DINAMIKA PENGARUSUTAMAAN GENDER REGISTER JOURNAL – Vol 15, No 2 (2022), pp. 183-200 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18326/rgt.v15i2.183-200 p-ISSN: 1979-8903; e-ISSN: 2503-040X 183 Stance Expressions in Introduction of English Research Articles written by Cambodian Authors Soeurn Chenda1*, Safnil Arsyad 2, Syafryadin 3 1Graduate School, National University of Battambang, Battambang,053, Cambodia 1, 2, 3Postgraduate Program of English Education, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, University of Bengkulu, Bengkulu, 38122, Indonesia *) Corresponding Author Email: shoeurnchenda@yahoo.com DOI: 10.18326/rgt.v15i2.183-200 Submission Track: Received: 24-03-2022 Final Revision: 12-10-2022 Available Online: 01-12-2022 Copyright © 2022 Authors This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Abstract Stance Expression indicates feelings, certainty or uncertainty, and interests of the authors. As the increasing needs of the readers on significant findings from the introduction section of research articles, a study on Stance Expression of introduction section in the English research articles written by Cambodian authors has been conducted to employ crucial aims of the study: (1) examine stance expression types and the categories of each type; (2) compare the similarities and differences of stance expression types used in the introduction section of English RAs written by Cambodian authors published in local and international journals. Thirty research articles written by Cambodian authors published in local and international journals were used in this study. To fulfill these research objectives, the mixed-method research design was utilized in this study. All the four stance features, such as Hedges, Boosters, Attitude Markers, and Self-expression, proposed by Hyland (2005), were used as a lexical analysis framework model in this study. The results revealed that four stance expression types were found in this study. The hedge was the most frequently employed among the other types of stances. There is a significantly different in terms of the frequencies of hedge used within both RA journals, but there is no for booster, attitude marker, and self-mention. Local Cambodian authors should follow the international authors as models in applying stance in their RAs. A comparison study of the stance expression and engagement between Cambodian and international authors in the introduction should be expanded more different articles from available journals. Keywords: english research article, introduction section, stance expression, local journals, international journals http://dx.doi.org/10.18326/rgt.v14i1.25-42 mailto:shoeurnchenda@yahoo.com http://dx.doi.org/10.18326/rgt.v14i1.25-42 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ S. Chenda, S. Arsyad, Syafryadin 184 REGISTER JOURNAL – Vol 15, No 2 (2022) INTRODUCTION Stance expressions in written articles are very significant for extinguishing the quality of the research thesis and written articles. Stance illustrates the feelings, uncertainty, certainty, and interests of the writers which is a significant area of writing consideration. Also, the writer’s way of writing can be similar or different in their English research article writing like in the introduction section. Accordingly, many international researchers studied the use of stance within research articles, theses, or dissertations in applied linguistics and science or other fields such as Miasari et al. (2018)- studied authorial stance in research article introductions in the field of science written by Indonesian authors, who found that the four types of authorial stances in this field of science (Biology, Physic, and Chemistry) like hedges: verb, adjective, adverb, noun and modal; booster: verb, adjective, adverb, Model and Noun, yet among these subcategories adverbs were the most commonly found. While attitudinal markers were highly counted in Adjectives, and self- mention, last, subjective pronouns were often accounted for self-mention. Wu and Paltridge (2021) studied the stance expression in academic writing in Chinese students’ MA dissertations and doctoral PhD theses; the results showed that all four types of stance expression were found in both degrees, but the highest frequency used was hedges while the attitude markers were the lowest rate. PhD students utilized fewer boosters and presented a broader set of attitude markers within their writing, which showed PhD students have increased their abilities in declaring a position. In the same vein, Lancaster (2016) conducted stance use in undergraduate writing between the Econ students and the PolTh writer; hedges, disclaim markers, boosters, and self-mentions were significantly greater frequently used than the PolTh writers. The significantly greater frequency was attitude markers applied. However, none of the studies on the use of stance features were done in articles and none of the categories of each stance expression type on RA introduction written by Cambodian authors were found, such as hedge, booster, attitude markers, and self-mention. Thus, there is also no study about the comparison of the similarities and differences of stance expression types used by Cambodian authors in Language Education in their article introductions published in local and international