Journal of English for Academic Purposes最新文献

Signalling nouns (SNs, hereinafter) as grammatical metaphors serve as effective clues to disciplinary epistemology. Based on self-built corpora, this study explores disciplinary variation in the use of SNs by investigating marketing and economics research articles (RAs, hereinafter). The results show that marketing RAs employ SNs with significantly higher frequency than economics RAs. In terms of grammatical patterns, marketing RAs prefer the “SN+ to-infinitive” pattern, whereas economics RAs tend to use the “SN+ that-clause” structure. Semantically, marketing researchers prefer modal fact and idea nouns to show a greater tendency for writer visibility, greater interest in factors influencing consumer purchasing behaviors, and the more empirical and experimental nature of marketing. In contrast, economics researchers prefer fact and idea nouns to explore the decision-making process of economic agents, and reveal the more hypothetical, econometrical, and abstract reasoning nature of this discipline. The choices of SNs reflect distinct disciplinary epistemologies between marketing and economics. This study sheds new light on the significance of SNs in revealing disciplinary variations, and creates a database of detailing the characteristics of SNs used in both disciplines, which can aid EFL learners and EAP practitioners to better use SNs to construct interpersonal relations with readers in academic writing.

Diverging from the long-held homogeneous view of academic discourse, the issue of disciplinarity has come to the forefront in EAP teaching and discourse analysis. Although disciplinary discourse is a well-established and expanding line of inquiry, there has been limited retrospective analysis to unpack its evolutionary nuances. This bibliometric study maps its evolution from 1990 to 2022, tracing its journey from a fringe component within applied linguistics and language pedagogy to a globally recognized field. Using 921 articles retrieved from the Web of Science's core collection, our analysis reveals enduring scholarly interest in disciplinary literacy, writing, and socialization, with a marked shift since 2006 towards exploring the interplay between disciplinary knowledge-making practices and interpersonal features, such as stance, identity, and function. These studies, often using corpus approaches, highlight how these themes both reflect and are shaped by the disciplinary epistemology and ideology inherent in communities of practice. Emerging areas include student writing, spoken English, multimodal resources, and the temporal and interdisciplinary dynamics in various disciplines. The diverse authorship and geographical sources across various fields further underscore the global relevance of these topics. This overview could serve as a valuable resource for researchers, educators, and practitioners navigating this dynamic and significant field.

This study examined the rhetorical organization and the distribution of meta-discourse markers in a corpus of 20 qualitative research articles in the Applied Linguistics field. The findings of the study indicated that the seven-move structure proposed by prior research in quantitative datasets is also true in our qualitative dataset. Concerning steps, however, this study indicated that there are two new steps in the Comment on the Results move and also two new steps in the Deduction from the Research move, compared with the quantitative data of prior research. It was also found that both the distribution and frequency of meta-discourse markers indicate significant differences in comparison with quantitative research articles. Given these findings, we can say that although the schematic structure proposed for the Discussion sections of quantitative research articles is applicable to the qualitative corpus, it is also important not to ignore subtle nuances in the two research paradigms. Drawing academic writers' attention to these rhetorical and linguistic nuances arising from research paradigm differences can carry practical pedagogical implications. The findings of this study can raise novice writers’ awareness with respect to academic writing rhetoric and the functions of meta-discourse markers in qualitative research in Applied Linguistics.

Argumentation is a crucial skill in higher education, and argumentative essays are common genres that students have to write. However, studies have shown that many L2 learners have difficulty in developing an argument in their essays (Wingate, 2012) and that teachers face challenges in gaining an understanding of argumentation and how to scaffold L2 learners (Kibler, 2017). As a first step toward establishing a comprehensive argumentative writing framework for learners and teachers, this article presents a synthesis of relevant empirical studies that illuminate the argumentative features of academic discourse. Focusing on two research perspectives—argumentative writing for general academic purposes and argumentative writing for specific academic purposes—, this review aims to establish a nexus between generic knowledge about argumentation and discipline-specific contexts for argumentation. This review forms the theoretical foundations for the improvement of English for academic purposes practice, providing choices that teachers may have been previously unaware of, thus empowering them to move beyond the constraints of a structure-oriented understanding of argumentative writing and helping learners navigate the demands of higher education.

Tweetorials, long Twitter threads to communicate complex concepts, are becoming increasingly popular among medical experts. While a few studies have analyzed tweetorials which serve to communicate scientific information to a general audience, no attention has been paid to how tweetorials are used to report on and publicize research and results published in an article or preprint. In this study move analysis was conducted to analyze a corpus of 50 such biomedical publication-promoting tweetorials, in order to understand how the paper/preprint is recontextualized in this online genre. The analysis reveals that the moves in these tweetorials work together to draw attention to the publication and highlight the key findings and contributions. In addition to moves adapted from the research article, tweetorials incorporate some moves and steps intended to attract and engage the readers. The way these moves are realized is determined by the (semi-)expert audience, the promotional purpose of the genre, and the affordances of the medium. Features typical of the research article are combined with resources intended to create intimacy and solidarity and make authors more visible. The results suggest that these tweetorials are a suitable tool for researchers to promote their work and meet the challenges of the attention economy.