Stance‐Taking in Heritage Language Writing.

This study explored stance‐taking in Chinese heritage language writing. Analysis focused on a prominent stance expression, wo juede 'I think.' Frequency, function, and formulaic usage of wo juede were compared across 3 written Chinese corpora by heritage learners, second language (L2) learners, and native speakers (L1 writers). The analysis revealed distinctive linguistic features and collocational patterns of stance‐taking among the 3 groups. Overall, heritage writers' stance performance was found to be self‐centered and text oriented. They exhibited a strong reliance on wo juede combined with textual organizers such as contrastive or causal conjunctions. In contrast, L1 writers were more reader oriented, exhibiting a strong tendency to combine wo juede with interpersonal devices including attitudinal markers, modal verbs, sentence‐final particles, and question forms. The study also found that heritage writers' stance‐taking performance consistently fell between that of L1 and L2 writers. Findings and pedagogical implications are discussed in light of heritage learner pragmatics and learner agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]