Reflexive metadiscourse in Chinese and English sociology research article introductions and discussions

The present study examines the use of metadiscourse in English and Chinese research article introductions in the field of educational psychology. The corpus for this study comprises 40 introductions of research articles – 20 Chinese and 20 English – in the field of educational psychology. Hyland’s (2004) model of metadiscourse has been employed as the analytical framework for the present study. The similarities and differences in the use of metadiscourse (i.e. the interactive and interactional resources) between the two sets of texts are looked at from a socio-cultural point of view. The findings of the present study provide some insights into the teaching and learning of academic English writing for Chinese ESL (English as a Second Language) students.

A considerable body of research has investigated the use of metadiscourse in academic writing in different languages, and it is assumed in the literature that the use of metadiscourse is language- and culture-specific. However, little research has investigated how Arab writers interact with their readers in Arabic research articles (RAs). Thus, following Hyland’s (2005) models, this study explores the use of the interactional metadiscourse in the introductions of 94 Arabic RAs totalling 88,350 words published between 2013-2022. Findings showed that Arab writers tend to establish a relationship with readers and involve them as discourse participants through the use of the inclusive pronoun naḥnu نحن ‘we’ and the rhetorical forms. Arab writers used both grammatical and lexical items to express their views with confidence with a high degree of commitment. They were found to use reader-accuracy markers to mitigate their arguments. They, however, appeared not to evaluate what is presented through their personal feelings, and this might be due to sociocultural reasons, which requires further investigation.

Self-mention is a powerful rhetorical strategy for constructing authorial identity in research articles. This study proposes that researchers’ authorial identity can be considered in three aspects according to the self-mention devices they employ: the detached self, the individual self and the collective self. Based on a corpus comprising 90 research articles (45 in English and 45 in Chinese), the research explores the construction of authorial identity in English and Chinese research articles by examining the frequency of and roles performed by self-mention markers. Results show that both English and Chinese writers try to display their detached self by distancing themselves from the text and reader. But English writers are more ready to present the individual self by taking on the role of discourse constructor, arguer and evaluator, whereas Chinese writers are inclined to show their collective self and take on the role of researcher. The research results have implications for research article writing and the teaching of research article writing.

ABSTRACTThis study determines the fine-grained bottom-up linguistic features involved in successful second language (L2) English academic group oral tutorial discussion through the use of a spoken learner corpus composed of more than 20 hrs of L2 production. Student performances were graded by teacher-raters using a can-do rating scale, which assessed students’ ability to participate in a group academic oral discussion. The performances were transcribed and annotated for linguistic features such as L2 errors, a range of interactive and interpersonal metadiscourse features, and a range of temporal, prosodic, lexical, and syntactic markers (or “fluencemes”) of (dis)fluency. The results of the corpus study suggest that frequent use of metadiscourse is the primary indicator of raters’ positive evaluation of student performance in L2 academic tutorial discussion, alongside frequent use of discourse markers, filled pauses, and a high speech rate per minute as fluencemes. Most L2 error types and syntactic fluencemes did not particularly feature in raters’ positive (or negative) evaluations. The detailed cross-sectional data afforded by this corpus analysis serve as quantitative evidence of the linguistic features accompanying each grade awarded across the rating scale and contributing to the construct validity of the assessment.

Introduction: In academic written texts, linguistic and rhetorical features are often interactively used as a vehicle for writers to construct their texts in order to accomplish specific communicative purposes. However, the effective integration of these resources may pose challenges for developing writers. Purpose: This study employed a corpus-based genre analysis approach to investigate phrasal complexity features and rhetorical functions in data commentaries written by Iranian undergraduate and graduate students. Through this approach, we aimed to examine a relatively unexplored genre of data commentary in terms of its phrasal complexity features, rhetorical functions, and their relationships. By analyzing these relationships, we sought to provide insights into the writing practices of Iranian undergraduate and graduate students in the context of data commentaries. Method: This study employed a convenient sampling method to select a total of 76 university students, which included 47 undergraduate students and 29 graduate students. The participants were involved in generating a corpus of 380 data commentaries, which were then thoroughly examined and compared. To identify instances of phrasal complexity features, the researchers utilized the AntConc software tool, applying regular expressions (regex) to extract potential occurrences. Additionally, a Python program was developed and implemented to calculate the frequencies of the identified PCFs. The researchers manually annotated the rhetorical function of the data commentaries to determine their specific usage. Results: Statistical analysis such as Mann Whitney U test and Spearman correlation test, revealed that graduate students significantly utilized more phrasal complexity features including attributive adjectives, nominalizations, and prepositional phrases (of) compared to undergraduate students. However, a qualitative analysis showed that the use of these linguistic features is influenced by the writing topics. Regarding rhetorical functions, graduate students used more moves and/or steps related to presenting and commenting data, while undergraduate students produced more moves or steps concerning personal asides. Moreover, certain phrasal complexity features and the moves and/or steps were found to be correlated, aligning with recent corpus-based studies. Conclusion: The study concludes with pedagogical implications.

Because of its important role in the advancement of science, attempts have been made to investigate research article abstracts in terms of both their discourse patterning and their linguistic characteristics. This research is an attempt to examine their rhetorical patterning. More specifically, it addresses the questions what common discourse patterns research article abstracts have and whether abstracts from different disciplines show different patterns. The research corpus contained 50 research article abstracts collected from five international journals published in the fields of biology, engineering, linguistics, medicine and physics. The data were analyzed using a four-move abstract structure developed by Hardjanto (1997). The results showed that Moves 1, 3 and 4 were found in most abstracts, and were, therefore, considered as obligatory moves in the abstracts. The most common pattern was found to be a pattern containing all the four moves in the order of 1-2-3-4, especially in abstracts from medicine and linguistics. Another common pattern was a 1-3-4 pattern, found especially in abstracts from biology and physics, whereas abstracts from engineering did not show any preference for a specific pattern even though 40% of them had a 1-2-3-4 pattern. These results suggest that there is a significant disciplinary variation in English research article abstract patterning.

