Contrastive interlanguage analysis of evidentiality in PHD dissertations

Abstract

The present study investigates evidentiality in its broadest sense (Chafe 1986) in PhD dissertations as a genre of academic writing. For this purpose, Chafe’s taxonomy (1986), revised by Ifantidou (2001), has been used as a framework in order to analyze three different groups of datasets, including one group of native speakers of English and two groups of non-native speakers: a group of Turkish speakers of English and the other non-native speakers with different L1 backgrounds. The texts of these three groups are examined in order to find out whether the native language of the participants is a factor in the choice of evidential markers. The results show that the native speakers of English use evidential markers more frequently compared to the non-native authors. In terms of the Native Language/Interlanguage comparison in Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (Granger 1996, 1998), the overall use of evidentiality reveals that non-native authors do not show native-like features in the use of evidentiality. In terms of the Interlanguage/ Interlanguage comparison, Turkish authors of academic texts differ from the authors with various native language backgrounds in terms of the use of evidentiality.