A Cross-Cultural Comparative Investigation of Linking Adverbials in Linguistics Research Articles Written in English by Native and Arab Scholars

May Abulaziz Abumelha,Hesham Suleiman Alyousef

doi:10.13189/lls.2019.070506

Abstract

The study reports a comparative investigation into the way Arabic first language (L1) and English native language scholars construct cohesive English texts in linguistics research articles through the use of linking adverbials (LAs). It was framed by Biber et al.'s (1999) classification of LAs. The corpus comprised 80 published research articles in a linguistics journal written in English by native and Arab scholars (304,144 words). Both qualitative and quantitative analyses have been conducted in order to investigate the semantic uses of LAs and their frequencies and percentages. There were overall similarities between the two datasets and slight differences that can be related to cross-cultural and L1 influence. Some Arab scholars had the tendency to overuse additive adverbials by comparison to other LAs. This tendency might be linked to their L1, such as Arabic which heavily uses additive adverbials. The findings revealed the non-native English speaking scholars' (NNES) slight preference for using formal (e.g. 'in order to') over less formal adverbials (e.g. 'so'). The distribution pattern of the categories was similar in both datasets. The study suggests investigating other genres of RAs written within different disciplines.

Highlights

English native language scholars construct cohesive add information about an action or state in a clause in terms
The findings revealed that the writers employed a limited range of cohesive devices, though the frequent ones were elaborative (e.g. ‘and’, ‘’) ones, followed by the inferential (e.g. ‘so’), contrastive, causative and topic relating markers; the study, did not investigate NS scholars writing in order to conduct a comparison and interpret the results
Pertinent to investigate if there are any cross-cultural variations in the use of linking adverbials (LAs) in linguistics RAs written by native English scholars (NES) and native English speaking scholars’ (NNES) in order to reveal 1) the most frequent LAs in linguistics English RAs written by NES and NNES, 2) if there were any linguistic cross-cultural variations in the use of any of these LAs in linguistics RAs, and 3) if the LAs contributed to the interaction between the author(s) and reader(s)

Summary

Introduction

No work has investigated and compared the use of LAs in linguistics RAs written in English by NES and Arab scholars This is a new area of inquiry that will build upon the knowledge found on the differences between the two languages and reveal cross-cultural variation in academic communication. It was, pertinent to investigate if there are any cross-cultural variations in the use of LAs in linguistics RAs written by NESs and NNESs in order to reveal 1) the most frequent LAs (listing, summative, appositive, resultive/inferential, and contrastive/concessive) in linguistics English RAs written by NES and NNES, 2) if there were any linguistic cross-cultural variations in the use of any of these LAs in linguistics RAs, and 3) if the LAs contributed to the interaction between the author(s) and reader(s). The study contributes to our understanding of the nature and the semantic meaning of linguistics’ register

Methodology

General Findings

Linking Adverbials

Listing Adverbials

Summative Adverbials