A Comparative Study of Stance Adverbs Used in the Introduction Section of Chinese and English Native Scholars’ Journal Articles

Abstract

The research aims to examine stance adverbs in the introduction section of Chinese and English native scholars’ journal articles. The corpus-based analysis reveals that Chinese and English native scholars use epistemic stance adverbs most frequently, attitudinal stance adverbs next, and style-of-speaking adverbs last, and that Chinese scholars use lower frequency and variety of stance adverbs than their native counterparts. It is also found that the frequency of the collocates mainly used by Chinese scholars is dramatically higher than that of English native scholars. It also indicates that Chinese scholars can reasonably use attitudinal stance adverbs frequently used by English native scholars, but their awareness of using attitudinal adverbs still needs to be improved. English native scholars are more inclined to put stance adverbs in the sentence-medial. Furthermore, both Chinese and English native scholars tend to use epistemic and style-of-speaking stance adverbs in the sentence-medial position, and they are more likely to place attitudinal stance adverbs in the sentence-initial and medial position.