Genre Analysis: Studying Authorial Stance in the Pakistani Research Articles of Business and Management Sciences

Abstract

The notion of authorial stance has received much attention internationally in recent years which has increased its complexity in terms of its relationship with genre-pedagogy and genre-awareness. Metadiscourse markers are used by academic writers in order to build and maintain relationship with their readers. This is done by use of appropriate language either to influence them or show a certain degree of agreement or disagreement. The present study investigated the stance features as they appeared in the genre of research article introduction section written by seasoned authors. 50 papers from the field of Business and Management Sciences were studied in order to explore the language features projecting authorial stance or author’s voice used by authors. Hyland’s (2005b) Model of Academic Interaction was used to study the authorial stance. The findings showed that the authors used a considerable degree of stance features in their research articles. The study may provide some useful insights regarding teaching the writing of research article, understanding the concepts of genre-competence and genre-production.