ERIC Number: EJ1258050
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020-Apr
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0555-7747
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Engagement in Pakistani Academic Research Discourse: A Cross-Disciplinary Analysis of PhD Theses in Natural and Social Sciences
Malik, Moazzam Ali; Islam, Muhammad; Shahbaz, Muhammad
Bulletin of Education and Research, v42 n1 p17-27 Apr 2020
This study investigates the rhetorical choices of the engagement features in Pakistani Academic Research Discourse (PARD) of natural and social sciences. Using the 'Interaction Model' (Hyland, 2005), it explores how the writers of different disciplinary cultures employ engagement features to define and maintain their knowledge territories in their respective fields. Hyland's (2005) typology of engagement features includes; "reader pronouns," "directives," "questions," "shared knowledge" and "personal asides" as linguistic elements of engagement. The corpus data for this study comprised 120 PhD theses produced by Pakistani scholars in the domains of natural and social sciences. This data was accessed from Pakistan Research Repository (www.prr.hec.gov.pk ); and after cleaning, it was transferred into the text-file format. Corpus analysis tool AntConc 3.4.4w was used for generating Word-lists, Keywords, and Concordances to explore engagement features from PARD. The findings reveal that, in PhD theses of the social sciences, authors make more use of "reader's pronouns," "directives," "questions," and "appeal to shared knowledge" than in the natural sciences. The study concludes by emphasizing the need for more research to understand how, discursively, knowledge communities of natural and social sciences are established. The findings of the study may be used to develop English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses and resources aimed at improving the academic writing skills of new researchers.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Educational Research, Discourse Analysis, Academic Language, Doctoral Dissertations, Graduate Students, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, English for Special Purposes, Form Classes (Languages), Reader Text Relationship
Institute of Education and Research. University of the Punjab Quaid-i-Azam Campus, Lahore, 54590 Pakistan. e-mail: ber.ier@pu.edu.pk; Web site: http://pu.edu.pk/home/journal/32
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Pakistan
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
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