The Use of Interpersonal Resources in Argumentative/Persuasive

560 Pages·2006·3.16 MB·English

Chapter 1 Introduction to the study
Chapter 1 Introduction to the study
1.1 Purpose of the study
This study will investigate argumentative/persuasive essays (APEs) written by international
undergraduate university students from East-Asian countries (Japan, South Korea, and
Taiwan) (EAS) and Australian-born English speaking students (ABS). More specifically, this
study will explore how these students utilise interpersonal aspects of English grammar and
discourse in their writing and the extent to which these aspects contribute to their relative
success in the assessment of their APEs.

The study principally adopts a systemic functional linguistic (SFL) orientation in investigating
the deployment of interpersonal resources in APEs, seeking in particular to contribute to
refining the description of the resources of ‘appraisal’ and metaphors of mood and modality.
Also of interest is identifying the relationship between results of text analysis and markers’
comments on the students’ essays and the grades awarded to the students.
1.2 Academic argument and East-Asian students
1.2.1 The importance and difficulties of argumentative/persuasive essays
When students make the transition from high school to a tertiary institution, they encounter
many challenges. One of these is the writing of course-work essays (Ballard and Clancy,
1991; Couchman, 1997). Furthermore, most essay topics, particularly in the humanities and
social sciences, require sound argumentation1 (Stuart-Smith, 1998). While arguing for and
against a certain proposition is one of the most frequent and important kinds of assignments
set in university (Lloyd, 1996; Connor et al., 1987; Crowhurst, 1991; Johns, 1993; Knudson,
1994), most undergraduate students both in L1 (English as a first language) and L2 (English
as a second language) still find it difficult to argue, discuss or evaluate competently as well as
persuasively (Ballard, 1984; Ballard and Clanchy, 1981 1988, 1991; Grabe and Kaplan,

1 Andrews (2005) makes a distinction between argument and argumentation. Argument can be said to
refer, variously, to a claim or proposition, to the evidence cited in support of a proposition, or to the
phenomena of arguing itself (p. 109). Argumentation is the process of developing arguments, the
exchange of views, the seeking and provision of good evidence to support claims and propositions –
the choreography of argument. Argument can be thus considered the noun, argumentation the
process in verb. He suggests that it is the latter that is of most relevance to education (p. 110).
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Chapter 1 Introduction to the study
1996). This form of writing is particularly problematic for non-native speakers of English,
who are often both linguistically and rhetorically inexperienced when it comes to writing
APEs in English (Johns, 1993; Connor, 1988; Thompson, 2001). Students from East-Asian
backgrounds experience the most severe difficulties in APEs (Mohan and Lo, 1985; Choi,
1988; Kamimura and Oi, 1998; Arsyad, 2000; Hirose, 2003).

As a typical second-language writer from South Korea, I was disadvantaged in academic
writing as well as in everyday life situations, when I was required to write
argumentative/persuasive types of essays and letters, which include making requests. I saw
many Asian students both in and out of Australia disempowered due to their lack of skill in
argumentative/persuasive writing (APW). As Crowhurst (1991:314) maintains, arguing a case
is particularly challenging, even though “it is important both for academic success and for
general life purposes”. Knudson asserts that, “argumentation/persuasion is one of the genres
which is essential for full participation in society” (1994:211).

To come to an appreciation of the difficulties and circumstances that ESL students encounter
in writing, it would be useful to begin by exploring factors in the unique cultural, linguistic,
and educational backgrounds of ESL writers that may cause general problems in arguing a
case. These differences often leave the overseas students underprepared for study in Australia
and other English-speaking Western cultures (Couchman, 1997). Their prior experiences also
place an additional constraint on these students when compared to native speakers of English
working at the same level (Leki, 1992; Grabe and Kaplan, 1996).
1.2.2 Cultural background and characteristics of East-Asian students
The problems with APW can be traced to the similarities in the cultures of EAS, which shape
their linguistic, social, and educational experiences in terms of English literacy programs
practised in their home countries. Biggs (1996:46) claims that East-Asian countries share the
same cultural orientation which he calls the “Confucian-Heritage Culture” (CHC). They also
share similar language systems and social structures, which seem extremely ‘exotic’ to
English (Taylor and Taylor, 1995). These differences can intensify the difficulties of students
from East-Asian regions in expressing themselves in English.

