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Evaluative Meanings and Disciplinary Values - eTheses Repository ...

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of sub-disciplines contained within them.<br />

Each sub-discipline <strong>and</strong> its leading journal are selected based on a relatively broad<br />

cross-section of research specializations within each academic discipline. It is however<br />

difficult <strong>and</strong> perhaps impossible to specify all possible sub-disciplines of the two disciplines,<br />

<strong>and</strong> it is practically impossible to collect <strong>and</strong> include such all data for an individual research<br />

project like the current study. According to the Council for International Exchange of Scholars<br />

(CIES) website, 21 there are 24 sub-disciplinary variants for applied linguistics, 55 for<br />

business administration, 15 for economics, <strong>and</strong> 35 for law (including business law) <strong>and</strong> so on.<br />

For this reason, I decided to simply select the same numbers of sub-disciplines (i.e. each 8<br />

sub-disciplinary variants) from these variants of the two disciplines <strong>and</strong> to include the data<br />

from the journals being representative of these sub-disciplines in my corpora. Sub-disciplines<br />

<strong>and</strong> their journals included within applied linguistics are 1) testing (Language Testing), 2) the<br />

analysis of speech (Language <strong>and</strong> Speech), 3) language learning (Language Learning), 4)<br />

English for specific purposes (Journal of English for Specific Purposes), 5) corpus linguistics<br />

(International Journal of Corpus Linguistics), 6) cognitive processes (Language <strong>and</strong> Cognitive<br />

Processes), 7) second language acquisition (Studies in Second Language Acquisition), <strong>and</strong> 8)<br />

teaching English as a foreign language (TESOL Quarterly). Those included within business<br />

studies are 1) accounting (Journal of Accounting Research), 2) business law (American<br />

Business Law Journal), 3) society (Business <strong>and</strong> Society), 4) economics (Quarterly Journal of<br />

Business <strong>and</strong> Economics), 5) finance (Journal of Business Finance <strong>and</strong> Accounting), 6)<br />

business strategy (Journal of Business Strategy), 7) marketing (Journal of Business <strong>and</strong><br />

Industrial Marketing), <strong>and</strong> 8) management (Journal of (Small) Business <strong>and</strong> Management).<br />

Articles were selected at r<strong>and</strong>om from those published after 2000, thereby representing<br />

current topics, questions <strong>and</strong> issues in each field. In particular, I attempted to extract data from<br />

data-based RAs, which is one of four genres of RAs suggested in Swales (2004, p. 213) (viz.<br />

Swales divides RAs into Theory Pieces, Review Articles, Data-based RAs <strong>and</strong> Short<br />

Communications), since they are popular in both disciplines.<br />

These journals were selected because they are all internationally renowned <strong>and</strong> cover a<br />

wide range of topics in the field of applied linguistics <strong>and</strong> business studies. 22 RAs in each of<br />

these journals are subject to a strict <strong>and</strong> rigorous peer review process before being published.<br />

21 The website of CIES is at http://www.cies.org/specialists/Joining_The_Roster/Sub_Discipline.htm.<br />

22 The decision to limit the number of journals in each corpus to only eight was due to practical purposes; it does not mean<br />

that other journals are less prestigious than those selected in the current study.<br />

59

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