Comparison of positioning strategies in undergraduate and postgraduate research

proposals between Humanities and Business

CHEUNG Lok Ming Eric1 (eric.cheung@polyu.edu.hk)

Mary JOHANNES2 (mary.el.johannes@polyu.edu.hk)
Renia LOPEZ-OZIEBLO3 (renia.lopez@polyu.edu.hk)

Summary of Presentation

Project Title: Supporting Professional Development, Pedagogy & Language for Curriculum Learning
Texts Selected: 15 Capstone Project proposals (BA English: 5; MA English: 5; Logistics & Maritime
Studies: 5)
Theoretical/ Analytical Framework: ENGAGEMENT system of APPRAISAL in Systemic Functional
Linguistics

Table 1. Functions and realisations of ENGAGEMENT (Cheung, 2015, p. 65)

ENGAGEMENT Functions Examples
features
MONOGLOSSIC Single voiced; no other voices In the section of TOEFL speaking, many academic
introduced; dialogically inert terms and scientific phenomena are incorporated in
the listening materials.
HETEROGLOSSIC Multi-voiced; introduction of alternative positions
CONTRACTION Fending off the scope of voices
DISCLAIM Rejection of dialogic alternatives
DENY Negation of proposition Teaching speaking is not just the matter of
teaching how to speak fluently and accurately.
COUNTER Counter-expectancy of a This approach sounds adoptable, but in the
proposition practice of question 6…
PROCLAIM Limiting scopes of alternatives
CONCUR Overt agreement with the Contextual guesswork in top-down model is
projected dialogic partner commonly used in real life…
PRONOUNCE Explicit intervention of authorial It is clear that the emergence of both fragments
presence and run-ons…
ENDORSE Portrayal of the authorial voice This research indicates the strong relationship
or the sourced voice is valid and between writing and grammar
thus warrantable
EXPANSION Allowing dialogic alternatives
ENTERTAIN Modalisation of proposition They might misunderstand sentence variety as
complicated sentences.
ATTRIBUTE Attribution of voice of external Fitzpatrick and Ruscica (2000) once pointed out
sources that by recognising…

1, 2, 3 Department of English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University 1

Figure 1. Overall distribution of ENGAGEMENT resources across student proposals

Major References:

Cheung, L. M. E. (2015). Legitimising Knowers’ Multiple Voices in L2 Postgraduate Writing. TESOL

International Journal, 10(1), 61-72.

Cheung, L. M. E. (2017). Development of evaluative stance and voice in postgraduate academic

writing (Doctoral dissertation).

Forey, G., & Cheung, L. M. E. (forthcoming). The benefits of explicit teaching of language for curriculum
learning in the Physical Education classroom. Journal of English for Specific Purposes.

Hood, S. (2012). Voice and stance as appraisal: Persuading and positioning in research writing across
intellectual fields. In Stance and voice in written academic genres (pp. 51-68). Palgrave Macmillan,
London.

Martin, J. R., & White, P. R. (2003). The language of evaluation(Vol. 2). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Matsuda, P. K., & Tardy, C. M. (2007). Voice in academic writing: The rhetorical construction of author
identity in blind manuscript review. English for Specific Purposes, 26(2), 235-249.

O’Donnell, M. (2008). O’Donnell, M. (2008, April). The UAM CorpusTool: Software for corpus annotation
and exploration. In Proceedings of the XXVI Congreso de AESLA (pp. 3-5). Almeria Spain.

White, P. R. R. (2003). Beyond modality and hedging: A dialogic view of the language of intersubjective
stance. TEXT-THE HAGUE THEN AMSTERDAM THEN BERLIN-, 23(2), 259-284.

1, 2, 3 Department of English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University 2