Zak Lancaster
Wake Forest University, English, Faculty Member
- Discourse Analysis, Composition and Rhetoric, Writing, English for Academic Purposes, Text Linguistics, Systemic Functional Linguistics, and 48 moreCorpus Linguistics and Discourse Analysis, Genre, Teaching Composition, Educational Linguistics, Academic discourse, Academic Literacies, Genre Theory & Second Language Writing, Academic discourse analysis, Appraisal (Systemic Functional Linguistics), Evaluation, Stance, Appraisal, Writing Across the Curriculum, Genre Theory, Genre studies, Writing in the Disciplines, Intercultural Communication, Languages and Linguistics, Rhetoric (Languages and Linguistics), Pragmatics, Corpus Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Teaching English as a Second Language, Identity (Culture), Academic Writing, English language, Composition Studies, Linguistic Politeness, Academic Identities, Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis, Stance, Interpersonal Communication, Language and Identity, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis, Genre Studies, SFL, Spoken Discoures, Genres, ESP, EOP, Plagiarism, Authorial Voice, Rhetorical stance, Systemic Functional Grammar, Threshold concepts in Rhetorical Grammar, Functional Grammar, Writing Studies, Metalinguistic awareness and knowledge, Relationship Between Grammar and Writing, Intercultural Communication and Rhetoric, and Linguistics and English Language Teachingedit
- My research explores linguistic approaches to writing research, instruction, and assessment.edit
This article offers a linguistic analysis of interpersonal stancetaking in four argumentative term papers written in an upper-level undergraduate course in economics. Two of the papers were written by English L2 writers who experienced... more
This article offers a linguistic analysis of interpersonal stancetaking in four argumentative term papers written in an upper-level undergraduate course in economics. Two of the papers were written by English L2 writers who experienced particular difficulty with the assignment and two by English L1 writers who received the highest grades among the forty students in the course. My analysis is guided by the question of how recurring patterns of interpersonal meanings operate to construct an argumentative stance that indexes, or not, the specific goals and expectations for writing in the course. Considered alongside interviews with the professor and the graduate student instructor (GSI) who graded and commented on the papers, my analysis draws on the Engagement framework from systemic functional linguistics (Martin & White, 2005), which has proven useful in recent years for understanding the ways both professional and student writers (Chang & Schleppegrell, 2011; Derewianka, 2009; Wu, ...
Grounded in the principle that writing assessment should be locally developed and controlled, this article describes a study that contextualizes and validates the decisions that students make in the modified Directed Self-Placement (DSP)... more
Grounded in the principle that writing assessment should be locally developed and controlled, this article describes a study that contextualizes and validates the decisions that students make in the modified Directed Self-Placement (DSP) process used at the University of Michigan. The authors present results of a detailed text analysis of students’ DSP essays, showing key differences between the writing of students who self-selected into a mainstream first-year writing course and that of students who selfselected into a preparatory course. Using both rhetorical move analysis and corpus-based text analysis, the examination provides information that can, in addition to validating student decisions, equip students with a rhetorically reflexive awareness of genre and offer an alternative to externally imposed writing assessment.
Research Interests: Composition Studies, Psychology, Composition and Rhetoric, English for Academic Purposes, Genre studies, and 15 moreAcademic Writing, Applied Linguistics, Assessment in Higher Education, Writing Studies, Genre Theory, Corpus Linguistics and Discourse Analysis, Academic discourse, Academic discourse analysis, Functional Discourse Grammar, Education Systems, Validity, Communication and media Studies, Curriculum and Pedagogy, Redacción, and Corpus Assisted Discourse Analysis
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This article offers a linguistic analysis of interpersonal stancetaking in four argumentative term papers written in an upper-level undergraduate course in economics. Two of the papers were written by English L2 writers who experienced... more
This article offers a linguistic analysis of interpersonal stancetaking in four argumentative term papers written in an upper-level undergraduate course in economics. Two of the papers were written by English L2 writers who experienced particular difficulty with the assignment and two by English L1 writers who received the highest grades among the forty students in the course. My analysis is guided by the question of how recurring patterns of interpersonal meanings operate to construct an argumentative stance that indexes, or not, the specific goals and expectations for writing in the course. Considered alongside interviews with the professor and the graduate student instructor (GSI) who graded and commented on the papers, my analysis draws on the Engagement framework from systemic functional linguistics (Martin & White, 2005), which has proven useful in recent years for understanding the ways both professional and student writers (Chang & Schleppegrell, 2011; Derewianka, 2009; Wu, ...
