Proscribed informality features in published research: A corpus analysis

Abstract

Some linguistic features are proscribed in academic writing as they are considered too informal. However, from a descriptive perspective, the extent to which academic writers follow popular proscriptions is an empirical question. Although previous studies present important findings about the frequency of proscribed informality features in academic writing, they do not explore how many academic writers use these features because frequencies were typically not calculated per text (i.e., per article). Additionally, previous research may have included quotes in frequency counts. These methodological limitations are addressed in the current study, which examines (a) whether proscribed informality features are commonly used by a wide range of academic writers, (b) whether disciplines differ in their use of these features, and (c) whether the use of these features has changed over time. The findings show that academic writers tend to avoid many of the proscribed informality features, but some features such as initial conjunctions and conjunctive adverbs, first-person pronouns, and unattended references have higher frequency rates, which corroborates the findings of previous research. Unlike previous research, the current study shows that these high frequencies come from a few academic authors as most authors either use these features minimally or completely avoid them.