Writers Of Research Articles Research Articles

Are research articles becoming more syntactically complex? Corpus-based evidence from research articles in applied linguistics and biology (1965–2015)

Research on the diachronic changes of syntactic complexity in research articles (RAs) in recent decades has been scant. As one of the first studies addressing this gap, the present study investigated the diachronic changes of eight indices of syntactic complexity in the RAs of applied linguistics and biology from 1965 to 2015 based on a corpus of 720 RAs (totalling 4.14 million tokens) from prestigious journals. The study revealed several common patterns of diachronic changes in syntactic complexity in two disciplines. First, RA writers in both disciplines tended to produce longer production units and employed more coordinate phrases and complex nominals over time, reflecting increased levels of syntactic complexity in two disciplines in recent five decades. In addition, both disciplines displayed an overall decline in the reliance on clausal elaboration (e.g. clausal coordination and clausal subordination), but an increase in phrasal complexity (e.g. phrasal coordination and complex nominals), which demonstrated an increased level of information compression in RA writing over time. The study also discussed changes in publication norms and practices in the two academic fields in recent decades that may be related to the diachronic changes of syntactic complexity features.

‘These results are inconsistent’

Abstract Shell nouns (SNs; e.g., fact and problem) are an open group of abstract nouns defined functionally through use as emergent ‘shells’ referencing and labeling ideas in surrounding discourse. This paper analyzes the ‘this/these + [SN]’ pattern in second language (L2) English Master’s theses and published English research articles (RAs) across three Engineering disciplines (Electrical, Mechanical, Chemical), with a secondary focus on unattended ‘this/these’ use and disciplinary variation. The corpus includes 60 RAs per discipline (840,683 words) and 25 Master’s theses per discipline (899,182 words). Corpus methods were used to support manual identification of ‘this/these + [SN]’. Results show that L2 English Master’s thesis writers used this pattern significantly less than writers of RAs. Normalized frequencies, frequent SNs, and functional patterns are also presented across genres and disciplines. L2 writers and experts use a similar range of SN types, and expert writers adopt a more rhetorically sophisticated means of organizing information.

Visual recontextualisation of meaning in science research articles and News and Views articles

News and Views articles appear in Nature-branded journals, summarising and critiquing newly published studies. Written by experts outside the research team, they inform the wider scientific community of novel research, promoting a broader readership as well as cross-fertilisation between fields. Most studies of genres that recontextualise science research articles for a broader audience focus on textual meaning. This article prioritises visual meaning, comparing News and Views articles and research articles. Corpora of research articles and News and Views articles were analysed using social semiotic analysis (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2021); interviews with expert authors of the articles also inform the investigation. Drawing on Daston and Galison (2007), a three-way categorisation was made of conceptual, technologically-produced and mathematical images. Findings reveal that visual meaning is central in both genres. In research articles detailed and exact meaning is conveyed using graphs and technologically-produced images (e.g., microscope images). News and Views articles use accessible, conceptual images such as schematic diagrams. Research article writers reported planning the article around the images, which function to validate author claims; as readers, experts reported examining images before reading the article. In News and Views articles, the image provides a conceptual overview of the text, matching the genre’s purpose in facilitating understanding of a complex study.

A diachronic study of authorial stance in the discussion of Chinese MA theses and published research articles

Stance-taking in academic writing changes over time in response to individual options and shifting disciplinary, social and cultural practices. The existing literature on stance primarily adopts a synchronic perspective and diachronic studies are scarce. To add to the thin body of literature, this study investigates the changing patterns of authorial stance in the part of discussion of Chinese MA theses and published research articles (RA) over the past 30 years in the discipline of applied linguistics. Two corpora, one consisting of 90 thesis discussions written in English by Chinese MA students from 1991 to 2020, and the other comprising 90 RA discussions from three leading journals in the field from the same time period, were built and retrieved for four major stance resources, namely, hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mentions according to Hyland's (2005b) stance model. Results reveal that Chinese students consistently used fewer stance markers than RA writers across the three decades. The two groups of writers' employment of the four stance resources also displayed distinct changing patterns over the years. The study also unveils problematic demonstration of authorial stance by Chinese students, thus emphasizing the need for explicit instruction on stance-taking in L2 English academic writing.

