More than discipline: uncovering multi-dimensional patterns of variation in academic research articles

Abstract

Research analysing linguistic variation in research articles (RAs) across academic disciplines typically employs a relatively coarse definition of RAs: any text published in an academic journal that reports on primary research. This definition assumes that articles within a single discipline which report on distinct research methodologies are similar linguistically. Yet little empirical work has investigated this assumption. This study uses multi-dimensional analysis to analyse variation in the use of seventy lexical and grammatical features in 270 research articles representing three sub-registers (theoretical, qualitative and quantitative research reports) in six disciplines (philosophy, history, applied linguistics, political science, biology and physics). The resulting dimensions of variation indicate that linguistic variation occurs along multiple parameters, not only across disciplinary lines. For example, variation also corresponds to the differing purposes and types of evidence associated with the three research paradigms. This article explores each of these complex patterns of variation to move towards a more comprehensive understanding of language use within and across disciplines, and considers the implications of these findings for future corpus-based analyses of disciplinary variation.