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Chapter 1 Introduction to the study
Based on my experiences and interviews with students, CHC is characterised as a ‘tests-
oriented culture’ as opposed to ‘an assessment-oriented’ one. The ‘tests-oriented culture’ of
CHC has led to English classes in the East-Asian region having reading- and grammar-
focused systems of learning. International students from East-Asian backgrounds thus find it
very difficult socially and functionally to use English both in speaking and in writing (Xu,
2001). Their lack of pragmatic and social interactional skills in speaking has been well
documented (Bhatia, 1993). However, a strong emphasis on the primacy of ‘oral
communication’ by educational agencies in these countries has relegated writing to the least
important position of language skills (Matsuda, 2001b, 2003; Leki, 2003). In fact, ESL writers
from South Korea, Japan, and China are almost never exposed to formal instruction in writing
styles in English in their six years in high school (Eggington, 1987; Blochi and Chi, 1995;
Leki, 1992; Johns, 1995; Kubota, 1998b; Hirose, 2003; Braxley, 2005). This contributes to
the problems these students encounter in APW on Western academic writing contexts.

CHC also favours ‘collectivism’ as opposed to ‘individualism’. These variables, in turn,
manifest themselves quite differently within communication. Collective cultures tend to be
associated with “oral-based culture” (Rubin et al., 1990:68) or “orality” (Thatcher, 2004:8). In
contrast, individualist cultures seem to correlate very strongly with “literacy-based culture” or
“writing”. Oral-based cultures have resulted in students’ reduced experiences of writing and
the writing pattern tends to be indirect with complex and subtle invocations of interpersonal
networks, which are reflected in argument structures (Thatcher, 2004). In this cultural
orientation, writing APEs is not a crucial part of the culture. APW exercises are thus
neglected both in and outside school curricula in East-Asian countries.

Asian students’ lack of critical construction is also partially attributable to the unique
educational systems associated with the Asian tradition of CHC. Under CHC, students’
educational experiences are based on ‘rote learning’ methods and a ‘teacher-centred’ method
in contrast with a ‘learner-centred’ approach. Learning strategies in those countries are based
on a ‘reproductive approach’ in contrast with ‘an analytical and a speculative approach’ as
employed in Western cultures (Ballard, 1984; Clanchy and Ballard, 1991; Hyland, 2003b).
The reproductive style of learning experienced by EAS is detrimental to critical thinking and
may lead this particular group to demonstrate “a lack of critical comment in their writing”
(Ballard, 1984:49) and to experience problems with the conceptual nature of Australian
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Chapter 1 Introduction to the study
academic writing (Couchman, 1997). For East-Asian students, there is much reverence for
scholars and scholarly work. Students are generally trained to absorb knowledge dispensed by
their teachers and to memorise and imitate, rather than challenge scholarly texts. The
influence of CHC traditions means there is a strong resistance to critical analysis (Ballard,
1984). Shifting to analytical and critical approaches is a major change in EAS study practices.

Belcher (1998) also reinforces those views in that ESL students are reluctant to critique, not
only because they feel relatively ignorant of their disciplines, but also because they are
intimidated by the authority of any established knowledge in their fields of study. Belcher
(1998) particularly stresses that Asian students do not know enough to be critical. Belcher’s
view takes into account the East-Asian cultural background as well as the importance of
‘subject-saturated knowledge’ in raising a critical voice. Scollon (1991) also highlights
Chinese students’ lack of self-assertive expression, claiming that they find it difficult to
express their inner feelings due to the Confucian sense of self. This result is in line with the
Japanese tendency to avoid ‘self-assertion’ or ‘self-expression’ (Wierzbicka, 1990).

The difficulties EAS experience in writing AP have been explained in terms of the constraints
of native culture contexts, which are beyond the control of the student writers. Therefore,
pedagogical implications are few. The next section will discuss how situational constraints,
derived from students’ transition to the target culture, affect their academic argument.
1.3 The importance of audience awareness in an academic argument
1.3.1 Cross-cultural transitions and academic discourse community
The increasing number of students from Asian countries studying in Australia has given rise
to a corresponding increase in problems associated with cross-cultural factors discussed in the
Australian context (Golebiowski and Borland, 1997). Both ABS and EAS go through
transitions when they enter into the academic culture upon which Australian universities are
based. EAS, however, go through a “double culture shift” (Ballard, 1984:53), firstly in the
transition from high school to university and secondly in the transition from the native culture
to the target culture. In other words, they have to make both cultural and situational
adjustments. As a result, EAS need to be involved in “communicating across cultures” as well
as in learning to “communicate between cultures” (Liddicoat, 1997:13). EAS are required to
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produce texts not only for the target culture but also for the particular academic discourse
community, whereas ABS only need to learn ‘communicating within a culture’, when they
enter into the particular specialist discourse community within their own culture.

