Pub Date : 2025-09-02DOI: 10.1016/j.esp.2025.08.003
Weizu Li , Hui Zhou
This paper offers a corpus-based study of how metadiscursive nouns are used in English RA abstracts published in Chinese-language journals and international journals by Chinese L2 writers in comparison to RA abstracts published by English L1 writers in Applied Linguistics across two decades. It is found that L1 writers employ the most metadiscursive nouns in Applied Linguistic RA abstracts, while L2 writers employ the least in their Chinese journal abstracts. Variations in metadiscursive noun use are found between L1 writers' RA abstracts and L2 writers' international RA abstracts in the purpose move. Functional categories also demonstrate an under-employment of metadiscursive nouns in the moves of background and purpose in L2 RA abstracts in comparison with their L1 counterparts. Over two decades, metadiscursive noun use has seen a decrease in frequencies in both L1 and L2 RA abstracts. In particular, L2 writers’ international journal RA abstracts have witnessed a marked shift in the overall use and functional categories in the purpose move and the method move. The variations may be driven by academic socialization, publishing practices and conventions, and disciplinary paradigm shift. The practical implications of the findings are also discussed concerning the instruction of using English for publication purposes.
{"title":"“This study is an attempt to”: Metadiscursive nouns in L1 and L2 Applied Linguistics research article abstracts","authors":"Weizu Li , Hui Zhou","doi":"10.1016/j.esp.2025.08.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esp.2025.08.003","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper offers a corpus-based study of how metadiscursive nouns are used in English RA abstracts published in Chinese-language journals and international journals by Chinese L2 writers in comparison to RA abstracts published by English L1 writers in Applied Linguistics across two decades. It is found that L1 writers employ the most metadiscursive nouns in Applied Linguistic RA abstracts, while L2 writers employ the least in their Chinese journal abstracts. Variations in metadiscursive noun use are found between L1 writers' RA abstracts and L2 writers' international RA abstracts in the purpose move. Functional categories also demonstrate an under-employment of metadiscursive nouns in the moves of background and purpose in L2 RA abstracts in comparison with their L1 counterparts. Over two decades, metadiscursive noun use has seen a decrease in frequencies in both L1 and L2 RA abstracts. In particular, L2 writers’ international journal RA abstracts have witnessed a marked shift in the overall use and functional categories in the purpose move and the method move. The variations may be driven by academic socialization, publishing practices and conventions, and disciplinary paradigm shift. The practical implications of the findings are also discussed concerning the instruction of using English for publication purposes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47809,"journal":{"name":"English for Specific Purposes","volume":"81 ","pages":"Pages 1-15"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144989603","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-08-21DOI: 10.1016/j.esp.2025.08.002
Yubin Qian , Hans C. Boas , Qun Zheng
Semantic analysis is a context-based activity that requires a detailed level of language analysis. This paper focuses on the application of the methodology underlying the FrameNet database in the process of decoding word meanings in business discourse. By focusing on the Management Discussion and Analysis text from the 3M Corporation as a case study, we identified four major semantic dimensions: “Financial Metrics”, “Operation and Business”, “Time and Duration”, and “Legal and Ethical Considerations”. In each of these dimensions, we found dominant semantic patterns closely related to those top frames that highlight essential aspects of corporate communication from financial reports to ethical statements. This article demonstrates how FrameNet can serve as a useful tool to kindle the unexposed linguistic features of business texts and support linguistic analysis of business discourse, which in turn can enhance the teaching of Business English by deepening students’ understanding of complex business vocabulary and context.
