dialogism in research article introductions written by iranian non-native and english native speaking writers

Despite a growing interest in the study of the introduction sections of research articles, there have been few studies to investigate how academic writers engage with other voices and alternative positions in this academic genre. therefore, the purpose of this study was to show how nativespeaking (ns) and nonnativespeaking (nns) writers take position and stance in research article introductions. for this purpose, engagement resources based on the appraisal framework were investigated in 60 articles written by english ns and iranian nns writers published in journals of applied linguistics. it was found out that the mean occurrences of heteroglossic items in both corpora was larger than those of monoglossic items but comparing the means of monoglossic engagements between the two corpora, it was revealed that ns writers’ corpus had larger mean occurrences of monoglossic engagements than nns writers’ corpus implying the natives’ stronger authorial stance in the texts. the results also revealed that there was no significant difference in the use of contractive and expansive engagements by ns writers (t = 0.995, p > 0.05), indicating a balanced use between the two options. however, the higher mean occurrences of expansive options compared with contractive options in the nns corpus may suggest that ns writers open up more dialogic room for alternatives positions in the introductions. the findings of this study may help writers to better perceive the creation of a strong authorial position using appropriate engagement resources in research article introductions.