A Comparative Study of Authority in English and Chinese Writing: Analyzing Grammatical Subjects and Modal Verbs in Academic Discourse

Journal publication is one of the productive vehicles through which one’s contribution to the research community is expressed. However, it has been found to be a particularly challenging task for scholars who are not English native speakers (e.g. Flowerdew, 1999, 2000, 2001; Martinez, 2005; Sionis, 1995). Previous research has indicated that Chinese non-native writers of English may have difficulty in expressing an appropriate level of authority. However, these studies usually centered on novice academic writers whose performance is likely to be overshadowed by the possibility that they had not yet mastered the academic language in the discipline. This study reports on the way in which varying degrees of authority, encoded in grammatical subjects and modal verbs, are used in the conclusion and implication sections of empirical journal articles in applied linguistics. The purpose of the study is to compare the strategic choices made by Chinese non-native writers of English to exercise their authority with that of English and Chinese natives and identify any traces of first language linguistic and cultural influences on English second language (L2) writing in order to shed light on academic writing pedagogy for non-native speakers. A detailed analysis of the texts revealed that the L2 writers differ from the two native groups by limiting most of their choices to impersonal subjects and possibility modals to imply neutrality in their display of research contributions. The Chinese native writers “outperform” the English native group by exhibiting an even higher level of authority through the prevalent use of personal subjects in conjunction with necessity modals. The results indicate that authority, rather than self-effacement, may be used by Chinese writers to demonstrate group solidarity. Also, the non-native scholars’ lack of authorial presence suggests that a sub-culture in the academic community may have been formed.