Features Characterizing Academic Writing: A Corpus-Based Research on Dissertations from Hard and Soft Science Disciplines

Abstract

This corpus-based research aims to find out the salient features characterizing Pakistani academic writing (AW). In this regard, the corpus has been: developed from doctoral dissertations from hard and soft sciences disciplines representing Pakistani AW; tagged through MAT and TagAnt Taggers; and analyzed through AntConc Software. Results show the use of clausal, phrasal, and intermediate features more in the AW from soft sciences than in the AW from hard sciences. Therefore, phrasal, intermediate, and clausal features are concluded to characterize AW from soft sciences discipline more than AW from hard sciences discipline. Furthermore, the use of phrasal, intermediate, and clausal features is found to contain in the first, second, and third more frequent use. Therefore, phrasal features are concluded to characterize Pakistani AW. In addition, phrasal features are found to characterize AW from soft sciences discipline more than the AW from hard sciences discipline. Therefore, it is concluded that Pakistani AW from soft sciences discipline (as opposed to the results from past research) relies on phrasal features more than the AW from hard sciences discipline.

Keywords: Academic writing,  Clausal features, Intermediate features,  Lexicogrammatical features, Phrasal features.