Exploring Valued Patterns of Stance in Upper-Level Student Writing in the Disciplines

Written Communication Jan 2014

Exploring Valued Patterns of Stance in Upper-Level Student Writing in the Disciplines

Zak Lancaster Wake Forest University

Abstract

Drawing on the appraisal framework from systemic functional linguistics (SFL), this article examines patterns of stance in a corpus of 92 high- and low-graded argumentative papers written in the context of an upper-level course in economics. It interprets differential patterns of stance in students’ texts in light of interview commentaries from the instructors, exploring how their judgments of students’ levels of “critical reasoning” and “analytic rigor,” among other qualities, may be influenced by recurring configurations of stance. As a methodological contribution, the article demonstrates how appraisal analysis of student writing, when used alongside instructor interviews, can reveal types of stances that are tacitly valued in the specific context. Results suggest the need for greater awareness among faculty in the disciplines of what is “going on” when they are reading student work and how they can make their expectations and judgments more explicit to students when assigning and evaluating writing.

Journal: Written Communication
Published: 2014-01-01
DOI: 10.1177/0741088313515170
Open Access: Closed
Topics: writing across the curriculum

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (5)

Black (2022)

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Rhodes (2019)

Feeling It: Toward Style as Culturally Structured Intuition

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Aull (2019)

Linguistic Markers of Stance and Genre in Upper-Level Student Writing

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Hyland et al. (2016)

Change of Attitude? A Diachronic Study of Stance

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Aull et al. (2014)

Linguistic Markers of Stance in Early and Advanced Academic Writing

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