Jul 2026· International Journal of English Language and Literature Studies· Vol 15, pp. 148-159· 0 citations
Abstract
The proposed research explores the lexical schism between Hard Sciences (STEM) and Soft Sciences (Humanities) within English-medium instruction, using an 824,560-token corpus. The of peer-reviewed research articles (2020-2025), the study employs a multi-dimensional analysis of five dimensions of linguistic behavior, including lexical saliency, formulaic sequences, epistemic stance, syntactic collocation, and an expert-novice comparative overlay, with statistical analysis via Log-Likelihood (LL) test (p < 0.01). Results show STEM discourse uses certainty, and with the help of high-frequency boosters and research-oriented lexical bundles (e.g., as indicated in the figure), the discourse tries to emphasize empirical objectivity. By contrast, the Humanities emphasize interpretive agency more, applying almost 3.5 times the number of hedging markers and participant-focused bundles (e.g., one might say) to bargain dialogic space. It is also found that there are substantial semantic drifts in common academic lexicon, with verbs like analyze having varying collocational patterns across different fields. The expert-novice overlay also determines an existing linguistic ceiling among EFL learners, characterized by excessive use of general academic words and inadequate application of disciplinary formulaic sequences. The findings respond to the one-size-fits-all concept of Academic English and suggest the need to shift to a new model, differentiated EAP (D-EAP). With the coordination of pedagogical practices and disciplinary epistemology, curriculum designers are better positioned to prepare learners to negotiate the subtle rhetorical requirements of their preferred intellectual realms.
English for Academic Purposes (EAP) recognises that academic language varies according to disciplinary context and that learners’ linguistic needs are shaped by the norms of specific fields. This study investigates whether grammatical patterns in research article abstracts (RAA) differ across levels of disciplinary specificity. A Multidimensional Analysis (MDA) was conducted on a large corpus of RAAs, which were classified according to the Web of Science hierarchy at three levels of disciplinary granularity. Independent t-tests were then used to compare Mean Dimension Scores across disciplinary groups for each of the extracted MDA dimensions. The results show significant differences at the broadest level (e.g. Social Sciences compared to Physical Sciences), driven mainly by variation in tense and authorial stance (past-oriented empirical reporting versus present-oriented author-focused framing), nominalisation and phrasal complexity versus quantitative and conditional features, and evaluative predicative constructions. Smaller but still significant differences were also found at more fine-grained levels of classification, including between related subdisciplines such as Mathematics and Statistics & Probability. Overall, the findings suggest that grammatical variation in academic writing is systematic across multiple levels of disciplinary organisation, indicating that disciplinary specificity in EAP extends beyond broad ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ science distinctions to more fine-grained subdisciplinary differences.
Don Watson, M. Krug, C. Carbon· Research in Corpus Linguisti...· 0 citations
Teaching philosophy statements (TPSs) are high-stakes promotional documents required for academic hiring, tenure, and promotion in higher education worldwide. Despite their gatekeeping function in professional academic discourse, TPSs remain an underexamined occluded genre: prescriptive writing guides offer general advice, but few empirical studies have described the rhetorical structure of authentic statements. This study addresses this gap by investigating the move-step structure and lexicogrammatical features of TPSs from an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) perspective. A specialized corpus of 46 authentic TPSs written by faculty members and graduate students from North American universities (2004-2016) was compiled and analysed using corpus-based genre analysis. Functional moves were coded in MAXQDA with an inter-rater reliability of 94.9%, and keywords and three-word n-grams for each conventional move were extracted with AntConc. The analysis identified fourteen moves across three categories (teacher-focused, classroom-focused, and teaching/evaluation process), of which five were conventional. The most frequent and cyclical move was focus on teaching practices (100%), indicating that concrete classroom examples outweigh abstract philosophical declarations. The genre proved hybrid and flexible, with no fixed move order, combining features of academic prose (prepositional-phrase n-grams) and promotional genres such as CVs and application letters. Substantial variation emerged between faculty and graduate-statement corpora: faculty privileged philosophical concepts and mentorship, while graduate students foregrounded concrete activities, technology use, and diversity. A systematic comparison with twelve prescriptive writing guides revealed partial alignment but also several moves – such as acknowledging mentors and addressing students’ difficulties – that occur in authentic texts but are absent from the guides. The study contributes a genre model grounded in authentic data, offers empirically derived lexicogrammatical resources for novice writers, and provides pedagogical implications for teacher training and ESP instruction in academic genres.
