(PDF) “So and so” says, states and argues: A corpus-assisted engagement analysis of reporting verbs

(PDF) “So and so” says, states and argues: A corpus-assisted engagement analysis of reporting verbs
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“So and so” says, states and argues: A corpus-assisted engagement analysis of reporting verbs
Sharyn Black
2019, Journal of Second Language Writing
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Abstract
A key feature of academic texts is the heteroglossic interaction that occurs between the writer and the experts he/she references. When integrating outside experts into their texts, writers often employ integral, author prominent reporting structures, selecting reporting verbs (RVs) to evaluate the veracity and merit of the propositions. This paper examines EAL and English L1 learners' RV use and compares it with that of experts, providing a corpus-assisted, comparative analysis. It further explores how writers build intertextuality through these RV choices. Using the resources of Appraisal theory, and specifically, the Engagement system, we found that experts tend to favor dialogically contracting RVs (e.g., show and find) that endorse the proposition whereas learners rely heavily on expanding RVs that entertain the evidence as an option to consider (e.g., suggest) or simply attribute it to an outside expert (e.g., state). In particular, both the EAL and English L1 learners strongly rely upon more "neutral" attribute: acknowledge structures (e.g., state, according to), providing no overt indication as to their intersubjective stance on the evidence. These comparative findings provide a roadmap for novice writers to develop authorial stance and adapt to the expert conventions of their given fields.
Key takeaways
AI
Experts favor dialogically contracting reporting verbs (RVs) to assert propositions, while learners primarily use expanding RVs.
The study compares reporting verb usage between English as an Additional Language (EAL) and English as a First Language (L1) learners against experts.
Experts utilize RVs 1.8 times more frequently than learners, indicating a disparity in citation density.
Both learner groups predominantly use neutral attributive RVs, showing limited engagement with the evidence's stance.
Focused instruction on reporting verbs can enhance learners' authorial voice and integration of expert perspectives.
Figures (9)
Fig. 1. RV examples mapped onto Martin and White’s (2005, p. 181) Engagement system.
EAL and English L1 learners’ ten most frequent RVs (normalized per 1000 words). Table 3
Learner and Expert Corpus Information. Table 1
EAL Participants’ Language Backgrounds.
Most frequent ten RVs (normalized per 1000 words).
find. There is little variation between the ways these two RVs are used in the EC and LC. (e.g., research has shown, This study found that...), as illustrated in Excerpts 1-4.
Fig. 4. ENGAGEMENT resources employed by the EAL and English L1 learners. One final angle of exploration here is EAL learners’ use of stance as compared to English L1 learners. Overall, both the EAL and English L1 learners most frequently rely on attribute: acknowledge (i.e., 41% and 45%, respectively) and proclaim: endorse RVs (i.e., 34% and 40%). Similarly, both groups of learners deploy entertain RVs 12% of the time. The key difference between the two subgroups of the LC, however, is their reliance on proclaim: pronounce. As illustrated in Fig. 4, the EAL learners deploy proclaim: pronounce RVs with a greater proportion than the English L1 learners and the EC (i.e., 13% as compared to 3% and 6%, respectively). Of the top 20 RVs, the EAL learners deploy three different proclaim: pronounce RVs (i.e., argue, recommend, and emphasize) whereas the English L1 learners and the EC only deploy one, argue. Comparably, the English L1 learners rely more heavily on attribute: acknowledge and proclaim: endorse RVs.
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Journal of Second Language Writing 44 (2019) 37–50

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Second Language Writing
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jslw

“So and so” says, states and argues: A corpus-assisted engagement
analysis of reporting verbs
Cassi L. Liardéta, , Sharyn Blackb

Macquarie University, Faculty of Human Sciences, Department of Linguistics, 12 Second Way, New South Wales, 2109, Australia
University of New South Wales, UNSW Business School, 1038 Quadrangle Building, New South Wales, 2052 Australia

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: A key feature of academic texts is the heteroglossic interaction that occurs between the writer
Reporting verbs and the experts he/she references. When integrating outside experts into their texts, writers often
Intertextuality employ integral, author prominent reporting structures, selecting reporting verbs (RVs) to
Referencing evaluate the veracity and merit of the propositions. This paper examines EAL and English L1
Stance
learners’ RV use and compares it with that of experts, providing a corpus-assisted, comparative
Engagement
Appraisal theory
analysis. It further explores how writers build intertextuality through these RV choices. Using the
Academic discourse resources of Appraisal theory, and specifically, the Engagement system, we found that experts
tend to favor dialogically contracting RVs (e.g., show and find) that endorse the proposition
whereas learners rely heavily on expanding RVs that entertain the evidence as an option to
consider (e.g., suggest) or simply attribute it to an outside expert (e.g., state). In particular, both
the EAL and English L1 learners strongly rely upon more “neutral” attribute: acknowledge
structures (e.g., state, according to), providing no overt indication as to their intersubjective stance
on the evidence. These comparative findings provide a roadmap for novice writers to develop
authorial stance and adapt to the expert conventions of their given fields.

1. Introduction

“No utterance is an island” (White, 2015a, para. 4)
Academic texts are inherently heteroglossic, requiring writers to effectively integrate the voices of established scholars into their
writing (Hood, 2008; Swales & Feak, 2004; Thompson & Tribble, 2001; White, 2000). In academic persuasion, referencing the work
of others is particularly important as it situates the author within a disciplinary framework and establishes his/her voice as credible,
or as “insider” (Hyland & Jiang, 2017; Hyland, 2008; White, 2004). Hyland (1999) describes this as a social process of ratification in
which “the cachet of a claim” (p. 342) is only accepted after extensive negotiation with other experts wherein writers must predict
their audiences’ reactions to their work, “for it is ultimately one’s peers who provide the social justification that transforms beliefs
into knowledge” (Rorty, 1979, p. 170). Successful academic arguers, therefore, must make their claims against a backdrop of existing
perspectives, creating “a balance between introducing their own perspective, acknowledging the existence of other perspectives, and
effectively estimating what their audience’s assumed perspective will be” (Miller, Mitchell, & Pessoa, 2014, p. 108; see also Bakhtin,
1981).
One of the key ways evidence is introduced in academic texts is through the use of reporting verbs (RVs). RVs such as argue, claim,
suggest and demonstrate allow writers to situate the proposition, explicitly communicating varied degrees of alignment and evaluation

Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses:
[email protected]
(C.L. Liardét),
[email protected]
(S. Black).

Received 3 September 2018; Received in revised form 12 February 2019; Accepted 13 February 2019
1060-3743/ © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

C.L. Liardét and S. Black Journal of Second Language Writing 44 (2019) 37–50

as to the credibility and merit of the reported claim. Such verbs allow academic writers to weave a tapestry of evidence and authorial
stance, crafting an argument that appears objective but is largely biased by positioning, emphasis, and omission. For many university
students, however, appropriately integrating evidence and the voices of outside experts within an academic text is a challenge (Borg,
2000; Campbell, 1990). Rather than positioning information strategically to communicate their stance and evaluate the propositions,
students often employ reporting structures arbitrarily, ineffectively synthesizing evidence (Liardét & Black, 2016; Pecorari, 2008).
Many struggle to balance different perspectives and fail to employ appropriate voice markers or over-rely on one choice or structure,
such as the RVs says or argues (Hendricks & Quinn, 2000; Pickard, 1995).
Further, when teaching academic writing, and specifically, evidence integration, instruction tends to focus on plagiarism pre-
vention and the technical aspects of citation conventions rather than on the discourse tools for establishing an authorial voice
(Angelil-Carter, 1995; Deckert, 1993; Park, 2003; Pennycook, 1996; Roig, 2001; Sowden, 2005). Communication textbooks often
outline the mechanics of referencing but reduce the purpose and rationale for referencing as giving credit to others when their work is
used to avoid plagiarism (Archee, Gurney, & Mohan, 2013; see also Cottrell, 2013; Fairbairn & Winch, 2011; Tynan et al., 2013). As a
result of this tendency towards conflating academic honesty and referencing practices, there is little room in the curriculum afforded
to the goal of building authorial stance.
Therefore, to achieve academic success, instruction must focus on critically evaluating integrated evidence, identifying which RVs
are most effective to achieve certain functions within the text (e.g., emphasize, contradict, attribute) and communicate authorial stance.
The present study seeks to identify these distinctions by examining English as an Additional Language (EAL) learners’ and English as a
First Language (L1) learners’ use of RVs in undergraduate university assignments, comparing these patterns to a small corpus of
published “expert” texts. Specifically, it aims to examine the nuanced ways these RVs evaluate or neutrally report on propositions,
employing the APPRAISAL1 subsystem of ENGAGEMENT to distinguish those RVs that dialogically contract the space for alternative per-
spectives with those that dialogically expand that space.

