Cover not available

Article published In: International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
Vol. 22:1 (2017) ► pp.57–84

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

The importance of, it is important that or importantly?

The use of morphologically related stance markers in learner and expert writing

 | Uppsala University
Published online: 28 July 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.22.1.03lar
Abstract
The ability to successfully position oneself in relation to one’s claims through the use of stance markers is of central importance for academic writers. This study, which uses data from one expert corpus (LOCRA) and three learner corpora (ALEC, VESPA and BATMAT), investigates the use of morphologically related stance markers that occur in different syntactic constructions (such as possibly, the possibility of and it is possible that). In doing so, it examines to what extent lexis, level of expertise in academic writing and L1 transfer influence the distribution of the different realizations of stance under investigation. The results show that all three variables are important predictors. In addition, differences pertaining to information structure are found to influence the distribution of two largely synonymous constructions (disjuncts and the introductory it pattern). The findings suggest that there are principled explanations for why one construction is used instead of another functionally similar construction.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous research on stance marking
  • 3.Corpora and method
    • 3.1Corpora
    • 3.2Method
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Stance marking across the three grammatical realizations
      • 4.1.1Lexical influence
      • 4.1.2Level of expertise in academic writing and L1 transfer
    • 4.2The introductory it pattern vs. disjuncts
      • 4.2.1Establishing a basis for comparison
      • 4.2.2The distribution of variants
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (33)
References
Anthony, L. (2014). AntConc (Version 3.4.3) [Computer Software]. Tokyo: Waseda University. Retrieved from [URL] (last accessed February 2017).
Biber, D. (2006a). Stance in spoken and written university registers. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 5(2), 97–116. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Charles, M. (2003). ‘This mystery…’: A corpus-based study of the use of nouns to construct stance in theses from two contrasting disciplines. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2(4), 313–326. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Conrad, S., & Biber, D. (2000). Adverbial marking of stance in speech and writing. In S. Hunston & G. Thompson (Eds.), Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse (pp. 56–73). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Davies, M. (2008). The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): 520 Million Words, 1990-present. Available online at [URL] (last accessed February 2017).
Fox, J., & Hong, J. (2009). Effect displays in R for Multinomial and Proportional-odds logit models: Extensions to the Effects package. Journal of Statistical Software, 32(1), 1–24. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gries, S. T. (2013). Statistics for Linguistics with R: A Practical Introduction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Groom, N. (2005). Pattern and meaning across genres and disciplines: An exploratory study. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 4(3), 257–277. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hacker, D., & Sommers, N. I. (2014). The Bedford Handbook (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. (1994). An Introduction to Functional Grammar (2nd ed.). London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hasselgård, H. (2009). Thematic choice and expressions of stance in English argumentative texts by Norwegian learners. In K. Aijmer (Ed.), Corpora and Language Teaching (pp. 121–139). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hatzitheodorou, A.-M., & Mattheoudakis, M. (2009). “It is more than true that television reproduces life”: The effect of Greek rhetorical conventions on Greek learners’ academic writing in English. In T. Tsangalidis (Ed.), Selected Papers from the 18th International Symposium on Theoretical and Applied Linguistics (pp. 167–176). Thessaloniki: Monochromia.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Herriman, J. (2013). The extraposition of clausal subjects in English and Swedish. In K. Aijmer & B. Altenberg (Eds.), Advances in Corpus-based Contrastive Linguistics: Studies in Honor of Stig Johansson (pp. 233–260). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Herriman, J., & Boström Aronsson (2009). Themes in Swedish advanced learners’ writing in English. In K. Aijmer (Ed.), Corpora and Language Teaching (pp. 101–120). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hunston, S., & Sinclair J. (2000). A local grammar of evaluation. In S. Hunston & G. Thompson (Eds.), Evaluation in text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse (pp. 74–101). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hunston, S., & Thompson, G. (Eds.). (2000). Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hyland, K. (2005). Stance and engagement: A model of interaction in academic discourse. Discourse Studies, 7(2), 173–192. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Koehn, P. (2005). Europarl: A parallel corpus for statistical machine translation. In Conference Proceedings: The Tenth Machine Translation Summit (MT Summit X) (pp. 9–86). Phuket, Thailand.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Larsson, T. (2014, January). Introducing the Advanced Learner English Corpus (ALEC): A new learner corpus. Poster presented at the 2014 LOT Winter School, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
(2016). The introductory it pattern: Variability explored in learner and expert writing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 22(2016), 64–79. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(forthcoming). A syntactic analysis of the introductory it pattern in non-native-speaker and native-speaker student writing. In M. Mahlberg & V. Wiegand (Eds.), Corpus Linguistics, Context and Culture. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
(under review). A functional classification of the introductory it pattern: Investigating academic writing by non-native-speaker and native-speaker students.
Lindgrén, S -A. (2015). The BATMAT Corpus Version 1.1. English Language and Literature, Åbo Akademi University, Åbo.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
LOCRA (Louvain Corpus of Research Articles) [Corpus]. Louvain-la-Neuve: Centre for English Corpus Linguistics, Université catholique de Louvain. Available online at [URL] (last accessed February 2017).
Martin, J. R., & White, P. R. R. (2005). The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Neff, J., Ballesteros, F., Dafouz, E., Martínez, F., & Rica, J.-P. (2003). Formulating writer stance: A contrastive study of EFL learner corpora. In D. Archer, P. Rayson, A. Wilson & T. McEnery (Eds.), Proceedings of the Corpus Linguistics 2003 Conference. UCREL Technical Papers 16 (pp. 562–571). Lancaster University: UCREL.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Paquot, M., Hasselgård, H., & Oksefjell Ebeling, S. (2013). Writer/reader visibility in learner writing across genres: A comparison of the French and Norwegian components of the ICLE and VESPA learner corpora. In S. Granger, G. Gilquin & F. Meunier (Eds.), Twenty Years of Learner Corpus Research: Looking Back, Moving Ahead (pp. 377–388). Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses universitaires de Louvain.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
R Core Team (2015). R: A language and environment for statistical computing [Computer software]. Vienna, R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Retrieved from [URL] (last accessed November 2016).
Sinclair, J. (1991). Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (9)

