Logical Operators in Local and International English Research Articles in Applied Linguistics

Stance Expression indicates feelings, certainty or uncertainty, and interests of the authors. As the increasing needs of the readers on significant findings from the introduction section of Research Articles, a study on Stance Expression of introduction section in the English research articles written by Cambodian authors has been conducted to employ crucial aims of the study: (1) examine stance expression types and the categories of each type; (2) compare the similarities and differences of stance expression types used in the introduction section of English RAs written by Cambodian authors published in local and international journals. Thirty research articles written by Cambodian authors published in local and international journals were used in this study. To fulfill these research objectives, the mixed-method research design was utilized in this study. All the four stance features, such as Hedges, Boosters, Attitude Markers, and Self-expression, proposed by Hyland (2005) were used as a Lexical analysis framework model in this study. The results revealed that four stance expression types were found in this study. The hedge was the most frequently employed among the other types of stances. There is a significantly different in terms of the frequencies of hedge used within both RA journals, but there is no for booster, attitude marker, and self-mention. Local Cambodian authors should follow the international authors as models in applying stance in their RAs. A comparison study of the stance expression and engagement between Cambodian and international authors in the introduction should be expanded more different articles from available journals.Keywords: English research article, introduction section, stance expression, local journals, international journals

In the context of EFL writing in China, there is a prevalent tendency among students to heavily rely on the provided model essays from teachers, leading to a phenomenon known as sameness. This overreliance often results in confusion when it comes to expressing ideas effectively in sentences. To address this issue, this paper adopts an analytical framework based on the theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). SFL is a linguistic theory that emphasizes language’s social context and meaning (Halliday, 1985; 1994). Notably, SFL prioritizes meaning over form and examines the organization of texts as well as individual sentences. The theory has been widely applied in discourse analysis and language teaching. This paper offers a brief literature review on key SFL terms, such as language rank, clause, clause complex, taxis, and logico-semantic relation. Additionally, the paper presents examples of identifying taxis and logico-semantic relations using two types of EFL writing samples from SFL perspective. The analysis reveals that the first text, a comparison and contrast essay, predominantly employs the relation of extension, whereas the second text, an argumentative piece, prominently exhibits the logico-semantic relation of enhancement. The paper provides insight into the use of SFL as an analytical tool for analyzing variable text types. Students learning from these analytical tools may have more grammatical awareness in identifying clause boundaries and logico-semantic relations across different writing genres.

Lexical Bundles (LBs) have been considered an effective tool for not only academic writing but also spoken discourse. The use of these clusters has attracted a lot of researchers in different registers because of their characteristics and functions in constructing the texts. However, research into LBs seems to be quite rare in English Applied Linguistics (AL) Research Articles (RAs) written by non-native English researchers, especially Vietnamese researchers. This study, therefore, aims to scrutinise Vietnamese researchers’ use of LBs in English AL RAs. A corpus of 77 AL RAs selected from three Journals was built. This study adapted the theoretical frameworks by Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, and Finegan (1999), Biber, Conrad, and Cortes (2004) and Biber (2006) for data analysis. The findings revealed that Vietnamese researchers tended to deploy noun-based LBs more than verb-based and preposition-based ones in their AL RAs. It was further found LBs showing research-oriented functions were prevalent in AL RAs over text-oriented and participant-oriented ones. This research has pedagogical implications in terms of LB use for Vietnamese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers and learners in the teaching and learning of academic writing.

This study reported on an analysis of the transcript of the students’ conversation. It highlighted the way in which the transcript was analyzed qualitatively on the issue of clause complexity based on the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). In detail, this study demonstrated the clause complexity of the transcript of the students’ conversation which was related to, for example, inter-clausal relations (logico-semantic relation), coordination (parataxis) and subordination (hypotaxis) as mainly outlined by Halliday (1994), Halliday & Matthiessen (2004) and Eggins (2004). The results of the analyses indicated that the students showed a positive trend of developments in the use of semantic relations in their conversation. The students produced clause complexes (37.71%) less than clause simplexes (62.29%), In the syntactic dimension, the students produced hypotaxis (50.65%) more than parataxis (49.35%). In hypotaxis, the students produced expansion (92.31%) more than projection (7.69%). It also occurred in parataxis where students also produced expansion (92.11%) more than projection (7.89%). In the logico-semantic dimension, students produced expansion (92.47%) more than projection (7.53%). In the case of projection, locution (57.14%) was produced more than idea (42.86%). In addition, in the case of expansion, elaboration (40.70%) was the most frequently used by the students rather than both of extension (34.88%) and enhancement (24.42%).

