STANCE AND ENGAGEMENT IN EFL LEARNER INTERACTIONS

Abstract

This study seeks to understand the construction of stance and engagement in Indonesian EFL learners’ interactions during panel discussions and group presentations in the classroom. Employing Hyland’s (2005) framework, we investigate stance and engagement markers in Universitas Negeri Malang Spoken English in Academia Konteks (UMSpEAKs), a spoken corpus of EFL learners’ speech in academic contexts. The overall findings show that stance projection is more common than audience engagement. Stance projection in both speech events is constructed by hedges and self-mentions. There seems to be a reluctance among the learners to use other stance markers such as boosters and attitude markers. Regarding audience engagement, audience mentions are highly frequent, while directives, asides, knowledge references, and questions are rarely used. These findings indicate that the speakers in both speech events tend to project a humble and polite stance, which sometimes leads to an uncertain and ambiguous self-projection. These speakers are inclined to address the audience by using the second-person pronoun you to keep them engaged in the interactions.