Research Interests: Discourse Analysis, Composition Studies, English for Academic Purposes, Academic Writing, Systemic Functional Linguistics, and 15 moreLanguage and Identity, ESP, Educational Linguistics, Text Linguistics, Genres, Stance Analysis, Plagiarism, Teaching Academic Writing, Language Studies, SFL, Curriculum and Pedagogy, Rhetorical stance, Spoken Discoures, EOP, and Authorial Voice
Research Interests: Discourse Analysis, Composition and Rhetoric, English for Academic Purposes, Stylistics, Discourse Stylistics, and 15 moreSystemic Stylistics, Academic Writing, Argumentation, Linguistic stylistics, Systemic Functional Linguistics, Genre Theory, Functional Linguistics, Educational Linguistics, Text Linguistics, Functional Discourse Grammar, Plagiarism, Teaching Academic Writing, Expression of Stance, Rhetorical stance, and Authorial Voice
Research Interests: Composition Studies, Composition and Rhetoric, English for Academic Purposes, Genre studies, Academic Writing, and 15 moreApplied Linguistics, Assessment in Higher Education, Writing Studies, Genre Theory, Corpus Linguistics and Discourse Analysis, Academic discourse, Academic discourse analysis, Functional Discourse Grammar, Genre Analysis & Second Language Writing, Education Systems, Validity, Communication and media Studies, Curriculum and Pedagogy, Redacción, and Corpus Assisted Discourse Analysis
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein’s writing textbook, “They Say / I Say,” has triggered important debates among writing professionals. Not included within these debates, however, is the empirical question of whether the textbook’s... more
Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein’s writing textbook, “They Say / I Say,” has triggered important debates among writing professionals. Not included within these debates, however, is the empirical question of whether the textbook’s templates reflect patterns of language use in actual academic discourses. This article uses corpus-based discourse analysis to examine how two particular “moves” discussed in the textbook are realized in three large corpora of professional and student academic writing. The analysis reveals important differences between the textbook’s wordings and those preferred by student and professional writers. It also uncovers differences in use of “interpersonal” functions of language by experienced and less experienced writers. In offering this detailed analysis of academic prose, I aim to extend calls to recenter language in writing research and instruction. I conclude with implications for discussing academic argumentation with students.
Research Interests:
The expression of stance--defined broadly as expression of attitudes, epistemic judgments, and interactional involvement--is increasingly recognized as an important, though hidden, feature of both expert and student academic writing, one... more
The expression of stance--defined broadly as expression of attitudes, epistemic judgments, and interactional involvement--is increasingly recognized as an important, though hidden, feature of both expert and student academic writing, one with potentially “much impact on the success of writing” (Wingate, 2012, p. 147). The study this article reports is motivated by the question of whether there are stance-taking qualities in undergraduate students' coursework writing that, in addition to being valued within specific course contexts, are valued across contexts. Specifically, it presents results from a corpus-based comparative analysis of stance in high- and low-graded papers written in two distinct undergraduate courses at a university in the United States. The investigation reveals both contextual specificity and overlap across the HG papers. It shows that the HG papers in both courses expressed stance with significantly greater frequency than the corresponding LG papers and in ways that project greater contrastiveness, critical distance, and positive alignment with disciplinary concepts. These three stance qualities, I suggest, are a part of a general novice academic stance that may be implicitly expected in students' coursework writing across a range of contexts, especially formal assignments calling for “critical analysis” and evidence-based argumentation.