The use of appropriate rhetorical moves (RMs) and meta-discourse markers (MMs) improve the argumentative and persuasive force of academic texts, such as essays, thesis, seminar papers, and articles. However, authors from a different language background and level of expertise may use different RMs and MMs when writing in a foreign language. This study is aimed at describing how Indonesian authors in Applied Linguistics use RMs and MMs in their research article abstracts (RAAs) published in international and local journals. 20 RAAs published in international journals and 20 RAAs published in local journals were chosen for the corpora of this study. Swales (2009) five rhetorical move for RAAs and Hyland's (2005) taxonomy of MMs were used as models in the analyses. The results reveal that different from international journal readers’ expectations, Indonesian authors in Applied Linguistics use only 3 Moves (Moves 2, 3 & 4) classified as obligatory and 2 Moves (Moves 1 & 5) conventional. Also, they use interactive MMs far more frequently in Move 3 and 4 because these two moves are relatively longer than the other three moves. As found in other similar studies, the Indonesian authors use interactive MMs far more frequently than interactional MMs because they concern more of their text cohesion, coherence, and convincing rather than their interaction with the potential readers.

This study identified the use of evaluative ‘that’ stance embedded in rhetorical move structures in applied linguistics research articles in discussion sections written in English and published in international and Thai journals. The study aimed to investigate the uses of the evaluative ‘that’ stance in discussion sections for observing the evaluative ‘that’ stance practices in both international and Thai journals. The data was gathered from 80 research articles. The rhetorical moves from the discussion sections were analyzed. Occurrences of the evaluative ‘that’ stance were identified and counted within the embedded rhetorical move-step. The results revealed that international journals and Thai authors employed a similar amount of evaluative ‘that’ stances, although they occurred in different moves and steps. The International authors used an evaluative ‘that’ stance for commenting on results, whereas Thai journal authors tended to use an evaluative ‘that’ stance for reporting results. In the subtypes of evaluative ‘that’ stance, Doubt stance was heavily used in move four: commenting on the results from the international corpus. The findings confirmed that Certainty stance was found in the same contexts from both corpora. Surprisingly, the international journal authors tended to use only a few instances of Neutral stance for commenting on the results. The findings show the differences in the common convention between both journals that could provide information in terms of how the discussion section moves and the evaluative ‘that’ stance presented to help novice EFL scholars to write discussions that comply with international conventions.

The study investigated whether there was any significant generic difference between the Research Questions (RQs) and Method sections of applied linguistics research articles (RAs) published in international and local Iranian journals. Two hundred applied linguistics RAs (100 from each group) were selected from 5 SSCI-indexed international journals and 5 Iranian Scientific-Research (Elmi-Pazhouheshi) ISC-indexed journals. Having analyzed the Introduction and Method sections based on Swales’ (2004) CARS model and Lim’s (2006) model, respectively, we found there were no significant differences in the frequency of occurrence of RQs in the Introduction sections, on the one hand, and between the Method sections of both groups of RAs, on the other. However, significant differences were found in the frequency of occurrence of certain moves and steps in both sections. Moreover, the findings of an expert-viewed validated questionnaire indicated that the RQs were of paramount importance to the authors of both groups of RAs.

Logical Function is a function related to the logical relationship between one clause and another, including two aspects, namely interdependency relations and logico-semantic relations. This study demonstrated the clause complexity of the transcript of two different texts with a similar subject matter, news and editorial text from the Jakarta Post Newspaper, such as, logical function, coordination (parataxis) and subordination (hypotaxis). The method of this study highlighted the analysis of qualitative research on the issue of clause complexity based on the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) in the two different texts. SFL allows the analyst to shed light on interaction with the social context to imbue texts with the meanings expressed. The results of the study show that taxis in logical function analysis of News and Editorial Text apply two taxis, they are parataxis and hypotaxis. Hypotaxis is dominantly used in both text, 85.71% in Editorial and 89.65% in News. The proportion of the dominant hypotaxis in News text was 37.93% and in Editorial 33.33%.

Citations are significant academically for establishing research backgrounds and justifying a research problem. In spite of the increasing studies on citations, limited studies have employed the Systemic Functional Linguistics in analysing citations. Therefore, this study explores the logico-semantic relations in citations with clause complexes, employing the ideational metafunction of the Functional Theory. The study adopted a purposeful sampling in selecting the literature review chapters of 20 PhD theses by EFL postgraduates in a public Malaysian university in two disciplines: Information Technology and Applied Linguistics. The findings revealed that citations were structured to realise two logico-semantic relations, mainly Expansion and Projection with several subcategories for each. A combination of Projection and Expansion was also used, which resulted in reclassifying the logico-semantic relations. The findings could present comprehensive descriptions of citations that could be pedagogically utilised for academic purposes. Keywords: academic writing; citations; expansion; projection; Systemic Functional Linguistics

