The Use of Interpersonal Resources in Argumentative/Persuasive ...

The Use of Interpersonal Resources in
Argumentative/Persuasive Essays by East-Asian
ESL and Australian Tertiary Students

Volume 1


Sook Hee Lee







A thesis submitted in satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of


Doctor of Philosophy





Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney


2006, September

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Author’s Declaration


I.
This thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD degree
II.
Due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used
III.
The thesis does not exceed the word length for this degree
IV.
No part of this work has been used for the award of another degree
V.
This thesis meets the University of Sydney’s Human Research Ethics Committee
(HREC) requirements for the conduct of research





Signature:


Name:


Date:














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I dedicate this thesis to my family: my
husband Dr IL-Kyu Lee, my three
children Mee-Jin Lee, Mee-Eun Lee, and
Jong-Do Lee.



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Acknowledgements
I feel very proud to have completed this research at a relatively late stage of my life and as a
second language writer. It has proven to be an extremely enjoyable exercise on the one hand
and an excruciatingly painful journey on the other.

I owe a deep debt of gratitude to the following people for their help and support. My supervisor,
Professor Len Unsworth, for his constructive criticism, truly devoted support, and endless
patience with my writing. Certainly, he played the most important role in assisting my climb up
the PhD summit. Without him, this project would not have been possible. My gratitude also
extends to my associate supervisor, Dr Alyson Sympson, for her invaluable suggestions and
kind guidance and to Sally Humphrey for her constant compliments and interest in my research,
as well as for her tireless proofreading, inspiration, and friendship throughout my candidature.

I am greatly indebted to Geoff Thompson for his generosity and encouraging comments
whenever I cried out for help. I will never forget his kind guidance. Also to Dr Jim Martin for
his positive comments and encouragement on my theoretical frames during my presentation in
an SFL Friday seminar; Dr Rick Iedema and Dr David Rose for their help in construing my
theoretical frameworks; and Dr Peter White, for his invaluable contribution to the Appraisal
discussion group. I would also like to express my deep gratitude to Dr Paul Thibault, Dr Paul
McAndrew, Dr Louise Ravelli, Helen Drury and Dr Sue Hood for their kind responses in
sending materials I requested.

I am truly grateful to the University of Sydney for awarding me with a UPA scholarship and
the Faculty of Education for the completion scholarship. Many thanks must also go to SFL
members, and Faculty of Education staff: Dr Gerard Sullivan, Dr Hui Shen for their moral
support, and Dr Brian Paltridge for his insightful comments. In particular, many thanks to Dr
David Thomas for editing and proofreading my thesis, to my office mate; Wei Wang, for his
enriching discussions; and to Tebbin Koo, On Kei Lee, and Dai Fei Yang for their lovely
friendship.

Special thanks must go to my husband, Dr Il-Kyu Lee, for his endless support, including house
chores and my most beautiful three children for their long-suffering patience during my
candidature. I must also express my gratitude to my family back in South Korea, especially to
my deceased mother, and to my brother-in-law, who have always encouraged my scholarly
achievements.

And a final thank you to Dr Beverly Derewianka and Dr Elizabeth Thomson at the University
of Wollongong for introducing me to the Appraisal workshop.





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Abstract
This thesis explores the use of the interpersonal resources of English in
argumentative/persuasive essays (APEs) constructed by undergraduate international students
from East-Asian regions (EAS), in particular, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, and also by
Australian-born English speakers (ABS). High-graded essays (HGEs) were compared with
the low-graded essays (LGEs) in order to identify the relationship between their deployment
of interpersonal features and the academic grades given by markers. In addition, the essays
constructed by the EAS writers were compared with those written by ABS writers.

A major complaint of academic staff about ESL Asian students concerns their lack of
analytical, critical voice and formality in their arguments. The linguistic evidence for this
explored in this thesis is based mainly on interpersonal systems of interaction and evaluation
recently developed within Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (Iedema et al., 1994;
Iedema, 1995, 2003, 2004; Martin, 2000a, 2003c; White, 1998, 2004; Martin and Rose,
2003; Macken-Horarik and Martin, 2003; Martin and White, 2005). Within interaction, the
thesis draws on work dealing with the metaphorical realisations of commands in a
bureaucratic administration context. Evaluation is based on appraisal theory, which is
concerned with the linguistic inflection of the subjective attitudes of writers, and also their
evaluative expressions and intersubjective positioning.

In order to explore the use of interpersonal resources from a perspective of writer and reader
interaction, this study incorporates a social interactive model derived from ‘Interaction in
writing’ alongside Bakhtin’s (1981, 1986) dialogic literacy. Under this broad
interdisciplinary approach, the interpersonal aspects in APEs are examined from three main
perspectives: Interactive (schematic structures), Interactional (the metaphorical realisation of
commands), and InterPERSONAL meanings (the three main appraisal systems:
ATTITUDE, ENGAGEMENT, and GRADUATION).

