https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088318819472 Written Communication 1–29 © 2019 SAGE Publications Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0741088318819472 journals.sagepub.com/home/wcx Article Linguistic Markers of Stance and Genre in Upper-Level Student Writing Laura Aull 1 Abstract Stance is a growing focus of academic writing research and an important aspect of writing development in higher education. Research on student writing to date has explored stance across different levels, language backgrounds, and disciplines, but has rarely focused on stance features across genres. This article explores stance marker use between two important genre families in higher education—persuasive argumentative writing and analytic explanatory writing—based on corpus linguistic analysis of late undergraduate and early graduate-level writing in the Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Papers (MICUSP). The specific stance markers in the study, both epistemic and textual cues, have been shown to distinguish student writing across levels; this study, then, extends the analysis to consider the comparative use of these markers across genres. The findings show two stance expectations persistent across genres as well as significant distinctions between argumentative and explanatory writing vis-à-vis stance markers that intensify and contrast. The findings thus point to important considerations for instruction, assignment design, and future research. Keywords undergraduate writing assignments, stance, metadiscourse, corpus analysis, writing assessment, argumentative essay, research paper 1 Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA Corresponding Author: Laura Aull, Wake Forest University, C210 Tribble Hall, Winston-Salem, NC 27109, USA. Email: aulll@wfu.edu 819472WCX XX X 10.1177/0741088318819472Written CommunicationAull research-article 2019