journals. More importantly, it is a rare case to find written research articles by Cambodian authors regarding stance analysis in writing. Therefore, there is no study of a comparison of the similarities and differences between the two groups of articles. This study is important because it can help article Stance Expressions in Introduction of English Research Articles … REGISTER JOURNAL – Vol 15, No 2 (2022) 185 writers in applying stance expression in the correct way and forms within their RAs writing, especially in showing their certainty of claiming the truth of information to persuade the readers with the real objective of the study. Thus, it also gives international readers more different information about the quality of local and international research articles written by Cambodian authors in using stance expression in their writing. This provides them with more concepts in comparing the quality of local and internal research in terms of stance expression use. Through these gaps, this study aims to identify the stance expression types used in the introduction of research articles (IoRAs) in language education fields and find out the similarities and differences between the two groups of English research articles written by the Cambodian authors. This research aimed to answer the following questions: 1) What stance expression types and categories are used by Cambodian authors in their introduction of research papers in language education published in local and international journals? and 2) What are the similarities and differences of stance expression types and categories used by Cambodian authors in Language Education in their article introductions published in local and international journals? RESEARCH METHOD This study was designed following Creswell (2012) as both qualitative and quantitative methods. It was built on corpus-based descriptive qualitative and quantitative research methods on the use of stance expressions in the introduction of English research articles written by Cambodian authors published in local and international journals. The qualitative analysis was conducted to present the examples of each research question and objectives by analyzing stance expression in the sample text and the quantitative analysis was focused to calculate the frequency and percentage of stance expression types and sub-categories of each stance type. The researcher used the lexical analysis framework model of the four stance features analysis of Hyland (2005) as the research design. The model of stance expressions focused on Hedges, Boosters, Attitude Markers, and Self-mention in the introduction section of each English research article. S. Chenda, S. Arsyad, Syafryadin 186 REGISTER JOURNAL – Vol 15, No 2 (2022) The corpus of the study This study involved thirty articles from local and international journals in the field of language education written by Cambodian authors. Convenience sampling was utilized as a sampling method for selecting the 30 articles in this corpus. The corpus of this study contained thirty English research articles focused on only the introduction section. Table 1. Distribution of the Articles in the Study. No Sources of Research Articles Code Number of Articles Discussion Average Length of the Introduction in word count 1 Local Journals LoJ 15 (50%) 604.6 2 International Journals InJ 15 (50%) 754.2 Total 30 (100%) Table 1 shows that the research articles (RAs) in the field of Language education have the most words on average with 604.6 found as written words in the RAs introduction section written by Cambodian authors published in a local journal, Cambodia, while the average of word counts with 754.2 was found as the written word in the introduction section of research articles written by Cambodian author published in international journals. The articles were selected from two types of journals including Local Journals and International Journals, regarding several considerations as the following: 1) RAs are written in English by Cambodian authors; 2) RAs are in the language education field; 3) RAs have published from 2006 to 2021; 4) the papers are open-access, freely read and downloaded for who needs it.; and, RAs are indexed by SCOPUS, ERIC, ESCI, EBSCO, MAS, SCImago, Open J-Gate, CrossRef, Google Scholar, Sinta2, DOAL, EBSCOhost, ajournalSeek, ERA, ARC, OPenDOAR, Springer, Sage, CLaSIC, and ROAR; The RAs published in local journals are under the controlled of the university only. There was no limitation of sample size in the qualitative research study. According to Baker and Edwards (2012), the participant numbers needed to ensure a sufficient sample for a project can be varied from one up to more than a hundred. As, qualitative research studies are mostly run with small samples (Sandelowski, 1995) as well as making 10 research samples is quite usual (Lichtman, 2010, as cited in Sandelowki, 1995). Otherwise, Adler and Adler (2012), students should orientate a small sample size from 6 to 12 or whatever they catch (cited in Mocănașu, 2020). As an example, a study of the authorial stances in English RA introductions written by Stance Expressions in Introduction of English Research Articles … REGISTER JOURNAL – Vol 15, No 2 (2022) 187 Indonesia authors within the science field such as Biology, Physic, and Chemistry, by Miasari et al. (2019) also