The sample comprised six overseas students and six Australian-born native English
speakers. They were all participants in the English for Academic Purposes class in the
Modern Language Program offered by a regional university in southern New South Wales.
These students were required to write APEs as a part of their course. Discourse analysis was

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applied to the essays at the genre, discourse semantic and the lexico-grammatical levels.
Interviews were undertaken with markers to identify the relationship between text analysis
results and markers’ comments on the essays and the grades.

The results indicated that students’ use of interpersonal resources is a good indicator for
judging quality of APEs. The analysis reveals significant differences in the extent to which
HGEs are interactive by showing awareness of audience in argument structure, and making
interactional choices focusing on command and interPERSONAL choices of appraisal
systems. These differences are reflected in the use both of strategies of involvement by
being interactional, and strategies displaying distance by being formal. The differences are
also reflected in the presentation of personal opinions by being evaluative and of
intersubjective claims supported by evidence. While there were no significant differences
between the EAS and ABS writers in terms of the argument structure, ABS texts are more
interactional, having a high degree of authority and conviction characterised by a formal
tone. ABS writers also display a stronger voice through frequent exploitation of
GRADUATION resources of appraisal. Overall, it can be said that while EAS students
display problems with raising their own voices in argument, ABS students display problems
in supporting persuasion. Educational implications for English for Academic Purposes
(EAP) writing curriculum design include the desirability of enhancing a context-sensitive
approach in writing, raising audience awareness of language teachers in relation to the
interpersonal use of English, and promoting the dialogic nature of argument by reconciling
individual creativity with social voices and community conventions.

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Table of Contents
Author’s Declaration ....................................................................................................i
Acknowledgements....................................................................................................iii
Abstract .......................................................................................................................iv
Table of Contents .......................................................................................................vi
List of Figures.............................................................................................................xi
List of Tables .............................................................................................................xii
Key to Acronyms used ............................................................................................xiv
Chapter 1 Introduction to the study ..........................................................................1
1.1 Purpose of the study............................................................................................................1
1.2 Academic argument and East-Asian students..................................................................1
1.2.1 The importance and difficulties of argumentative/persuasive essays............................1
1.2.2 Cultural background and characteristics of East-Asian students...................................2
1.3 The importance of audience awareness in an academic argument ................................4
1.3.1 Cross-cultural transitions and academic discourse community.....................................4
1.3.2 Audience awareness and successful argument ..............................................................5
1.3.3 Interaction in writing .....................................................................................................6
1.3.4 Tension in an academic argument .................................................................................7
1.4 An SFL perspective on audience awareness, persuasion and evaluative stances .........8
1.4.1 Two main types of linguistic errors and quality of an argument ...................................8
1.4.2 Realisations of command and appraisal within interpersonal metafunction ...............10
1.5 Significance of the study...................................................................................................17
1.6 General areas of inquiry...................................................................................................18
1.7 Overviews of chapters.......................................................................................................19
Chapter 2 Interpersonal resources in argumentative/persuasive essays ......... 20
Introduction.............................................................................................................................20
2.1 Inadequacies in argumentative/persuasive essays .........................................................20

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2.1.1 Contrastive rhetoric and argument structure................................................................21
2.1.2 Rhetoric research in relation to interpersonal resources of English. ...........................25
2.1.3 Rethinking theory and research ...................................................................................36
2.2 Social approaches to the context in writing ....................................................................38
2.2.1 Writing as social interaction ........................................................................................39
2.2.2 Writing as social construction......................................................................................39
2.2.3 Writing as power and ideology....................................................................................40
2.2.4 Writing as dialogic solidarity.......................................................................................41
2.2.5 Audience in writing .....................................................................................................45
2.3 Nature of argumentative/persuasive writing..................................................................50
2.3.1 Argumentative/persuasive writing in contrastive rhetoric...........................................51
2.3.2 Argumentative/persuasive writing in SFL...................................................................54
Summary..................................................................................................................................58
Chapter 3 Theorising writer/reader relations and types of interpersonal
meaning..................................................................................................................... 60
Introduction.............................................................................................................................60
3.1 The interpersonal metafunction ......................................................................................60
3.1.1 Metafunctions and types of structure...........................................................................60
3.1.2 Schematic structure and prosodic structure .................................................................63
3.1.3 Interpersonal dimensions and tenor relationships........................................................64
3.1.4 Interpersonal systems...................................................................................................65
3.2 The metaphorical realisations of commands..................................................................71
3.2.1 Lexico-grammatical metaphor.....................................................................................71
3.2.2 Interpersonal metaphor ................................................................................................72
3.2.3 The metaphorical realisation of commands in directive genres ..................................74
3.2.4 Demodulation, demodalisation and modality metaphor ..............................................77
3.3 Theory of appraisal...........................................................................................................79
3.3.1 ATTITUDE..................................................................................................................80
3.3.2 ENGAGEMENT..........................................................................................................89
3.3.3 GRADUATION.........................................................................................................101
3.4 Relevant studies on interpersonal meaning in writing and an analytical framework103
3.4.1 Interpersonal meaning in writing within SFL............................................................103
3.4.2 Types of interpersonal resources in writing...............................................................106
3.4.3 The nature of three interpersonal resources...............................................................110
Summary................................................................................................................................112
Chapter 4 Research design and methodology.................................................... 113
Introduction...........................................................................................................................113

