The correct use of linguistic features of authorial identity has been found to be a problem for novice writers and non-native writers when writing research articles. This research aims to find out the linguistic elements that the native English and Thai writers use to express their stance in their research articles (RAs), and to describe how the native English and Thai writers express their stance in their RAs based on their socio-cultural background. The results, based on the frequency analysis of 30 RAs, showed that the native English writers in Applied Linguistics (AL) field used slightly more hedges and epistemic stance words, while the Thai writers employed slightly more attitude markers, as well as attitudinal stance words. In term of boosters, the native English writers were found to use twice more boosters than the Thai writers. Another remarkable difference found is in the use of self-mentions; the pronouns I-we were used eight times more by the native English writers than the Thai writers. The contextual analysis further showed that the native English writers were overt when promoting their authorial involvement through the use of stance markers, while the Thai writers' use of stance markers was intended to achieve rhetorical functions that fade degrees of authority. Implications of the findings for the instruction of academic writing are proposed.