Epistemic Stance Personal Pronouns in Malaysian Tertiary Level ESL Islamic Based Written Tasks
Keywords:
Epistemic Stance, English as a Second Language, Language Learning.Abstract
The commitment to correspond the Islamic teachings highlights the importance of Malaysian Muslims being proficient in the worldwide lingua franca English. Learners’ approaches of expressing epistemic stance in the first language and target language differ depending on the discourse and context. English as a Second Language (ESL) studies in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) are lacking in exploring English for da’wah (Islamic missionary) purposes, therefore, examining interlanguage writing of the Malay tertiary level learners specifically the pre-university students, in this genre is significant. The study aims to analyse the Malaysian Muslim tertiary level students’ written English in expressing about Islamic related matters. The analysis focuses on the use of personal pronouns in communicating their Muslim perspectives of their religious teachings. An analysis on the use of epistemic stance-taking personal pronouns of 13 average Malaysian Muslim pre-university students’ short paragraph compositions has been conducted. They had to write about the du’a (supplication) and about strengthening relationship within fellow Muslims. The analysis examines the structural and linguistic contextual features of the epistemic stance-taking personal pronouns employed. The personal pronouns most exploited in the writing are the plural first person ‘we’ and ‘us’. The findings suggest that these students mostly could express their ideas about the du’a and Muslim bonding in English reasonably, albeit not utterly exceptional and as formal as most accessible English medium Islamic resources.
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