Native experts and reputable journals as points of reference: A study on research-article discussions

The current study sought to compare the rhetorical moves and steps that native-English-speaking and Iranian authors of research articles (RAs) employ in writing up the ‘discussion’ sections of their RAs. It was hypothesized that the latter group is not as proficient in writing RA discussions as the former group. A total of 66 (N=66) RA discussions from three reputable international academic journals and three Iranian journals were sampled from years 2009 to 2019. This corpus was then analyzed by three human coders who used Yang and Allison’s (2003) rhetorical move analysis model for scoring the sampled RA discussions. Results showed stark differences between Iranian and native RA writers; the majority of the rhetorical moves and steps that are considered obligatory or conventional by the native group are seen as options by the Iranian group. With the native group and the reputable international journals being the standard points of reference, it was concluded that Iranian authors of RAs lack the professional knowledge and expertise prerequisite to writing standard RA discussions. It is recommended (a) that non-native authors of RAs receive professional training for writing standard discussions, and (b) that journal editors be more sensitive to rhetorical moves and steps before they accept a submission for publication.

The diachronic change of research article abstract difficulty across disciplines: a cognitive information-theoretic approach

Text difficulty refers to the ease with which a text can be read and understood, and the difficulty of research article abstracts has long been a hot topic. Previous studies have found that research article abstracts are difficult to read in general and that abstracts have gradually become more and more difficult. However, the widely used measurements, such as FRE and SMOG, have long been criticized in that they use only simplistic and surface-level indicators as proxies for complex cognitive processes of reading, and the sophisticated cognitive theory and Natural Language Processing/machine learning-based methods seem not that easy to use and interpret. A theoretically sound and methodologically neat measurement of text difficulty should be called for. Besides, the diachronic changes of abstract difficulty across disciplines have been under-researched. To address these issues, this study adopted a cognitive information-theoretic approach to investigate the diachronic change of text difficulty of research article abstracts across the areas of natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. 1890 abstracts were sampled over a period of 21 years, and two indexes, i.e. entropy from information theory and mean dependency distance from cognitive science, were employed for the calculation of cognitive encoding/decoding difficulty. The results show that in general, the cognitive encoding difficulty of abstracts has been increasing in the past two decades, while the cognitive decoding difficulty of abstracts has been decreasing. Regarding the disciplinary variations, the humanities show no significant diachronic change in encoding difficulty, and the social sciences show no significant diachronic change in decoding difficulty. These phenomena can be attributed to the traits of abstracts, the nature of academic knowledge, the cognitive mechanism in human languages and the features of different disciplines. This study has implications for the innovations in theories and methods of measurement of text difficulty, as well as an in-depth understanding of the disciplinary variations in academic writing and the essence of research article abstracts for research article writers, readers, the scientific community, and academic publishers.

A comparative corpus-based investigation of results sections of research articles in Applied Linguistics and Physics

Abstract The present study sought to identify the generic structures of the results sections of scientific research articles (RAs) between Applied Linguistics and Physics. Following a manual search approach, a total of 200 RAs in the field of Applied Linguistics and Physics from different top prestigious journals randomly were singled out and analyzed. In addition to offering a tentative template for the rhetorical organizations of results sections, the findings revealed shared and non-shared rhetorical units as well as obligatory and optional steps in the results sections (RSs) of research articles between the disciplines. The findings also indicated that RA writers organize the contents of the RSs around certain rhetorical resources (i.e., M1, M2, M3, M4, and M5) to present key experimental and factual analytical results of their studies. The findings further suggested the existence of common core of rhetorical resources in writing RSs between the disciplines, albeit there are a set of certain steps playing an essential part in distinguishing textual features of each discipline as well as depicting how RSs of individual discipline are developed. The findings generated from the study can offer a number of important pedagogical implications for teaching EAP and ESP courses, especially for Applied Linguistics and Physics teachers and students.

Hedges and Boosters in Research Article Abstracts of Turkish and Chinese Scholars

In the reviewed literature, many studies have compared the research articles written by L1 and L2 speakers of English. In this regard, comparing L2 speakers of English from two different linguistic backgrounds distinguishes this study from similar studies. While writing research article abstract, writers need to calculate what weight to give to their arguments while showing credibility and authority at the same time. Given these reasons, the use of hedges and boosters in RA abstract is a worthwhile topic to be searched. The goal of this study is to investigate the hedging and boosting strategies in research article abstracts of Turkish and Chinese scholars. They were identified and analyzed in accordance with Hyland’s (2000) hedging and boosting list. The results of this study showed that Turkish and Chinese academics didn’t show much statistical difference in their frequency of hedges, but they preferred to choose different hedging strategies in some instances.

