Title Revisiting expressions of stance in british english: bnc 1994 vs bnc 2014
Translation of Title Autoriaus požiūrio raiška britų anglų kalboje: „BNC1994“ ir „BNC2014“ tekstynų tyrimas.
Authors Ahmed, Khaled Sayed Saad Sayed
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Pages 60
Keywords [eng] BNC, corpus-based, stance, adverbials, Diachronic studies, Britų nacionalinis korpusas, tekstynais paremtas tyrimas, autoriaus požiūrio raiška, adverbialai, diachroniniai tyrimai
Abstract [eng] This MA thesis represents a corpus-based study comparing expressions of stance in two versions of the British National Corpus: BNC1994 and BNC2014. It focuses particularly on the classification of attitudinal and epistemic stance adverbs, following Douglas Biber’s theoretical framework (Biber and Finegan, 1988; Biber et al., 1999; Biber, 2006). The two subcorpora under investigation are academic prose and e-language registers of the BNC1994 and BNC2014, with the aim of qualitatively analysing stance adverbials explicitly mentioned in the framework, according to specific selection criteria explained in the study, extracting 500 randomised concordance lines for each marker, totalling 2500 lines per corpus. In total, 8,242 concordance lines were manually examined across corpora to identify epistemic and attitudinal stance adverbials, using frequency rates and semantic analyses. Chi-square and Cramér's V tests were used to measure the significance of differences in the frequencies of the adverbials in the two versions of the BNC. P-values suggest significant results across corpora. The results suggest a decline in attitudinal stance expressions in academic prose registers, while epistemic markers remained almost stable. E-language registers exhibited a higher frequency of stance markers across all types. Cross-register comparisons demonstrate register-specific shifts across corpora. Grounded in the classification of stance adverbials by Biber et al. (1999), the novelty of the study lies in the manual analysis of each concordance line to determine its classification as epistemic or attitudinal semantically. These findings are interpreted within the frameworks of Halliday’s (2014) register theory and Traugott’s (1989) subjectification theory. The study provides insights for linguistics scholars, ESL teachers, and students.
Dissertation Institution Vilniaus universitetas.
Type Master thesis
Language English
Publication date 2026