Abstract
This chapter demonstrates how the discourses that circulate in the texts of a scientific discipline, creating the discipline’s identity, can be identified using a particular corpus-based approach known as Multi-Dimensional (MD) analysis, and drawn upon to construct a history of the discipline. It employs a variant of the MD Analysis framework that draws exclusively on lexical units. The lexical dimensions comprise sets of lexical items that occur in similar groups of texts at particular time periods, with the lexical MD analysis serving as a tool for detecting historical disciplinary discourses. The primary goal of a lexical MD Analysis of discourse is to describe discourse variation; that is, how discourse varies systematically according to context. The chapter detects some of the major discourses of applied linguistics and maps out some of the history of the academic discipline.
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