Developing a Framework to Analyse Master’s Students’ Projection of Authority through Written Argument at a UK University: Insights from a Pilot Study

This article will discuss a pilot study used to develop a novel framework to analyse master’s students’ projection of authority in argumentative academic writing. The projection of authority will be presented as a vital component of student success, as it allows the student to make a meaningful contribution to the disciplinary discourse community. If students fail to project authority in their writing, they run the risk of producing written work which is characterised by description rather than evaluation. The pilot analysis of five student essays from the BAWE corpus resulted in the creation of a triadic framework for the analysis of textual authority focusing on the following aspects: 1) The way students construct written argument 2) The way students negotiate the argument in the context of a disciplinary conversation 3) The way students position themselves in relation to the argument and how they project an authorial self