Noviceness or non-nativeness? Disentangling the use of stance in French EFL learner academic writing

Jadoulle, Pauline [UCL]

Stance, or the linguistic ways writers express their (1) assessment and commitment, and (2) attitudes and value judgments towards the information presented, has repeatedly been characterized as an area of difficulty for English as a Foreign language (EFL) learners of academic writing. EFL learners are often described as adopting a more assertive style and as taking on a more personal tone than experts, for instance. The tendency to associate such features with learner writing, however, has been subject to criticism. First, some researchers argue that those features could actually be typical of novice writing in general – thus encompassing both native and non-native novice writing – as “expertise is a more important aspect to consider than nativeness” (Römer 2009: 99). Second, the culture and language of production of academic writers has an impact on writers’ stance usage (Breivega et al. 2002, Vassileva 2001, Recksi 2004), and generalizing such features to all learners might be slightly reductive. The question thus arises as to the extent to which features of EFL learner writing are associated with (1) the writers’ level of expertise, and (2) the fact that they do not write in their first language. A twofold methodology is used to answer this question. First, a tripartite comparison is conducted between one corpus of English expert writing, one corpus of L1 English novice writing, and one corpus of French EFL learner writing. Second, French EFL learner writing is compared to L1 French novice writing, so as to gain better understanding of crosslinguistic influence (Jarvis & Pavlenko 2008). The focus is laid on stance adverbials and stance complement clauses controlled by nouns, adjectives, and verbs. The results reveal that a number of features are associated with the noviceness of the writers – native or non-native – such as a lack of awareness of register conventions, a presence of lexical teddy bears, or signs of wordiness. On the other hand, one main finding stands out as being linked to the non-nativeness of EFL learners rather than their noviceness, namely hedge usage. In particular, it was found that the adoption of a less tentative tone through an underuse of hedges is learner-specific. The relatively high number of similarities between the corpora of French EFL learner writing and L1 French novice writing also point to the importance of crosslinguistic influence. This study therefore allows us to distinguish between noviceness- and (non)-nativeness-related stance features in EFL learner writing, and to nuance repeated claims qualifying learners as being “too authoritative” or having a “limited lexical repertoire” (e.g. Hyland & Milton 1997, Paquot 2010). It also highlights the importance of language-specific register awareness, a notion that has received little attention so far.