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Article published In: Corpus Linguistics and Second Language Studies
Edited by Dilin Liu, Xiaofei Lu and Isaiah WonHo Yoo
[Journal of Second Language Studies 7:2] 2024
► pp. 320–346

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‘These results are inconsistent’

‘This/these + shell noun’ patterns in Engineering theses and research articles

 | The University of Memphis, United States
 | University of California Santa Barbara, United States
 | The University of Memphis, United States
 | The University of Memphis, United States
Published online: 24 September 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jsls.00031.cas
Abstract
Shell nouns (SNs; e.g., fact and problem) are an open group of abstract nouns defined functionally through use as emergent ‘shells’ referencing and labeling ideas in surrounding discourse. This paper analyzes the ‘this/these + [SN]’ pattern in second language (L2) English Master’s theses and published English research articles (RAs) across three Engineering disciplines (Electrical, Mechanical, Chemical), with a secondary focus on unattended ‘this/these’ use and disciplinary variation. The corpus includes 60 RAs per discipline (840,683 words) and 25 Master’s theses per discipline (899,182 words). Corpus methods were used to support manual identification of ‘this/these + [SN]’. Results show that L2 English Master’s thesis writers used this pattern significantly less than writers of RAs. Normalized frequencies, frequent SNs, and functional patterns are also presented across genres and disciplines. L2 writers and experts use a similar range of SN types, and expert writers adopt a more rhetorically sophisticated means of organizing information.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Shell nouns, genre practices, and genre learning
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1The corpora
    • 3.2Shell noun identification
    • 3.3Data analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1‘This/these + [shell noun]’ use in L2 thesis and published research in Engineering
    • 4.2Discipline effects on ‘this/these + [shell noun]’ use
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
References (44)
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