Atekah Abaalkhail· Professional Discourse &...· 0 citations
This study investigates the textual comprehension of the discourse genre abstract of empirical social sciences articles in English within an extracurricular module entitled Academic Literacy with students of Social Communication (SC) and Social Work (SW) majors from a public university in Argentina. A variety of multiple-choice questions in each task was included for the pre- and post-tests as well as for the presentation and practice stages. These tasks were systematically and empirically evaluated under the genre-based approach to make students aware of the importance of understanding the rhetorical information and the communicative functions of the lexico-grammatical elements of the discourse genre abstract. Students’ answers in the pre- and post-tests were analyzed and contrasted, thus yielding data on their textual comprehension performance of the genre. Findings indicated that both groups experienced difficulties in the strategy detailed reading, though most students were able to identify the lexico-grammatical elements of the genre in both tests. In the pre-test, SC and SW students had limitations to correlate these elements with their communicative functions and the rhetorical moves. It is concluded that more exposure to the proposed tasks is necessary to improve students’ performance in the textual comprehension of the discourse genre abstract.
Jorge Alberto Sánchez, G. Müller· Revista de Filología y Lingü...· 0 citations
Lexical bundles are repeated multi-word units that serve to organise information and convey disciplinary knowledge in academic writing. The use of lexical bundles in the conclusion sections of research papers, particularly across diverse fields, remains underexplored. Four-word lexical bundles in the 400 concluding paragraphs of international journal articles published in 2025 across the four fields of Applied Linguistics, Sociology, Biology, and Electrical & Electronic Engineering have been studied in this paper. AntConc was used to obtain a corpus-based list of lexical bundles and then analysed their structure and function. Lexical bundles are used widely in all fields, but their distribution and function vary among different areas of study. Soft disciplines are more likely to have interpretative and evaluative parts in the research significance and theoretical implications sections of their studies; hard sciences focus on empirical results, research outcomes and future development plans. Therefore, the above results show that lexical bundles contain disciplinary conventions and ways of knowing, and they can offer some references for research on academic writing and discipline-specific writing instruction.
Yujie Shao· Studies in English Language...· 0 citations
This study investigates how culturally grounded conceptualizations shape English collocational usage in learner writing. Drawing on a 4.6-million-word corpus of Thai English as a foreign language (EFL) academic texts, collocations were extracted using corpus-driven association measures, including Mutual Information (MI) and t-score, and were manually validated against the British National Corpus (BNC). Of the 2,239 collocation types identified, 316 types (20,173 tokens) were classified through manual coding as cultural-transfer or culturally interpretable transfer-related forms when Thai linguistic patterning was accompanied by culturally salient conceptual motivation. Rather than viewing non-standard collocations as deficiencies, this study interprets this culturally classified subset as evidence of cultural meaning-making and lexical nativization. Quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed five domains: Kinship Hierarchy, Religious Practice, Food/Domestic Culture, Localized Service Economy, and Institutional/Media Discourse. Together, these domains accounted for 41% of all non-standard collocations, indicating that cultural transfer represents a systematic rather than incidental phenomenon in Thai learner English. The study contributes to applied corpus linguistics and World Englishes by showing how local cultural schemas are encoded in collocational choices. Pedagogically, the findings highlight the need to foster learners’ intercultural lexical awareness and to develop corpus-informed instructional practices that help learners negotiate cultural identity while maintaining communicative clarity.
Songtham Vongvirulh, A. Khamkhien· Research in Corpus Linguisti...· 0 citations
Purpose: The growing popularity of pronunciation research has led to an accumulation of knowledge in the literature. Notwithstanding the existence of reviews and syntheses on pronunciation, none has addressed this line of inquiry in the Turkish academic setting within the context of DergiPark journals. Design & Methodology: To that end, this study employed systematic, bibliometric, and content analyses to uncover the research tendencies and trends in pronunciation research within the mentioned context. A title search using keywords in DergiPark revealed 73 eligible records. A spreadsheet was used to document bibliometric and methodological characteristics, and NVivo 15 was used for content analysis. Findings: The study demonstrated that pronunciation research primarily focused on learnerteacher problems, leaving under-researched areas (e.g., instructional effectiveness, affective/cognitive factors, pronunciation constructs). Methodological robustness and depth are missing as the majority of research is either pedagogical/practice-oriented or uses quantitative designs, data collection tools, and analysis techniques. The prevalence of single-authorship calls for national and international co-operation. Implications & Suggestions: Collectively, the results were discussed within the broader literature, and implications were drawn. The findings suggest that Turkish researchers need greater methodological diversity, interdisciplinary collaboration, and attention to under-researched areas within English pronunciation scholarship.
I. Topal· İnönü Üniversitesi Eğitim Bi...· 0 citations
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