{"title":"Frame-based semantic patterns in business discourse: A case study","authors":"Yubin Qian , Hans C. Boas , Qun Zheng","doi":"10.1016/j.esp.2025.08.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esp.2025.08.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Semantic analysis is a context-based activity that requires a detailed level of language analysis. This paper focuses on the application of the methodology underlying the FrameNet database in the process of decoding word meanings in business discourse. By focusing on the Management Discussion and Analysis text from the 3M Corporation as a case study, we identified four major semantic dimensions: “Financial Metrics”, “Operation and Business”, “Time and Duration”, and “Legal and Ethical Considerations”. In each of these dimensions, we found dominant semantic patterns closely related to those top frames that highlight essential aspects of corporate communication from financial reports to ethical statements. This article demonstrates how FrameNet can serve as a useful tool to kindle the unexposed linguistic features of business texts and support linguistic analysis of business discourse, which in turn can enhance the teaching of Business English by deepening students’ understanding of complex business vocabulary and context.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47809,"journal":{"name":"English for Specific Purposes","volume":"80 ","pages":"Pages 126-139"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144886245","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-08-18DOI: 10.1016/j.esp.2025.08.001
Minh Hieu Nguyen
While self-mention has been widely researched in academic genres, its role in corporate communication across linguacultures remains relatively underexplored. My corpus-based cross-linguacultural study addresses this gap by examining how U.S. and Vietnamese corporate leaders employ self-mentions to construct their identities in their statements in annual reports. Drawing on Lee's (2024) three-dimensional framework of business-self identities, I used Sketch Engine to analyze the frequencies and collocational patterns of self-mentions in CEO statements from the 2023 annual reports of 70 U.S. and 70 Vietnamese companies across various sectors. The results showed that U.S. CEOs favored “our” over “we” to construct their collective identity. In contrast, Vietnamese CEOs mainly adopted depersonalized company references to obscure their individual identity. Both groups used self-mention devices to emphasize gratitude, achievements, and conviction; however, U.S. CEOs made greater rhetorical efforts to interact with multiple stakeholders. These variations arise from a complex interplay of linguistic systems, socio-cultural norms, corporate reporting traditions, and business environments. The findings enrich the literature on cross-linguacultural communication and offer valuable insights for developing ESP materials and genre-based pedagogy.
{"title":"Identity construction in corporate leaders’ messages: A corpus-based cross-linguacultural study of self-mention","authors":"Minh Hieu Nguyen","doi":"10.1016/j.esp.2025.08.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esp.2025.08.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>While self-mention has been widely researched in academic genres, its role in corporate communication across linguacultures remains relatively underexplored. My corpus-based cross-linguacultural study addresses this gap by examining how U.S. and Vietnamese corporate leaders employ self-mentions to construct their identities in their statements in annual reports. Drawing on Lee's (2024) three-dimensional framework of business-self identities, I used Sketch Engine to analyze the frequencies and collocational patterns of self-mentions in CEO statements from the 2023 annual reports of 70 U.S. and 70 Vietnamese companies across various sectors. The results showed that U.S. CEOs favored “our” over “we” to construct their collective identity. In contrast, Vietnamese CEOs mainly adopted depersonalized company references to obscure their individual identity. Both groups used self-mention devices to emphasize gratitude, achievements, and conviction; however, U.S. CEOs made greater rhetorical efforts to interact with multiple stakeholders. These variations arise from a complex interplay of linguistic systems, socio-cultural norms, corporate reporting traditions, and business environments. The findings enrich the literature on cross-linguacultural communication and offer valuable insights for developing ESP materials and genre-based pedagogy.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47809,"journal":{"name":"English for Specific Purposes","volume":"80 ","pages":"Pages 109-125"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144860475","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-07-15DOI: 10.1016/j.esp.2025.06.003
Nuria Escobar-Lluch, Noelia Ruiz-Madrid
The emergence of English Medium Instruction in Higher Education has increased the interest in translanguaging, which involves using individuals' linguistic repertoire as a pedagogical tool to scaffold content comprehension. Nevertheless, meaning-making is not solely a product of language; rather, it emerges from the interaction between language and other semiotic resources. In EMI lectures, students need to understand disciplinary content in a language other than their L1. Consequently, lecturers must look for different strategies to make such specific content more accessible and comprehensible. In order to understand how disciplinary content is conveyed by an EMI lecturer, this paper explores the role of translanguaging and other semiotic modes to revisit the functions of translanguaging so that we can redefine them as trans-semiotising practices. The data collected included two video-recorded lectures from a Business course. Following Sahan and Rose's taxonomy (2021) and from a mixed-based approach, we aim at analysing quantitatively and qualitatively the episodes where translanguaging was employed by the lecturer. We then examine the multimodal nature of those episodes using the Multimodal Discourse Analysis perspective and the GRAPE-MARS software. Results show that translanguaging has a clear pedagogical function since the lecturer employs the L1 to check students' comprehension, explain or clarify presented content, translate technical vocabulary, provide feedback, and build rapport. Moreover, depending on the aforementioned functions, the lecturer employs specific multimodal ensembles, which reinforce translanguaging practices. Hence, this practice should be redefined as trans-semiotising because it offers a more comprehensive approach to communication within the EMI classroom.