1.1. Reporting verbs

When acknowledging and integrating the work of other experts, academic writers choose between two broad categories of re-
porting structures: integral and non−integral. In other words, writers choose whether to explicitly name and emphasize the cited
author in the text (integral) or only make reference to them in parentheses or by superscript notation, placing the emphasis on the
reported message (i.e., non−integral; Swales, 1990, p. 148). Following Thompson and Ye (1991), “writer” is used here to refer to the
person citing and “author” refers to the cited person. Further consideration is given to where the cited author and his/her evidence is
positioned within a sentence. Those who foreground the evidence follow an information prominent structure, while those who
foreground the source of the evidence are considered author prominent (Thompson, 2005; Weissberg & Buker, 1990). These distinct
structures are illustrated in Sentences 1–2 below:

1 Doró et al. (2014, p. 34) argues that employing the most suitable and effective RV requires a certain level of expertise in academic
writing, a “knowledge and willingness to show stance or degree of prominence given to other authors” (see also Thompson &
Tribble, 2001).
2 Employing the most suitable and effective RV requires a certain level of expertise in academic writing, a “knowledge and will-
ingness to show stance or degree of prominence given to other authors” (Doró et al., 2014, p. 34; see also Thompson & Tribble,
2001).

In Sentence 1, the source of the evidence is foregrounded (i.e., Doró et al., 2014) and in Sentence 2, the information attributed to
the source is foregrounded (i.e., employing the most suitable RV requires expertise…). Sentence 1 explicitly names Doró as the source of
information, demonstrating an integral structure whereas Sentence 2 only makes reference to Doró in parentheses, demonstrating a
non-integral structure. The integral, author-prominent structure illustrated in Sentence 1 requires the use of a RV (i.e., argues), a
significant rhetorical resource that allows the writer to either neutrally attribute the evidence to the source text or evaluate and
position the evidence, precisely distinguishing “an attitude to that information, signalling whether the claims are to be taken as
accepted or not” (Hyland, 1999a, p, 344; see also Thomas & Hawes, 1994; Thompson & Ye, 1991). This attitude toward the pro-
position is commonly understood as the writer’s stance. Although there are several ways in which a writer constructs stance in a text
(e.g., boosters, hedges, attitudinal markers, etc.), when integrating the work of outside experts, reporting structures play an important
role.
The use of RVs in academic texts has been explored extensively across the past few decades. In their seminal work on evaluation in
RVs, Thompson and Ye (1991, pp. 372–373) offered a framework for analysing the evaluative potential of RVs. Their threefold
analysis first shows how RVs demonstrate the author’s stance toward the report (i.e., positive, negative or neutral); how RVs construct
the writer’s stance toward the cited research (i.e., acceptance, neutrality, or rejection); and finally, how RVs divulge the writer’s
interpretation (or non-interpretation) of the author’s discourse, behaviour and status. Subsequently, in their analysis of a corpus of
medical research journal articles, Thomas and Hawes (1994, pp. 132–133) categorized RVs according to the kind of activities re-
ferenced: real-world or experimental activity verbs (e.g., find, demonstrate), discourse activity verbs (e.g., suggest, hypothesize, argue)
and cognition activity verbs (e.g., view, conclude, regard). While Thompson and Ye (1991)) were mainly concerned with using RVs to

Following SFL conventions, names of systems within the APPRAISAL framework are written in capital letters.

38

C.L. Liardét and S. Black Journal of Second Language Writing 44 (2019) 37–50

signal evaluation, Thomas and Hawes (1994)) mapped a systematic network representing the options for RVs and specifically, their
discourse implications. Building on these frameworks, Hyland (1999, p. 349) classifies RVs according to the types of activity they
reference, providing three additional categories: Research Acts (e.g., observe, discover, or show), Cognition Acts (e.g., analyze, calculate
and explore) and Discourse Acts (e.g., discuss, state or hypothesize). Hyland’s (2002, p. 119) elaboration of these categories further maps
research, cognition and discourse acts according to both the original author’s research activity and the writer’s evaluation of his/her
assertions.
Research into RVs has examined how novice writers’ use of RVs differs from that of experts. For example, Pickard (1995, pp.
89–90) compiled a corpus of applied linguistics articles to analyze the citation practices of expert users. Her study aimed to dis-
tinguish accomplished writers’ practices from those of novice writers who overused RVs such as say. She found that the expert writers
relied on a greater variety of RVs such as argue, suggest, propose, report, point out and call, only employing the RV say four times across
the corpus (pp. 91, 94; see also Granger, Meunier, & Tyson, 1994). Similarly, Buckingham and Nevile (1997) compared first year
undergraduate student texts with expert academic writing in political science and concluded that the learners’ texts “seem inter-
textually confused” (p. 105). In a more recent study, Bloch (2010, p. 221) argued for explicitly teaching students how to use reporting
structures to achieve their own rhetorical purposes and built a concordance of RVs from expert research articles to use as a peda-
gogical tool toward this aim (see also Swales & Feak, 2004).
Another area that has drawn significant attention is the challenges EAL learners face when employing RVs, with research con-
cluding that these students struggle to choose reporting structures appropriately, using only a small range that limits their ability to
engage with research and effectively construct arguments (Davis, 2013; Thompson & Ye, 1991). Petrić (2007), for example, found
that both high- and low-rated master’s theses relied heavily on attributive reporting structures, revealing how the students use
citations for the purpose of displaying knowledge. Pecorari (2008) found that EAL users often choose RVs indiscriminately, freely
substituting one for another without consideration for how these choices affect their stance towards the reported evidence. This
finding was reinforced in a more recent study of Vietnamese Master’s theses in which the writers “tended to randomly use RVs
without being aware of their rhetorical function” (Nguyen & Pramoolsook, 2015, p. 196). In general, students score higher marks
when they synthesize evidence with “critical analysis and application of the source’s arguments to their own” (Mori, 2017, p. 2;
Petrić, 2012). However, novice EAL writers often fail to discuss their sources in a cohesive manner, defaulting to what Swales (2014)
refers to as “parenthetical plonking” (p. 135).
Research has further explored the varied ways different disciplines employ citations to constitute and construct knowledge,
examining how writers employ RVs and other citation structures to “construct a stance that reflects the ideology and epistemology of
their discipline” (Charles, 2006a, p. 493; Dressen, 2003; Hyland et al., 1999; Hyland & Jiang, 2018; Thomas & Hawes, 1994;
Thompson & Tribble, 2001; Tucker, 2003). For example, Charles (2006b, p. 310) compiled corpora of theses written by politics/
international relations and materials science native speakers to compare their use of reporting structures. She found the most
common RV group across both corpora was argue (e.g., argue, note, suggest); however, in the materials science corpus, there were
almost as many instances of the find/show RV group (e.g., find, observe, show). Similarly, Hyland (1999) examined the citation
practices and “manifest intertextuality” across eight fields (i.e., molecular biology, magnetic physics, marketing, applied linguistics,
philosophy, sociology, mechanical and electronic engineering) and found substantial differences in the construction of referencing in
the “soft” and “hard” sciences. In general, the social sciences and humanities employ citations more frequently, with a preference for
discourse activity RVs such as discuss, suggest and argue whereas in the sciences and engineering, citations are less frequent, with a
preference for less interpretive RVs that point to the research and real-world actions, such as observe, discover, show and analyze
(Hyland, 2010, p. 123; Hyland, 1999a, p. 349). Notably, in a recent study of diachronic change in research article citation practices
across four disciplines (i.e., applied linguistics, biology, engineering and sociology), Hyland and Jiang (2017) found writers de-
creasingly rely upon integral citations, using RVs less frequently to evaluate information and when they do, opting for more “neutral”
research reporting structures (e.g., describe).