included only 30 articles in their study. The Procedure of Data Analysis The data was analyzed by marking stance expression of the four features model: hedges, booster, attitudinal markers, and self-mention, within frequency and percentage of each category: adjective, adverb, verb, model, found, subject pronoun, common nouns, possessive adjectives, and objective pronoun. Furthermore, the procedures of data analysis were regarded as the following. Thirty English research articles were downloaded from different Cambodian local journals focusing on language education as mentioned above. The introduction of each article in the corpus of this study was read to get a thorough understanding of the content in the text and the 30 articles were converted into file text to fit the AntConc Software program; The text was reread to pinpoint the stances use of the text within the introduction, and each device of the stance features used in the introduction of RAs was counted through AntConc (v.3.5.8, 2021). To certify the reliability of this study, the researcher invited an experienced teacher of the second language, who taught second-language writing and majoring in the English language to be a second-rater. Comparing both data from co- rater and researcher results after the following the frequency and percentage of stance. Last, the interpretation of the data was described based on the identical features shown in the table/figure of the statistical research framework. The Reliability of Analysis Results An independent co-rater was a lecturer from the English department of the Institution of Foreign Languages. Then the independent co-rater was trained for a week to identify or code the RA’s introduction based on the types of stance styles framework. Next, the result of the analysis was discussed, negotiated, and clarified for an agreement between the researcher and the co-rater if there were any miscoding occurred. Finally, the co-rater could work on their own independently to code the 6 sample texts on the stance framework. McHugh (2012) stated that the stance identification results from the co-rater and the researcher on a sample of 6 (20%) RAs introductions were compared through the Kappa score. Brown (1996) illustrates that Cohen’s Kappa has made the maximum score of 1.00 and the lowest score of 0.00, (as cited in Nur et al., 2021). Consequently, Kanoksilapatham’s (2005) study was adopted in this study, if Cohen’s Kappa mark is less than 0.40, this was regarded as ‘poor’, S. Chenda, S. Arsyad, Syafryadin 188 REGISTER JOURNAL – Vol 15, No 2 (2022) between 0.40–0.59 ‘average’, between 0.60–0.74 ‘acceptable’, and 0.75 or above ‘excellent’. The following table 3 showed the result of the Kappa measurement of the researcher’s checklist and the co-rater’s checklists Table 2. Inter-Rater agreement Result The number used of stance expression No. of agreement No. of Disagreement K Percentage 107 107 0 100 100% According to table 2, the researcher and the two co-raters discovered forty-one decision data drawn out while examining the Corpus. Most interestingly, the same data results between the researcher and the two co-raters unfolded. This meant that the random agreement data (Pr(e)= 0% or 0.00), whereas 107 data were categorized as the same agreement data (Pr(a)= 100% or 1). RESULTS & DISCUSSION The expression styles in the introduction section by Cambodian authors The first finding of this study was significantly expressing a common occurrence in the local journals and international journals. The below table demonstrates the frequency styles of stance expression which were commonly found in Local journals (LoJ) and international journals (InJ) in this study. Hedges, boosters, attitudinal markers, and self-mention were the four forms of stance expression styles discovered by data analysis from LoJ and InJ publications through AntConc. software. Based on table 3, it can be seen that there are four types of styles found in this research: hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mention. The total frequency of stance expressions from the thirty-research article introduction sections was 444 times; the frequent use of stance expression types in the research article introduction sections publish in Local journals is greater than the research article introduction section published in international journals, which was counted in 201. Otherwise, the hedge was mostly found in both research articles which were published in local journals, and international journals were 228 or 51.35%, applied by the Cambodian authors in writing the RAs introduction section. The second most frequent stance expression type use was boosters with a total number of 87 or 19.60%. These types are, must, really, find, found, and many others. Stance Expressions in Introduction of English Research Articles … REGISTER JOURNAL – Vol 15, No 2 (2022) 189 Table 3. Stance expression types found in research article introductions No Stance Expression Categories (LoJ) (InJ) Total % N=15 N=15 N=30 Frequency 1 Hedges 140 88 228 51.35 2 Boosters 38 49 87 19.60 3 Attitude Markers 43 36 79 17.79 4 Self-mentions 22 28 50 11.26 Total 243 201 444 100% Additionally, the following rank was the use of attitude markers whose percentage accounted for 79 or 17.79% among all of the cases. They are appropriate, demonstrate, belief, find, shown, even