Evaluative Meanings and Disciplinary Values - eTheses Repository ...

the writers research results by referring to antecedent theory and/or research findings.
9.1.3. Dependence
The third form of connection to be discussed here is dependence. The DEPENDENCE group
indicates that something relies on something or something is affected by something because
they are connected. This group is often expressed by adjectives such as dependent,
contingent, conditional and others in the pattern A DJ on N. Table 9.9 below summarizes the
quantitative data for the adjectives in this group.
Order ALC Freq. BC Freq.
1 dependent 82 dependent 128
2 contingent 11 conditional 32
3 reliant 8 contingent 18
4 conditional 3 reliant 9
Total 104 187
Prop. 36% 64%
Table 9.9. The DEPENDENCE group in A DJ on N
As can be seen, this group is more strongly associated with BC than it is with ALC. My
analysis suggests that this is largely because the discourse of business studies tends to express
independent relations through this group, and also because the type of the dependent entity
is relatively fixed in applied linguistics, but relatively varied in business studies.
For example, the dependent relation expressed by the LSP dependent on N in
business studies conversely indicates independent relation in many cases by co-occurring
with negatives. Table 9.10 below summarizes the high-frequency N2 nouns in this LSP in
both corpora.
Order ALC Freq. BC Freq.
1 task 4 firm 13
2 number 3 stakeholder 9
3 memory 3 trust 8
4 writing 3 level 4
5 processes 3 hypothesis 4
6 disambiguating 3 CEO 4
7 proficiency 2 performance 4
8 gestures 2 labor 3
9 L2 2 relationship 3
10 links 2 actor 3
Table 9.10. The high-frequency nouns in dependent on N
170