An Analysis of Structural Bundles Clustered within Rhetorical Moves of Qualitative and Quantitative Discussion Section of Research Articles

One of the most significant activities that writers can engage in to share their knowledge and establish a voice within the disciplinary community is writing academic research articles. To have a greater understanding of this commonly practiced genre, exploring the linguistic realisations which are used to classify the rhetorical structures of academic research articles is beneficial. This study’s main objective was to analyse structural bundles clustered in rhetorical moves in the Discussion parts of the specialised corpora of qualitative and quantitative datasets of Applied Linguistics Research articles (RAs), wherein each corpus contains Discussion sections of 50 RAs, as well as structural elements of those lexical bundles. For rhetorical move identification, the data were analysed based on Ruiying and Allison’s (2003) model. For lexical bundle analysis, the corpus-driven approach was used to extract four-word lexical bundles. Hence, the data were analysed using Biber et al.'s (1999) structural taxonomy. The analysis of Discussion sections identified some discrepancies in terms of lexical bundle frequency, which has also shown that some moves incorporated more bundles as compared to others. In terms of similarity of usage, the two groups of RA writers significantly used phrasal more than clausal. RA writers used more NP-based bundles at the expense of other phrasal sub-categories. The results of the current study provides insightful knowledge of genre convention as well as cluster of lexical bundles in Qualitative and Quantitative research articles. This knowledge enables authors, especially novice ones, to dive into their academic writing approach.

Analysis of Interactional Markers in the Methodology Sections of Research Articles Across Englishes and Disciplines

A cornucopia of research has been conducted on the use of metadiscourse across disciplines and languages. Still, this present study is the first to identify and analyse how metadiscourse markers (MDMs) help realize the functions of moves and steps in the Methods sections of research articles (RAs) across disciplines and Englishes. The present study is an investigation of the distribution of MDMs in the formulation of moves and steps in the Methods section of social science, business, and linguistics RAs written by American English (the inner circle), Philippine English (outer circle), and Chinese English (expanding circle) RA writers. Utilizing a qualitative-quantitative mixed methodology, it shows that engagement markers are the most frequently used interactional markers, that culture and discipline are two variables that account for the variations in MDMs use, that soft disciplines like humanities and social sciences seem to demand more writer accountability to assertions made, and that both the outer and the expanding circles of Englishes sometimes behave like the inner circle English with pronounced similarities and differences in the utilization of MDMs. Instructional implications were suggested based on the findings of the present study.

Authorial stance in citations: Variation by writer expertise and research article part-genres

Citation, as an explicit marker of the social nature of the academic discourse, reflects writers' positioning vis-à-vis the cited scholars and anticipated readers and plays a crucial role in the construction and acceptance of claims in a research community. While most studies focused on the forms and functions of citations, few studies explored the authorial stance writers displayed in citations, and even fewer examined the citation practices of emerging scholars in engineering disciplines. Addressing these gaps, this article presents a corpus-based discourse analysis study that adopted an Appraisal Theory inspired citation analysis framework to investigate the stance-related citation patterns in engineering research articles written by doctoral students (n = 17) and published research article writers (n = 17). In-text citations were identified in part-genres (Introduction-Methods-Discussion) and analyzed for the expression of authorial stance by writer expertise. Findings revealed fairly consistent choices of citation forms in the two corpora, and writers were found to adapt their authorial stance and citation forms to the rhetorical needs of a part-genre. However, compared to experts’ more diverse and intricate citation and stance patterns, students relied on a more limited repertoire of strategies. The implications of findings on disciplinary writing research and pedagogy are discussed.

Syntactic complexity features of science research article introductions: Rhetorical-functional and disciplinary variation perspectives

An increasing body of genre analysis research within English for Academic Purposes (EAP) has attended to the relationship between linguistic features and their rhetorical functions in academic writing. Previous studies along this line have focused primarily on lexical or phraseological features and less on syntactic complexity features, with few exceptions. This study contributes to this body of research by investigating the rhetorical functions of syntactically complex sentences in science research article (RA) introductions, using a corpus containing the introduction sections of 300 published RAs in six science disciplines. The corpus samples were annotated for rhetorical move-steps using an adapted version of the Create a Research Space model (Swales, 2004) and analyzed using five indices tapping into different aspects of syntactic complexity. Results showed that the syntactic complexity indices varied significantly among the rhetorical move-steps but remained stable across hard-pure and hard-applied disciplines. Furthermore, science RA writers employed different types of syntactic complexity features more often for achieving different rhetorical functions. The implications of our findings for academic writing research and pedagogy are discussed.