{"title":"Multimodal approach to translanguaging practices: From translanguaging to trans-semiotising in an EMI business course","authors":"Nuria Escobar-Lluch, Noelia Ruiz-Madrid","doi":"10.1016/j.esp.2025.06.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esp.2025.06.003","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The emergence of English Medium Instruction in Higher Education has increased the interest in translanguaging, which involves using individuals' linguistic repertoire as a pedagogical tool to scaffold content comprehension. Nevertheless, meaning-making is not solely a product of language; rather, it emerges from the interaction between language and other semiotic resources. In EMI lectures, students need to understand disciplinary content in a language other than their L1. Consequently, lecturers must look for different strategies to make such specific content more accessible and comprehensible. In order to understand how disciplinary content is conveyed by an EMI lecturer, this paper explores the role of translanguaging and other semiotic modes to revisit the functions of translanguaging so that we can redefine them as trans-semiotising practices. The data collected included two video-recorded lectures from a Business course. Following Sahan and Rose's taxonomy (2021) and from a mixed-based approach, we aim at analysing quantitatively and qualitatively the episodes where translanguaging was employed by the lecturer. We then examine the multimodal nature of those episodes using the Multimodal Discourse Analysis perspective and the GRAPE-MARS software. Results show that translanguaging has a clear pedagogical function since the lecturer employs the L1 to check students' comprehension, explain or clarify presented content, translate technical vocabulary, provide feedback, and build rapport. Moreover, depending on the aforementioned functions, the lecturer employs specific multimodal ensembles, which reinforce translanguaging practices. Hence, this practice should be redefined as trans-semiotising because it offers a more comprehensive approach to communication within the EMI classroom.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47809,"journal":{"name":"English for Specific Purposes","volume":"80 ","pages":"Pages 74-90"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144632485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-07-09DOI: 10.1016/j.esp.2025.06.002
Hang (Joanna) Zou , Ken Hyland
Studies of authorial stance are now a staple of the discourse analytic literature. Less studied, however, are the more personal, affective attitudes authors take towards their material and how these contribute to persuading an academic audience. In this paper, we employ Hyland’s (2005) metadiscourse model to examine the role of affect in two of the most explicitly rhetorical genres in the academy: abstracts and highlights. Despite differences, these genres share the promotional purpose of announcing research and seeking to attract an audience for it. Based on the abstracts and corresponding highlights from 261 articles in high profile medical journals addressing Covid-19 research, we show how attitude markers are used to strategically manage this purpose in different ways. The results indicate that academics routinely express attitudes to promote their research, with proportionately more features in the highlights. Variations in markers and their functions underscore their importance. Our study contributes to the literature on attitude markers and rhetorical persuasion, particularly in Covid-related discourse.
