The relationship between L1 and L2 stance use: An investigation of noviceness, non-nativeness and individual variation in academic writing
(2023) Linguists’ Day of the Linguistic Society of Belgium — Location: University of Antwerp (13.October.2023)
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- Over the last few decades, learner corpus-based studies have repeatedly identified stance features such as over-assertiveness as typical of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learner writing (e.g. Paquot 2010). The tendency to portray these features as ‘learner-typical’ has however also been subject to criticism. First, as L1 and L2 English novice writing have been found to share linguistic characteristics, some have argued that expertise plays a more significant role than nativeness (Römer 2009). Most EFL learners are also novice writers in their L1, but almost no research so far has compared systematically their writing in the L1 and the L2. Second, learners have often been considered as a homogeneous group in L2 stance studies, which goes against recent developments insisting on the importance of individual differences (e.g. Wulff & Gries 2020). This is all the more important for stance research, as different writers have been shown to adopt different degrees of assertiveness and attitude in their L1 (e.g. Vold 2008). In order to disentangle the effects of EFL learners’ novice vs. non-native status, while also accounting for individual variation, this study investigates stance in L1 and L2 writing by the same individuals. The analyses are based on the Corpus of Academic fRench and English (CARE) corpus, which contains L1 French and L2 English term papers written by university students. A mixed-method approach is adopted, involving a corpus study and three case studies. Noviceness vs. non-nativeness is studied via a general comparison between the L1 French texts and the L2 English texts. Individual variation is examined through a more qualitative analysis of three specific writers’ L1 and L2 productions. The focus is placed on epistemic and attitudinal adverbials and complement clauses. A corpus-driven approach is adopted to identify the markers (e.g. "hypothesis", "intéressant"), which are then extracted and disambiguated in context. The results obtained by means of the two methodologies are complementary. The corpus study highlights a relationship between L1 and L2 stance marker frequencies, lexical preferences and lexical diversity, thus pointing to the importance of noviceness. The analysis of the texts of three specific writers reveals that, in addition to this L1-L2 relationship, there exists individual variation, both in terms of L1 stance usage, and in terms of the extent to which L1 stance use is mirrored in L2 stance use.
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Jadoulle, P. (2023). The relationship between L1 and L2 stance use: An investigation of noviceness, non-nativeness and individual variation in academic writing. Linguists’ Day of the Linguistic Society of Belgium, University of Antwerp. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/247328