Scholars involved in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and in English for Specific
Purposes (ESP)2 note that the main root of the problems that non-English speaking
background (NESB) students encounter in writing can be attributed to their unfamiliarity with
the Western academic culture and community (Swales, 1990; Bhatia, 1993; Belcher, 1995;
Jordan, 1997). The main contributor to the literacy difficulties faced by some L1 and L2
tertiary students should be thus understood in relation to a target culture, when they are
inducted into a Western academic discourse community.

As the regularities of preferred discourse community practices is a concept central to genre
views of writing, scholars involved in second-language writing discuss the importance of
genre approaches and advocate genre-based pedagogies for teaching L2 writing (Paltridge,
1997, 2001, 2002, 2004; Johns, 1995, 1997, 2002, 2003; Hyland, 2002a, 2003a). The notion
of discourse community foregrounds the socially situated nature of genre and helps to join
writers, readers and texts in a particular discursive space. Since the concept of discourse
community indicates groups or members of the community who share the same patterns,
values and conventions in writing, the real challenge for ESL students may stem more from
the fact that writers do not take into account the situationally related specific expectations that
academic audiences set up. It is in these cultural traditions of the community and these
discourse conventions that genres are formed and it is within the genre that audience
expectations are embodied. Therefore, the students’ meeting audience expectations play a
significant role in producing successful academic arguments.
1.3.2 Audience awareness and successful argument
From Aristotle’s rhetoric to the latest composition theories, there is substantial agreement that
a writer’s consideration of his/her audience exerts an important influence on written

2 According to Hyon (1996), genre scholarship has developed in three main research areas: EAP/ESP,
North American New Rhetoric studies and Australian systemic functional linguistics. The term ‘genre’
in this study refers to the third type of scholarship.
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Chapter 1 Introduction to the study
communication.3 Many scholars emphasise that developing the skill of successful writing
involves, among other things, an awareness of audience in academic writing and an ability to
exploit the awareness in written text (Kirsch and Roen, 1990; Grabe and Kaplan; 1996;
Thompson, 2001; Burgess, 2002; Swales and Feak, 2004; Casanave, 2004; Paltridge, 2004).
Others focus on the correlation between students’ awareness of audience4 and the quality of
their writing (Golden, 1980; Berkenkotter, 1981; Ede, 1984; Ede and Lunsfrord, 1994). The
sense of audience possessed by a good writer using persuasive language has been termed a
“rhetorical stance” (Golden, 1980:758). Audience adaptation is more noticeable in mature
writers than among novices (Hamp-Lyons, 1991). That is, as the students’ level of English
proficiency increases, the more developed their audience awareness becomes.

Many scholars point out that a writer’s sense of audience and purpose is particularly
important to the effectiveness of argumentative writing (Bradbury and Quinn, 1991; Johns,
1993, 1997; Schriver, 1992; Thompson, 2001). Students may fail to produce successful APW
because they have too little knowledge of their readers’ expectations (Pfister and Petrick,
1984). APEs require particular awareness by the writer of their audience (Connor, 1987).
APW presupposes an audience that has to be persuaded, and thus entails a stronger focus on
audience than does any other genre (Berkenkotter, 1981).
1.3.3 Interaction in writing
Studies on ‘interaction in writing’ have contributed to the studies on audience awareness and
its relation to linguistic realisation using an SFL model (Thompson and Thetela, 1995;
Thompson, 1997; Myers, 1999; Hyland, 2000a; 2005; Al-Sharief, 2001; Thompson; 2001;
Hoey, 1988, 2001). The basic assumption of this well-documented field is that written texts,
like speaking, are viewed as embodying interaction between the writer and reader. Interaction
can draw on both interactive and interactional resources. Interactive resources help to guide
the reader through text, while interactional resources involve the reader collaboratively in the
development of the text (Thompson, 2001). Interactive aspect of written texts relates to the
discourse level of interaction. For instance, an argument structure, such as a problem–solution
structure and discourse units, is seen from the perspective of interactiveness (Thompson,