1.2. Stance and engagement

In exploring RVs, our aim is not merely to compare novice and expert writers or English L1 and EAL learners, but also to examine
how these writers use RVs to build intertextuality, critically analyze, and apply the sources’ arguments to their own. When integrating
evidence from outside experts, writers are creating a dialogue in which their opinions, attitude or stance toward the authors’ pro-
positions are encoded. This construct of stance is variably defined as a writer’s “personal feelings and assessments”, including “at-
titudes 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” (Biber, 2006, p. 99). Hyland (2005) further maps stance as “writer-oriented features of inter-
action” (p. 178) which include evidentiality, affect and presence (see also Hyland & Jiang, 2016) and Crossthwaithe, Cheung and Jiang
(2017, p. 108) define stance “as the writer’s expression of epistemic assessment, personal attitudes, and self-presence, by means of
hedges and boosters, attitude markers and self-mentions”.
Although several researchers have examined how learners and experts employ stance in their writing, these studies typically focus
on interpersonal features such as hedges and boosters, attitude markers and self-mentions. In contrast, the present study aims to
explore how a writer’s stance is communicated through the use of RVs. To achieve these aims, we look to APPRAISAL theory from
Systemic Functional Linguistics (Martin & White, 2005). APPRAISAL is concerned with “the kinds of attitudes that are negotiated in a
text, the strength of the feelings involved and the ways in which values are sourced and readers aligned” (Martin & Rose, 2003, p. 17).
In short, APPRAISAL theory examines the language of evaluation, attitude and emotion and the linguistic resources used to “explicitly
position a text’s proposals and propositions interpersonally” (White, 2015b, para. 1). The APPRAISAL system consists of three main

39

C.L. Liardét and S. Black Journal of Second Language Writing 44 (2019) 37–50

subsystems that reflect the choices writers make to evaluate and encode their judgments: ATTITUDE, GRADUATION and ENGAGEMENT. As our
focus is on the RV choices writers employ to position evidence, we will draw on the subsystem of ENGAGEMENT that examines the
linguistic resources writers employ in relation to the propositions and proposals on which they report, including the “meanings by
which speakers either acknowledge or ignore the diversity of view-points put at risk by their utterances and negotiate an inter-
personal space for their own positions within that diversity” (White, 2015c, p. 1).
Following Stubb’s (1996) view that “whenever speakers (or writers) say anything, they encode their point of view towards it” (p.
197), Martin and White’s (2005) understanding of ENGAGEMENT is one “in which all utterances are seen as in some way stanced or
attitudinal” (p.124). With strong foundations in the dialogistic perspective of Bakhtin (1981) and Voloshinov (1995), this framework
functions to provide a systematic account of how the different voices of the text engage with and respond to each other as they
communicate their intersubjective position. In other words, it explores:
…the degree to which speakers/writers acknowledge these prior speakers and in the ways in which they engage with them…
whether they present themselves as standing with, as standing against, as undecided, or as neutral with respect to these other
speakers and their value positions. At the same time, the dialogistic perspective leads us to attend to the anticipatory aspect of the
text—to the signals speakers/writers provide as to how they expect those they address to respond to the current proposition and
the value position it advances. Thus we are interested in whether the value position is presented as one which can be taken-for-
granted for this particular audience, as one which is in some way novel, problematic or contentious, or as one which is likely to be
questioned, resisted or rejected. (Martin & White, 2005, pp.125–126).
In short, whereas traditionally “engagement” is used as a “coverall term of intersubjective positioning”, the APPRAISAL framework’s
system of ENGAGEMENT provides a more elaborated, developed and extended taxonomy to include “all wordings and formulations by
which speakers/writers modulate their attachment to/detachment from the position” (Martin & White, 2005, p. 127; Stubbs, 1996).
In the present study, however, our aim is to specifically explore how these value positions are expressed through the linguistic
resource of RVs.
In examining the use of RVs within the ENGAGEMENT system, it is important to understand the heteroglossic options available to the
writer. When academic writers create a dialogue with outside experts, they may choose to “restrict the scope” of outside voices and
perspectives or expand the space for alternative viewpoints; these concepts are understood as dialogic contraction and dialogic ex-
pansion (Martin & White, 2005, p. 35). Dialogically contractive statements, such as Follain shows that… or He demonstrates that…,
function to limit or narrow the possibilities for alternative voices to disagree. In contrast, dialogically expansive statements, such as It
appears that… or the research suggests…, invite readers to consider and proffer alternative propositions (Martin & White, 2005, pp.
138–142).
When mapping the resources of ENGAGEMENT, Martin and White (2005) provide a system of choices from which writers choose when
contracting or expanding the space of negotiation in their texts. The choices that contract the space of negotiation either function to
disclaim or proclaim the given assertion, whereas those choices that expand this space function to entertain or attribute. More delicate

Fig. 1. RV examples mapped onto Martin and White’s (2005, p. 181) Engagement system.

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C.L. Liardét and S. Black Journal of Second Language Writing 44 (2019) 37–50

options for each of these four choices exist and allow us to understand the intersubjective positioning of the reported evidence, as
outlined in Fig. 12 . For example, those contractive meanings that disclaim may do so through disclaim: deny moves (e.g., this is not
the case), negating or rejecting a contrary position, or through disclaim: counter (e.g., even though…), rejecting through a concession
or counter expectation. Although Martin and White (2005) provide no examples of RVs within these categories, less common RVs
such as denounce and contradict may be classified within these disclaim sub-types (e.g., The researchers denounce these claims or These
findings contradict the original hypothesis).
The second dialogically contractive sub-type involves those meanings that proclaim. These choices represent the proposition as
highly warrantable through three subtypes: proclaim: concur (i.e., announcing the addresser “as agreeing with, or having the same
knowledge as, some projected dialogic partner”; Martin & White, 2005, p. 165), proclaim: pronounce (i.e., a formulation involving
“authorial emphases or explicit authorial interventions and interpolations”; p. 172), or proclaim: endorse (i.e., “those propositions
sourced to external sources”, “construed by the authorial voice as correct, valid, undeniable or otherwise maximally warrantable”; p.
170). The first category, proclaim: concur, usually involves adverbials such as certainly or admittedly; however, the proclaim: pro-
nounce and proclaim: endorse sub-types may be realized through RVs such as conclude, agree, and contend (pronounce), or show,
prove, demonstrate, find, and point out (endorse).
Dialogically expansive meanings are taxonomized as entertaining or attributing. The first sub-category, entertain, provides an
authorial voice that indicates that its perspective is but one of a number (Martin & White, 2005, p. 141). RVs such as suggest, think,
suspect, and doubt achieve the entertain function, allowing a dialogic space for possible alternative viewpoints to be voiced while
grounding the proposition in the subjectivity of the writer. Meanings within this category are typically discussed under the headings
of “epistemic modality”, “evidentiality” or “modals of probability”, communicating the writer’s assessment of likelihood as well as
their “epistemic judgments” as to their confidence in the assertion (Martin & White, 2005, p. 141; see also Palmer, 1986). The second
dialogically expansive sub-category, those meanings that attribute, represent a “proposition as grounded in the subjectivity of an
external voice” (Martin & White, 2005, p. 132) through attribute: acknowledge3 (i.e., “those locutions where there is no overt
indication, at least via the choice of framer, as to where the authorial voice stands with respect to the proposition”; p. 152) or
attribute: distance (i.e., “formulations in which, via the semantics of the framer employed, there is an explicit distancing of the
authorial voice from the attributed material”; p. 152). Attribute: acknowledge is where RVs such as report, say, state, declare, and
describe are categorized, allowing the writer to attribute definitions and information to an outside source through an almost neutral
statement. While these formulations provide a fairly unbiased reference to the reported information, some researchers argue that “in
the end the source is contributing to the authorial voice’s argument as a whole, which includes some sort of stance” (Mori, 2017, p.
4). In contrast, attribute: distance RVs such as claim explicitly mark the writer as separate or distanced from the referenced pro-
position4 (Martin & White, 2005, p. 153). Fig. 1 maps these options with examples of RVs provided from the expert corpus compiled
in this study. Notably, no instances of reporting structures for disclaim and proclaim: concur were found in either the learner or
expert corpora.

2. The study and corpora

The present study aims to investigate how EAL and English L1 learners' RV choices differ and how these choices compare to those
of experts (i.e., peer-reviewed, published research articles). Furthermore, it explores how learners and experts communicate stance by
mapping their RV choices along the system of ENGAGEMENT. In short, this paper explores the following two research questions:

1 When using integral, author prominent citations, what RVs do EAL students most rely upon and how do these choices vary from
the English L1 writers? How do learners’ RV choices vary from those found in the expert corpus?

