Abstract
The methods section is a critical portion of a research article, which represents the validity and rigor of the overall research design. While previous research has shown a predominance of the passive voice in the research article genre, particularly in the methods section due to its impersonal and explanatory nature (Riley, 1991), recent trends suggests that researchers are increasingly resorting to the active voice in the writing of research article in general (Seoane, 2013). The current study explored whether this trend can be observed in the methods section of applied linguistics research articles and investigated the possible patterns of voice use. The methods sections of 24 articles from international applied linguistics journals were examined to investigate the frequency of voice use and the functional patterns of voice arising, in the corpus. Results suggest that researchers do show alignment with the current trend by actively employing the active voice as well as the passive voice. Functional patterns of voice further revealed that specific discoursal functions within the methods section can be associated with the use of voice. Findings from this study are hoped to serve as the starting point of discussions on the use of voice in particular sections within the research article.
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