Disciplinary Voices in Academic Writing: A Study of Two Korean EFL College Students

Abstract

This study investigates how EFL students as disciplinary insiders construct a voice in their academic writing through specific linguistic resources. Through detailed text analysis of voice markers, the study identifies and describes how disciplinary voices are manifested or constructed through the texts written by two undergraduates of one upper-level course in applied linguistics. The range of relevant voice markers as employed in this study builds upon two dimensions of interactional model of voice in academic writing proposed by Hyland (2008a): stance and engagement. The voice features found in the two texts provide clues as to how the students portray their disciplinary voices through the linguistic choices made in text construction. The students showed clear preference for some choices over others. Alongside these preferences were variations in the way they used linguistic resources to represent themselves, their positions, and their readers. Certain preferences were, at times, different from the rhetorical preferences of native English-speaking writers in academic discourse. However, complementary analyses, including more quantitative studies, are needed to provide a complete picture of how Korean EFL college students make decisions on the strategic use of voice features in academic writing.