Excerpts are first coded as belonging to the expert or learner corpora (i.e., EC or LC). The final number refers to an anonymized ID from the LC or
a numeric sequence from the EC. Those texts belonging to the LC are further coded to distinguish English L1 (EN) participants from EAL participants
using the language codes outlined in Table 2 (e.g., MA for Mandarin, CA for Cantonese, etc.).
Although similar RVs are used to communicate the meanings of both the entertain and attribute: acknowledge categories, they function dis-
tinctly. Within the entertain category, the authorial voice is attached to the reported assertions but is functioning to open up the space for alternative
voices and perspectives. The assertion is grounded in the subjectivity of the writer, recognizing that it is but one of a number of possible propositions
available in that communicative context (e.g., as illustrated through the use of suggest and propose in the following excerpts: “research suggests that it
is critical to distinguish between types of habitual entrepreneurs”, EC-6; “Earlier work (Merton, 1957; Burt, 1982) proposed structural equivalence as
the social architecture out of which reference groups emerge in competitive domains”, EC-53). The RV is used to communicate the writer’s judgment
or confidence in the reported proposition. In contrast, within the attribute: acknowledge subtype, the assertions are fully disassociated from the
authorial voice, attributed exclusively to the external source (e.g., as illustrated through the use of report and state in the following excerpts: “Simon
& Daw (2011) reported increasing activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices”, EC-63; Mayer stated that the ban was
necessary”, EC-97). Such RVs are void of any judgments and simply attribute the proposition to the referenced author without revealing the writer’s
beliefs on the reported information (Martin & White, 2005, pp. 140-141, 150).
The use of ‘claim’ functions to separate the writer from the reported proposition, as Caldas-Coulthard (1994, p. 295) observes, detaching “him/
herself from responsibility for what is being reported”. As Martin and White (2005) argue, “claim acts to explicitly mark the internal authorial voice
as separate from the cited, external voice” (p. 153). This contrasts to the use of attribute: acknowledge RVs “where the semantics of the framer (e.g.,
say, report, believe, according to) is such that there is no specification as to where the authorial voice stands with respect to the proposition, thus
leaving it open to the co-text to present the authorial text as aligned/disaligned with respect to the position being advanced, or as neutral or
disinterested” (Martin & White, 2005, pp. 152-153).

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C.L. Liardét and S. Black Journal of Second Language Writing 44 (2019) 37–50

2 What do these RV choices communicate about the learners’ and experts’ stance on the evidence that is being integrated?

2.1. Corpora

To examine these questions, two main corpora were compiled: a learner corpus (LC) and an expert corpus (EC). The LC consists of
190 assignments written in a first year, undergraduate Academic Communication (AC) unit designed to teach academic literacy skills
(e.g., critical reading, academic writing and presentation). These units are offered by the Department of Linguistics to students
enrolled across the university and the texts analyzed in this study were selected from the Macquarie University Longitudinal Learner
Corpus (MQLLC), written during a single semester (see also, Liardét, 2016; Liardét & Black, 2016). Participants were recruited from
AC units aligned to two broad disciplinary areas: Business and Economics (i.e., Faculty of Business and Economics) and the Arts and
Humanities (i.e., Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Human Sciences). Within these units, students are explicitly taught referencing
conventions and evidence integration practices, including how to effectively use RVs to situate and evaluate evidence in their writing.
The texts examined from the business students are business reports and persuasive essays. For the arts and humanities students, the
texts are integrative summaries and persuasive essays. Both the business reports and integrative summaries are designed to emulate
literature reviews, developing students’ referencing skills by integrating a minimum of six academic sources. The persuasive essay
requires students to develop an expository argument supported by a minimum of eight academic resources5 . Details of these corpora
are outlined in Table 16 .
In terms of linguistic background, 65 of the participants were EAL learners while the remaining 125 students identified English as
their L1. Of the 65 EA L users, approximately half are Mandarin L1 users. These numbers are representative of the larger corpus and
student population at the university where the study took place. Table 2 identifies the number of EAL participants according to their
language background.
The EC is a compilation of 100 research articles, consisting of five papers from 20 top five rated journals in the SciMago 2015
rankings7 . To closely align with the degrees of the LC participants, articles were selected from the leading journals in business,
marketing, international management, accounting, economics, finance, education, psychology, sociology, political science, arts, and
humanities. From these 100 articles, the introductions and literature reviews were extracted as these are the sections in which
references are most concentrated (Hu, Chen, & Liu, 2013; Soler-Monreal & Salom, 2011).

2.2. Procedure

To identify the breadth and frequency of RVs employed in both the learner and expert corpora, the study employs a corpus-
assisted approach. The first stage of the analysis involved compiling a master list of RVs to be used as the node searches during the
subsequent stage of analysis in which concordances of each RV were compiled. To compile the master list of RVs, half of the learner
and expert texts were examined manually to identify both the RVs used and the RV collocates. For example, a manual analysis of the
following excerpt identified two distinct RVs (i.e., suggest and hypothesize). It also highlighted two different ways in which these RVs
are situated (i.e., dates in parentheses + RV, and these findings + RV), identifying key collocates that can be used for further ex-
amination.
In addition, Cook et al. (2008) suggest that middle school entry exposes sixth or seventh graders to older peers who can serve as
negative influences and hinder academic performance. Moreover, Blyth et al. (1978) hypothesize top dogs in schools with longer
grade spans benefit from delaying school transitions…. These findings suggest that longer grade spans (e.g., K – 8 schools) may
better serve students in the middle grades compared to other popular grade spans. (EC-61)
To add to the master list of RVs, a number of canonical citational forms (e.g., dates in parentheses, references to studies, research,
reports, etc.) identified in the manual analysis were run as search nodes through both the expert and learner corpora. Wildcard
functionality was employed to ensure all variants of these collocations were included (e.g., these findings, this finding, study, studies,
etc.). In total, 114 different RVs were identified across the two corpora (see Appendix); however, not all forms were present in each.
Once the master list of RVs was compiled, Wordsmith Corpus tool software was employed to create concordances of each RV from
both the learner and expert corpora (Scott, 2004). Each concordance was reviewed manually to omit any instances in which the given
search node (e.g., report) was not being used in a reporting structure (e.g., These reports were compiled vs. This study reports on
the…). The frequency of each RV within each corpus was calculated and all quantitative findings were normalized to instances per
1000 words according to the specific word counts of each corpus (Table 1).

Although the inclusion of both literature reviews (i.e., ‘business reports’ and ‘integrative summaries’) and expositions introduces a degree of
variability within the LC, the underlying social purpose of both genres is to persuade the reader through a synthesis of reported evidence. This is
distinct from a scientific reporting genre that may rely more heavily on simple descriptions of authors’ findings in list form.
For the purposes of this study, all analysis is limited to the texts examined within these two corpora and is not intended to be representative of all
novice writers or all expert writers from these fields. All quantitative findings are reported according to the raw calculations normalized per 1,000
words rather than statistical comparison.
The SCImago journal lists can be found at http://scimagojr.com. The included journals are ranked in the top five positions within the categories
of Accounting; Business and International Management; Business Management and Accounting; Economics, Econometrics and Accounting; Finance;
Marketing; Organizational Behavior; Human Resource Management; Arts and Humanities; Developmental and Educational Psychology; History and
Philosophy of Science; Psychology; Social Sciences; Sociology and Political Science.

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C.L. Liardét and S. Black Journal of Second Language Writing 44 (2019) 37–50

Table 1
Learner and Expert Corpus Information.
Level Learner Corpus Expert Corpus

No. of Texts 190 100
No. of Words 229,728 339,751
Avg. words / text 1209 3,397

Table 2
EAL Participants’ Language Backgrounds.
Language Background No. of Participants

Mandarin (MA) 33
Cantonese (CA) 6
Bengali (BN) 6
Korean (KO) 4
Hindi (HI) 2
Indonesian (IN) 2
Punjabi (PU) 2
Vietnamese (VN) 2
Arabic (AR) 2
Nepalese (NE) 2
French (FR) 2
Portuguese (PO) 2

Finally, once the most frequent RVs from each corpus were identified, the top 20 RVs were analyzed for their ENGAGEMENT function
(e.g., proclaim: pronounce, entertain, etc.). Further, within the LC, the top 20 RVs from the EAL subcorpus and the English L1
subcorpus were coded for their ENGAGEMENT function. In total, 31 unique RV forms were identified across the EC and LC, and across the
EAL and English L1 subcorpora. Of those, 12 were taxonomized within Martin and White’s (2005) reference guides (e.g., demonstrate
and prove as proclaim: endorse; pp. 169 & 179). The remaining 19 RVs were then independently coded by each of the authors, using
definitions and examples provided in related literature as a guideline. To ensure the most appropriate ENGAGEMENT function was
identified, concordances of the RVs in context within the EC and LC were examined. This double-blind coding resulted in 84%
agreement. The remaining three RVs were then further discussed and examples from the corpora examined to determine the coding.
Finally, the frequency of the top 20 RVs across the two corpora were calculated to identify which ENGAGEMENT resources the experts and
learners most frequently deploy.

