A comparison of authorial stances in speech genres : a corpus-based study

Abstract

Corpus-based studies have grown in popularity among researchers, especially those in the linguistic fields (Conrad, 1999). Given this emphasis, a corpus-based analysis on authorial stances in speech genres has been employed

This study explored the use of authorial stances among Thai undergraduate students enrolled in a Public Speaking class in an international university in Thailand. Authorial stances were compared between speech genres and between the gender of the speakers. The speeches delivered in class were videotaped and transcribed into plain text formats to create the corpus of the study. A freeware program called AntConc and a statistical analyzing program called PASW were then employed to investigate the authorial stances in the corpus.

Results revealed that all four types of authorial stances concerned in the study were present in the corpus. The self-mention “I” was the most frequently used, whereas attitude markers were the least employed overall.

Differences did exist between genders, but none was statistically significant. However, differences did exist between speech genres, with booster adverbs and hedge modal verbs being statistically significant. Lastly, differences did exist between rounds of the speech, with booster adverbs, hedge verbs, and possessive self-mentions being statistically significant.