though, even, etc. Finally, it is different from the above three stance expression styles. There are only 50 or 11.26% of self-mention were found in this research such as I, my, the researchers, we, our, the writer, etc, to identify themselves in writing the research article introduction section. Some examples presented about stance expression types engaged by the Cambodian authors in their research article introduction sections published in local and international journals as the following: Example1: “Clayton (2006) has shown, …. that the Khmer embraced learning English, as another to French (their colonial language………….” [03_InJ] Example2: “This means the researcher should have a decent understanding of the curriculum, the materials, and also the language levels the scholars are taking.” [06_InJ] Accordingly, example 1 shows that the author applied the verb “shown” as a past participle in present perfect tense to express the action which has just happened recently, and it is employed to cite the information that can be used about the writer’s stance. Last, in example 2, the common noun “the researcher” was taken to directly mention the researcher who was doing the research. The hedges categories The following tables presented the total number of hedges found with examples in thirty RA introductions. S. Chenda, S. Arsyad, Syafryadin 190 REGISTER JOURNAL – Vol 15, No 2 (2022) Table 4. The frequency of hedges categories in the research article introduction section No. Hedges categories RAs in LEF T o ta l % LoJ InJ Frequency 1 Modal Auxiliary verbs 76 33 109 47.81 2 Epistemic lexical verbs 40 27 67 29.39 3 Epistemic adjectives& adverbs 24 28 52 22.80 Total 140 88 228 100 Hedges were demonstrated in three diverse lexical categories, as shown in Table 6. It can be noted that modal auxiliaries were the most frequently employed was 109 or 47.81% of all cases; through these results the researcher found that there are 76 modal auxiliary verbs were counted in the research article introduction section published in local journals, while only 33 out of 109 modal verbs were accounted for RAs published in international journals (i.e., can, should, would, etc.); the second most utilized was epistemic lexical verbs with 67 or 29.39% of all thirty RAs introduction sections published in both journals (i.e., seems, feel, suggested, claimed, preferred, argue, and so on). It showed that 40 out of 67 epistemic lexical verbs were found in ARs published in local journals, but there are only 27 times counted for RAs published in international journals. The last was epistemic adjectives and adverbs which accounted for just 52 times or 22.8 % of the total, likely largely, rather, etc. We can illustrate that the frequent use of adjectives and adverbs was slightly different between the LoJ RAs and InJ RAs (24 to 28 adv & adv). There were 24 adjectives and adverbs found in LoJ RAs, similarly, 28 out of 52 accounted for InJ RAs. Some examples presented about hedge categories as following: Example 3 “…..English needs analysis should be conducted before formulating any English language program….” [04_InJ] According to the use of “should”, a modal verb hedge, in example 3 is applied to express the uncertain suggestion of evaluating the English language program before creating or running any English language program or courses. As a result of these above examples, it was possible to conclude that hedges can contribute to authors reducing the risk of dissimilarity. It can also be used to disprove the authors' claim and demonstrate doubt about the writers' entitlement to information. Stance Expressions in Introduction of English Research Articles … REGISTER JOURNAL – Vol 15, No 2 (2022) 191 The booster categories The three categories of boosters were discovered in these academic texts such as modal auxiliary verbs, epistemic lexical verbs, and epistemic adjectives and adverbs. Table 5 below lists the boosters discovered in this study's corpus. Table 5. Booster categories in the research article introduction section No Boosters Categories RAs in LEF T o ta l Percentage LoJ InJ Frequency 1 Modal Auxiliaries verbs 0 5 5 5.75 2 Epistemic lexical verbs 27 28 55 63.22 3 Epistemic adjectives& adverbs 11 16 27 31.03 Total 38 49 87 100 Based on table 5, it can be seen that in the English research article introduction sections written by Cambodian authors; three categories of booster were counted for RAs published in international journals as modal auxiliary verbs, lexical verbs, and adjective and adverbs while there were only two categories of booster were found in RAs published in local journals: epistemic lexical verbs and adjectives and adverbs. As a result, the epistemic lexical verbs were the most commonly utilized by the writers with 27 times for RAs in local journals and 28 times for RAs in international journals. Meanwhile, there were two results of this study also were shown that booster adjectives and adverbs were found more than 10 times from LJ Ras 11 of 15 cases and IJ Ras 16. Finally, the author realized that modal auxiliaries were found 5 times counted for IJ RAs of this study. The writers brought out some examples of the two types of RAs: Example 4 “Making a quotation takes the exact words from a source without any change and is clearly indicated as such, by quotation marks for example (Anker, 2009; Bailey, 2011).” [02_LoJ] According to example 4 above, it was presented that adverb booster “clearly” was employed to show the stance of the author about making a quotation mark to the exact words of sources. So, it can be concluded that booster stances can be formed in verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and modal auxiliary verbs, yet modal auxiliary verbs were not frequently found in these articles’ studies. The adjective, adverbs, verbs, and modal auxiliary verbs that have been mentioned and discussed above can be used to direct the certainty of the writers and emphasize a fact that they focused on. S. Chenda, S. Arsyad, Syafryadin 192 REGISTER JOURNAL – Vol 15, No 2 (2022) The attitude markers categories The following table illustrates the three categories of attitude markers stance: they were attitude verbs, sentence adverbs, and attitude adjectives. The details and examples are presented below in the table. Table 6. Attitude Marker categories in the research article introduction section Table 6 shows that the three categories of attitude markers were found in RAs journals, and the most common frequently used attitude marker stance was attitude adjectives, which accounted for 62 or more than 78 percent of the two RAs. It can be seen that the adjectives were mostly employed in RAs local journals 35 times when only 27 out of 62 were counted for RAs international journals. Notedly, adverbs were known as one of the attitude markers that were poorly found with only 13 or just more than 16 percent of thirty cases. A number of 8 out of 13 were found in RAs of International journals; however, 5 out of 13 were adverbs used in RAs published in local journals. Finally, the poorest frequently use was attitude verbs with only 4 times in both types of RAs Journals. We can see that the writer rarely utilized this category, and it was just only 1 calculated for RAs international journals. As can be seen, the use of attitudinal markers in the form of adjectives, adverbs, and verbs was taken to demonstrate the importance of the information in terms of building the field being researched, as well as to assist the author in expressing their thoughts toward the information. The use of attitude markers was pointed out through the following examples. Example5 “…… the fact that one of the most important stages in any lesson is the Warming-up Phase….. [08_LoJ]” For example5, the word ‘important’ was used by the authors to stress their positive ideas on the effective using the warming-up stage among all the instruction phases in getting students’ attention. In short, it can be seen that attitude markers can No Attitude Markers Categories RAs in the LE field T o ta l % LoJ InJ Frequency 1 Attitude verbs 3 1 4 5.06 2 Sentence adverbs 5 8 13 16.46 3 Attitude adjectives 35 27 62 78.48 Total 43 36 79 100 Stance Expressions in Introduction of English Research Articles … REGISTER JOURNAL – Vol 15, No 2 (2022) 193 be used in various forms as verbs, adjectives, and adverbs which were applied to address the importance of the information for strengthening their studying fields. Thus, this type of stance expression can be used to support the writers to prompt their awareness toward the information which was considered as effective information and important information as to their research information. The Self-mention expression categories The table below brings the detailed result of self-mention analysis used by the writers in the written English research article introduction section in the language education field. Table 7. Self-mention categories in the research article introduction section No. Self-Mention RAs in LE field T o ta l Percent. LoJ InJ Frequency 1 Subject Pronouns 12 17 29 58 3 Common Nouns 5 7 12 24 4 Possessive Adjectives 5 4 9 18 2 Object Pronouns 0 0 0 0 Total 22 28 50 100 Based on table 7, the total number of using self-mention was 50 times of all thirty cases, which were published in local journals and international journals. However, 29 out of 50 frequencies were the subject pronouns ‘we’ were the most commonly employed by the authors in both types of RAs journals. There were 17 times found in RAs published in international journals, and in the RAs published in local journals, there were only 12 counted in the study. The lower rate of use of common nouns “the researcher, the author” was also found in both RAs journals with 12, which accounts for 24%. The lowest frequency found on the possessive adjectives was only 9 or18% from both types of RAs journals. We can clearly see that 5 possessive adjectives were found in RAs’ local journals; similarly, 4 out of 9 were counted for IJ RAs. It was ‘our’. Therefore, the subject pronoun ‘we’ was found as the most commonly used by the authors in this research. The authors used ‘we’ to present themself in the writing research. The authors in both journals of the thirty English research articles did not use objective pronouns in presenting themselves in their text. The following example is presented about self-mention stance types. S. Chenda, S. Arsyad, Syafryadin 194 REGISTER JOURNAL – Vol 15, No 2 (2022) Example6 “Based on our observations, some learners,...they fail to remember the detailed information in the stories.” [07_LoJ] According to example6, the author used the possessive pronoun ‘our’ to originally