Authorial Stance in Government News on Social Media Age Restrictions: A Comparative Analysis of Indonesian and English Discourse
DOI: https://doi.org/10.30605/282z8g56
Epistemic Stance, Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis, Institutional Genres, Comparative Analysis, Social Media Age Restrictions
Abstract
This study examines how epistemic stance is linguistically realized across two institutional genres addressing children's digital protection: an Indonesian government policy corpus (Data A, 908 words) and an Australian research report (Data B, 1,490 words). Employing a quantitative corpus-based discourse analysis, the study identifies and compares the distribution of epistemic stance markers across three analytical categories, namely cognitive attitude, epistemic modality, and epistemic justification, developed inductively from the data. The findings reveal a striking asymmetry in both density and distribution: the policy corpus deploys markers at nearly three times the rate of the research corpus (89.21 vs. 32.89 per 1,000 words), with cognitive attitude dominating at 58% of policy markers, while epistemic justification accounts for 84% of research markers. These results indicate that the two corpora construct institutional authority through fundamentally different epistemic logics, with the policy text commanding through normative evaluation and deontic assertion, and the research report persuading through evidential accountability and methodological transparency. The study contributes to cross-genre discourse analysis by demonstrating that comparative examination of institutional texts addressing the same social issue can reveal epistemic patterns invisible in single-genre studies, and affirms that stance is always shaped by communicative purpose, audience design, and institutional ideology.
Downloads
References
Ahmad, F., Mishra, V., Musale, M. M., Gautam, A., & Bhakare, S. S. (2025). Impact of Social Media on Adolescent Mental Health : A Comprehensive Study. 4, 71–79.
Arrese, J. I. M. (2015). Epistemic Legitimisation and Inter/Subjectivity in the Discourse of Parliamentary and Public Inquiries: A contrastive case study. Critical Discourse Studies, 12(3), 261–278. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2015.1013484
Biber, D., & Finegan, E. (1989). Drift and the Evolution of English Style: A History of Three Genres. Language, 65(3), 487–517. https://doi.org/10.2307/415220
Blake, J. A., Sourander, A., Kato, A., & Scott, J. G. (2025). Will restricting the age of access to social media reduce mental illness in Australian youth ? 59(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/00048674241308692
Bonnin, J. E. (2019). Double stance discourse : Managing social and personal identity at work. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926519837393
Boye, K. (2012). Epistemic Meaning: A Crosslinguistic and Functional-Cognitive Study (Vol. 43). De Gruyter Mouton.
DataReportal. (2025). Statistik media sosial global. https://datareportal.com/social-media-users
Dong, J., & Zhang, M. (2025). English for Specific Purposes Stance beyond words : How TED speakers construct stance through multimodal semiotic resources. English for Specific Purposes, 81, 150–168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2025.10.001
Du Bois, J. W. (2007). Stancetaking in Discourse Edited by. In R. Englebretson (Ed.), Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction (pp. 141–182). John Benjamins Pub.
eSafety Commissioner. (2025). Children and Social Media Methodology Report (Issue February).
Fitzmaurice, S. (2004). Discourse Studies markers to discourse markers. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445604046585
Gray, B., & Biber, D. (2014). Stance markers. In K. Aijmer & C. Rühlemann (Eds.), Corpus Pragmatics: A Handbook (pp. 219–248). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139057493.012
Guerra-lyons, J. D., Concu, V., Alberto, J., & Rosa, D. La. (2026). Not all it seems are the same : A systemic functional and pragmatic approach to evidentiality and mitigation. Journal of Pragmatics, 255, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2026.01.007
Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2013). Halliday’s introduction to functional grammar: Fourth edition. In Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar: Fourth Edition (4th ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203431269
Han, J., & Zhang, D. (2026). Stance and engagement in graph accounts in applied linguistics research articles : a diachronic study. Language and Semiotic Studies, 1, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2025-0106
Hyland, K. (2005). Stance and engagement: a model of interaction in academic discourse. Discourse Studies, 7(2), 173–192. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445605050365
Hyland, K. (2008). Disciplinary voices Interactions in research writing. English Text Construction, 5(22). https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.1.1.03hyl
Hyland, K., & Joanna, H. (2021). Journal of English for Academic Purposes “ I believe the fi ndings are fascinating ” : Stance in three- minute theses. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 50, 100973. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2021.100973
Kärkkäinen, E. (2006). Stance taking in conversation : From subjectivity to intersubjectivity. Text & Talk, 6, 699–731. https://doi.org/10.1515/TEXT.2006.029
Kementerian Komunikasi dan Digital. (2026). Sekilas Tentang PP TUNAS.
Kucher, K., Schamp-bjerede, T., & Kerren, A. (2016). Visual analysis of online social media to open up the investigation of stance phenomena. 15(2), 93–116. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473871615575079
Nuyts, J. (2001). Epistemic Modality, Language, and Conceptualization: A Cognitive-pragmatic Perspective. J. Benjamins. https://books.google.co.id/books?id=X7Y4PHb07AcC
Prakash, O. (2025). Is it time for India to set social media age limits for adolescents ? 267–273. https://doi.org/10.4103/indianjpsychiatry.indianjpsychiatry
Romero, E. D., Sanhueza-Campos, C., Dı´az-Vargas, C., Campos, M. V., & Carrillo, K. S. (2025). Exploring the Use of Epistemic and Effective Stance Strategies in the EFL Classroom : Evidence From Reflective Writing. SAGE Open, December, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440251378837
Toledo, E. Q. (2025). Adverbials and interpersonal meaning in earlier women ’ s instructive writing. 18(2), 121–146.
Downloads
Published
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Afriliani
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
In submitting the manuscript to the journal, the authors certify that:
- They are authorized by their co-authors to enter into these arrangements.
- The work described has not been formally published before, except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review, thesis, or overlay journal.
- That it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere,
- That its publication has been approved by all the author(s) and by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – of the institutes where the work has been carried out.
- They secure the right to reproduce any material that has already been published or copyrighted elsewhere.
- They agree to the following license and copyright agreement.
License and Copyright Agreement
Authors who publish with Onoma Journal: Education, Languages??, and Literature agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
