Identity Construction in China’s Highly Cited Researchers’ Research Article Abstracts

This article investigates the usage of stance markers and the constructed authorial identities by China's highly cited researchers based on Hyland's stance model and Sun's identity classification.It adopts a mixed-method approach combining quantitative data and qualitative pragmatic analysis based on a self-built corpus of 200 abstracts of 36,183 words.Quantitative data show that there are 1534 stance markers in the abstracts examined.China's highly cited researchers predominantly employ hedges and boosters with attitude markers and self-mentions less frequently used when expressing the stance in their abstracts.In terms of identity construction, they construct the identity of representor most frequently, which is significantly more than evaluator and interactor.Through qualitative textual analysis, it is found that hedges and boosters help China's highly cited researchers construct the identity of cautious representor; attitude markers construct the identity of objective evaluator; and self-mentions construct the identity of active interactor.Findings of this study are expected to provide pedagogical implications for the teaching of EFL learners' academic writing.