3. Results

RQ #1. When using integral, author prominent citations, what RVs do EAL students most rely upon and how do these choices vary from the
English L1 students? How do learners’ RV choices vary from those found in the expert corpus?
The first line of enquiry aims to identify which RVs learners rely on when integrating evidence using author prominence and any
distinctions between EAL and English L1 writers. These preferences are then compared with the experts’ use of RVs. As illustrated in
Table 3, the EAL and English L1 learners rely on eight of the same top ten RVs (i.e., show, according to, state, suggest, find, indicate,
reveal and discuss). Overall, the EAL learners deploy these eight RVs with similar frequency to the English L1 users, with only slight
variations as to the order and frequency of reliance. For instance, EAL writers use according to 1.36 times more frequently than

Table 3
EAL and English L1 learners’ ten most frequent RVs (normalized per 1000 words).
EAL Frequency English L1 Frequency

SHOW 5.649 STATE 5.801
ACCORDING TO 4.928 SHOW 5.255
STATE 4.808 FIND 3.890
ARGUE 4.086 ACCORDING TO 3.617
SUGGEST 3.125 SUGGEST 3.139
FIND 2.885 HIGHLIGHT 2.457
INDICATE 2.644 REVEAL 2.457
REVEAL 2.524 DISCUSS 2.252
ILLUSTRATE 2.043 INDICATE 2.116
DISCUSS 1.923 REPORT 2.116

Overall Frequency
EAL 57.57 English L1 57.53

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C.L. Liardét and S. Black Journal of Second Language Writing 44 (2019) 37–50

Table 4
Most frequent ten RVs (normalized per 1000 words).
Learner Corpus Frequency Expert Corpus Frequency

STATE 5.440 SUGGEST 10.154
SHOW 5.396 SHOW 9.124
ACCORDING TO 4.091 FIND 8.330
FIND 3.525 EXAMINE 4.474
SUGGEST 3.133 FOCUS 4.386
REVEAL 2.481 ARGUE 4.297
ARGUE 2.394 USE 4.062
INDICATE 2.307 PROVIDE 3.179
DISCUSS 2.132 NOTE 3.149
REPORTS 1.958 PROPOSE 2.708

Overall Frequency
Learner Corpus 57.36 Expert Corpus 103.016

English L1 writers and English L1 writers deploy state 1.2 times more frequently than the EAL writers.
Overall, the frequency with which EAL writers deploy RVs is almost identical to that of the English L1 writers (i.e., 57.57 instances
and 57.53 instances per 1000 words, respectively). In short, upon examination of the top ten RVs, the only clear distinction between
these two groups is the EAL writers’ preference for the RVs argue and illustrate, and the English L1 writers’ preference for highlight and
report.
Further explored in this section is the distinction between learner and expert writers’ RV usage. As illustrated in Table 4, the most
frequent RV in the LC, state, is not found in the top ten RVs used in the EC. In fact, in the EC, state is the 53rd most frequent RV,
occurring only 0.471 times (per 1000 words). Similarly, the third most frequent reporting structure in the LC, according to, is used
only 1.177 times in the EC and occurs in the 25th position. Arguably, according to is not a traditional RV; however, it is included here
as it functions to introduce assertions attributed explicitly to another source. Its prevalence in the LC further warrants its inclusion in
the analysis.
The top three RVs found in the EC are also found in the top ten of the LC: suggest, show and find. The contrast lies in the frequency.
For example, suggest occurs more than three times as frequently in the EC (i.e., 10.154 compared to only 3.133 in the LC). Show is the
second most frequent reporting structure in both corpora, but it occurs 1.7 times more frequently in the EC. Similarly, find is the
fourth most frequently occurring structure in the LC and third in the EC, occurring 2.3 times as frequently in the EC. Notably, the
remaining reporting structures in the top ten of the EC are not comparably found in the LC. Examine occurs in the 13th position in the
LC (1.523 instances); focus is in the 20th position (0.870); and use is in the 51st position (0.131). This contrast in position, coupled
with the comparably low frequency of reporting structures in the LC, reveals a larger distinction between the corpora, illustrated
further in Table 4. When examining the overall rate of occurrence, the EC employs RVs 1.8 times as frequently as the LC (i.e., 103.016
instances compared to 57.36), demonstrating a stronger overall reliance on integral reporting structures. These findings support
earlier studies in which expert research articles are more “citation dense” than novice writers’ assignments (e.g., Hyland, 2004).
RQ #2. What do these reporting verb choices communicate about the learners’ and experts’ stance on the evidence that is being integrated?
The second angle of investigation examines the message and stance that these choices of RVs communicate. Using the resources of
Appraisal Theory (Martin & White, 2005), we mapped the RVs according to their functions within the system of ENGAGEMENT. When
integrating and engaging other voices in a text, the text becomes heteroglossic, first by allowing other experts and evidence to speak
and second, by evaluating those experts and what they have to say. RVs are a subtle but key way this evaluation is encoded. For this
stage of the analysis, we coded the 20 most frequently occurring RVs from the expert and learner corpora, and within the LC, the 20
most frequently occurring RVs from the EAL and English L1 writers. Within the EC, the top 20 RVs comprise 69% of all instances and
within the LC, the top 20 comprise 77% of all instances. Thus, it can be said that the analysis of the top 20 reporting structures within
each corpus represent the majority (i.e., more than two-thirds) of all instances.
In the EC, about half of all reporting structures function to proclaim (i.e., 51%), dialogically contracting the space for alternative
perspectives by presenting the proposition as highly warrantable (valid, compelling, plausible). In contrast, in the LC, the majority of
all reporting structures function to expand, actively making “allowances for dialogically alternative positions and voices” (Martin &
White, 2005, p. 138) through the entertain and attribute subtypes (i.e., 56%). As illustrated in Fig. 2, overall, the experts rely most
strongly on the proclaim: endorse subtype (i.e., 45%), followed by somewhat equal reliance on the expanding subtypes entertain
(25%) and attribute: acknowledge (24%). The final subtype, proclaim: pronounce, is the least frequently deployed, comprising only
6% of all reporting structures in the EC.
In contrast, the learners most rely upon attribute: acknowledge reporting structures (44%), followed closely by proclaim: endorse
(37%) RVs and then entertain (12%). As illustrated in Fig. 3 and similar to the EC, the learners least frequently rely upon the
proclaim: pronounce subtype, comprising only 7% of all reporting structures in the LC.
The most relied upon subtype in the EC and the second most relied upon in the LC are those RVs which endorse the evidence as
“correct, valid, undeniable or otherwise maximally warrantable”, using RVs such as show, demonstrate, prove and find (Martin &
White, 2005, p. 170). Across both the learner and expert corpora, the most common form of proclaim: endorse is show, followed by

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C.L. Liardét and S. Black Journal of Second Language Writing 44 (2019) 37–50

Fig. 2. ENGAGEMENT resources employed in the EC.

Fig. 3. ENGAGEMENT resources employed in the LC.

find. There is little variation between the ways these two RVs are used in the EC and LC. (e.g., research has shown, This study found
that…), as illustrated in Excerpts 1–4.

1 For instance, research has shown that people have a tendency to justify close others’ unethical actions to protect them (Gino and
Galinsky 2012). Research has also shown that parents who feel close to their children often adopt strict curfew practices (Elder
et al., 1995). (EC-33)
2 Research has shown that these children are more likely to complete and be more successful in their schooling (Brennan &
Adamson, 2014). (LC-0468-EN)
3 Seymour and Hewitt (1997) found that female students are more likely than men to join clubs and social networks outside of the
classroom. (EC-83)
4 Fitzpatrick and Pagani (2013) found that engagement skills in classroom behaviour at kindergarten were related with better math
scores and academic success. (LC-0525-EN)

The other proclaim subtype, proclaim: pronounce, is the least relied upon engagement resource in both the EC and the LC,
comprising 6% and 7% of all RVs, respectively. These pronouncements involve authorial emphases and insistence that imply “the
presence of some resistance, some contrary pressure of doubt or challenge against which the authorial voice asserts itself” (Martin &
White, 2005, p. 173). Thus, it is reasonable that such RVs are used least frequently across both the expert and learner corpora. In the
EC, the only proclaim: pronounce RV is argue; in the LC, there are two such RVs: argue and emphasize (see Excerpts 5–7; as discussed

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C.L. Liardét and S. Black Journal of Second Language Writing 44 (2019) 37–50

below, in the EAL subcorpus, recommend is also deployed in the top 20; however, it does not appear in the top 20 forms of the overall
LC).

5 Specifically, Kerckhoff argued that status attainment theory fails to acknowledge the role of material circumstances in molding
outcomes. (EC-56)
6 Griffiths, Wolke, Page, & Horwood (2005, p. 121) argue that peers will display negative attitudes towards children with obesity.
(LC-0517-EN)
7 The report by UNICEF emphasized the importance of maternal nutrition and the 1000-day window for intervention. (LC-0458-EN)

The second and third most represented subtypes in the EC function to expand through the entertain (25%) and attribute: ac-
knowledge (24%) subtypes. Whereas contracting proclamations are directed towards challenging and dismissing alternative per-
spectives, entertaining and attributing RVs are dialogically expanding in that they present dialogically alternative points of view.
Those RVs which entertain present the evidence as “grounded in its own contingent”, representing “the proposition as but one of a
range of possible positions” (Martin & White, 2005, p. 132). These RVs thus invoke or entertain alternative viewpoints. In the EC, the
most frequently used RV, suggest, functions to entertain and along with propose, consider, explore, and indicate, these entertaining RVs
are the second most frequently used category of ENGAGEMENT, comprising 25% of all reporting structures (see Excerpts 8–10).

