A Contrastive Study of Qualification Devices in Native and Non-Native Argumentative Texts in English.

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This paper presents results from a contrastive study of qualification devices used in a 400,000-word corpus of English argumentative texts, written by English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) Spanish university students, U.S. university students, and native professional writers (newspaper editorials in English). The study attempted to account for the great differences between native and non-native texts in regard to use of the modal verbs “can,” “could,” “may,” “might,” and “must.” The study also proposed reasons for why overor underuse should occur in the EFL texts as compared to the professional editorial texts. Results indicated that some of the problems Spanish writers experienced may have been due to discourse differences between Spanish and English (first language factors). The study confirmed differences that appeared in previous research in relation to the discourse conventions used in constructing writer stance. The overuse by Spanish writers of “we can” and “we must” followed by verbs of mental and verbal processes suggested a transfer of politeness strategies from the Spanish academic context. In regard to reporting verbs as a qualification device, results revealed that the total tokens were similar, but the frequencies for individual verbs varied notably. (Contains 29 references.) (SM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. A contrastive study of qualification devices in native and non-native argumentative texts in English 2001 AAAL Conference: Discourse Analysis-written cr) JoAnne Neff (fling 1 0@emducms 1 . sis.ucm. es) Li) Francisco Martinez and Juan Pedro Rica, Universidad Complutense, Madrid’ W 1. Qualification devices and writer stance This paper, part of the work for a project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education (BFF2000-0699CO2-012), presents the results of a contrastive study of qualification devices used in a 400,000-word corpus of English argumentative texts, written by EFL Spanish university students, American university students, and native professional writers (newspaper editorials in English). By qualification, we mean the type of evidentiality (source of knowledge) that Palmer (1986) has included within modality. By devices, we mean the grammatical and lexical means used to construct writer stance, defined as “…the positioning of a social agent with respect to alignment, power, knowledge, belief, evidence, affect and other socially salient categories” (Du Bois, 2000). Teachers of academic writing have long noted that Basic Writers of English as a first language (L1) and writers of English as a Second Language (ESL) or as a Foreign Language (EFL) frequently experience difficulty in establishing writer stance for the propositions they put forth. Many years ago, Shaughnessy (1977: 240) noted that one of the major tasks for the Basic Writer (BW) of English (L1) is to develop “an understanding of the expectations and needs of the academic or professional audience”. She further pointed to the “many evidences in BW papers of the egocentricity of the apprentice writer, an orientation that is reflected in the assumption that the reader understands what is going on in the writer’s mind and needs therefore no introductions or transitions or explanations”. Upon analyzing EFL texts from the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE), Petch-Tyson (1998) found that the four EFL groups studied (Dutch, Belgian French, Finnish and Swedish) used more indicators of high personal, writer-reader visibility, such as first-and-second person pronouns, than did the American university writers. A close examination of the concordance lines of these texts revealed that the native writers’ use of I appeared in chains of past-tense sentences which recounted personal experiences. The non-native writers, on the other hand, used the first person pronoun for interactive functions involved in managing the flow of information (I can take the example of) or in order to insert the writer’s opinion or evaluation (I said, I think that). For more than two decades, researchers in fields such as discourse analysis and applied linguistics (Hoey 1979, 1983; Jordan 1984) have studied various forms of propositional (ideational) coherence in the construction of the discourses of different disciplines. Until more recently, however, relatively little work has been carried out in analyzing interpersonal interaction, including the use of politeness strategies (Cherry 1988; Meyers 1989; Hyland 2000), of attribution and of evaluative coherence 1 Other members of the Research team are Emma Dafouz and Honesto Herrera of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid; Mercedes Diez, of the Universidad de Alcala; Rosa Prieto, E.O.I., Madrid; and, Carmen Sancho, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid. 2 Contrastive Analysis of the Expression of Evidentiality in English and Spanish: A Corpus Study of Argumentative Texts Written by Englishand Spanish-speaking University Students. PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY BEST COPY AVAILABLE 2 Joann TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. 0 Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. (Hunston 1994; Hunston and Thompson 2000). The latter approaches show more concernwith the interpersonal function, in that they focus on the roles writers assume in conducting interaction with their readers rather than on supporting the validity of a proposition. With a few exceptions (Hinkel 1997; Thompson 2001; Thompson and Thetela 1995; Neff, Dafouz, Diez, Herrera, Martinez, Prieto, Rica and Sancho in press), many of these more recent types of analyses have not yet been applied to non-native texts. The present study, based on a corpus analysis, has a two-fold purpose. The first has to do with the signaling of writer-reader interaction. We attempt to account for the_great differences between native and non-native texts in regard to the use of the modal verbs can, could, may, might and must. If the student texts show more or less use of these verbs, in what way does their use differ from that of the professional writers? The second purpose of the study is to propose reasons for why this over-or underuse should occur in the EFL texts, as compared to the professional editorial texts. In a previous study (Neff, Dafouz, Diez, Herrera, Martinez, Prieto, Rica and Sancho in press), we maintained that the overuse of modals such as can and could and the underuse of may and might was due, in great measure, to two factors: typological mismatch between the Ll and the L2, and the transfer of discourse conventions from the Ll to the L2. In the present study, we address the latter factor once again but relate it to the characteristics of novice writers, native and non-native, as compared to those seen in the editorial texts of professional writers. 2. A Comparison of Modal and Reporting verbs: Spanish university writers (NNS), American university writers (NS) In another study (Neff, et al., forthcoming), we examined certain modals of probability and reporting verbs as used by Spanish EFL university students (NNS) and American university students (NS) to construct writer stance (Biber & Finnegan, 1989; Biber & Finnegan, 1988). The Spanish L2 writers’ texts came from the International Corpus of Learner English, a corpus held at Louvain-le-Neuve and to which we have contributed as the Spanish participants. The American university writers’ texts came from the LOCNESS corpus (argumentative texts written by British and American students), also held at Louvain. In that study, the findings for the two groups in regards to modal verbs showed significant differences in the uses of can, may, and might, but not of could, as shown in Figure 1 below. The NNSs overused can (882 tokens) in comparison to NSs (514 tokens), while there was a NNS under-use of the three other verbs: could (NS, 290 vs. NNS, 273), may (NS, 196 vs. NNS, 108 ), and might (NS, 48 vs. NNS, 18).