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Evaluative Meanings and Disciplinary Values - eTheses Repository ...

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!!. Charles (2006) likewise<br />

suggests that disciplinary differences in characteristic linguistic choices are ultimately<br />

reflective of differences in the ideology <strong>and</strong> epistemology of each discipline. A<br />

work demonstrates, ways of organizing ideas in each academic discourse community differ<br />

especially in the type of lexico-grammatical patterning used, <strong>and</strong> such patterns are an<br />

important linguistic resource for encoding disciplinary culture. This being the case, it is<br />

necessary for EAP teachers to present their students with detailed accounts of the specific<br />

linguistic features of the academic disciplines that they are being apprenticed into. This thesis<br />

aims to make a practical contribution to this end, by providing new information about the<br />

kinds of evaluative meaning that are expressed by adjective patterns in the two disciplines of<br />

applied linguistics <strong>and</strong> business studies.<br />

Although this thesis was initially motivated by practical <strong>and</strong> pedagogic concerns, as<br />

stated above, it has also become increasingly strongly informed by issues of a more general<br />

theoretical <strong>and</strong> methodological nature. In particular, this thesis proposes a new methodology<br />

for identifying the complex associations between a discipline <strong>and</strong> its pattern use. Pattern<br />

Grammar (hereafter, PG) has been used successfully to analyse academic specialized<br />

discourses (e.g. Charles, 2004, 2006; Groom, 2005). However, some linguists have criticised<br />

PG for lacking methodological sophistication; in particular, it has been described as lacking a<br />

quantitative dimension (e.g. Gries, 2008). 1 Thus, the current study attempts to show not only<br />

PGs sophistication as a qualitative approach to discourse analysis but also how PG can be<br />

used in a quantitatively sophisticated manner, by utilizing the methodology of multivariate<br />

analysis.<br />

1.4. Research questions<br />

The current study investigates how the pattern A DJ PR EP N is used in RAs in the academic<br />

fields of applied linguistics <strong>and</strong> business studies. In particular, the current study attempts to<br />

reveal both linguistic <strong>and</strong> cultural differences through the behaviour of this pattern in these<br />

-disciplines.<br />

The three main research questions (hereafter, RQs) in the current study are presented<br />

as follows:<br />

1 Gries (2008) has particularly stated, <br />

p. 18).<br />

4

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