Express a stance: Tentative

How to express a stance: Tentative (50% subjective & 50% objective)

Authors present a humble stance by not asserting their opinions. Four key linguistic items,
(1) modal auxiliaries,
(2) adverbs/verbs of some possibility or frequency (and sometimes adjectives),
(3) suggesting mental verbs, and
(4) conditional conjunctions are used.

Learning Objectives & Strategies:
Familiarize with the linguistic patterns for expressing Tentative stance.
1. Find the linguistic patterns for expressing Tentative below
2. Then search by the linguistic patterns (keywords, pre/suffix, tense, etc.) you found in the "Stance Sentence Examples" XXpage.xHere is a reference list for you.
3. You can also compare the linguistic expressions across the 4 stances in "Distinguishing the 4 stances")

(key linguistic expressions in red)

Sentence Types (What is this?)

Linguistic Expressions

	Modal Auxiliary	Some Possibility or frequency Adverb or verbs
1) S.+ Active verbs (e.g. contribute to, reflect, require, present	would, will, might, could	perhaps, likely, usually, relatively, a bit, more, generally, somehow, increasingly, seem, tend to, etc.
2) Passive form (e.g. It is made of.., We are expected to...)	same as above	same as above
3) Be verb+ n or adj (e.g. This is a dilemma, The study is significant.)	same as above	same as above
4) S. + mental verb to suggest or to hypothesize (e.g. As Winthrop suggests, I argue, They presume)	same as above	same as above
5) Conditionals (e.g. if, when, unless, given)	N.A.	N.A.
6) Questions e.g. How can we obtain the goal of…?	N.A.	N.A.