show their operating work in their study. Through these examples, it can be concluded that the authors rarely referred to themselves as he or she in their text. As well, there were not many dissimilarities in self-addressing of self-mention stance regarding the thirty articles written by the Cambodian authors published in both journals. The comparison between both RAs’ introductions Figure 1. the comparison of using each stance expression type Based on figure 1, it can be seen that the total frequency of using each category of stance expression within the RAs introduction section published in local journals was 243 by the Cambodian authors while 201 times used in each category were counted in the IJ RAs introduction section. Moreover, the researcher found that hedge was more highly used in RAs in the local journals than in RAs in international journals, with 148 times while there were only 88 times found in InJ Ras by Cambodian authors. In contrast, the result revealed that booster was mostly utilized in the InJ RA introduction with 49, but 38 times were discovered in the LoJ RA introduction. On the other hand, the figure also showed that the attitude markers used were greater found in the LoJ RA introduction with 43 while there were only 36 counted in the InJ RA introduction. Last, there are similar numbers of self-mention used were employed in both journals’ RAs with 22 of LoJ and 26 of InJ introduction. It means that the use of self-mention in both RA journals is almost the same, yet it is significant differences in the use of hedge, booster, and attitude markers in both RA journals written by Cambodian authors. 140 38 43 22 88 49 36 28 Hedge Booster Attitude Marker Self-mention LoJ InJ Stance Expressions in Introduction of English Research Articles … REGISTER JOURNAL – Vol 15, No 2 (2022) 195 Discussion The first research question was that the hedge categories are used by Cambodian authors in the introduction of English research articles in the field of language education. The result showed that all four types of stance expression proposed by Hyland (2005) appeared in the two RAs’ introduction journals. They named hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mentions. Interestingly, the highest frequency used type was a hedge in both research article journals written by Cambodian authors. However, the hedge has been often employed in Local journal research articles than international journal articles. This can be assumed that local RA writers overused the hedge, which is not important, and this showed that local article journal writers were less confident than international RA writers in demonstrating their findings. Thus, this might be due to the cultural factors of local writers who consider face-saving and respect to be an important reason to use hedges in their RA writing. Getkham (2016) found that hedge was the biggest dominant used in the introduction and discussion sections. He stated that might be because of the cultural factor impact on saving face and showing politeness. Thus, the hedge allows the author to expose a broad space where readers can discuss their understandings (Hyland, 2005). This study is closely related to Papangkorn and Phoocharoensil’s (2021) study; they found that hedge was the most commonly used in English argumentative writing by Native and Thai learners. They also stated that this result showed weakness and less confidence on the part of both Native and Thai learners in tentatively expressing their argumentative text. Hence, the finding of this research is in line with Incharoesak (2018), in which Thai high school students were sent to U.S middle college because they frequently used hedge in application essays to express their confident predictions. However, this result is contrasted with Moini and Salami (2015), who found that there was slightly less use of hedge in journal author’s guidelines because this light use was employed to soften the impact of journal assertions and to prompt probability. Moreover, the hedge can be used to show the writer’s views, criticism, uncertainty, and little confidence and applied to soften the text or reduce the reluctance of the force of a statement. Thus, this finding was supported by Shen and Tao (2021) who also revealed that the most frequent type of stance markers in both newspapers OC and medical RA was hedge. This high-frequency use of hedge demonstrated the authors' caution and weakening in creating appropriate truth expressing claims and S. Chenda, S. Arsyad, Syafryadin 196 REGISTER JOURNAL – Vol 15, No 2 (2022) necessity for a statement. In this respect, Petchkij (2019) found that the modals as sub- categories of hedge were the most frequently employed by Thai EFL students in the academic writing classroom. The result of this study is also related to that of Alghazo et al. (2021), in which modals and semi-modals were mostly counted and increasingly contributed to applied linguistics than in the literature research article abstract. The reason was that the slippery nature of the applied linguistic subject is remarked by uncertainty and ambiguity. That is why it impacted the LA writer’s use of hedge sub- categories in their writing as well as LE writer’s writing too. The lexical verbs of sub-categories were booster and were the most frequent use the same in both English research