Addressing audiences in academic writing

This chapter discusses audience awareness as a key component of academic literacy and explores the challenges novice writers face in understanding and addressing their audiences. Metadiscursive resources expressing stance, such as hedges and boosters, and their role in shaping credible and persuasive arguments are considered. In addition, stance qualities are incorporated, as they provide a convincing framework for achieving authorial identity and interaction with readers. A genre-based approach is proposed to support students in identifying their audiences and addressing them appropriately. The proposed tasks and materials are based on the comparison of successful and unsuccessful texts and involve the identification of epistemic devices used to express authorial identity and stance.