Investigating Stance and Engagement Markers in Ph.D. Theses of Libyan EFL Postgraduates

Abstract

  In academic writing, the stance and engagement features establish an important area because they help writers convey their impressions, messages, and attitudes towards their readers.  In spite of the increasing studies tackling this issue, limited studies have focused on EFL Libyan students. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the stance and engagement markers in the conclusion sections of ten Ph.D. theses of Libyan postgraduates; five of them are from the soft domain specifically business administration field (B), and the other five are from the hard domain specifically the electrical-electronics engineering (EE). The current study used Hyland’s (2005) model to explore stance and engagement markers used in the conclusion sections. The findings show that the total number of the stance in the soft domain conclusions is (117), and the total number of the engagement markers is (35), whereas in the hard domain, (27) were for the stance and (13) were for the engagement. Such findings could be employed academically to enhance EFL Libyan students’ performance in academic writing.