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topic for quantitative and qualitative researches in corpus linguistics. 2.7.2. Research articles We now turn to the question of why the RA genre has been selected as the empirical focus on this thesis. Over 350 years has already passed since the first scientific journal The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society emerged in 1665 (Swales, 1990). The genre of the scientific RA developed from the informative letters written by scientists (Swales, 1990, p. 110), in order to share their academic knowledge with each other. This communicative purpose has remained the same ever since. The RA genre is a highly social genre in another key respect. According to Swales (2004), the RAs published in academic journals are the final outcome in a written form, introducing knowledge and ideas and presenting the results of a particular academic research through a complex process: they are produced from many drafts reflecting multiple inputs (i.e. advice or comments) from discourse community members such as co-authors, colleagues, reviewers, editors, supervisors (if the authors are post-graduate students), or many anonymous audiences at academic colloquia (p. 218). For this reason, it is naturally understood that RA texts are richly persuasive rather than flatly expository (p. 218). The RA is now widely regarded as the key genre in many scholarly or research-driven discourse communities. As Swales (1990, p. 177) points out, this is not only because the RA acts as the main conduit of new research knowledge, but also because it has a dynamic relationship with all the other public research-process genres, and the RA is at the centre of a spiders web as follows: abstracts presentations research articles grant proposals theses and dissertations books and monographs Figure 2.3. The RA and other research-process genres (quoted from Swales (1990, p. 177)) In summary, the RA genre is traditionally the fundamental genre deepening the quality of academic research and developing each disciplinary culture. For this reason, this 22
genre has come increasingly under the spotlight over time, as the main channel of scientific or scholarly communication in every academic discipline (Holmes, 1997, p. 322). At the same time, RAs are increasingly being seen as one of the principal means by which discourse communities are produced and sustained: the writers of RAs need to manifest deference to and solidarity with their respective research communities, which, through their various gatekeeping roles, exert considerable power and influence (Swales, 2004, p. 218) As Swales (2004, p. 240) points out, the unfinished business in current research on the RA genre is the concept of disciplinary variation, and a particular corpus of RAs allows us to examine the disciplinary proclivities in linguistic and stylistic features. By accumulating the knowledge together with other members in the same discourse communities, a mere note on a particular research topic is thus finally expanded into an RA that is finely attuned to disciplinary conventions. For this reason, this genre is ideally suited to the investigation of disciplinary differences. Since the RA is the key genre in academic discourse, it is not surprising that it has already been the subject of a great deal of research in the field of ESP. For instance, Thetela (1997), which is in many respects similar to the current study, studies how evaluation works through a text in order to transmit the writers purpose in four disciplines (i.e. history, economics, psychology, and applied linguistics). Kuo (1999) quantitatively investigated personal pronouns in a corpus of scientific RAs of three disciplines (i.e. computer science, electronic engineering, and physics). Varttala (1999) investigated hedging in popular scientific publications and specialist RAs on medicine. Hyland (2001) examines the strategy of self-mention (i.e. the use of self-citation and exclusive first person pronouns) in a corpus of 240 RAs in eight disciplines (i.e. physics, marketing, biology, philosophy, applied linguistics, sociology, electronic engineering, and mechanical engineering) in order to reveal how self-mention is used and perceived as a way of understanding more about writing in the disciplines and the kinds of options available to students (p. 208). Martinez (2001) reports on the way in which impersonal constructions encoded in transitivity structures are used in a corpus of 21 experimental RAs in the fields of physical, biological and social sciences. Other notable studies on this genre focus on features such as evaluation and stance (e.g. Groom, 23
Page 1 and 2: Evaluative Meanings and Disciplinar
Page 3 and 4: ABSTRACT The purpose of this study
Page 5 and 6: CONTENTS C H APT E R 1. Introductio
Page 7 and 8: C H APT E R 9. The second theme: Re
Page 9 and 10: Figure A-1 Histogram for tokens of
Page 11 and 12: Table 8.15 The SKILFULNESS group in
Page 13 and 14: CHAPTER 1. Introduction 1.1. Genera
Page 15 and 16: study are still not large enough fo
Page 17 and 18: RQ1) Is it valuable to apply a new
Page 19 and 20: in the way each of these evaluative
Page 21 and 22: disciplines feature different bodie
Page 23 and 24: White and Liccardi (2006) have show
Page 25 and 26: However, it was not possible to cla
Page 27 and 28: typically presented as impersonal a
Page 29 and 30: 2.5. Applied linguistics and busine
Page 31 and 32: 2.6.2. Business studies Business co
Page 33: Swales (2004) thus offers a rather
Page 37 and 38: CHAPTER 3. Pattern, meaning and eva
Page 39 and 40: 170). 7 On the basis of the vast am
Page 41 and 42: 3.3. Lexico-grammatical patterns 3.
