Investigating Stance and Engagement Markers in Ph.D. Theses of Libyan EFL Postgraduates

In academic writing, stance and engagement features establish an important area because they help writers convey their impressions, messages, and attitudes towards their readers. in spite of increasing the number of studies tackling this issue, limited studies have focused on efl libyan students. therefore, this study aims to investigate the stance and engagement markers in the conclusion sections of ten ph.d. theses of libyan postgraduates; five of them are from the soft domain, specifically the business administration field (b), and the other five are from the hard domain, specifically the electrical-electronics engineering (ee). the current study used hyland‟s (2005) model to explore the stances and engagement markers used in the conclusion sections. the findings showed that the total number of stances in the soft domain conclusions is 117, and the total number of engagement markers is 35, whereas in the hard domain, 27 were for stances and 13 were for engagements. such findings could be employed academically to enhance efl libyan students‟ performance in academic writing.