Although researchers, postgraduate students, and university professors are under tremendous pressure to publish or perish, there exist few widely acknowledged rating scales or checklists for evaluating manuscripts submitted to journals in applied linguistics. To top it all, the existent peer-reviewing criteria are typically not publicly shared; thus, peer-reviewing is a closed, occluded genre. To fill this lacuna in applied linguistics, this research critically analyzed the evaluation scales, existing review criteria, and available documents from 18 journals, two publishing institutions, and APA guidelines in order to come up with a comprehensive checklist for evaluating research articles in applied linguistics. The analysis of the data through inductive content analysis revealed 43 categories, which were later classified under six main themes. It was found that researchers must be aware of the practicalities of research, include the essentials in their manuscript, and appeal to editors by adding elements of face validity. Having met these requirements, researchers must enjoy excellent composition skills and adhere to the fundamental principles in research ethics in order to be able to write a research paper having high overall value. The paper concludes with several implications for researchers and opens up some avenues for future research.

This article presents and explores a methodology to analyze verbal and verbal-visual logico-semantic relations (LSRs) in picturebooks originally written in English and their translations into Brazilian Portuguese. Drawing on systemic-functional theory (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014) and on Visual Grammar (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006), verbal and visual text in picturebooks was annotated and analyzed according to the LSRs identified in them. Results showed differences between the type of LSRs that tend to occur most frequently in verbal-visual texts and in clause complexes: while Expansion_Extension is the most frequent verbal-visual LSR in both the source text and the translated text, Projection_Locution is the most frequent LSR in clause complexes, in the source and translated texts as well. The study contributes a proposal to categorize LSRs in verbal text and LSRs in visual and verbal text that proves to be fully operational for annotation purposes and text analysis.

The quality of argument in the discussion section determines the quality of a journal article because in this section authors must argue convincingly so that readers may accept and use their new knowledge claim. This study aims to determine the differences in argument strategies and linguistic realizations in the discussion sections of unaccredited local, accredited national, and reputable international journals in English by Indonesian writers in the field of Language Teaching. The research method used was descriptive qualitative and quantitative research methods (mixed-method) in analyzing differences in argument styles and linguistic features of the discussion sections of the journal articles. Sixty articles were analyzed using the genre-based text analysis method following Swales (1990) and Dudley Evan (1994). The results show that the argument strategies of articles in local, national, and international journals have important differences. The main differences are the discussion sections in the international journals are much longer in word count and use much more references than the local and national journals do. Also, unlike international journal articles, the majority of local journals use an incomplete argument strategy while national journal articles use a semicomplete argument strategy. Yet another difference is that international journal authors tend to use non-integral citations more frequently while local and national journal authors prefer using integral citation types. The similarity among the three journal articles is that the majority of the authors tend to use present tense and past tense in their discussion section rather than present perfect tense and future tense. Keywords: argument strategy, Research article, comparative rhetorical study

The employment of reporting verbs in academic writing can explicitly situate previous studies into the current research, reflect diverse degrees of alignment and appraisal toward the literature, and implicitly indicate a writer's stance and private intentions. This study investigates the deployment of reporting verbs in the conclusion section of research articles in applied linguistics and sociology. Based on Hyland's (2002) taxonomy, the denotation and evaluation categories and functions of reporting verbs in the conclusion section of 270 research articles were examined. The results show that the use of discourse acts verbs is the most predominant and that writers strongly rely on positive evaluation, both in applied linguistics and sociology. Additionally, 12 types of functions of reporting verbs in the conclusion section of research articles were identified. The findings suggest that the choice of reporting verbs depends not only on the disciplinary nature but also on the specific section of research articles to achieve different communicative purposes and private intentions. This study helps novice writers enhance their awareness concerning the appropriate application of reporting verbs in academic writing.

Keyword analysis is one of the most widely used methods in corpus linguistics. The method is used to generate keywords which provide an indication of concepts in texts or a corpus. Keyword analysis tools commonly produce resulting keywords presented as a list which rather poorly indicates what the corpus is about since it typically requires analysts’ knowledge on conceptual associations between keywords. Therefore, common follow-up methods of keyword analysis are to examine concordances, collocational patterns, and some other patterns of associations between keywords and contexts. This study focuses on the association within a group of keywords by constructing a representation of a keyword list as keyword clusters. The keywords for an analysis were generated from two corpora; the target corpus was collected from research articles in applied linguistics and the comparative corpus was a collection of research in pure and applied sciences. The relationship between the top 30 keywords was identifed using mutual information scores of all possible pairs of the keywords within a span of 20 and these scores were used as input for creating keyword clusters. The representations of the 30 keywords as a list and clusters are presented and discussed.

This paper reports on a genre study of the Discussion sections of 15 qualitative research articles in Applied Linguistics from five high impact journals published from 2003-2009. Based on Swales' (1990, 2004) move structure model, this study aims to develop a description of move structure in this corpus and introduce the available patterns and options. The analysis reveals that there are similarities and differences between the generic structure of qualitative research articles identified in this paper and those found concerning empirical research articles.