In research articles (RAs), the writers always express their arguments especially in discussion section. In this case, most of the writers tend to relate one idea to another to make their ideas coherent. This research article is done to investigate the logical connectors used by the writers of research articles, especially the logical connectors of three categories: logical connectors, frame markers, and Code Glosses. These linguistic devices are commonly used by the writers in academic or research articles (RAs). This is a qualitative research using the documents for analysis. These documents are taken from the research articles published in the academic journals which are collected by means of purposive sampling from the discussion sections of the RAs. The instrument used is called Taxonomy of Textual Meta-discourse. The results show that the writers have different strategies in using the logical connectors depending on which point they relate the ideas in the discussion sections. The results are expected to provide the readers with some logical connectors and some perspectives of the strategies of using logical connectors in research writing especially in the discussion sections. It is recommended that the research writers use logical connectors for making the ideas coherent.Keywords: Linguistics, logical connectors, frame markers, code glosses, Textual Metadiscourseanalysis, academic journal articles, research articles (RAs), Indonesia

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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

Background/Aim: Historically, the majority of research on air pollution and birth outcomes was undertaken on cohorts from western countries, with relatively lower levels of exposure. There is now a sufficient number of studies to warrant an assessment of effects in China, a higher exposure setting. This was the first systematic review of both Chinese and English language research on air pollution and birth outcomes in China. Methods: We conducted a systematic review, according to the PRISMA statement, of all Chinese and English language articles published between 1980 and 2015 on the association between ambient air pollution (NO2, SO2, CO, PM10, PM2.5, O3) and birth outcomes (low birth weight, preterm birth, stillbirth, congenital anomaly) in China. Of the 1,829 articles screened, 11 English language articles and 14 Chinese language articles were included for full review; 25 total. Results: Mean concentrations of PM10, NO2and SO2during the study period were 113μg/m3, 50μg/m3and 61μg/m3, respectively, with maximum concentrations of 600, 468 and 630μg/m3, respectively. Evidence of association with sulphur dioxide (SO2) was more consistently reported for reduced birth weight and preterm birth. Coarse particulate matter (PM10) was associated with congenital anomaly, notably cardiovascular defects. The adjusted odds ratio (95% CI) for pooled heart defects was 1.35 (1.15, 1.60) and ranged from 1.31 (1.07, 1.60) for patent ductus arteriosus to 1.44 (1.04, 1.99) for defects of the cardiac septa per 10 μg/m3 of PM10 over the entire pregnancy. Conclusions: Exposure levels and effects were generally greater in China. China has low incidence of some perinatal morbidities (e.g, preterm birth, 3%) but contributes substantially to global burden due to the large number of births (e.g.,1m preterm births per year), which might be addressed by reductions in sulphur dioxide and particulate matter.

This study investigated the employment of interactional metadisocurse in English academic articles written by Iranian ESP students. Data consisted of a total of 66 academic articles written in English by nonhumanities and humanities writers. Discussion and Conclusion sections were extracted, and Hyland’s (2005) taxonomy was borrowed for analysis. The use of hedges, boosters, and attitude markers was compared in the articles. Total number of each metadiscourse marker was counted, and the differences were checked running Mann-Whitney U test. Analysis revealed that there were disciplinary differences in the use of markers by nonhumanities and humanities. Hedges and attitude markers were more frequent in the humanities’ articles, rather than the nonhumanities’ articles. Also, the use of hedges and boosters was statistically significant. Pedagogical implications are discussed in light of the empirical data.

The quantitative contrast of appraisals in English and Chinese scientific research articles

The purpose of this corpus-based study was to investigate whether different sections in chemistry research articles, i.e., abstract, introduction, and results and discussion, rely on different sets of lexical bundles. Lexical bundles, associated with the above sections, were extracted from a corpus of 4 million words, comprising 1,185 chemistry research articles, using WordSmith Tools 5.0, and were categorized according to their functions. Altogether, 197 key bundles were identified in the three sections of chemistry research articles, 15 in the abstract, 99 in the introduction, and 83 in the results and discussion section. Two functions also emerged for lexical bundles in chemistry research articles, including purpose-oriented bundles, which refer to the aim/aims of the study; and literature-oriented bundles, which are used to refer to the literature. Altogether, the results showed that various sections in chemistry RAs are associated with specific sets of lexical bundles and, as such, deal with different rhetorical functions.

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.

Rhetorical studies within research articles have received a growing concern among linguists worldwide. However, studies on this significant area to create incremental innovation are rarely found. Understanding this need has attracted the authors to conduct the present study by investigating rhetorical strategies authors use to create incremental innovation in their research articles and analyzing linguistic features used to create innovation for their current research. In an attempt to address these purposes, the present study analyzed 37 research article introductions (RAIs) from the disciplines of Applied Linguistics published in four reputable international journals (Q1) with the Scimago Journal Ranks (SJR) higher than 0,61. This study employed a newly designed framework and linguistic feature approaches from previous studies for the analysis. The results showed three rhetorical strategies to create incremental innovation in research articles. However, of these three, most authors tend to employ Strategy 2, Presenting the existing knowledge – and then – improving it in the present study, more than the other two strategies. Then, to realize incremental innovation, they employed six linguistic features, but of these six, two features (connective adverbs and phrases denoting examining a particular issue) appeared to be the most dominant in the present data.