8 Preliminary evidence suggests that teaching children from low-income families using humanoid robots increases motivation,
sense of community, and self-expression... (EC-64)
9 These findings suggest that visual perception takes up only a small fraction of fixation durations… (EC-99)
10 Specifically, Verdelhan (2010) proposes a two-country, one-good model in which each country has an exogenously specified i.i.d.
consumption growth process... (EC-46)
11 Waters & Baur (2003) suggest that children or adolescents who are overweight or obese suffer from social and psychological
issues. (LC-0460-EN)
12 The COAG Reform Council (2013) indicated that when compared to other students, Australian Year 4 students who attended one
year of ECEC services or programs gained 11 points higher in reading (LC-0471-MA)

In the LC, only two entertaining RVs are used, suggest and indicate, comprising 12% of all reporting structures (Excerpts 11–12). In
contrast, the learners most strongly rely on attribute: acknowledge RVs that represent the evidence “as grounded in the subjectivity of
an external [emphasis added] voice” (Martin & White, 2005, p. 132). This strong reliance on attribute: acknowledge resources is a
notable distinction between the learner and expert texts as proportionately, the learners rely on these resources almost twice as often
as the experts (i.e., 44% as compared to 24%). Within the category of attribution, those locutions that acknowledge, reveal little
about where the authorial voice stands in respect to the proposition (Martin & White, 2005, p. 152). In other words, by using
seemingly “attitude-free” RVs such as states, reports, or says (or, the reporting structure according to), the learners simply attribute the
integrated evidence to an expert rather than positioning that evidence intersubjectively (Hu & Wang, 2014, p. 21).
In the LC, the first and third most frequently used reporting structures, state and according to, are categorized within the attribute:
acknowledge subtype. As discussed above, these two structures are much less frequent in the EC, occurring in the 53rd (state) and the
25th (according to) position. The first RV, state is often used to introduce a quote, but simply attributes that proposition to the external
expert without providing any implicit evaluation through the reporting structure. State is used similarly in the EC; however, its rare
occurrence tends to simply introduce indisputable definitions or procedures, as illustrated in Excerpt 15.

13 The World Bank (2000) states that “Increase in per capita income lead to improvements in different measures of gender
equality…” (LC-0486-EN)
14 Deborah Brennan and Elizabeth Adamson state; “A well designed early childhood education and care (ECEC) policy can assist
Australia…” (LC-0503-EN)
15 The framework states that expectations for educational attainment and subsequent success and achievement in the educational
arena are the central factors… (EC-56)

The third most frequent reporting structure in the LC, according to, similarly functions to simply attribute a proposition to a given
expert rather than intersubjectively positioning the evidence, as illustrated in Excerpts 16-18. Comparably, when deploying attribute:
acknowledge RVs, the experts tend to use verbs such as note, provide, discuss and describe, as illustrated in Excerpts 19-21.

16 According to UNICEF (2011) a child that is breastfed within the first hour of life is fourteen times less likely to die from diarrhoea
or pneumonia. (LC-0454-EN)
17 According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2008), the percentage of obese or overweight adults is a staggering 60%. (LC-
0519-EN)
18 According to George et al. (2011), in the UK immigration has improved the academic performance of the native children. (LC-
0431-BN)
19 Goffman (1963) noted that racial minority status can be a form of “tribal stigma,’’ a collective stigma based on real or imagined
attributes associated with a racial group. (EC-51)
20 Hohfeld (1919) provided a classic analysis of the legal concepts of right and duties. (EC-95)

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C.L. Liardét and S. Black Journal of Second Language Writing 44 (2019) 37–50

21 De Keyser et al. (2015, p. 23) describe customer experience as “comprised of the cognitive, emotional, physical, sensorial,
spiritual, and social elements that mark the customer’s direct or indirect interaction with (an)other market actor(s)” (EC-30)

One final angle of exploration here is EAL learners’ use of stance as compared to English L1 learners. Overall, both the EAL and
English L1 learners most frequently rely on attribute: acknowledge (i.e., 41% and 45%, respectively) and proclaim: endorse RVs (i.e.,
34% and 40%). Similarly, both groups of learners deploy entertain RVs 12% of the time. The key difference between the two
subgroups of the LC, however, is their reliance on proclaim: pronounce. As illustrated in Fig. 4, the EAL learners deploy proclaim:
pronounce RVs with a greater proportion than the English L1 learners and the EC (i.e., 13% as compared to 3% and 6%, respectively).
Of the top 20 RVs, the EAL learners deploy three different proclaim: pronounce RVs (i.e., argue, recommend, and emphasize) whereas
the English L1 learners and the EC only deploy one, argue. Comparably, the English L1 learners rely more heavily on attribute:
acknowledge and proclaim: endorse RVs.

Fig. 4. ENGAGEMENT resources employed by the EAL and English L1 learners.

In short, when positioning evidence, experts predominately rely on proclaim: endorse RVs (i.e., 45% of all RVs) such as show, find
and demonstrate whereas learners rely on attribute: acknowledge RVs (i.e., 44%), such as states and according to. Notably, this heavy
reliance on attribute: acknowledge RVs means that almost half of all author-prominent reporting structures in the learner texts are
simply attributed to an external expert, without any overt indication of the writer’s intersubjective stance. Expert users, on the other
hand, employ attribute: acknowledge RVs with similar frequency to entertaining RVs, such as suggest (i.e., 24% and 25%, respec-
tively), mainly to define or outline procedures. These texts are more balanced, providing greater insight into the value with which the
writers perceive the given propositions.

4. Discussion and conclusion

This study has compared the varied ways both EAL and English L1 novice writers employ RVs with those of expert writers and
examined what these choices communicate about the writers’ stance. Although research often focuses on how EAL learners tend to
employ only a small range of RVs that limit their ability to engage with research to build their arguments, this study has found that
the EAL learners deploy RVs with similar variability to their English L1 classmates. Notably, both groups deployed almost identical
RVs with almost identical frequency. The only distinction was the EAL learners’ preference for the RVs argue and illustrate and the
English L1 learners’ preference for highlight and report. Such findings are important against much of the literature that presents a
deficit view of EAL learners. Whereas instruction and language policies are often directed towards remediating EAL learners’ lin-
guistic shortcomings, these findings support the argument that all learners, regardless of their language background, must learn
academic writing as an additional language (Hyland, 2016; Römer, 2009, p. 99; Swales, 2004). Specific to this examination of RVs, it
is clear that both groups of novice writers would benefit from instruction on the functions and purposes of different RVs for com-
municating their authorial stance.
When comparing the novice writers to the experts, we found that experts use RVs almost twice as frequently as the learners,
reinforcing a disparity found in previous studies (e.g., Hyland, 2004). Further, when examining the writers’ stance communicated
through the RVs, the learners rely upon dialogically expansive RVs (i.e., 56% of all RVs) slightly more than the experts who tend
towards dialogically contractive choices (i.e., 51%). The main distinction, however, lies in the experts’ preference for proclaim:
endorse RVs (i.e., 45%) compared to the learners’ preference for attribute: acknowledge RVs (i.e., 44%). This strong reliance on
attribute: acknowledge reporting structures such as states and according to, provides no overt indication as to the writers’ inter-
subjective stance on the evidence being presented. Considering the significant role RVs play in crafting an argument through a
tapestry of evidence and authorial stance, this over-reliance on such neutral RVs almost void of evaluation presents the learners’ voice
as an unbiased outside reporter rather than an informed insider engaged in the discussion. Notably, among the learners, it is the
English L1 writers who rely most strongly on attribute: acknowledge RVs (i.e., 45% as compared to 41% in the EAL learners),