articles. Both authors used these sub-categories to show the strong certainty degree of their belief in a statement. This means that they revealed either the accepted idea or fact as evidence to represent their confidence in stating a statement. Yet, this finding is closely associated with Shen and Tao’s (2021) study, which illustrated those epistemic lexical verbs of the booster category were mostly accounted for newspaper genre. It can be assumed that both researchers are confident enough in emphasizing a statement. The adjectives sub-category of attitude marker were mostly counted in these two RA introduction sections. The attitude markers are used by the authors to show the important judgment of a statement to pull the readers into a conspiracy of agreement as well as attitude markers refer to the affective of the writer (Hyland, 2005). The result from Getkham (2016) also supported this study that Thai doctoral students often utilized adjectives as subcategories of attitude markers in their doctoral dissertation writing. Otherwise, the useless one was subjective pronouns of self-mention were frequently counted in both RA introduction sections. However, the author realized that this subject pronoun was more commonly used in IJRAs than in LJRAs. This study is supported by Karahan (2013), who studied self-mention use by Turkish and Non- Turkish in scientific writing articles and found that the subject pronoun of self-mention was always used in both Turkish and Non-Turkish scientific writing articles. This can be assumed that the authors were not confident enough in addressing themselves in the introduction because their findings were not released yet. This is supported by Getkham (2016) who presented the finding that writers used less self-mention in the introduction rather than in the discussion section because they felt more confident once they see the result in their discussion section. Stance Expressions in Introduction of English Research Articles … REGISTER JOURNAL – Vol 15, No 2 (2022) 197 The finding showed that there were no significant differences in terms of the frequent use of boosters, attitude markers, and self-mention. However, there was a significant difference in terms of the frequent use of hedges in both RA introductions. The hedge was the highest proportion of all stance expression types accounted for both research article types. This finding is similar to Papangkorn and Phoocharoensil’s (2021) comparison study that found the difference in frequencies of stance expression use, hedge was the biggest used in THAI writers and Native writers. This is closely related to Petchkij’s (2019) finding about hedges being the most frequently used by native writers as well as Sukhanindr (2008) found that native writers used more hedges than Thai writers in the discussion section of research articles. Therefore, this finding contrasted with the findings from Incharoensak (2018) that hedge was used more in Thai writers’ writing than in Native writers’ writing. This can be concluded that Thai and Cambodian authors have similar cultures, which is the cause of the increase in the distribution of hedges. CONCLUSION There are some points to be concluded in sequence: first, it was found that all four stance expression types proposed by Hyland appeared in both RA introduction published in local journals and international journals. They were hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mention. However, we see that the biggest frequency use type among the four types of stance expression was a hedge sub-category in the RA introduction sections of both journals. Second, the subcategory of self-mention was mostly accounted by the subject pronoun “we” in the RA introduction sections of both journals. Thirdly, the researcher found that differences in terms of the frequencies of use of hedge in the RA introduction sections of both journals were significant in this study. But there was no significant difference in terms of the booster, attitude markers, and self-mention because there was a very small difference in the frequency use of these types within both RA introduction sections. The Cambodian authors use more attitude markers and boosters of stance expression in their introduction section to improve their research article writing quality. There were only 15 RAs selected from local journals and the other 15 RAs were chosen from international journals. However, the other content such as the abstract, methodology discussion, and conclusion section were not discussed in this study and should be discussed by another researcher. Furthermore, for further study, the researchers can study the comparison of the stance expression and engagement S. Chenda, S. Arsyad, Syafryadin 198 REGISTER JOURNAL – Vol 15, No 2 (2022) used between native Cambodian authors and non-native Cambodian authors in RAs published in international journals in the introduction section or the discussion section by expanding more sample from different research articles from diverse available journals. REFERENCES Alghazo, S., Al Salem, M. N., Alrashdan, I., & Rabab'ah, G. (2021). Grammatical devices of stance in written academic English. Heliyon, 7(11), e08463. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e08463 Baker, S. E., & Edwards, R. (2012). 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