{"title":"“Long-term effects of Covid-19 are poorly understood”: Attitude in medical journal abstracts and highlights","authors":"Hang (Joanna) Zou , Ken Hyland","doi":"10.1016/j.esp.2025.06.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esp.2025.06.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Studies of authorial stance are now a staple of the discourse analytic literature. Less studied, however, are the more personal, affective attitudes authors take towards their material and how these contribute to persuading an academic audience. In this paper, we employ Hyland’s (2005) metadiscourse model to examine the role of affect in two of the most explicitly rhetorical genres in the academy: abstracts and highlights. Despite differences, these genres share the promotional purpose of announcing research and seeking to attract an audience for it. Based on the abstracts and corresponding highlights from 261 articles in high profile medical journals addressing Covid-19 research, we show how attitude markers are used to strategically manage this purpose in different ways. The results indicate that academics routinely express attitudes to promote their research, with proportionately more features in the highlights. Variations in markers and their functions underscore their importance. Our study contributes to the literature on attitude markers and rhetorical persuasion, particularly in Covid-related discourse.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47809,"journal":{"name":"English for Specific Purposes","volume":"80 ","pages":"Pages 60-73"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144581187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-23DOI: 10.1016/j.esp.2025.06.001
Jieyun Feng , Wenze Lu , Ming Liu , Wenqing Yu
Although corporate climate discourse has been extensively studied, research has primarily focused on self-legitimisation and self-promotional strategies. How corporations engage with key stakeholders and balance competing priorities remains underexplored. By integrating stakeholder theory with corporate climate discourse, this study explores how American and Chinese petroleum corporations frame their climate discourses in relation to two key global and national stakeholders: the Paris Agreement and their respective national governments. Using a mixed-methods approach, this study conducts a quantitative thematic analysis of the Paris Agreement and national climate policies, followed by a qualitative thematic analysis of climate discourse from six leading petroleum corporations—Marathon Oil, ExxonMobil, and Chevron (U.S.) and CNPC, Sinopec, and CNOOC (China). Findings indicate that the Paris Agreement prioritises global engagement, development capacity and a formal, obligatory commitment to directives. China's policy discourse presents the government as a central orchestrator, actively guiding national policy within a global framework. Meanwhile, U.S. policy discourse focuses on addressing immediate climate crises and promoting environmental justice while emphasising the roles of various agencies. In response to these two key stakeholders, Chinese corporations align their discourse closely with the Paris Agreement, centring on two themes: ‘transition to sustainable energy management’ and ‘policy-driven climate strategy’. American corporations take a more delicate approach, balancing global commitment with business operations while demonstrating ‘selective policy support and active lobbying’ and ‘advocacy for market-driven carbon pricing’. This study concludes with a discussion of its academic contributions and practical implications for climate regulators, corporate communication students and practitioners.
{"title":"Climate discourses of petroleum corporations in China and the United States: A comparative stakeholder analysis","authors":"Jieyun Feng , Wenze Lu , Ming Liu , Wenqing Yu","doi":"10.1016/j.esp.2025.06.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esp.2025.06.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Although corporate climate discourse has been extensively studied, research has primarily focused on self-legitimisation and self-promotional strategies. How corporations engage with key stakeholders and balance competing priorities remains underexplored. By integrating stakeholder theory with corporate climate discourse, this study explores how American and Chinese petroleum corporations frame their climate discourses in relation to two key global and national stakeholders: the Paris Agreement and their respective national governments. Using a mixed-methods approach, this study conducts a quantitative thematic analysis of the Paris Agreement and national climate policies, followed by a qualitative thematic analysis of climate discourse from six leading petroleum corporations—Marathon Oil, ExxonMobil, and Chevron (U.S.) and CNPC, Sinopec, and CNOOC (China). Findings indicate that the Paris Agreement prioritises global engagement, development capacity and a formal, obligatory commitment to directives. China's policy discourse presents the government as a central orchestrator, actively guiding national policy within a global framework. Meanwhile, U.S. policy discourse focuses on addressing immediate climate crises and promoting environmental justice while emphasising the roles of various agencies. In response to these two key stakeholders, Chinese corporations align their discourse closely with the Paris Agreement, centring on two themes: ‘transition to sustainable energy management’ and ‘policy-driven climate strategy’. American corporations take a more delicate approach, balancing global commitment with business operations while demonstrating ‘selective policy support and active lobbying’ and ‘advocacy for market-driven carbon pricing’. This study concludes with a discussion of its academic contributions and practical implications for climate regulators, corporate communication students and practitioners.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47809,"journal":{"name":"English for Specific Purposes","volume":"80 ","pages":"Pages 44-59"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144338498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-19DOI: 10.1016/j.esp.2025.05.008
Yue Yuan , Luda Liu , Feng (Kevin) Jiang
This study explores how negation features in peer review discourse, examining patterns of its occurrence in the rhetorical exchanges between reviewers and authors. Drawing on a corpus of reviewer comments and corresponding author responses from 50 research articles published in the British Medical Journal, we adopt a discourse-informed approach that examines the co-textual environments in which negation appears, rather than attributing interpersonal functions to negation itself. We identify six rhetorical alignments (comparison, addition, refutation, hedging, boosting, and affect) based on how negation co-occurs with discourse features that organise information or express stance. Our findings reveal that while reviewers primarily use negation to deliver critical evaluation and assert authority, authors use it to defend research choices and manage disagreement through hedging and contrast. Exemplar exchanges illustrate how both parties negotiate critique while maintaining collegiality. The study contributes to English for Specific Purposes by addressing a practical need that novice researchers and postgraduate students often struggle to interpret reviewer feedback and write response letters. By examining the rhetorical deployment of negation, we offer insights into the interactional dimensions of peer review and provide pedagogical implications for teaching critique and rebuttal strategies in academic writing instruction.