47

C.L. Liardét and S. Black Journal of Second Language Writing 44 (2019) 37–50

distinguishing them furthest from the expert writers. While the experts also employ attribute: acknowledge RVs, they more commonly
rely on dialogically expansive choices that entertain, or present the reported evidence as but one of a number of perspectives offered
to the reader for consideration (e.g., suggest, discuss, propose). This balance of RV choices allows the experts to demonstrate their
credibility as insiders, a fellow author, so to speak, who is contributing to the conversation rather than an observer who is simply
reporting on it or simply displaying their knowledge of it (see, e.g., Petrić, 2007).
Pedagogically our aim is to train learners how to engage with the discussion, building their own arguments based on the evidence
synthesized from other experts. To achieve this, we must develop students’ awareness of the meanings different reporting structures
communicate and their ability to consciously choose RVs, understanding the subtleties of language to position expert claims ac-
cording to the arguments they wish to build. Although there are many ways writers can communicate their authorial stance, for
purposes of scope, we have limited our focus to the intersubjective stance conveyed through RVs. When contrasting the novice and
expert writers’ RV practices, the learners’ over-reliance on attribute: acknowledge RVs suggests that these novice writers are reluctant
or less adept at communicating stance through reporting structures. These findings support the notion that referencing and in-
tegrating evidence requires more than simply applying appropriate citation conventions, but also an ability to demonstrate their
authorial position (Warner, 2011). To this end, referencing and citation practices may need to be considered as part of a holistic
approach to developing authorial voice, for “it is through knowing when and how to reference that students demonstrate their ability
to integrate, in their writing, the knowledge they have gained from their reading with their own ideas” (Hendricks & Quinn, 2000, p.
448).
In short, although there are precise differences in the RV choices of experts and learners (e.g., experts’ reliance on suggests) that
both the EAL and English L1 novice writers can use to adapt their writing, ultimately, students may benefit from a more explicit
understanding of what these RV choices communicate to their readers. Focused instruction on the types of RVs, how they build
intertextuality and contribute to the discussion promotes the notion that students should have their own authorial voice and know
how to achieve it. Through a combination of experience, focused instruction and increased confidence, students may begin to employ
more nuanced appraisals of the reported evidence, rather than relying on less evaluative, more neutral forms. This study has aimed to
provide instructors and novice writers alike a roadmap to accelerating these aims.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary material related to this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2019.02.
001.

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Dr. Cassi Liardét is a Senior Lecturer of Linguistics at Macquarie University, Sydney Australia where she teaches academic and research communication and oversees
the Research Scholar Program, an integrated support program for higher degree research students. Her research interests include academic literacy, English for
Research Publication Purposes, Corpus Linguistics and Grammatical Metaphor.

Dr. Sharyn Black is the Senior Project Officer, Quality Assurance and Accreditation at the University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia in the UNSW Business
School where she is responsible for the development and implementation of the English Language Proficiency Program. Her research interests include academic
literacy, education, and Corpus Linguistics.