Research Interests: Composition and Rhetoric, English for Academic Purposes, Academic Writing, Applied Linguistics, Writing Studies, and 8 moreCorpus Linguistics and Discourse Analysis, Academic discourse, Academic discourse analysis, Writing in the Disciplines, Writing Across the Curriculum, Stance, Corpus-based discourse analysis, and Epistemic Stance
Discourse-based interviews (or DBIs) have long been used in writing research to investigate writers’ tacit genre knowledge, including their rhetorical motivations for sentence-level wordings. Meanwhile, researchers in English for Academic... more
Discourse-based interviews (or DBIs) have long been used in writing research to investigate writers’ tacit genre knowledge, including their rhetorical motivations for sentence-level wordings. Meanwhile, researchers in English for Academic and Specific Purposes (EAP/ESP) have used corpus techniques to uncover patterns of such wordings, ones that index community-valued ways of knowing and meaning. This article brings together these two methods in a novel way. By offering a case study of Richard, an advanced undergraduate writer majoring in philosophy at a U.S. university, the article demonstrates how systematic analysis of Richard’s writing informed and enriched DBIs with him and his professor, Maria. Specifically, corpus-based text analysis revealed that Richard regularly expressed an epistemic stance in his course essays in ways that are conventional and valued in philosophical argumentation, while the DBIs revealed that neither Richard nor Maria were consciously aware of these stance patterns, despite regular appearance in both their writing. Taken together, these findings point to the value of using corpus techniques prior to the DBI to identify meaningful choices in language that likely otherwise would be missed. The findings also raise important questions about the acquisition of disciplinary discourses and the sources of knowledge that foster that acquisition.
Research Interests: Discourse Analysis, Composition and Rhetoric, English for Academic Purposes, Tacit Knowledge, Research Methodology, and 11 moreAcademic Writing, Applied Linguistics, Argumentation, Corpus Linguistics, Writing Studies, Corpus Linguistics and Discourse Analysis, Academic discourse analysis, Writing in the Disciplines, Writing Across the Curriculum, Stance, and Corpus-based discourse analysis
Drawing on the appraisal framework from systemic functional linguistics (SFL), this article examines patterns of stance in a corpus of 92 high- and low-graded argumentative papers written in the context of an upper-level course in... more
Drawing on the appraisal framework from systemic functional linguistics (SFL), this article examines patterns of stance in a corpus of 92 high- and low-graded argumentative papers written in the context of an upper-level course in economics. It interprets differential patterns of stance in students’ texts in light of interview commentaries from the instructors, exploring how their judgments of students’ levels of “critical reasoning” and “analytic rigor,” among other qualities, may be influenced by recurring configurations of stance. As a methodological contribution, the article demonstrates how appraisal analysis of student writing, when used alongside instructor interviews, can reveal types of stances that are tacitly valued in the specific context. Results suggest the need for greater awareness among faculty in the disciplines of what is “going on” when they are reading student work and how they can make their expectations and judgments more explicit to students when assigning and evaluating writing.
Research Interests: Discourse Analysis, Composition and Rhetoric, English for Academic Purposes, Academic Writing, Applied Linguistics, and 12 moreArgumentation, Systemic Functional Linguistics, Writing Studies, Appraisal (Systemic Functional Linguistics), Academic discourse, Writing in the Disciplines, Writing Across the Curriculum, Systemic Functional Grammar, Stance, Metalinguistic awareness and knowledge, Evaluation, Stance, Appraisal, and Interpersonal metadiscourse
Expressing an authorial stance in contextually valued ways may be especially challenging for English as a Second Language (L2) writers (in addition, certainly, to many L1 writers), as the subtle ways that writers in the disciplines go... more
Expressing an authorial stance in contextually valued ways may be
especially challenging for English as a Second Language (L2) writers (in addition, certainly, to many L1 writers), as the subtle ways that writers in the disciplines go about evaluating evidence and positioning the reader toward their views are largely tacit and therefore not often made explicit to students. In response to this problem, this chapter discusses ways that writing specialists can assist faculty in the disciplines to become explicitly aware of stance expressions in their students’ writing. Drawing on analysis of student writing in two disciplinary contexts (political theory and economics) as well as interviews with the course instructors, I offer examples of stance features that appear to be valued in these two contexts even though they run below the instructors’ fully conscious awareness. I then discuss ways that disciplinary faculty can be assisted to identify these features explicitly. The larger goal of this chapter is to argue for a way of reading students’ disciplinary writing that is sensitive to the details of stance-taking and to the language related problems that many students experience when writing in the disciplines.