Cited by nine other publications

Larsson, Tove, Marcus Callies, Tülay Dixon, Hilde Hasselgård, Nicole Hober, Natalia Judith Laso, Sanne van Vuuren, Isabel Verdaguer & Magali Paquot
2025. Adverb placement in L1 and L2 spoken production. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 30:1 ► pp. 79 ff. DOI logo
Guerra Lyons, Jesús David & Valentina Concu
2024. Academic writing and identity: evaluative discourse in academic papers across cohorts of 20th century linguists. Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics 10:1 ► pp. 93 ff. DOI logo
Yue, Chunxiao
2024. We make viewpoints in different ways: the use of stance adverbials across academic levels and disciplines. Cogent Arts & Humanities 11:1 DOI logo
Pyykönen, Maria
2023. Exploring patterns of lexical variation in the use of epistemic stance markers in written L2 English across task types and levels of proficiency. International Journal of Learner Corpus Research 9:2 ► pp. 215 ff. DOI logo
Larsson, Tove
2022. Grammatical stance marking across registers. Register Studies ► pp. 243 ff. DOI logo
Larsson, Tove & Henrik Kaatari
2022. Extraposition in learner and expert writing. International Journal of Learner Corpus Research ► pp. 33 ff. DOI logo
Hasselgård, Hilde
2021. Attribution in novice academic writing. English Text Construction 14:2 ► pp. 203 ff. DOI logo
Larsson, Tove, Marcus Callies, Hilde Hasselgård, Natalia Judith Laso, Sanne van Vuuren, Isabel Verdaguer & Magali Paquot
2020. Adverb placement in EFL academic writing. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 25:2 ► pp. 156 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Conjunctive Markers of Contrast in English and French [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 99], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue