Collections
- Ädel, Annelie and Randi Reppen. Corpora nd Discourse: The challenges of different settings. Benjamins, 2008.
- Charles, Maggie, Diane Pecorari and Susan Hunston, eds. Academic Writing: At the interface of corpus and discourse. Continuum, 2009. P 302.18 A33 2009
- Flowerdew, John, ed. Academic Discourse. Pearson Education, 2002.
- Hyland, Ken and Marina Bondi, eds. Academic Discourse Across Disciplines. Peter Lang, 2006.
- Nash, Walter, ed. The Writing Scholar: Studies in Academic Discourse. Sage Publications, 1990.
Old and non-corpus, but quite linguistic. several on modality (Paul Simpson, Joanna Channell, Christopher Butler)
- Tognini-Bonelli, Elena and Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti, eds. Strategies in Academic Discourse. John Benjamins, 2005.
Articles and monographs
- Aijmer, Karin. "Evaluation and pragmatic markers, " in Tognini-Bonelli and Camiciotti (2005) 82-96.
uses parallel translated Swedish/English texts to tease out three functions of prag markers: a 'reality' use, a hedging use, and a conclusion from a number of alternatives.
- Bell, D. "Sentence-initial AND and BUT in academic writing." Pragmatics 17 (2007):183-201
- Biber, Douglas. University Language: A corpus-based study of spoken and written registers. John Benjamins (2006).
Based on his own T2K-SWAL Corpus: chapters on vocaculary, grammatical variation, expression of stance, lex bundles, and multidimensional analysis
- Bondi, Marina. "Emphatics in academic discourse: Integrating corpus and discourse tools in the study of cross-disciplinary variation," in Ädel et al. (2008); 31-56.
About "boosters" as used in two "soft" disciplines: history and economics. Corpora of all articles in 10 journals in each discipline for year 1999-2000. Mostly initial adverbials, esp. "the use significantly, invariably, undoubedly. shows that the use of emphatics in history is much more varied and graded than in economics (52_
- ____________. "'A case in point': Signals of Narrative Development in Business and Economics," in Hyland and Bondi, eds. (2006):49-74
- ____________. "In the Wake of the Terror: Phraseological tools of time setting in the narrative of history," in Charles et al. (2009): 73-90.
Extracts keywords for time setting in 2.5 M word history corpus (reference list a similar sized one in econ and business. Key words and phrases that emerge are frequent in history (COCA), sometimes most frequent, but never more than 2x more. Except of course those including 19th and 20th century, middle ages, history
- Charles, M. “In search of representativity in specialised corpora: Categorisation through
collocation”. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 7 (1) (2009): 43–64.
- _________. “Revealing and obscuring the writer’s identity: Evidence from a corpus of
theses”. In R. Kiely, P. Rea-Dickins, H. Woodfield & G. Clibbon (Eds.), Language, Culture
and Identity in Applied Linguistics. London: BAAL/Equinox, 147–1
- Cortez, Viviana. "Lexical bundles in Freshman composition," in Reppen et al. (2002):132-145.
Comparison of most frequent 4-grams in freshman essays and in acad/convers subcorpora of Longman's corpus (Biber et al.). Shows clearly Freshmen not influenced by conversational models, but by desire to replicate academic formulae in their readings. Suggests looking for variation across disciplines and academic levels.
- ______________. "Lexical Bundles in Published and Student Disciplinary Writing: Examples from history and biology," English for Specific Purposes 23 (2004): 397-423
- Dahl, Trini. "Contributing to the academic conversation: A study of
new knowledge claims in economics and linguistics," Journal of Pragmatics 40 (2008): 1184-1201.
- ____________. "The linguistic representation of rhetorical function:
A study of how economists present their knowledge claims," Written Communication 26:4 (2009):370-391.[Abstract]
This article deals with how economists present their new knowledge claim in the genre of the research article. In the discipline of economics today, the claim is typically included not only in the obvious results/discussion section(s) but also in three other locations of the article: the abstract, the introduction, and the conclusion. The present study considers whether the rhetorical function of each of these three text parts has an impact on the linguistic realization of the claim. The corpus consists of 25 articles from two international journals, European Economic Review and Journal of International Economics. The investigation shows that economist authors commonly draw their readers' attention to the claim by means of signaling expressions such as Our main finding is that . . . , not only in the introduction but also in the conclusion. The simple present seems to be the preferred tense in the claim sentence, even in the conclusion (We find . . . /We argue . . .). The discussion of these findings includes the views hof discipline insiders, providing clear indications of the strategic nature of the research communication process.
- Flowerdew, Lynne. "Corpus-Based Analyses in EAP," in Flowerdew (2002) 95-114
Review of literature
- Freddi, Maria. "From corpus to register: The construction of evaluation and argumentation in linguistics textbooks.
Compares introductory chapters in 10 intro textbooks on point of overlapping of evaluation and argumentation. Style emerges as a parameter.
- _____________, "Arguing linguistics: Corpus investigation of one functional variety of academic discourse. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 4(1) (2005):5-26.
- Flowerdew, John and Richard W. Forrest. "Schematic Structure and Lexico-Grammatical Realization in Corpus-based Genre Analysis: The case of research in the PhD Literature Review," in Charles et al., eds., (2009): 15-36.h
Traces 3 key keywords in lit. review chapters of diss.s in applied lings. Finds difs. in frequency of research, study, and studies by Moves. Finds study almost always self-referential (this, the present, the current).
- Gardezi, S. Amina, and Hilary Nesi. "Variation in the writing of economics students in Britain and Pakistan: the case of conjunctive ties." in Charles et al. eds. (2009)
Compares Pakistani and British essays by economics students (Br. from from BAWE) in use of conjunctive ties; finds and and but used initially more by the Pakistanis and in general more conjunctive ties used by them. Illustrates use of Rayson-Garside LL calculator to measure similarity or corpora.
- Giannoni, Davide Simone. "Book Acknowledgements across Disciplines and Texts," in Hyland and Bondi, eds. (2006): 151-176.
Sharp rise in Acknowledgment sections of books in last 50 years creates a place where subjectivity can be indulged, esp. via hyperbole, irony, and emotivity. More of this across the board in the 'soft' sciences (lings, econ, soc). Size of networks to be acknowledged is greater in hards.
- Groom, Nicholas. “Pattern and meaning across genres and disciplines: An exploratory study”.
Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 4 (3) (2005), 257–277.
[Abstract]
Work in corpus linguistics has led to the development of a theory of language as phraseology [Hunston, S., & Francis, G. (1999). Pattern grammar: A corpus-driven approach to the lexical grammar of English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sinclair, J. M. (1991). Corpus, concordance, collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sinclair, J. M. (2004). Trust the text: Language, corpus and discourse. London: Routledge.]. This paper investigates whether and to what extent phraseology, as exemplified by the grammar patterns it v-link ADJ that- (e.g. ‘It is clear that the problem of evidence continues to vex new historicist criticism’) and it v-link ADJ to-inf (e.g. ‘it is important to compare unemployment rates on a consistent basis’), varies or remains consistent across four multi-million word corpora representing two different genres (research articles and book reviews) and two different disciplinary discourses (History and Literary Criticism), and is therefore at least partly constitutive of these generic and discursive formations. A quantitative analysis of the corpus data reveals significant and systematic distributional trends across both genres and disciplines, and a qualitative analysis of concordance lines confirms that these trends are not arbitrary but motivated by genre-specific purposes and discipline-specific practices, respectively. The paper concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and pedagogical implications of the study, and by making suggestions for further research.
- Hewings, M. & Hewings, A. “Anticipatory ‘it’ in academic writing: An indicator of disciplinary
difference and developing disciplinary knowledge”. In M. Hewings (Ed.), Academic
Writing in Context: Implications and Applications. Birmingham: University of Birmingham
Press, (2001): 199–214.
- ________________________, “‘It is interesting to note that…’: A comparative study of anticipatory ‘it’ in student and published writing”. English for Specific Purposes, 21 (4)*2002): 367–383.
- _________________________. “Impersonalizing stance: A study of anticipatory ‘it’ in student
and published academic writing”. In C. Coffin, A. Hewings & K. O’Halloran (Eds.), Applying
English Grammar: Functional and Corpus Approaches. London: Arnold, (2004) 101–116.
- Holmes, Jasper, and Hilary Nesi. "Verbal and Mental Processes in Academic Disciplines," in Charles et al. (2009): 58-72. [Abstract]
Uses key keywords (ref. corp.=all BAWE) to contrast positive and negative freqs. in history vs. physics subcorpora of assignments. "KWs in the physics assignments referred to causal, logical and evidential relationships between physical phenomena and between phenomena and propositions (in the form of models, theories, and properties of phusical objects or systems). . . . on the other hand the KWs in history were more likely to have explicit agents; the identities of the authorities an sources referred to were important in establishing their validity and relevance." (67)
- Hunston, Susan. "Evaluation and ideology in scientific writing," in Register Analysis: Theory and Practice, ed. Mohsen Ghadessy. Pinter Pub Ltd. (1993), pp. 57-75.
- ______________. "Professional Conflict: Disagreement in academic discourse," in Baker et al, eds. (1993): 115-134. [Abstract]
Close analysis of 6 papers, 2 each from Biochemistry, Sociolinguistics, and History. Suggests multiple ways of grouping the texts: "the investigation into how the conflict was made relevant distinguished those papers where earlier findings were re-worked (L2, H2) from teh others, which presented new findings.The way that knowledge claims are represented divides the empirical papers (S1, S2, L1) from the non-empirical (L2m H1, H2). The site of the conflict and the grounds for value that are invoked divide the papers along discipline lines, but more attitudinal language is used in the papers which challenge earlier findings" (132).
- ______________. "Conflict and Consensus: Construing opposition in Applied Linguistics," in Tognini-Bonelli and Camiciotti (2005) 1-16.
- Hyland, Ken. "Writing Without Conviction ? Hedging in Science Research Articles," Applied Linguistics 17: 4(1996): 433-454. [Abstract]
Hedging is a well-documented feature of spoken discourse as a result of its role
in qualifying categorical commitment and facilitating discussion Its use in
academic writing has received less attention, however, and we know little about
the functions it serves in different research fields and particular genres Hedging
is a significant communicative resource for academics since it both confirms
the individual's professional persona and represents a critical element in the
rhetorical means of gaining acceptance of claims Hedges allow writers to
anticipate possible opposition to claims by expressing statements with
precision, caution, and diplomatic deference to the views of colleagues Based
on a contextual analysis of 26 articles in molecular biology, this paper argues
that hedging in scientific research writing cannot be fully understood in
isolation from social and institutional contexts and suggests a pragmatic
framework which reflects this interpretive environment.
- ___________. "Directives: Argument and engagement in academic writing," Applied Linguistics 23:2 (2002: 215-239
- ___________. "Activity and Evaluation: Reporting practices in academic writing," in Flowerdew (2002), 115-130
variation across disciplines
- ___________. "As can be seen: Lexical bundles and disciplinary variation," in English for Specific Purposes 27 (2008): 4-21. [Abstract]
An important component of fluent linguistic production is control of the multi-word expressions referred to as clusters, chunks or bundles. These are extended collocations which appear more frequently than expected by chance, helping to shape meanings in specific contexts and contributing to our sense of coherence in a text. Bundles have begun to attract considerable attention in corpus studies in EAP, although the extent to which they differ by discipline remains an open question. This paper explores the forms, structures and functions of 4-word bundles in a 3.5 million word corpus of research articles, doctoral dissertations and Master’s theses in four disciplines to learn something of disciplinary variations in their frequencies and preferred uses. The analysis shows that bundles are not only central to the creation of academic discourse, but that they offer an important means of differentiating written texts by discipline.
- ___________. Academic Discourse. Continuum, 2009.
Very introductory—not really corpus lings. Sketches research, instructional, student, and popular discourses.
- __________ and Polly Tse. "'The leading journal in its field': evaluation in journal descriptions," Discourse Studies 11:6 (2009): 703-20. [Abstract]
Evaluation, as the expression of a writer’s attitudes, opinions and values, has become a key term in discourse studies in recent years and has proved to be a particularly fruitful way of analysing academic texts. But while studies have shown the importance of evaluation in research genres, its role in seemingly more promotional academic genres has been largely neglected. This article examines the journal description (JD), a brief but ubiquitous feature of all journals, whether online or in print. Situated at the academic—commercial interface, the JD provides information for prospective readers and authors while endorsing a particular view of the field and positioning the journal in the academic community. Drawing on a corpus of 200 JDs in four contrasting disciplines, we show how evaluation is a key feature of this genre, influencing both lexical choices and rhetorical structure. The analysis contributes both to our understanding of a neglected academic genre and the evaluative resources of language.
- Kaltenbock, G. “On the syntactic and semantic status of anticipatory it”. English Language
and Linguistics , 7 (2) (2003): 235–255.
- Lewin, Beverly A. "Contentiousness in science: The discourse of critique in two sociology journals," Text 25:6 (2005): 723-744. [Abstract]
This paper focuses on an
institutionalized genre for expressing criticism. The corpus consists of 30
'comments' from the two major sociological journals. In general, the findings
show that, although non-contentious or polite options are available for
giving criticism, the critics often chose a more confrontational alternative.
For one, criticism is often directly leveled at the target (termed Judgment)
rather than restricted to his/her work. Specifically, most texts cast at least
one aspersion about the target's honesty, propriety, competence, or ability
to perceive. Secondly, Judgments are unhedged and, in fact, are often intensified.
Lastly, sometimes discourse strategies are employed that force the
reader to concur in the criticism. These practices, which leave no room for
negotiating, are inconsistent with both politeness theory and the commitment
to open inquiry in science. The genre of 'comment' apparently allows expression
of the intrapersonal needs of scientists in their role as academics. There,
personal goals might dictate disregarding politeness strategies, as well as
adopting an adversarial rather than collegial stance to fellow scientists.
- McEnery, Tony and Nazareth Amselom Kifle, "Epistemic modality in argumentative essays of second language writers, in Flowerdew (2002)182-194
use of lexical verbs expressing e. modality in writing of NS/NNS
- Oakey, David. "Formulaic language in English academic writing: A corpus-based study of the formal and functional variation of a lexical phrase in different academic disciplines" in Reppen etal. (2002): 111-129.
Compares uses of 'sentence-builder' "it is/has been (often) asserted/believed/noted that X" in 3 subcorpora of BNC (socsci, medicine, tech/engineering) and three major functions (topic priming, support cited, straw man, self-reference) .
- ____________. "Academic vocabulary in academic discourse: The phraseological behaviour of EVALUATION in Economics research articles," in Tognini-Bonelli and Camiciotti (2005): 169-184
NNS learners' difficulties are more phraseological than word based.
- Okamura, Akiko. "pragmatic force in biology papers written by British and Japanese scientists," in Tognini-Bonelli and Camiciotti (2005: 69-82)
Japanese scientists use past tense rather than present perfecdt in introduction, making their 'we' less authoritative.
- Peacock, Matthew. "A cross-disciplinary comparison of boosting in research articles," Corpora 1:1 (2006) 61-84. [Summary]
Compares distribution of 'boosters' (lex verbs as well as modals and adverbs) in empirically driven research articles in six disciplines: Business (Marketing and Management), Language and Linguistics, Public and Social Administration, Law, Physics and Materials Science, and Environmental Science. Finds sciences use heavily strong set (show, demonstrate, find/found, establish.) Most freq use of boosters is Lang/Lings. A model study.
- _______________. "A comparative study of introductory it in research articles across eight disciplines," International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 16:1 (2011): 72-100. [Abstract].
of introductory it plus that-clause and to-clause complementation. These structures
are said to be particularly important in academic English. We examined
disciplinary variation in 288 research articles across eight disciplines, four
science and four non-science — Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Environmental Science,
Business, Language and Linguistics, Law, and Public and Social Administration.
We examined all 6,008 occurrences of it, recorded 110 different forms of
the patterns, and investigated function. Results indicate that Biology, Chemistry,
and Environmental Science writers used the structures significantly less frequently
than non-science writers, while Law used them more often. Numerous
other statistically significant disciplinary differences were found. Conclusions are
that the structure performs the important functions of evaluating the likelihood
or validity of propositions, evaluating or commenting on the difficulty of procedures
and evaluating or commenting on the necessity of procedures.
- Pecorari, Diane. "Formulaic Language in Biology: A Topic-specific Investigation," in Charles et al (2009):91-104
Found high density of 4+ ngrams in 500K word corpus of aritcles on candida albicans. Strongest in 'external' reference to materials, procedures, and the liberature. Lots of 'reporting verb' ngrams ([have] been identified as
- Poos, Deanna and Rita Simpson. "Cross-disciplinary comparisons of hedging: Some findings from the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English," in Reppen et al. (2002): 3-23.
- Poudat, Céline and Sylvain Loiseau, "Authorial presence in academic genres," in Tognini-Bonelli and Camiciotti(2005), 51-69.
First person pronouns in French philosophical vs. linguistic writings
- Römer, Ute. "'This seems somewhat counterintuitive, though…': Negative evaluation in linguistic book reviews by male and female authors," in Tognini-Bonelli and Camiciotti (2005): 97-116.
Focus on a corpus of book reviews in lings, on ways of expressing negative valuation. Considers gender. keys on words like surprising and disappointing.
- ________________. "The inseparability of lexis and grammar: Corpus linguistic perspectives”. Annual
Review of Cognitive Linguistics 7 (1) 92009), 140–162
- Sanderson, Tamsin. "Interaction, identity and culture in academic writing: The case of German, British and American academics in the humanities," in Ädel et al, eds. (2008): 57-92.
Compares German and Eng Lang author's self-reference (and some 2nd person); finds 'I-taboo' much more robust for Germans (pref. for we) and German Philosophers very heavy users (77%) of we-humans. Some 3rdp ref. Status and gender also imp. parameters.
- Shaw, Philip."Linking adverbials in student and profesional writing in literary studies: what makes writing mature," in Charles et al. (2009): 215-35. [Abstract]
Focusing on lang of literary criticism (2 corpora) contrasted to student lit essays and a reference corpus of Math. Finds two lit corpora very similar with however, yet, thus at the top of each followed by but and and somewhat later, with 1/3 non-initial. Math was quite different, with thus, so, hence, therefore (from top) with less but. and only 1/6th non-initial. He thinks relatively high but and and may reflect a literary flouting of grammar 'rules.' A high level of yet among both professionals and students in lit crit suggests it is a genre characteristic of lit crit or of humanities. He suspects an avoidance of initial but and and among the student wirters is due to prescriptive schooling: "Literary critics celebrate their freedom from convention by ignoring this advice" (228). [this is very rich article; pairs with Gardezi and Nesi]
- Silver, Marc. "Introducing abstract reasoning: World of reference and writer argument across disciplines," in Hyland and Bondi, eds. (2006): 75-101.
4 subcorpora: Unified Physics, Molecular Biology, Economics, and Business Management. Comparative keyword lists of 'doing science' verbs. logic of hard/soft disciplines.
- Simpson-Vlach, Rita and Nick C. Ellis. "An Academic Formulas List: New Methods
in Phraseology Research," Applied Linguistics 31:4 (2010): 487-512. [Abstract]
This research creates an empirically derived, pedagogically useful list of formulaic
sequences for academic speech and writing, comparable with the Academic
Word List (Coxhead 2000), called the Academic Formulas List (AFL). The AFL
includes formulaic sequences identified as (i) frequent recurrent patterns in
corpora of written and spoken language, which (ii) occur significantly more
often in academic than in non-academic discourse, and (iii) inhabit a wide
range of academic genres. It separately lists formulas that are common in academic
spoken and academic written language, as well as those that are special to
academic written language alone and academic spoken language alone. The AFL
further prioritizes these formulas using an empirically derived measure of utility
that is educationally and psychologically valid and operationalizable with corpus
linguistic metrics. The formulas are classified according to their predominant
pragmatic function for descriptive analysis and in order to marshal the AFL
for inclusion in English for Academic Purposes instruction.
- Stotesbury, Hilkka. "Gaps and False Conclusions: Criticism in Research Article Abstracts," in Hyland and Bondi, eds. (2006):123-148. [Summary]
Makes 3 corpora of 100 Research Abstracts (each) in humanities, social sciences, natural sciences. Humanities have most absracts expressing criticism of previous work (44%), followed by Sco Sci (26%) and Nat Sci (14%), but SocSci the most aggressive—ref Lewin (2005). Five types of crditical speech acts: criticism of previous research, gap, criticism of theory, method, model, argument or view, innovations in the field, and criticism in the discussion or conclusions section.
- Taylor, G. & Chen, T. “Linguistic, cultural, and subcultural issues in contrastive discourse
analysis: Anglo-American and Chinese scientific texts”. Applied Linguistics, 12 (3) (1991):319–336.
- Tse, Polly and Ken Hyland. "Gender and discipline: Exploring metadiscourse variation in academic book reviews," in Hyland and Bondi, eds. (2006): [Summary]
Reviews of monograph books in three disciplines (philosophy, sociology, biology). Interviews show sense of masculine/feminine styles is widely shared in all disciplines, with women describing 'writing like a man' at times. Female reviewers in philosophy, for instance, employed more transitions markers than their male counterparts, perhaps to set out the logic of their argument in a clear and accessible way with less need for the engagement markers and boosters more heavily used by males.The differences suggest a more personal and vigorously argumentative stance by males and the adoption of a more cautious, logical persona by females. In the Sociology reviews the interactions conveyed by metadicourse use displayed far more gender similarity perhaps because of a greater cross-disciplinary and egalitarian spirit in the field which encourages a less combative and forceful approach to argumentation and self intrusion. Finally, in biology, we see considerably more use of both interactive and interactional features by men in this traditionally male dominated discipline. The competition between laboratories, research teams and adherents to particular perspectives tends to be largely conducted by males and the greater interactivity in these reviews may reflect a more vigorous engagement in this competition, with a more personally involved use of language. (199)
- Thompson, Paul. "Aspects of identification and position in intertextual reference in PhD theses," in Tognini-Bonelli and Camiciotti, eds. (2005) 31-50.
averral vs. attribution in theses in Agricultural Botany, Agricultural Economics, and Psychology,
- Vassileva, Irena. "Who am I/who are we in academic writing? A contrastive analysis of authorial presence in English, German, French, Russian and Bulgarian," International journal of applied linguistics 8:2(1998): 163-190
- Vold, Eva Thue. "Epistemic modality markers in research articles: a cross-linguistic and cross-disciplinary study," International journal of applied linguistics 16:1 (2006): 611-87.
- ______________, "The choice and use of epistemic modality markers in linguistics and medical research articles," in Hyland and Bondi, eds. (2006): 225-252.
- Walsh, Steve, Anne O;Keefe and Michahel McCarthy. "'...post-colonialism, multi-culturalism, structuralism, feminisim, post-modernism and so on and so forth: A comparative analysis of vague category markers in academic discourse," in Ädel et al (2008):9-29. [spoken academic discourse]
- Williams, G. “In search of representativity in specialised corpora: Categorisation through
collocation”. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 7 (1) (2002), 43–64.
- Wulff, Stefanie and Ute Römer. "Becoming a proficient academic writer: shifting
lexical preferences in the use of the progressive," Corpora 4:2(2009): 115-133.