{"title":"When reviewers negate and authors navigate: Negation in peer review comments and author responses","authors":"Yue Yuan , Luda Liu , Feng (Kevin) Jiang","doi":"10.1016/j.esp.2025.05.008","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esp.2025.05.008","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study explores how negation features in peer review discourse, examining patterns of its occurrence in the rhetorical exchanges between reviewers and authors. Drawing on a corpus of reviewer comments and corresponding author responses from 50 research articles published in the <em>British Medical Journal</em>, we adopt a discourse-informed approach that examines the co-textual environments in which negation appears, rather than attributing interpersonal functions to negation itself. We identify six rhetorical alignments (comparison, addition, refutation, hedging, boosting, and affect) based on how negation co-occurs with discourse features that organise information or express stance. Our findings reveal that while reviewers primarily use negation to deliver critical evaluation and assert authority, authors use it to defend research choices and manage disagreement through hedging and contrast. Exemplar exchanges illustrate how both parties negotiate critique while maintaining collegiality. The study contributes to English for Specific Purposes by addressing a practical need that novice researchers and postgraduate students often struggle to interpret reviewer feedback and write response letters. By examining the rhetorical deployment of negation, we offer insights into the interactional dimensions of peer review and provide pedagogical implications for teaching critique and rebuttal strategies in academic writing instruction.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47809,"journal":{"name":"English for Specific Purposes","volume":"80 ","pages":"Pages 31-43"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144321304","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-11DOI: 10.1016/j.esp.2025.05.009
Chen-Yu Liu
Knowledge of academic formulas is essential for EAP learners, as these sequences are pervasive and serve key discourse functions in academic contexts. To support academic formula learning, it is crucial to identify resources that provide frequent and diverse encounters with these formulas. This study examines TED talks and TED-Ed animations as potential pedagogical resources by comparing the presence of Academic Formulas List (AFL) items in these discourse types with academic lectures. The results indicate that both TED talks and TED-Ed animations can offer learners opportunities to encounter a wide variety of AFL items, with their diversity comparable to academic lectures. TED talks contain a significantly higher density and variety of AFL items than TED-Ed animations, highlighting their relative usefulness for learning academic formulas. While TED-Ed animations contain fewer formulas overall, they feature a comparable variety of written AFL items to academic lectures and a higher density and variety of academic formulas than other learning resources (e.g., textbooks), emphasizing their value as supplementary resources. This study expands the range of resources available for academic formula learning and enhances the understanding of TED talks and TED-Ed animations as educational tools, highlighting their distinct lexical characteristics and implications for academic English instruction.
