Lexicogrammatical Specificities in L2 Academic Writing: An Across and Within Disciplinary Corpus Linguistic Study

Abstract

This corpus-based study investigated disciplinary specificities in the use of lexicogrammatical features in academic writing produced by the writers of English as a second language (L2) across and within disciplines. The corpus for this study was developed from the doctoral dissertation texts of four disciplinary groups across 16 disciplines and was analyzed systematically in AntConc after tagging with TagAnt and Multidimensional Analysis taggers. The corpus comprised 160 doctoral dissertations (10 per discipline, 40 per disciplinary group) totalling 3,613,190 words: arts and humanities (English, history, linguistics, philosophy), social sciences (economics, law, politics, sociology), life sciences (agriculture, biology, food sciences, psychology), and physical sciences (computer science, engineering, mathematics, physics). The results exhibited notable differences and similarities in the use of lexicogrammatical features in the academic writing across and within disciplines, echoing and extending the findings of the previous studies. The differences were observed against the expert disciplinary specificities. Therefore, the academic writers were advised to make appropriate use of lexicogrammatical features in accordance with the conventions of their respective disciplines. The results of this study have implications for the teachers, researchers, and students of English as a Second/Foreign language, syllabus designers, and language policy planners.