Evaluative Meanings and Disciplinary Values - eTheses Repository ...

3.3.3. Relevant research and the pattern ADJ PREP N
Verbs and nouns have been thus far prioritized in disciplinary discourse analyses (e.g.
Thompson & Ye, 1991; Shaw, 1992; Hunston, 1993; Swales & Feak, 2004; Charles, 2004,
2006; Nelson, 2006). Verbs mainly express an assertion toward things and nouns present
information of research contents in most cases. Both parts of speech are essential to construct
academic arguments. For example, Butler (1990) investigated modal verbs used in biological
and physical sciences, revealing that writers in physics texts tend to use the modal verb can in
a more epistemic way than those in botany and physiology texts, but the opposite is true
concerning may. Hyland (1999) also examines textual attribution (Sinclair, 1988; Hunston,
1995, 2000) in eight disciplines, and finds that people in hard fields frequently use verbs of
such as discover, notice and observe, whereas those in soft fields are likely to
such as claim, discuss and argue. Charles (2004) also
s science corpora by looking at nouns
occurring in particular lexico-grammatical patterns (e.g. shell-noun patterns, for example N of
N, in the noun section). 13
Whereas verbs and nouns have attracted considerable attention among academic
discourse analysts, much less attention has been paid to adjectives. This is somewhat
surprising, given the important role that adjectives play in meaning construction. Adjectives
enhance the information provided by a noun when used attributively, and express evaluations
of things when used predicatively (Biber et al., 1999, p. 515). Attributive adjectives are more
frequently used in academic contexts as compared to predicative adjectives since the
predicative adjectives often include the personal (or writers) judgement, emotion or attitude
that are inconsistent to the academic arguments (see figure in Biber et al., 1999, p. 506).
Some applied linguists are now beginning to pay attention to adjectives in predicative
use, especially those analysts who study patterns as a means of investigating disciplinary
differences in academic discourse (e.g. Charles, 2004, 2006; Groom, 2005). For example,
Charles (2004) and Groom (2005) investigated the patterns it v-link A DJ to-inf / that-clause,
to see if a qualitative difference could be identified between two disciplines (viz. Politics and
Materials Science in Charless work, and History and Literary Criticism in Grooms work).
However, the analysis of other adjectival patterns, namely adjectival prepositional patterns,
remains a worthy endeavour s
13 Charles (2004) also investigated the lexico-grammatical patterns of other word classes such as verbs, adverbs and
adjectives (e.g. it v-link A DJ to-inf/that-clause pattern in the adjective section).
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