Authorial Identity in Argumentative Writing: Exploration vs. Commitment

According to Hyland (2002), academic writing is not just about presenting a set of ideas, but through the act of writing,the authors may position themselves as individuals having particular identities which mostly reflect the dominantsociocultural values and practices of the discourse communities in which they are living and performing. In the sameregard, the present study intended to identify a group of Iranian EFL learners’ dominant identity type (that is, theidentity exploration and commitment types in the ideological and interpersonal domains) and to explore the possibledifferences between these two groups of learners in the extent of authorial voice intensity (assessed by analyzingassertiveness, self-identification, reiteration of central point, and authorial presence and autonomy of thought features)expressed in argumentative essays. The findings of study indicated that there was no statistically significant differencebetween the mean scores of the students in the exploration and commitment groups’ voice intensity in the written texts,which pointed to the fact that both groups of writers have presented a rather equal voice in their writings and haveeffectively made use of the available resources to present their ideas.

Keywords:

Authorial identity , voice intensity , argumentative writing