Epistemic Modality in English-Medium Artificial Intelligence Research Articles: A Systemic–Functional Perspective

Epistemic modality is a crucial tool for describing the speaker's judgment—or request for the judgment of the listener—that has gained broad recognition and been widely investigated in academic writing. This research investigates the use of epistemic modality in 50 English-medium artificial intelligence (AI) research articles (RAs) from a systemic–functional perspective. Our research focuses on the frequency and function of the value, orientation, and polarity of epistemic modality in AI RAs. The results reveal that these AI RA writers tend to use both high- and low-value modality with explicitly objective orientation and positive polarity and that the epistemic modality performs the interpersonal function. This indicates that AI RA writers tend to ensure the objectivity of their results and that these writers adopt varying attitudes and hold differing views toward AI technology and thus have not yet achieved consensus. The study furthers the understanding of scholars’ attitudes toward AI statements in recent years.

‘This study aims to …’

Abstract Using Swales’ (1990) CARS model and Hyland’s (2005) interpersonal model of metadiscourse, this study takes a pragmatic approach to explore the rhetorical structure and metadiscoursal features of research article introductions in a comparable corpus of 40 introductions from applied linguistics and chemistry. Specifically, this article reports on a rhetorical analysis of introduction moves and an identification of metadiscourse markers and discourse functions they were conveying and focuses on the mapping of the markers most pervasively used to signal the moves. Results showed disciplinary differences regarding both move structure and metadiscourse use which could be attributed to the susceptibility of rhetorical practices and preferences to socio-rhetorical conventions in each community. In addition to their pedagogical implications, the results of this study could be of use for novice research article writers and/or students in applied linguistics and chemistry in order to better consolidate their credence and socialisation in their community through publication.

How do applied linguistics researchers structure coherence relations in the process of establishing a niche for their research?

AbstractThis study is an extension of previous research on how writers of research articles (RAs) structure their texts to be coherent in the process of achieving communicative purposes of the RA genre. It examines how RA writers relate sentences in establishing a niche for their studies in the introduction section. Genre analysis methods and Rhetorical Structure Theory are used to analyse 40 applied linguistics RA introductions. The findings show that the RA writers who establish a niche by indicating a gap in previous research tend to use a concessive or contrastive relation to relate the gap statements to the descriptions of previous studies. The writers who establish a niche by indicating how their studies would extend previous research in the field tend to use a background relation to claim a niche based on the specific studies. The writers who indicate a real world problem for the niche establishment tend to use a background relation to reveal a niche based on contextual information surrounding the problem. Possible reasons for the selection of the relations are discussed in terms of the influence of the nature of the RA genre and/or the applied linguistics discipline.

Study on Hedges and Boosters in the Conclusions of Research Articles

This study aims to examine similarities and differences in the use of hedges and boosters in the conclusions of English research articles (RAs) written by Korean writers and English native writers and also compare them with other sub-genres (i.e., abstract, introduction). It is differentiated from previous studies which have focused on other sub-genres or students’ writing. 60 conclusions of RAs in the discipline of applied linguistics (30: written by Korean writers, 30: written by English native writers) are selected from four leading journals published domestically and internationally, and analyzed based on Hyland’s model (2005a). The results show that there is no statistically significant difference between both groups, but Korean writers use booster slightly more than native writers, while native writers choose hedges more often. Second, there is no salient sub-genre-based variation (i.e. conclusion-specific), compared with other sub-genres. Third, journal-based variations are not statistically significant, either. Pedagogical implication is that RA writers should recognize the importance of hedges and boosters in RA, practice how to use them efficiently and develop better methods of use. With other metadiscourse markers, extending the corpora into various disciplines and application of qualitative approach are recommended for future research.

