A Corpus-based Analysis of Noun Phrase Complexity in Research Article Part-genres in Applied Linguistics and Clinical Medicine

Abstract

Complexity measures in academic writing have experienced a shift from clausal to phrasal indices in recent years. Drawing on a subset of Biber et al."s ( 2011) hypothesized stages of writing development, we explored phrasal complexity across sections (part-genres) of research articles (RAs) in applied linguistics and clinical medicine. A 389,332-word corpus consisting of 80 randomly selected RAs from leading journals in applied linguistics and clinical medicine was compiled for the purposes of the present study. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and independent-samples t-test, as implemented in SPSS (version 25), were employed to find differences across the RA sections and between two groups of academic writers. The findings indicated that RAs in clinical medicine relied more heavily on noun phrase modifiers in all sections than those in applied linguistics, suggesting that the distributional pattern of these linguistic expressions is discipline-independent. The implications of the distributional pattern of phrasal complexity are discussed in relation to L2 writing pedagogy and the development of genrebased, discipline-specific academic writing.

How Syntactically Complex is L2 Academic Research Writing by Filipino Researchers across Disciplines?

“…They add that syntactic complexity features vary across disciplines which proves Gray"s (2015) and Hyland"s (2006) assertion that academic written language differs according to disciplines as disciplines use linguistic resources in various ways. In addition, they contend that differences in language use exist as disciplines vary in research cultures, writing practices, and so on to achieve their communicative purposes (Esfandiari & Ahmadi, 2022;Gray, 2015;Hyland, 2007).…”