especially challenging for English as a Second Language (L2) writers (in addition, certainly, to many L1 writers), as the subtle ways that writers in the disciplines go about evaluating evidence and positioning the reader toward their views are largely tacit and therefore not often made explicit to students. In response to this problem, this chapter discusses ways that writing specialists can assist faculty in the disciplines to become explicitly aware of stance expressions in their students’ writing. Drawing on analysis of student writing in two disciplinary contexts (political theory and economics) as well as interviews with the course instructors, I offer examples of stance features that appear to be valued in these two contexts even though they run below the instructors’ fully conscious awareness. I then discuss ways that disciplinary faculty can be assisted to identify these features explicitly. The larger goal of this chapter is to argue for a way of reading students’ disciplinary writing that is sensitive to the details of stance-taking and to the language related problems that many students experience when writing in the disciplines.
Research Interests: English for Academic Purposes, Academic Writing, Second Language Writing, Academic discourse, Writing in the Disciplines, and 7 moreWriting Across the Curriculum, Stance, Teaching Academic Writing, teaching academic writing to ESL or L2 students, Metalinguistic awareness and knowledge, Metadiscourse and Hedging, and Evaluation, Stance, Appraisal
Research Interests: Discourse Analysis, Composition and Rhetoric, English for Academic Purposes, Stylistics, Discourse Stylistics, and 20 moreSystemic Stylistics, Academic Writing, Argumentation, Linguistic stylistics, Systemic Functional Linguistics, Genre Theory, Appraisal (Systemic Functional Linguistics), Functional Linguistics, Educational Linguistics, Text Linguistics, Functional Discourse Grammar, Argumentation, Critical Thinking, DIscourse, Writing in the Disciplines, Plagiarism, Teaching Academic Writing, Evaluation, Stance, Appraisal, Expression of Stance, Stance, stance taking, interaction in discourse, Rhetorical stance, and Authorial Voice
This article offers a linguistic analysis of interpersonal stancetaking in four argumentative term papers written in an upper-level undergraduate course in economics. Two of the papers were written by English L2 writers who experienced... more
This article offers a linguistic analysis of interpersonal stancetaking in four argumentative term papers written in an upper-level undergraduate course in economics. Two of the papers were written by English L2 writers who experienced particular difficulty with the assignment and two by English L1 writers who received the highest grades among the forty students in the course. My analysis is guided by the question of how recurring patterns of interpersonal meanings operate to construct an argumentative stance that indexes, or not, the specific goals and expectations for writing in the course. Considered alongside interviews with the professor and the graduate student instructor (GSI) who graded and commented on the papers, my analysis draws on the Engagement framework from systemic functional linguistics (Martin & White, 2005), which has proven useful in recent years for understanding the ways both professional and student writers (Chang & Schleppegrell, 2011; Derewianka, 2009; Wu, 2007) use language to construct an authorial stance within specific disciplinary contexts. Following my analysis, I consider implications of this line of research for working with English L2 writers in upper-level courses in the disciplines.
Research Interests: Discourse Analysis, Composition Studies, English for Academic Purposes, Academic Writing, Systemic Functional Linguistics, and 18 moreLanguage and Identity, ESP, Educational Linguistics, Text Linguistics, Argumentation, Critical Thinking, DIscourse, Writing in the Disciplines, Writing Across the Curriculum, Genres, Stance Analysis, Plagiarism, Teaching Academic Writing, teaching academic writing to ESL or L2 students, Evaluation, Stance, Appraisal, SFL, Rhetorical stance, Spoken Discoures, EOP, and Authorial Voice
Research Interests:
Imagine if a discourse analyst were to examine a representative sample of scholarship in a particular field, uncovering a set of valued and stable (though tacit and unspoken) conventions that shape the ways scholars in that field... more
Imagine if a discourse analyst were to examine a representative sample of scholarship in a particular field, uncovering a set of valued and stable (though tacit and unspoken) conventions that shape the ways scholars in that field write—conventions that usually remain implicit in classroom contexts. What would happen if undergraduate students were taught these conventions explicitly? What would be the advantages and disadvantages for students’ learning? For the instructors teaching the course? Such are the driving questions behind Laura Wilder’s Rhetorical Strategies and Genre Conventions in Literary Studies: Teaching and Writing in the Disciplines.
