The relative influence of language backgrounds, communicative text types, and disciplines in undergraduate student writing

Abstract

Abstract Previous studies of undergraduate writing investigated linguistic variation across (i) assignment types, (ii) disciplines, and (iii) language backgrounds. The combined findings of these studies allowed us to formulate eight hypotheses as to how undergraduate writing is likely to vary across these three variables. Three of the hypotheses are as follows: (a) writing in humanities will have more features of ‘academic involvement’, while writing in sciences will have more features of ‘information density’; (b) assignments such as proposals and procedural recounts will have more features of ‘expression of possibility’; and (c) L1 students will use more features of ‘information density’ than L2 students. In the current study, we test these hypotheses, examining whether the language of undergraduate writing varies in accordance with the expectations from previous research. We use the dimensions identified in Goulart (2024) to examine these hypotheses in a corpus of undergraduate student writing. The results provide support for hypotheses related to disciplines and communicative purposes, but not for those related to language backgrounds.