Phrasal Discourse Style in Cross-Disciplinary Writing: A Comparison of Phrasal Complexity Features in the Results Sections of Research Articles

The present study aimed at exploring how research article writers from two academic disciplines exploit phrasal complexity features (PCFs) to verbalize the results sections of research articles with the eventual aim of assisting advanced EFL writers with their composition strategies. To this end, following a manual search, 200 empirical research articles in the fields of Applied Linguistics and Physics were comparatively examined. Due to the low rate of success of tagging programs in identifying the occurrences of PCFs, the datasets were also manually analyzed. The results revealed that the research article writers drew upon three high-frequency phrasal complexity features, namely, pre-modifying adjectives, post-modifying prepositional phrases, and nominalizations. The study also revealed that the results sections of research articles included different amounts of exceedingly complex patterns of pre-modification, a hybrid of novel appositive structures, and great reliance on hyphenated adjectives. Overall, we believe that these findings can be used to heighten the awareness of academic writers and instructors regarding the linguistic characteristics of academic writing and of the variations of how such phrasal features of compression are constructed in different academic subjects.

Examining Engagement in the Discussion Section of Marketing Research Articles

Studies have shown that the use of Engagement resources is a subtle task for research article writers, making the appropriate use of such resources a complex topic for less experienced writers. For this reason, the present study examined expert writers' ways of positioning their work in marketing research articles on Discussion sections to highlight how Engagement resources can be managed successfully. Drawing on the Engagement subsystem of the Appraisal Framework nine Discussion sections were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively using the UAM corpus tool. The analysis revealed that the Discussion sections were highly heteroglossic, and had contractive resources twice as much as expansive ones, suggesting that marketing academics are more concerned with establishing their credibility as knowers in the field than construing a reader-friendly text. It is also observed that academics in the marketing field tend to focus more on proclaiming their findings in the Discussion section while at the same time mitigating the communicative force of their argument by using tentative language, creating a subtle balance between claim-making and acceptance of potentially differing views. The findings of the present study can offer insights for academic writing materials' developers, novice researchers, and academic writing instructors.

Organisational Skills in Academic Writing: A Study on Coherence and Cohesion in Pakistani Research Abstracts

Writing requires a suitable and strategic use of language with communicative potential and structural correctness. The use of coherence and cohesion helps create communicative potential and structural correctness in texts. This study aims to investigate the use of cohesive items in the abstracts of Pakistani research articles and thereby determine what type of cohesive items are frequently used by writers. In addition, the study aims to know what functions the said writers achieve through the most frequently used cohesive items. For this purpose, 50 abstracts were retrieved from two famous Pakistani research journals (25 articles per journal), which were developed into a corpus for the study and analysed through AntConc. 3.4.4.0. The results revealed that Pakistani research writers used reference items the most frequently to achieve “directive” as well as “referential” functions. On the basis of these findings, the study concluded that Pakistani research article writers organised information in abstracts using reference items the most frequently and they were mainly concerned with directive as well as referential functions of meaning. The results also showed that the said writers organised texts on a syntactic level only, which implied that they should organise texts on a semantic level also. This would be possible with the use of repetition devices.

Move-based investigation of appraisal in the introduction section of Applied Linguistics research articles: Similarities and differences between L1 and L2 English texts

Recent research has shown that academic writing is not ‘author-evacuated’ but, rather, carries a representation of the writers’ identity. One way through which writers project their identity in academic writing is stance-taking toward propositions advanced in the text. Appropriate stance-taking has proved to be challenging for novice writers of Research Articles (RAs), especially those writing in a foreign language. To contribute to the literature on stance-taking, the present study compared the move-based use of evaluative resources in the introduction section of L1 (written by native English speakers) and L2 (written by Iranian, non-native writers) English RAs in the discipline of Applied Linguistics. To this end, 100 English Research Article Introductions (RAIs), 50 by L1 writers and 50 by L2 writers, were investigated as the corpus of the study. Categories of analysis were taken from Appraisal framework (Martine & White, 2005) and CARS model (Swales, 2004). The results revealed that the two groups of texts were not substantially different in the overall use of appraisal resources in the whole body of RAIs. However, more detailed analyses of the specific categories of appraisal in each of the rhetorical moves demonstrated that in some cases, especially in moves 1 and 3, L1 and L2 writers made different choices when taking a stance. The findings of this study can serve as a valuable source providing a practical and comprehensive understanding of the use of evaluative resources in RAIs for EAP researchers, teachers, and other professionals involved in the teaching of academic writing.