Wilder, Laura. Rhetorical Strategies and Genre Conventions in Literary Studies: Teaching and Writing in the Disciplines. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. 238 pages. $39.95. 978-0-8093-3093-5
Wilder, Laura. Rhetorical Strategies and Genre Conventions in Literary Studies: Teaching and Writing in the Disciplines. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. 238 pages. $39.95. 978-0-8093-3093-5
Research Interests:
This dissertation project examines patterns of stance in essays written by high- and low-performing students in two upper-level undergraduate courses, one in political theory and the other in economics. It employs methods of linguistic... more
This dissertation project examines patterns of stance in essays written by high- and low-performing students in two upper-level undergraduate courses, one in political theory and the other in economics. It employs methods of linguistic discourse analysis, drawing largely on Appraisal Theory (a subset of Systemic Functional Linguistics), in combination with methods from corpus linguistics and theoretical insights from rhetorical genre studies. It examines how recurring patterns of stance in students' essays correspond to the goals and assessment criteria for writing in the courses, as revealed through interviews with the instructors and analysis of selected course material. Through this robust set of analytic approaches, the study aims to make explicit patterns of stance in student writing that correlate with high- and low-graded essays and with the disciplinary contexts. The broader aim is to render explicit patterns of interpersonal meanings constructed in students' texts that construe such abstract qualities as critical reasoning, complexity and nuance in argumentation, and control of the discourse—features identified by the instructors as valued in student writing. The study contributes to the field of composition and rhetoric by pinpointing discursive resources that enable some student writers to construct more discipline-congruent styles of argumentation than others. Specific findings show that, while the two essay assignments require different ways of using language to construct valued stances, the high-performing writers in both contexts more consistently construct a "novice academic" stance while the low-performing writers more consistently construct a "student" stance. The former is marked by the rhetorical qualities of contrastiveness, dialogic control, critical distance, and discoursal alignment, or assimilation of the disciplinary discourse. In contrast, the “student” stance is marked by frequent personalizing moves, repeated references to the classroom discourse, and comparatively infrequent use of discursive resources that construe the rhetorical qualities listed above. These findings have implications for instruction in writing in the disciplines (WID) contexts, specifically in terms of how instructors can refine their metalanguage about writing for discussing stance with students explicitly and in detail.
Research Interests: Discourse Analysis, Composition Studies, Rhetoric, Composition and Rhetoric, English for Academic Purposes, and 51 moreGenre studies, Pragmatics, Semantics, Genre, Academic Writing, Discourse Markers, Teaching Composition, English, Syntax, Applied Linguistics, Academic Identities, Argumentation, Modality, Writing, Systemic Functional Linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, Language and Identity, Linguistics, Academic Literacies, Genre Theory, Appraisal (Systemic Functional Linguistics), Functional Linguistics, Educational Linguistics, Text Linguistics, Academic discourse, Academic discourse analysis, Functional Discourse Grammar, Argumentation, Critical Thinking, DIscourse, Writing in the Disciplines, Writing Across the Curriculum, Multimodal Literacy, Evidentiality, Analysis, Register Theory, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis, Genre Studies, Thesis, TESOL, Applied Linguistics, Systemic Functional Grammar, Plagiarism, Text Analysis, Stance, Teaching Academic Writing, Evaluation, Stance, Appraisal, Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis, Expression of Stance, Grammar Teaching, Modal Particles, Rhetorical stance, Teaching of Writing, Oral Skills, and Authorial Voice
In this chapter we propose that the concept of stance offers a valuable
focus and metalanguage for examining written style, especially in
academic prose.
focus and metalanguage for examining written style, especially in
academic prose.