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 L1 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 L1 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.