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4.1 Data collection and nature of data ................................................................................113
4.1.1 Participants.................................................................................................................114
4.1.2 The setting for data collection ...................................................................................115
4.1.3 The nature of the data ................................................................................................115
4.1.4 Evaluating students’ texts ..........................................................................................117
4.1.5 Data collection procedures.........................................................................................118
4.2 Organisation of data analyses and specific research questions ..................................120
4.2.1 Research questions.....................................................................................................120
4.2.2 The macro-design of the study...................................................................................122
4.2.3 Text analyses procedures ...........................................................................................123
4.3 Analyses of interactive resources (schematic structure analysis)...............................123
4.4 Analyses of interactional resources (mood analysis) ...................................................129
4.4.1 Analyses of command within clause complexes .......................................................129
4.4.2 Analyses of command across clause complexes........................................................135
4.4.3 Analyses of the textual distribution commands in APEs...........................................140
4.5 Analyses of interPERSONAL resources (appraisal analysis).....................................146
4.5.1 ATTITUDE (Subjective positioning) ........................................................................146
4.5.2 ENGAGEMENT (Intersubjective positioning) .........................................................167
4.5.3 GRADUATION.........................................................................................................181
Summary................................................................................................................................185
Chapter 5 Analyses of interactive resources ...................................................... 187
Introduction...........................................................................................................................187
5.1 Analyses of interactive resources...................................................................................187
5.1.1 The nature of the topic ...............................................................................................187
5.1.2 The model text ...........................................................................................................188
5.2 EAS’s argument structure .............................................................................................190
5.2.1 EAS High-Graded Essays..........................................................................................190
5.2.2 EAS Low-Graded Essays...........................................................................................195
5.2.3 Interpretative summary of EAS essays......................................................................199
5.3 ABS’s argument structure .............................................................................................202
5.3.1 ABS High-Graded Essays..........................................................................................202
5.3.2 ABS Low-Graded Essays ..........................................................................................205
5.3.3 Interpretative summary of ABS essays......................................................................209
5.4 Summary of findings ......................................................................................................212
Chapter 6 Analyses of interactional resources................................................... 214
Introduction...........................................................................................................................214

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6.1 Quantitative overviews ...................................................................................................214
6.2 EAS writers’ command strategy....................................................................................220
6.2.1 EAS High-Graded Essays..........................................................................................221
6.2.2 EAS Low-Graded Essays...........................................................................................230
6.2.3 Interpretative summary of EAS essays......................................................................236
6.3 ABS writers’ command strategy....................................................................................236
6.3.1 ABS High-Graded Essays..........................................................................................237
6.3.2 ABS Low-Graded Essays ..........................................................................................243
6.3.3 Interpretative summary of ABS essays......................................................................248
6.4 Summary of findings ......................................................................................................249
Chapter 7 Analyses of interPERSONAL resources ............................................ 253
Introduction...........................................................................................................................253
7.1 Quantitative overviews of all appraisal analyses .........................................................253
7.2 Analyses of ATTITUDE .................................................................................................254
7.2.1 Quantitative overviews ..............................................................................................254
7.2.2 Subjective positioning................................................................................................258
7.3 Analyses of ENGAGEMENT.........................................................................................281
7.3.1 Quantitative overview................................................................................................281
7.3.2 Intersubjective positioning.........................................................................................282
7.4 Analyses of GRADUATION ..........................................................................................326
7.4.1 Quantitative overview................................................................................................326
7.4.2 Analysis of GRADUATION .....................................................................................328
7.5 Summary of findings ......................................................................................................337
7.5.1 ATTITUDE................................................................................................................337
7.5.2 ENGAGEMENT........................................................................................................339
7.5.3 GRADUATION.........................................................................................................342
Chapter 8 Discussion, implications and conclusions........................................ 344
Introduction...........................................................................................................................344
8.1 Discussion and general implications..............................................................................344
8.1.1 Interactive resources ..................................................................................................344
8.1.2 Interactional resources ...............................................................................................346
8.1.3 InterPERSONAL resources .......................................................................................350
8.2 Educational implications ................................................................................................363
8.2.1 Implications for approaches to genre-based tertiary literacy pedagogy ....................364

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