“It is more than true that television reproduces life”: The effect of Greek rhetorical conventions on Greek learners’ academic writing in English

Abstract

This paper proposes a framework for analysing stance in argumentative essays written by Greek advanced learners of English. The essays are included in the Greek Corpus of Learner English (GRICLE). Their analysis showed that Greek learners point to their attitude mainly by using lexical chunks such as it is true that, it is a fact that, it is obvious that. Using such chunks allows students to defer commitment to the stated proposition, thereby presenting it as a commonly accepted fact. This technique is considered to be culturally induced as it is a typical rhetorical convention commonly followed in L1 writing