3 Although see the arguments against the significance of audience by Elbow (1994b).
4 Audience is a continuum between the real reader outside text and the implied reader inside text. It
can be socially set, such as conventions or norms, as well as psychologically set, such as audience
assumptions or expectations (see literature reviews in section 2.2.5 of Chapter 2).
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2001; Al-Sharief, 2001). Interactional aspect of written text, such as mood, modality and
evaluation is the clause level of interaction explored by SFL’s interpersonal systems (see
further accounts on interaction in writing in section 3.4.2 in Chapter 3). When students write
essays, they need to meet audience expectations in terms of presenting or exchanging
information. At the same time they need to interact with the audience through careful choices
of language. That is to say, part of what makes writing coherent resides outside the text in the
readers’ interpretative processes. The aim of this relationship is to help the reader to negotiate
the text more easily and the writer to better express his/her message.
1.3.4 Tension in an academic argument
One of the reasons for the difficulties encountered by EAS can also be traced to the very
nature of the APEs genre. Academic arguments are often seen as purely impersonal, objective
and informative, as faceless, voiceless depictions of reality where words deal directly with
facts. And yet, in presenting informational content, writers also adopt interactional and
evaluative positions (Hyland, 1999). The difficulty for EAS is intensified by the fact that they
have to write APEs in an academic context. Therefore, the real crux of the problem in writing
academic argument stems from academic contexts that conflict with each other. In short, the
writer has to deal with a “distant audience” (Peters, 1986:169). The distant audience is
reflected in the APEs’ objectivity and formality. Expository argument “seeks to convince an
audience while maintaining distance between writer and audience” (Tannen, 1984:153). This
conflicting nature of writing is a crucial area of difficulty for EAS.

The “rhetorical conflict” (Corbertt, 2001:32) is generated from the multi-roles that academic
writers have to play, for example: informality versus formality, and personal opinion versus
objective intertextual relations. Scholars from various disciplines attempt to address these
tensions under various terms, such as “conflicting demands” or “opposite constraints” in
writing in the words of Shaughnessy (1977:89). Ventola (1996:154) refers to “two opposing
poles”, Martin and Rothery to “conflicting constraints” (1986:245) while Ewald (1998:232)
talks of “binary opposition or the bipolar opposition”.

These rhetorical conflicts arise from tensions within the native culture, the target culture, and
the discourse community (Liddicoat, 1997), or between ‘illogical identity’ shaped by the
indirect way of organising argument constructed by Chinese writers and the linear
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development of the ‘English identity’ (Shen, 1988). There is also the conflict between
‘signalling subjective evaluation’ and ‘reporting objective data’ (Hyland, 1996), between
‘social involvement in detached and anti-social text’ (Brandt, 1990), and “the persuasive
nature of text to be hidden behind veneer of objectivity (Hunston and Thompson, 2000:177).
In particular, scholars who advocate “dialogic literacy” (Cooper, 1998:81), influenced by
Soviet sociolinguistic theorists such as Bakhtin and Voloshinov, argue that these conflicts are
the source of confusion, frustration and difficulties encountered by students (Recchio, 1998;
Ritchie, 1998). They claim that successful writing of academic arguments thus involves
resolving or reconciling tensions between ‘individual subjectivism and abstract objectivism’
that might arise due to the distant nature of the academic audience. However, few have paid
attention to these issues in multicultural settings (Severino et al., 1997; Casanave, 2002).
1.4 An SFL perspective on audience awareness, persuasion and evaluative
stances
1.4.1 Two main types of linguistic errors and quality of an argument
So far, I have identified the three major reasons for the problems that EAS students encounter
in writing: lack of practice in writing, lack of familiarity with the Western discourse
community, and the lack of audience awareness, including the conflicting nature of writing
for an academic audience. Except for the lack of practice in writing, all relate to the lack of
audience awareness. Lack of audience awareness is manifested in the three main difficulties
that EAS students experience from a linguistic perspective. The difficulties are reflected in
not only problems at a sentence grammar level but also at the discourse level of argument
structure. There is little evidence to show that syntactic errors or grammatical accuracy are
either the principal features of writing development or the best measure of good writing, even
though ESL students tend to be ‘obsessed with’ grammatical errors (Rubin et al., 1990;
Hyland, 2002a).

The global level of argument structure has much more effect on an audience impression of the
quality of the argument (Connor, 1987, 1988, 1990, 1991; Connor and Lauer, 1988; Stuart-
Smith, 1998). In contrastive rhetoric,5 most studies focus on this global level of argument

5 Contrastive rhetoric is an area of writing research in second language acquisition, which became
popular in the 1970s. It was originated by Kaplan (1966, 1972) who claims that ESL writers’ problems
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Chapter 1 Introduction to the study
structure and East-Asian students’ indirect way of building an argument structure (Hinds,
1987, 1983, 1990; Choi, 1988; Kamimura and Oi, 1997, 1998; Kubota, 1998a). This may
contravene a Western audience’s expectations of a direct and linear way of organising
arguments. This claim has, however, been disputed to some extent by a number of scholars
(Mohan and Lo, 1985; Eggington, 1987; Kirkpatrick, 1997; Hirose, 2001, 2003).

