Using the quantitative data to guide the interviews

The aim of RQ-1 is to uncover patterns of students’ lexical choices. As discussed in the methodology section, the main trends of the quantitative findings were used as prompts in the DBIs in the qualitative data collection. Therefore, a few stance markers in each category were selected to guide the interview protocol; these markers are:

Boosters: ‘show, demonstrate, the fact that, believe, think’

Hedges: ‘can, could, may might, indicate, suggest, probably, possibly, seem, appear’ Self-mentions: ‘the researcher, I’

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Attitude markers: ‘important, significant, interestingly, surprisingly, even’’

However, during the interview protocol, the above devices were used in chunks to investigate interviewees’ perception and knowledge of the similarities and differences among them, e.g.

Chunk one: show, demonstrate, suggest and indicate when revealing un/certainty Chunk two: epistemic ‘may, might, can, could, would’

Chunk three: epistemic ‘seem and appear’ Chunk four: ‘probably and possibly’

Chunk five: ‘I’ and ‘the researcher’ Chunk six: ‘important and significant’

Chunk seven: ‘interestingly and surprisingly’ Chunk eight: ‘believe and think’

Chunk nine: ‘the fact that’ Chunk ten: ‘even’

4.4 Conclusion

Based on the statistical analysis of data obtained, the following findings have been established:

1. How do both Egyptian MA students (English L2 writers) and British MA students (English L1 writers) employ stance markers:

a. What similarities in performance are there between L2 and L1 writers in terms of: I. the overall quantity of tokens / types of stance markers,

There is no statistically significant difference between the total numbers of stance markers between the two writer groups.

II. the frequencies of tokens/types of each category,

There is no statistically significant difference in using boosters and self-mentions between the two writer groups. Also, there do not appear to be noticeable differences in the way individual

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categories of stance markers are used by both writer groups. Both text writers used nearly similar types of hedges, boosters and attitude markers.

III. the preferred lexico-grammatical forms,

Both writer groups showed similarities in the preferences of lexical verbs in case of boosters, epistemic modal verbs in the case of hedges and adjectives in the case of attitude markers. Concerning self-mentions, the implicit self-reference ‘the researcher’ was the preferred lexical item in both corpora.

IV. and levels of epistemic commitment?

Possibility devices were found the most in both corpora (56% of all devices).

b. What differences in performance are there between L2 and L1 writers in terms of: I. the overall quantity of tokens / types of stance markers,

The British L1 writers used considerably more types (100) compared to (69) types used by the Egyptian L2 writers.

II. the frequencies of tokens/types of each category,

There is a statistically significant difference in terms of using hedges and attitude markers; the L1 writers used significantly more hedges and attitude markers than the L2 writers. Also, the data reported that the L1 writers used noticeably more types of hedges (43) and attitude markers (12) than the L2 writers (28 and 18, respectively). Moreover, a difference was found in using self-mentions, i.e. the personal pronoun ‘I’.

III. the preferred lexico-grammatical forms,

The only difference is that very few instances of the person pronoun ‘I’ were found in the L2 texts (0.01 per 1000 words) compared to the instances in the L1 scripts (0.22 per 1000 words).

IV. and levels of epistemic commitment?

The L1 group used considerably more EDs (60.2%) in the total number of devices, particularly when using probability devices (72.4%) compared to (27.6%) to the L2 group.

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The results in the conclusion are discussed in relation to the research questions and literature review in Chapter Six. Moreover, a few findings of the quantitative data were used to guide the interviews with some of the text writers in the following chapter as explained in section 4.3.6.

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Chapter Five: Qualitative Results (RQs 2&3)

5.1 Introduction

The quantitative results reveal that L1 writers used statistically significant more hedges and attitude markers while there is no significant difference between the two writer groups in terms of the overall quantity of stance markers, boosters and self-mentions. Further analysis indicates that the markers most used by L1 and L2 writers (with a slight variation) are epistemic modals, e.g. may and could, epistemic verbs, e.g. show and demonstrate, and attitudinal markers e.g. important and significant. It was noticed also that L1 writers referred to themselves implicitly and explicitly by using both the researcher and I while the L2 writers preferred using the implicit reference the researcher.

The main trends of the quantitative results (see Table 34) were be used to seed prompts for the discourse-based interviews with some of the text writers.