{"title":"Academic formulas in TED talks and TED-Ed animations: Insights for academic vocabulary learning","authors":"Chen-Yu Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.esp.2025.05.009","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esp.2025.05.009","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Knowledge of academic formulas is essential for EAP learners, as these sequences are pervasive and serve key discourse functions in academic contexts. To support academic formula learning, it is crucial to identify resources that provide frequent and diverse encounters with these formulas. This study examines TED talks and TED-Ed animations as potential pedagogical resources by comparing the presence of Academic Formulas List (AFL) items in these discourse types with academic lectures. The results indicate that both TED talks and TED-Ed animations can offer learners opportunities to encounter a wide variety of AFL items, with their diversity comparable to academic lectures. TED talks contain a significantly higher density and variety of AFL items than TED-Ed animations, highlighting their relative usefulness for learning academic formulas. While TED-Ed animations contain fewer formulas overall, they feature a comparable variety of written AFL items to academic lectures and a higher density and variety of academic formulas than other learning resources (e.g., textbooks), emphasizing their value as supplementary resources. This study expands the range of resources available for academic formula learning and enhances the understanding of TED talks and TED-Ed animations as educational tools, highlighting their distinct lexical characteristics and implications for academic English instruction.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47809,"journal":{"name":"English for Specific Purposes","volume":"80 ","pages":"Pages 16-30"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144261391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This corpus-based study provides cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary insights into stance-taking expression through controlling words in that-clauses within the English as lingua franca (ELF) academic context. It compares translated (from Chinese) and non-translated ELF discursive practices in research article abstracts (RAAs) in applied linguistics (AL) and medical sciences (MS), focusing on the frequency, semantic classes (communication, certainty, likelihood, and attitude), and diversity of controlling words. The results reveal a shared preference for verb forms of controlling words across disciplines and practices, along with a consistent disciplinary convention of higher frequency of that-clauses in AL than MS within each discursive practice. Further analysis indicates that translated discourses exhibit a higher frequency of that-clauses in both disciplines and rely on certain words indicating certainty or communication, suggesting cross-cultural constraints in translated practices. However, these constraints manifest differently in the two disciplines compared to their non-translated counterparts. Scholars in non-translated practices prefer communication and certainty words, a preference seen only in translated AL, not in MS. Additionally, lexical diversity of these controlling words shows minimal differences between translated and non-translated ELF practices in AL, but significant divergences in MS. These findings can inform literacy brokers and English for research publication instructors, enhancing multilingual academic communication.
{"title":"Stance taking through that-clauses in research article abstracts: Cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary practices in translated and non-translated English","authors":"Yueyue Huang (黄越悦) , Hao Yin (殷昊) , Dechao Li (李德超)","doi":"10.1016/j.esp.2025.05.007","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esp.2025.05.007","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This corpus-based study provides cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary insights into stance-taking expression through controlling words in <em>that</em>-clauses within the English as lingua franca (ELF) academic context. It compares translated (from Chinese) and non-translated ELF discursive practices in research article abstracts (RAAs) in applied linguistics (AL) and medical sciences (MS), focusing on the frequency, semantic classes (communication, certainty, likelihood, and attitude), and diversity of controlling words. The results reveal a shared preference for verb forms of controlling words across disciplines and practices, along with a consistent disciplinary convention of higher frequency of <em>that</em>-clauses in AL than MS within each discursive practice. Further analysis indicates that translated discourses exhibit a higher frequency of <em>that</em>-clauses in both disciplines and rely on certain words indicating certainty or communication, suggesting cross-cultural constraints in translated practices. However, these constraints manifest differently in the two disciplines compared to their non-translated counterparts. Scholars in non-translated practices prefer communication and certainty words, a preference seen only in translated AL, not in MS. Additionally, lexical diversity of these controlling words shows minimal differences between translated and non-translated ELF practices in AL, but significant divergences in MS. These findings can inform literacy brokers and English for research publication instructors, enhancing multilingual academic communication.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47809,"journal":{"name":"English for Specific Purposes","volume":"80 ","pages":"Pages 1-15"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144241162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-24DOI: 10.1016/j.esp.2025.05.003
David Lasagabaster, Ada Bier
The internationalisation process has encouraged the spread of English-medium instruction (EMI) in universities all over the world. Whereas the purported benefits of EMI are more often than not taken for granted, there are many issues related to what is actually happening in EMI classrooms that still need to be looked into. In this vein, the use of interactional metadiscourse markers when delivering content in the lingua franca and the potential impact of the disciplinary culture are two issues that have hitherto been largely overlooked. Since research studies indicate that teachers in the arts and social sciences tend to use a higher number of metadiscourse markers than those in the hard sciences, the impact of the discipline in classroom discourse deserves further attention. With a view to fill in this research gap, in this paper we analysed the 29,469 interactional metadiscourse markers found in 36 lectures of three different disciplines, namely economics, engineering and history. The overall distribution of interactional metadiscourse markers revealed that engagement markers happened to be the dominant category by an ample margin, followed by self-mentions, hedges, boosters and attitudes markers. In addition, statistically significant differences were found in the use of interactional markers across the three disciplines, a fact that should be considered in professional development courses. The pedagogical implications to be drawn from these findings and some future directions for research are also put forth.
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