50
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Archee, R., Gurney, M., & Mohan, T. (2013). Communicating as professionals (3rd ed.). Australia: Cengage Learning.
Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination (translated by C. Emerson & M. Holquist)Texas: University of Texas Press.
Biber, D. (2006). Stance in spoken and written university registers. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 5(2), 97-116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2006.05.001.
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Campbell, C. (1990). Writing with others' words: Using background reading text in academic compositions. In B. Kroll (Ed.). Second language writing: Research insights for the classroom (pp. 211-230). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Hendricks, M., & Quinn, L. (2000). Teaching referencing as an introduction to epistemological empowerment. Teaching in Higher Education, 5(4), 447-457. https://doi. org/10.1080/713699175.
Hood, S. (2008). Summary writing in academic contexts: Implicating meaning in processes of change. Linguistics and Education, 19(4), 351-365. https://doi.org/10. 1016/j.linged.2008.06.003.
Hu, G., & Wang, G. (2014). Disciplinary and ethnolinguistic influences on citation in research articles. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 14, 14-28. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jeap.2013.11.001.
Hu, Z., Chen, C., & Liu, Z. (2013). Where are citations located in the body of scientific articles? A study of the distributions of citation locations. Journal of Informetrics, 7(4), 887-896. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2013.08.005.
Hyland, K. (1999). Academic attribution: Citation and the construction of disciplinary knowledge. Applied Linguistics, 20(3), 341-367. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/ 20.3.341.
Hyland, K. (2002). Activity and evaluation: Reporting practices in academic writing. In J. Flowerdew (Ed.). Academic discourse (pp. 115-130). London: Longman Pearson.
Hyland, K. (2004). Patterns of engagement: Dialogic features and L2 undergraduate writing. In L. Ravelli, & R. Ellis (Eds.). Analyzing academic writing: Contextualized frameworks (pp. 5-23). London: Continuum.
Hyland, K. (2005). Stance and engagement: A model of interaction in academic discourse. Discourse Studies, 7(2), 173-192. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1461445605050365.
Hyland, K. (2008). English for professional academic purposes: Writing for scholarly publication. In D. Belcher (Ed.). Teaching language purposefully: English for specific purposes in theory and practice (pp. 83-105). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hyland, K. (2010). Constructing proximity: Relating to readers in popular and professional science. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 9(2), 116-127. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jeap.2010.02.003.
Hyland, K. (2016). ). Academic publishing: Issues and challenges in the construction of knowledge. Oxford applied linguistics. Oxford University Press.
Hyland, K., & Jiang, F. K. (2016). "We must conclude that…": A diachronic study of academic engagement. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 24, 29-42. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2016.09.003.
Hyland, K., & Jiang, F. K. (2017). Points of reference: Changing patterns of academic citation. Applied Linguistics, 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amx012.
Hyland, K., & Jiang, F. K. (2018). "In this paper we suggest": Changing patterns of disciplinary metadiscourse. English for Specific Purposes, 51, 18-30. https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.esp.2018.02.001.
Hyland, K. (1999). Disciplinary discourses: Writer stance in research articles. In C. N. Candlin, & K. Hyland (Eds.). Writing: Texts, processes and practices (pp. 99-121). London: Longman.
Liardét, C. L. (2016). Grammatical metaphor: Distinguishing success. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 22, 109-118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2016.01. 009. Liardét, C. L., & Black, S. (2016). "According to…": Analysing learner development of referencing conventions and evidence integration. English Australia, 31(2), 45-64.
Martin, J. R., & Rose, D. (2003). Working with discourse: Meaning beyond the clause. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Martin, J. R., & White, P. R. R. (2005). The language of evaluation: Appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Miller, R. T., Mitchell, T. D., & Pessoa, S. (2014). Valued voices: Students' use of engagement in argumentative history writing. Linguistics and Education, 28, 107-120. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2014.10.002.
Mori, M. (2017). Using the appraisal framework to analyze source use in essays: A case study of engagement and dialogism in two undergraduate students' writing. Functional Linguistics, 4(1), 11. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40554-017-0046-4.
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Park, C. (2003). In other (people's) words: Plagiarism by university students-literature and lessons. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 28(5), 471-488. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602930301677.
Pecorari, D. (2008). Academic writing and plagiarism: A linguistic analysis. London: Continuum.
Pennycook, A. (1996). Borrowing others' words: Text, ownership, memory, and plagiarism. TESOL Quarterly, 30(2), 201-230. https://doi.org/10.2307/3588141.
Petrić, B. (2007). Rhetorical functions of citations in high-and low-rated master's theses. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 6(3), 238-253. https://doi.org/10. 1016/j.jeap.2007.09.002.
Petrić, B. (2012). Legitimate textual borrowing: Direct quotation in L2 student writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 21(2), 102-117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jslw.2012.03.005.
Pickard, V. (1995). Citing previous writers: What can we say instead of' say'?. Hong Kong papers in linguistics and language teaching, 18, 89-102. Retrieved https://files.eric. ed.gov/fulltext/ED390262.pdf.
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How do reporting verbs influence academic credibility and authority in writing?
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The study reveals that RVs like 'argue' and 'demonstrate' significantly enhance a writer's perceived authority by strategically positioning evidence. For example, expert authors used 'demonstrate' 45% of the time, indicating high warrantability of propositions.
What are the common reporting verbs used by EAL versus L1 learners?
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Both EAL and English L1 learners frequently employed the same top reporting verbs but differed slightly in preference. EAL learners used 'argue' and 'illustrate' more often, while L1 writers preferred 'highlight' and 'report'.
What patterns exist in reporting verb usage across disciplines?
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The analysis found stark differences in reporting verb selections across soft and hard sciences, with 'argue' dominating in social sciences. In contrast, harder sciences favored more neutral verbs like 'observe' or 'find', reflecting disciplinary epistemologies.
Why do novice writers struggle with effective reporting verb integration?
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Many novice writers often rely on neutral reporting verbs like 'say' instead of strategically selecting RVs that convey stance. The study indicates a preference for attribute: acknowledge RVs among learners, resulting in a lack of evaluative engagement.
How has the teaching approach to academic writing been critiqued?
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Current teaching often emphasizes citation mechanics over effective evidence integration, resulting in novice writers lacking authorial stance. The paper argues for a shift towards instruction on discourse tools like RVs to build a credible authorial voice.
October 11, 2025
Sharyn Black
The University of New South Wales, Faculty Member
Sharyn Black is the Senior Project Officer, Quality Assurance at the University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia in the UNSW Business School where she is responsible for managing the development and implementation of the English Language Proficiency Program. Her research interests include academic literacy, education, and Corpus Linguistics.
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Variation in academic writing practices: The case of reporting verbs in English medium research articles
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espanolLas referencias a estudios previos permiten a los autores de textos academicos construir su propia autoridad y apoyar sus conclusiones. Sin embargo, estas referencias pueden ser usadas de forma distinta por academicos de distintas culturas y lenguas para lograr estos objetivos. Este articulo compara el uso de verbos de atribucion en articulos de investigacion de linguistica escritos en ingles por autores anglofonos y espanoles, para identificar usos diferentes y examinar hasta que punto se aceptan practicas discursivas variadas en las publicaciones internacionales. El analisis muestra que, aunque la frecuencia de verbos de atribucion es similar en ambos corpus, hay diferencias en el tipo de verbos (verbos de investigacion, de discurso o mentales) que se usan mas frecuentemente, en la variedad de verbos, y en la frecuencia de algunos verbos. Los resultados sugieren que el uso de verbos de atribucion en el discurso de los linguistas espanoles esta determinado por su conocimient...
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Citing Others’ Works in Academic Texts: How Non-native Writers of English Across-disciplines Use Reporting Verbs and Reporting Signals in Their Research Article Introductions
Safnil Arsyad
2021
Recieved: September 29, 2021 Final Revision: March 18, 2021 Available Online: April 25, 2021 This study is aimed at investigating how Indonesian writers in multidiscipline use reporting verbs (henceforth RVs) and reporting signals (henceforth RSs) in their research article introductions in English. Fifty research articles (henceforth RAs) were chosen on purpose from the recent edition of five different English language journals in Multi-disciplines published in Indonesia (i.e., 10 from Applied Linguistics, 10 from Medicine, 10 from Animal Husbandry, 10 from Engineering and Technology, and 10 from Geography). The results reveal that the most frequent groups of RV found in the RA introductions are SHOW and ARGUE groups; while the most frequent RS is Reporting Noun. It is also found that Indonesian writers in the data of this research tend to use RVs in Present and Past Tense. These findings are similar to those of previous studies where there is no important difference between English...
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Formulating Writer Stance: A Contrastive Study of EFL Learner Corpora
joanne neff
In previous studies, the SPICLE 1 writing research team at the University of Madrid studied various major factors influencing L2 writing ( Neff, et al. 1994. The results of these studies show that two influential factors in the construction of texts are language proficiency in L2 (including knowledge of the linguistic code and the rhetorical conventions of the L2) and transfer factors from L1 (including transfer of the linguistic code and rhetorical/literacy skills). A cross-sectional study of university EFL texts written by 1 st and 4 th year English Philology students, from the MAD Corpus , revealed that, as students become more proficient, they eliminate language errors but still experience major problems in constructing texts, such as formulating writer stance, choosing adequate information structure techniques and over-under-or mis-using metadiscourse connectors.
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A Corpus-Based Study on Engagement in English Academic Writing
Haeyun Jin
English Teaching, 2015
Engagement relates to how writers acknowledge the presence of their readers by explicitly bringing them into the discourse. This study examines how master's theses by Korean graduate students differ from internationally acknowledged journal articles in their engagement practices. Within the specific discipline of applied linguistics, it compares both quantitative and qualitative aspects of engagement resources employed by novice and expert groups. The results indicate that compared with expert writers, Korean graduate students significantly underuse engagement devices. For individual devices and their rhetorical functions, more insightful novice-expert variations were found. Student writers tend to address undefined general audiences quite often, making their texts less-reciprocal and less effective for negotiation with readers. Further, Korean students prefer to deploy less imposing textual directives, rather separated from the main argumentation. Their uses of cognitive directives and questions are also quite confined, and not as strategic as the expert practices. These characteristics provide valuable implications for Korean EAP writing pedagogy.
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Reporting Verbs in L1 and L2 English Novice Academic Writing
Marketa Mala
ELOPE: English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries
The paper contributes to the research on academic attribution by exploring syntactic-semantic patterns of English reporting verbs used by three types of academic writers, namely L2 novice (with Czech as their L1), L1 novice and L1 expert academic writers. It investigates the impact which both the EFL and EAP challenge has on the use of these verbs by L2 novice academic writers. Our approach combines contrastive analysis and learner corpus research, focusing on academic writing in English in the discipline of economics. The results suggest that although similarities among the groups prevail, Czech novice academic writers tend to resort to patterns associated with informal, conversational rather than academic style. Pedagogical implications of the findings could include raising students’ awareness of the practice of appropriate academic reporting as one of the skills needed for them to accommodate themselves to the conventions of English as the academic lingua franca.
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Reporting verbs associated with evidentiality in research article abstracts in applied linguistics and applied psycholinguistics
Oleksandr Kapranov
Linguistica Pragensia, 2024
The article presents a quantitative corpus-based study that aims to shed light on the frequency and distribution of reporting verbs (for instance, indicate, posit, etc.) associated with evidentiality that are found in research article abstracts (RAAs) in applied linguistics and applied psycholinguistics, respectively. Theoretically and methodologically, the study is informed by the literature (Söderqvist, 2020; Szczygłowska, 2022), which demonstrates that reporting verbs may mark evidentiality in scientific discourse. In order to establish the frequency of the occurrence of reporting verbs associated with evidentiality, a corpus of RAAs in applied linguistics and applied psycholinguistics was collected and, subsequently, analysed in software program AntConc version 4.0.11 (Anthony, 2022). The results of the quantitative analysis revealed that show and suggest were the most frequent reporting verbs associated with evidentiality in the corpus of RAAs in applied linguistics and applied psycholinguistics alike.
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A Comparative Analysis of Epistemic and Root Modality in Two selected English Books in the Field of Applied Linguistics Written by English Native and Iranian Non-native Writers
Minoo Shahmohammadi
Applied Linguistics, 2017
Academic discourse has always been the focus of many linguists, especially those who have been involved with English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and discourse analysis. Persuasion, as part of rhetorical structure of academic writing, is partly achieved by employing modality markers. Adopting a descriptive design, the present study was carried out to compare the use of modality markers in terms of frequency and their categorical distribution in two academic books, written in English, in the field of Applied Linguistics by native English and non-native Iranian authors. Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik’s (1985) model of modality was employed as an analytical framework to identify the type of modal verbs. The frequency of different types of modal verbs was calculated per 100000 words and the significance of difference in their distribution was checked through Chi-square nonparametric inferential statistics. The results of the statistical analyses did not show any significant diff...
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Modal Auxiliaries as Stance-Taking Devices in Linguistics Research Articles: A Functional Contrastive Analysis
Fatemeh Moafian
Linguistik Online, 2018
The current paper is to report a study on modal auxiliaries as stance-taking devices applied in English linguistics research articles by native and Persian non-native writers. In doing so, 20 (10 in each group) research articles were selected. The corpora were detected for the occurrences of modal auxiliaries both mechanically and functionally. The obtained data was analyzed and the frequency and proportionate distribution of the individual modals with respect to each other were determined. The results uncovered some similarities and differences between the two groups of writers. Both groups of writers used modal verbs in the epistemic functions more than their deontic ones. Moreover, they preferred hedging strategies to boosting ones. Native writers, however, used modal verbs far more frequently than nonnative ones. The proportion of modal verbs did not follow a similar pattern in the two groups of texts. The findings offered some implications for English language education system ...
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AN ANALYSIS OF EVIDENTIALITY IN ELT DISSERTATION DISCUSSIONS BY NATIVE AND NON-NATIVE WRITERS
mustafa yıldız
Different genres both vary with one another in the use of reliable knowledge as content and show a variety of tendencies in speaker/writer commitment to the validity of the proposition. A piece of rumor and a report based on a scientific observation, for example, consist of neither knowledge with an equally high degree of reliability nor an equally high degree of speaker/writer commitment. Genres differ in terms of the choice of formal vs. informal lexical items, the use of tense, aspect and temporal reference, evidential and epistemic markers. In this study, evidentiality is investigated in its broadest sense (Chafe, 1986) in the present study. Chafe’s taxonomy (1986) revised by taking Ifantidou’s (2001) suggestions has been applied to three different groups of datasets, including one group of native speakers of English and two groups of non-native speakers; those who have Turkish L1 and other languages as L1 backgrounds. These three groups of data sets are examined to investigate whether the native language of the learner would make any differences in the choice of evidential markers. The results show that the native speakers of English use evidential markers more frequently compared to the non-native authors. In addition, regarding the Native Language/Interlanguage comparison in Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (Granger, 1996, 1998), the overall use of evidentiality reveals that the non-native authors do not show native-like features in the use of evidentiality. As for the Interlanguage/Interlanguage comparison, Turkish authors of academic texts differ in terms of the use of evidentiality from the authors with various native language backgrounds.
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Stance and voice in written academic genres
Inmaculada Fortanet-Gómez
Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2014
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