A CORPUS BASED ANALYSIS ON ATTITUDE MARKERS IN ENGLISH DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS WRITTEN IN KENYAN UNIVERSITIES

Abstract

English is widely used for academic purposes in Kenya and globally. In academic writing the authors describe, analyze, and evaluate the development of their research. Metadiscourse markers are used to organize
the discourse, engage the audience, and signal the writer's attitude. The writer's attitude is signaled by the
use of attitude markers. Attitude markers refer to expressions used in a text to reflect writers' position toward both the content in the text and the reader. Attitude markers include deontic modal verbs, lexical
verbs, adjectives, and affective adverbs. This study examined the use of attitude markers in doctoral dissertations written by English second language writers, studying English for academic purposes in Kenya. The
data was drawn from the introduction, discussion and conclusion chapters of a randomly compiled corpus
of twenty dissertations from eleven universities across Kenya. Hyland (2005) framework of metadiscourse
markers was used to identify and code the markers. The data was analyzed using Antconc text 4.1.4 analysis tool, Wilcoxon sum rank test and Log-likelihood statistics to investigate how attitude markers are used.
This study revealed that every category of attitude markers was used across all chapters. The discussion
chapter had the highest usage relative to other chapters. While the conclusion chapter contained the least
number of attitude markers. The findings of this study offer valuable insights into the use of attitude markers in academic writing and can help guide the development of English for academic purposes course materials to improve the academic writing skills of doctoral students in Kenya