Table 34: A list of the used stance markers in the DBI

Boosters show, demonstrate, the fact that, believe, think

Hedges may, might, can, could, would, indicate, suggest, seem, appear, probably, possibly

Attitude markers important(ly), significant(ly), interesting(ly), surprising(ly), even

Self-mentions I, the researcher

Discourse-based semi-structured interviews were conducted to answer RQ-2: “What stance do some text writers (both Egyptian and British) prefer to take? What are their perceptions towards certain stance markers? What factors may have affected their lexical choices?”.

Twenty of the text writers were interviewed to investigate their perceptions towards using certain linguistic features, namely, these devices’ functions and their degree of certainty in case of boosters and hedges while at the same time the interviews provided accounts of the reasons that motivated text writers to choose and use these linguistic features. It was considered in the interview that each interview protocol would include contexts of the selected prompts whether in the interviewee’s own text as in stage-2 or from other discussion chapters as in stage-3 (see Appendix-4) to make sure each interviewee would be asked about the same prompts.

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A systematic approach was conducted during the interview in a way that the prompts were divided into chunks, i.e. epistemic modals ‘may, might, can, could, would’, epistemic verbs ‘seem, appear, indicate, show’, attitude markers ‘important, significant’, attitude markers ‘interesting/ly, surprising/ly’, and self-mentions ‘I, the researcher’. The following excerpt taken from (BR-3 interview) displays the flow of the interview questions/probes to investigate the interviewee’s perceptions about the epistemic modal verb could. (I) refers to me (the interviewer) while (BR-3) refers to the participant or the interviewee (BR=British, EGY=Egyptian). The word or the prompt that the questions were about are emboldened in the student’s academic text (the first shaded table below) while it will be capitalised in the interview transcript (the zigzag lines Table).

Excerpt from BR-3 discussion chapter:

The communicative language classroom promotes not only the spoken language but group and pair work with discussions that have no clear structure and thus could be perceived as

disorganised as the GTM classroom is very structured. (BR-3)

Excerpt from BR-3 interview:

I: What impression did you want your reader to have from using the word COULD? BR-3: again.. i couldn’t conclusively point out through my findings.. i wasn’t explicit in my

questionnaire and my interviews therefore.. i didn’t have conclusive answers so it may not have a conclusive structure and ‘this COULD be perceived as disorganised...COULD be

I: if you use IS instead of COULD BE, will you have the same meaning

BR-3: wo no…. this is absolute certainty...in this context…i am not certain.. i avoid being

certain...mm.. because my findings didn’t show absolute certainty… COULD is the right word.

I: well... if we put CAN instead of COULD

BR-3: ..no COULD is more academically... professional… CAN is rather.. mm.. informal. It’s

something you would speak not something you’d write

I: what about MAY…if I say ‘this MAY be perceived’…do you see a difference?

BR-3: no…no.. i don’t see any difference but i wouldn’t use MAY … because I’ve used it

there so it’s repetition.

I: if you haven’t used it there, will you use it

BR-3: mm.. yeah but MAY BE is a very bland form of expression ...COULD is more definite. I: what do you mean by definite

BR-3: mmm… more definite i mean stronger

As seen above, first the interviewee’s belief about the function of the word ‘could’ is elicited. And then, it was probed their perception of the difference if ‘can or may’ were used instead.

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The fact that both the L1 and L2 writers used hedges more than boosters does not indicate that they used hedges excessively or they should have used more boosters, since these uses needed extensive study of the context which would be too time consuming for a study of this size. Yet, the functions of some boosters, hedges, attitude markers and self-mentions were explored and how they were used and perceived by the text writers.

DBIs were conducted with twenty participants (twelve Egyptians and eight British) to answer RQ- 2 “What stance do some text writers -both Egyptian and British- prefer to take? What are their perceptions towards certain stance markers? What factors may have affected their lexical choices?”. Participants’ stance preferences are explored in section 5.2; participants’ perceptions about certain stance markers are explored in sections 5.3, 5.4, 5.5 and 5.6. It should be noticed that students’ perceptions in this study refers to what functions stance markers do in their texts, their awareness of the epistemic commitment of boosters and hedges, and their views about the selected stance devices. Finally, the potential reasons behind text writers’ use of stance markers are outlined in section 5.7.