The Words of Facts: How British and Italian Students Use in Fact in Academic Writing

This study examines the frequency, meanings, lexico-grammatical and discursive features of the pragmatic marker in fact in an Li subcorpus of the British Academic Written English corpus and in a learner corpus of essays written by Italian university students. One of four meanings, `contrast, `specification, `factuality' and `support, was assigned to each instance of in fact in both corpora. Similarities and differences emerged in the use of this pragmatic marker. All four meanings are present in both corpora; however, the `contrast' and `specification' meanings occur more often in the Li corpus, while the `factuality' and `support' meanings occur more often in the L2 corpus. These findings suggest that the Italian learners are not fully aware of the multiple meanings of in fact.