A study on the developmental features and stance construction of shell nouns by Chinese EFL learners

Abstract The unique semantic characteristics of shell nouns (SNs) endow them with a rich interpersonal function in academic discourse. However, little attention has been paid to the developing features of SNs and their lexico-grammatical patterns in Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. This study bridges these gaps by tracking the progression of 15 English postgraduate students in terms of their use of SNs in academic writing across three stages. Key findings reveal: (1) objective SNs remained the prevailing choice, but significant longitudinal increase was only observed in the use of ‘meta-text’ SNs; (2) stance expressions involved fewer object nouns, which highlighted the interactive and evaluative feature of academic papers; (3) the use of anaphoric shell-noun patterns increased, reflecting an emphasized author-centric stance formation; (4) learners had a preference for the use of objective premodifiers, revealing a divergent trend from SNs. Moreover, the study exposed features in learners’ stance construction, characterized by simplicity in use, limited interactivity, and imbalance in development.