This primarily methodological article makes a proposition for linguistic exploration of textual resources available through the "Google Scholar" search engine. These resources ("Google Scholar virtual corpus") are significantly larger than any existing corpus of academic writing. "Google Scholar", however, was not designed for linguistic searches…

This paper focuses on the interpersonal potential of the conditional clause as a rhetorical device for establishing a dialogue between the author and the reader of an academic text in search for shared understanding and consensus. It presents a corpus-based analysis of functions conditional clauses play in linguistics research articles in an…

This paper analyzes the use of a special type of unspecific noun, called "shell nouns" [Hunston, S., & Francis, G. (1999). "Pattern grammar". Amsterdam: Benjamins; Schmid, H. (2000). "English abstract nouns as conceptual shells: From corpus to cognition". Berlin: Walter de Gruyter], which are frequently used as cohesive devices, in the written…

Studies on classroom interaction have typically focused on relationships between turn-taking patterns and some larger unit of analysis of varying length and nature. However, two questions still left unanswered are how teachers talk differently from students in general and how linguistic variation between two participants might relate to…

This paper has a two-fold aim: first, to report on some findings as to the ways in which textbook authors construe their argument in the introductory chapters to linguistics textbooks; second, to discuss some concerns which are central to descriptions of academic prose and register variation in the light of what the data under study provide us…