Page 43 and 44: syntactic patterns encodes differen
Page 45 and 46: RESULT/DATA based on DATA/THEORY In
Page 47 and 48: (Biber, 1988, p. 237). Indeed, Chaf
Page 49 and 50: aspect of language use. For these r
Page 51 and 52: 1986), hedging (Holmes, 1988; Hylan
Page 53 and 54: adverbs but rather in certain patte
Page 55 and 56: average work is described as sound
Page 57 and 58: are also interrelated. In an attemp
Page 59 and 60: CHAPTER 4. Correspondence analysis
Page 61 and 62: - end. Although there is no doubt t
Page 63 and 64: appeal of multivariate analysis is
Page 65 and 66: While such observations might be in
Page 67 and 68: The contingency table has the follo
Page 69 and 70: CHAPTER 5. Corpus creation and meth
Page 71 and 72: of sub-disciplines contained within
Page 73 and 74: As Figure 5.1 illustrates, regardle
Page 75 and 76: corpus-based discourse analysis. Th
Page 77 and 78: analysis was conducted with the mat
Page 79 and 80: 5.3.4. Discourse analysis procedure
Page 81 and 82: CHAPTER 6. A case study In this cha
Page 83 and 84: express human feelings: specificall
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contingency table consists of 66 ro
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of this case study is limited. Howe
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likely to express what they feel ab
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6.2.2. The NERVOUSNESS group While
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adjectives in this group in the pat
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While the LSP enthusiastic about N
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AWARE and IGNORANT group in Francis
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CHAPTER 7. Data analyses 7.1. Intro
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The table is divided into high-freq
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about of Order ALC Freq. BC Freq. B
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Tables 7.2 and 7.3 above indicate t
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same for a corpus of a more special
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Table 7.5 above indicates that simi
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about for from in of on to with 8 l
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In the plot shown in Figure 7.1, it
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Figure 7.4. Adjective plot in the s
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Figure 7.7. Adjective plot for A DJ
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Figure 7.9. Adjective plot for the
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same time. This being the case, I h
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Other adjectives in this quadrant a
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This concludes my analysis of the e
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Figure 7.21 also indicates that adj
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With the sole exception of the patt
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evaluation (Martin & Rose, 2007, p.
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judgments tend to draw on both emot
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[Business studies: neutral about/on
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modals in BC, on the other hand, mo
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Order ALC Freq. BC Freq. 1 more 14
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itself. 8.1.3. Importance The third
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Fewer of the control variables are
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someone/something is certain or unc
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current/past oriented. While the nu
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monogloss heterogloss ALC 35%(7) 65
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that the default assumption among a
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monogloss heterogloss ALC 29%(4) 71
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general category of appreciation as
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while the BC examples evaluate the
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it seems that researchers in busine
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Overall, my findings suggest that a
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interpretation. Finally, these sema
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entities. This group is especially
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[Applied Linguistics] [
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The proportions for this group are
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In addition, this LSP strongly occu
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or evidence in the writers (ongoing
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Francis et al. (1998, p. 479) indic
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In summary, the intensity of severa
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The depended- entities in ALC are p
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order ALC freq. BC freq. 1 differen
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[Business Studies] Thi
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[Applied Linguistics] Scores (but
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In general, business studies discou
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Order ALC Freq. BC Freq. 1 involved
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[Applied Linguistics]
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[Business Studies] Language is
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something (e.g. ability, knowledge,
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[Business Studies] Only companies
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adverbs. Table 9.18 below summarize
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Order ALC Freq. BC Freq. 1 responsi
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Order ALC Freq. BC Freq. 1 present
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ALC BC Negative Noun inherent other
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In each of the above concordances t
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Several adjectives in this group in
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[Business Studies] Our sample is r
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Order ALC Freq. BC Freq. 1 study 27
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[Business studies: model + based on
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particular thing in order to deepen
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across the two disciplines. However
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A DJ PR EP N. Figure 10.1. Discipli
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likely to occur in applied linguist
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10.3.2. Cause vs. Effect As argued
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and unostentatious fashion. This fi
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10.4. Conclusion The fundamental as
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as follows: [A new methodology] RQ1
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linguistics and business studies on
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disciplinary culture of the two dis
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p. 156). By investigating a corpus,
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Figure A-3: Histogram for types of
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Appendix B: Tables for adjectives i
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vague 1 worried 1 1 2 1 2 1 wrong 1
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indispensable 1 1 ineligible 2 1 in
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indistinguishable 8 4 1 1 1 1 2 1 i
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immersed 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 implicated 4
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Table B-10. Contingency table for t
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12 conditional 3 clear 5 26 good 1
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51 free 17 unique 18 141 antagonist
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comparable 21 2 8 3 1 2 3 11 3 4 7
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new 2 12 1 11 2 5 4 8 3 2 9 3 45 ne
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27 comparable 4 competitive 3 68 si
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pregnant 1 preoccupied 2 1 1 replet
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crucial-as 1 effecti
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puzzled-by 1 recogni
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SRHE/Open University Press Bell, R.
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articles in biology and history. In
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Herbert, A. (1965). The structure o
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Lewis, M. (1997). Implementing the
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Rundell, M. (Ed.). (2007). Macmilla
Page 283:
functional perspective. English for
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