Engagement Markers in L1 and L2 English Academic Writing: The case of Master’s and Doctorate Theses

Yıl 2021, Cilt: 18 Sayı: 3, 1658 - 1670, 31.12.2021

Fatma Yuvayapan , İlyas Yakut

https://doi.org/10.33437/ksusbd.963087

Öz

Engagement markers are linguistic devices through which academic writers pull their readers into their texts and negotiate with them. This particular form of negotiation is crucial for the acceptance of new academic knowledge claimed by academic writers in addition to meeting the expectations of readers who are highly proficient scholars, specifically in postgraduate genres. A great deal of research has concentrated on the use of engagement markers in research articles. Hence, this study presents a comparative analysis of engagement markers in master’s and doctorate theses written by native academic writers of English and Turkish academic writers of English. The corpus is constructed for the investigation includes 1.148.992 words of master’s and doctorate theses written between 2010 and 2019 in English language-related fields. The concordance software, AntConc version 3.5.8, was utilized to calculate the frequency counts of engagement markers. We ran Log-likelihood statistics to determine whether there was a statistical difference among four corpora regarding engagement marker usage. In addition to cross-cultural variations in the two academic communities, we observed identical strategies in master’s and doctorate theses by both groups of academic writers.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Academic Writing, Postgraduate Genres, Engagement markers, L1 English speakers, Turkish speakers of English

Engagement Markers in L1 and L2 English Academic Writing: The Case of Master’s and Doctorate Theses

Öz

İlişki belirteçleri, akademik yazarların okuyucularını metinlerine çektiği ve onlarla müzakere ettiği dilsel araçlardır. Bu özel müzakere biçimi, özellikle lisansüstü türlerde oldukça yetkin akademisyenler olan okuyucuların beklentilerini karşılamanın yanı sıra, akademik yazarlar tarafından ortaya atılan yeni akademik bilgilerin kabulü için de çok önemlidir. Karşılaştırmalı aradil çözümlemesine dayanan bu çalışma, 2010 ve 2019 yılları arasında birinci dil olarak İngilizce konuşan ve ikinci dil olarak İngilizce konuşan Türk yazarlar tarafından yazılan İngilizce araştırmaları ile alakalı yazılmış olan yüksek lisans ve doktora tezlerinde ortaya çıkan ilişki belirteçlerini araştırmaktadır. Bu çalışmanın sonuçları, birinci dil olarak İngilizce konuşan yazarların yüksek lisans ve doktora tezlerinde ikinci dil olarak İngilizce konuşan Türk yazarlara kıyasla daha fazla ilişki belirteci kullandıklarını göstermiştir. İki akademik topluluktaki kültürler arası farklılıklara ek olarak, her iki akademik yazar grubunun yüksek lisans ve doktora tezlerinde aynı stratejileri kullandıkları gözlemlenmiştir. Bu çalışma, İngilizce dilinde eser üreten akademik yazarlar için önemli çıkarımlar sunmaktadır, çünkü birinci dil olarak İngilizce konuşan araştırmacıların akademik yazımda ilişki belirteci kullanımı, ikinci dil olarak İngilizce konuşanlara doğru ilişki belirteçlerini belirlemede rehberlik edebilir.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Akademik Yazım, Lisansüstü Türler, İlişki Belirteçleri, Birinci Dil Olarak Ingilizce Konuşuculari, İkinci Dil Olarak İngilizce Konuşan Türkler

Kaynakça

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