Constructing critical stance in University essays in English literature and sociology

• I investigated how writers construct critical stance in university essay writing.
• I analyzed statements in essays that overtly expressed a critical evaluation.
• Three key coherence relations most frequently framed these critical statements.
• The statements also used the metadiscourse devices of attitude markers and hedging.

The aim of this study was to investigate the means used by writers to establish a critical stance in university essays. Specifically, the study identified the particular statements in essays that overtly expressed a critical evaluation, and explored the textual resources that these statements employed. This involved the manual analysis of two samples of 15 student essays from the subject disciplines of English literature and sociology in terms of the social genre/cognitive genre model of the author (Bruce, 2008a). Two generic elements, operating together, emerged as the principal means used by writers to express a critical evaluation. First, the critical statements employed a small range of coherence relations operationalized in terms of Crombie's (1985) interpropositional relations. Most frequently they used: Grounds Conclusion, Concession Contraexpectation and Reason Result. Secondly, embedded within these relations, two devices from Hyland's (2005) metadiscourse model were also used to help construct a critical stance, specifically hedging and attitude markers. In relation to writing pedagogy, these findings suggest the need for novice writers to develop awareness of the use of these important textual elements to formulate critical statements and to develop the ability to incorporate them into their own writing.