely
Usually
Would
Wouldn’t
Broadly
Tended to
Presumably
Suggests
From this perspective
From my perspective
In my view
In this view
In our opinion
In my opinion
To my knowledge
Fairly
Quite
Rather x
Argue
Argues
Argued
Claims
Feels
Indicates
Supposed
Supposes
Suspects
Postulates
 B. Wu, B. Paltridge / Lingua 253 (2021) 103071 17

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