Most importantly, the difficulties also entail problems with interpersonal features such as lack
of evaluation, speech functions, intertextual relations, lack of formality, and lack of
metadiscoursal language6 or conversationality. I call problems associated with these aspects
the lack of “A’s”, (analysis, assertion, averral, argument, articulation, authority, authenticity,
assumption, attribution) in comparison to the lack of “C’s” (coherence, cohesion, correctness)
(Ballard and Clanchy, 1988:11). Rhetorical aspects such as being critical and making
persuasive audience appeals have become a major determining factor of the academic
audience’s impression with regard to the quality of APW (Connor, 1990, 1991; Varghese and
Abraham, 1998; Kamimura and Oi, 1998). This is a crucial area where major complaints have
been made by academic staff about international students (Belcher, 1995; Ballard and
Clanchy, 1991; Bloch and Chi, 1995). Coulthard (1994) points out:
some students seem to feel that their job when writing essays and term papers is
merely to sew together a series of averral from experts with no intervening text of
their own. (p.2)

Problems with interpersonal components have been discussed by many scholars from
different disciplines, using different terminology. For example, American scholars have
already explored the importance of interaction between a writer and reader in academic
writing under the term ‘metadiscourse’, which refers to a rhetorical domain that regulates the
communicative function of language (Crismore, 1989; Intaraprawat, 1988; Stainton, 1996;
Hyland, 2005). Social constructivists address the issue under the terms ‘voice as self
representation’ (Cherry, 1988; Elbow, 1994a; Ivanič and Camps, 2001), ‘writer’s identities’
(Ivanič, 1994, 1998; Ivanič and Clark, 1997; Starfield, 2002) and ‘stance’ (Hyland, 1999,
2004). Scholars in second-language writing explore the issue in terms of ‘voice’ (Hirvela and
Belcher, 2001; Prior, 2001; Matsuda, 2001a; Atkinson, 2001), and ‘intertextuality’ (Beach &

in writing English (L2, R2) are attributable to the ‘interference’ of their native languages’ linguistic and
rhetorical conventions (L1, R1).
6 Textual and interpersonal language features that help readers to organise, to interpret and to
evaluate propositional content (Crismore et al., 1993)
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Anson, 1992; Ritchie, 1998; Ricchio, 1998; Pennycook, 1996; Scollon et al., 1998). For
evaluative language, the issue of the writer-oriented features of dialogue has been explored
under the term ‘authorial stances’ (Biber and Finegan, 1989; Hunston and Thompson, 2000)
and ‘evaluation’ of entities and propositions (Thetela, 1997; Hood, 2004b).

As Belcher (1995:153) defines critical writing as “responding in an evaluative, analytical way
to texts”, the issue of being analytical and critical relates directly to interpersonal meaning in
writing. Many scholars point to a growing interest in the interpersonal meaning in academic
writing and the problems associated with it (Hyland, 2002a; Duszak, 1997; Thompson, 2001;
Crismore, 1989; Hood, 2004b). Scholars involved in these areas of study agree that use of
interpersonal features such as expressions of opinion has different constraints in different
genres (Myers, 2001) and displays a considerable variation in different genres (Al-Sharief,
2001). However, few studies have explored the linguistic evidence of interpersonal meaning
in terms of cross-cultural differences and its effect on the quality of argumentative writing.
1.4.2 Realisations of command and appraisal within interpersonal metafunction
The problems may stem from students’ incomplete understanding of rhetorical situations,
such as writers’ purpose and audience variables in an academic discourse community. In
addition, the problems may be closely linked with their lack of skills in manipulating the use
of interpersonal resources of English such as genre structure, the grammar of mood and
modality, evaluative language, contextualisation cues of opinion markers, and citations. The
research involved in this study attempts to address the linguistic realisation of a writer’s
degree of audience awareness in APW. The integrative theoretical framework proposed to
capture the writer’s interaction with the reader through linguistic clues is the Australian genre-
based approach, mood and appraisal which have been recently formulated within SFL
(Iedema et al., 1994; Iedema, 1995, 1997a, 2003, 2004; Martin, 1997, 2000a, 2003c; White,
1998, 2004; Martin and Rose, 2003; Macken-Horarik and Martin, 2003; Martin and White,
2005).

Since SFL is the theory that underpins this study, I introduce some key tenets briefly here in
Chapter 1. Further relevant concepts will be explained in Chapters 2 and 3. In SFL, language
is a social semiotic (Halliday and Hasan, 1985; Halliday, 1985, 1994; Martin, 1992a; Halliday
and Matthiessen, 1999, 2004). The word ‘semiotic’ conveys three principles. Firstly, language
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