Papers by Zak Lancaster
This article offers a linguistic analysis of interpersonal stancetaking in four argumentative ter... 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, ...
College Composition and Communication, 2013
Grounded in the principle that writing assessment should be locally developed and controlled, thi... 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.
Does grammar instruction help to improve students' writing? Should writing instructors focus on g... more Does grammar instruction help to improve students' writing? Should writing instructors focus on grammar in first-year composition or other university-level writing courses? These questions persist among writing professionals despite a long tradition of research-based conclusions that explicit grammar instruction has no effect or even a harmful effect on students' writing development (e.g.,
The Journal of Teaching Writing, 2014
This article offers a linguistic analysis of interpersonal stancetaking in four argumentative ter... 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, ...
Rhetorical Genre Studies, or RGS, has had much influence in recent years on reconceptualizing the... more Rhetorical Genre Studies, or RGS, has had much influence in recent years on reconceptualizing the goals of college level writing instruction in North America, both in the contexts of first-year composition (FYC) and upper-level writing in the disciplines. One broad goal for FYC specifically has been conceptualized as helping students gain "genre awareness" (see the work of Beaufort; Devitt; Johns) or "awareness of the social and ideological aspects of genre production and consumption" (Cheng, 2007, p. 304). By assisting students to develop a nuanced awareness of genre-and not just familiarity with particular genres-it is hoped that students will be better equipped to examine samples of a genre they are working in with a keen rhetorical eye, approach unfamiliar writing situations with greater confidence in their existing store of genre knowledge, and learn to make more deliberate genre choices in their own writing-which may include motivated disruptions of genre expectations. A key instructional method for fostering this kind of nuanced genre awareness is to train students to analyze genres, tracking how textual choices shape, and are shaped by, contextual dynamics. This approach is discussed by, among others, Amy Devitt, Anis Bawarshi, and Mary Jo Reiff ("Materiality"), who argue that RGS informs a discourse analytic approach that "links patterns of language use to patterns of social behavior" and thus "allows students and researchers to recognize how 'lived textuality' plays a role in the lived experience of a group" (2003, p. 542). The advantage of the approach, as Devitt et al. explain, is that it "focuses on the actual uses of texts, in all their messiness and with all their potential consequences" and "ties that use to actual language, to the smaller bits of language that alert analysts to underlying ideas, values, and beliefs" (2003, p. 543).
College Composition and Communication, Jun 1, 2013
Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2015
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein’s writing textbook, “They Say / I Say,” has triggered importan... 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.
The expression of stance--defined broadly as expression of attitudes, epistemic judgments, and in... 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.
Discourse-based interviews (or DBIs) have long been used in writing research to investigate write... 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.
The past and possible futures of genre analysis: An introduction to the special issue This specia... more The past and possible futures of genre analysis: An introduction to the special issue This special issue examines the theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical contributions of John Swales' seminal book, Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings, in commemoration of its 25-year anniversary. As is well known to JEAP readers, Swales' key concepts in Genre Analysis (henceforth GA) include genre, discourse community, communicative purpose, rhetorical move analysis, and language-learning task. The majority of these concepts have been taken up enthusiastically in the past 25 years, as well as refined, expanded, and challenged, including by Swales himself. The eleven articles in this issue are devoted to explaining the nature of this uptake, demonstrating how central ideas in GA have been, and can be, applied in research and teaching.
Written Communication, Jan 29, 2014
Drawing on the appraisal framework from systemic functional linguistics (SFL), this article exami... 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.
Written Communication, Mar 27, 2014
This article uses corpus methods to examine linguistic expressions of stance in over 4,000 argume... more This article uses corpus methods to examine linguistic expressions of stance in over 4,000 argumentative essays written by incoming first-year university students in comparison with the writing of upper-level undergraduate students and published academics. The findings reveal linguistic stance markers shared across the first-year essays despite differences in students’ educational context, with greatest distinctions emerging between first-year writers and all of the more advanced writers. The specific features of stance that point to a developmental trajectory are approximative hedges/boosters, code glosses, and adversative/contrast connectors. The findings suggest methodological and conceptual implications: They highlight the value of descriptive, corpus-based studies of incoming first-year writing compared to advanced academic writing, and they underscore the construction of academic stance—particularly via certain stance features—as a process of delimiting one’s stance in a way that accounts for the views of others.
WAC and Second-Language Writers: Research Towards Linguistically and Culturally Inclusive Programs and Practices, Jan 2014
Expressing an authorial stance in contextually valued ways may be
especially challenging for Eng... 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.
College Composition and Communication, Jun 2013
"Grounded in the principle that writing assessment should be locally developed and controlled, th... 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 self-selected 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."
The Centrality of Style, Parlor Press and WAC Clearinghouse
Across the Disciplines, Dec 21, 2011
This article offers a linguistic analysis of interpersonal stancetaking in four argumentative ter... 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.
Bibliographies by Zak Lancaster
WPA-CompPile Research Bibliographies, No. 24. WPACompPile Research Bibliographies
Does grammar instruction help to improve students' writing? Should writing instructors focus on g... more Does grammar instruction help to improve students' writing? Should writing instructors focus on grammar in first-year composition or other university-level writing courses? These questions persist among writing professionals despite a long tradition of research-based conclusions that explicit grammar instruction has no effect or even a harmful effect on students' writing development (e.g.,
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Papers by Zak Lancaster
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.
Bibliographies by Zak Lancaster
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.
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
focus and metalanguage for examining written style, especially in
academic prose.