The impact of research paradigms on encoding and decoding difficulties of applied linguistics articles

The diachronic change in the information load and the textual readability of research articles has recently attracted much scholarly interest. However, existing research has either focused on disciplinary variations or treated discipline as a homogeneous category. Little attention has been given to the potential interaction between the research paradigm (quantitative vs. qualitative) and the diachronic change within a specific discipline. To address this research gap, this study investigates the cognitive encoding and decoding difficulties in 160 Applied Linguistics research articles cutting across two historical periods (1981–1985 vs. 2011–2015) and two research paradigms (quantitative vs. qualitative). These research articles were randomly selected from four prestigious journals in Applied Linguistics, and the cognitive encoding and decoding difficulties were operationalized as information entropy and mean dependency distance of a research article, respectively. Statistical analyses with a MANOVA and two follow-up univariate ANOVAs show that time and research paradigm combined can significantly explain a large proportion of the variance in the two cognitive difficulty indices. Specifically, qualitative research articles consistently exhibit higher cognitive encoding complexity than their quantitative counterparts in both periods while they both experienced significant increases in this metric. However, regarding the cognitive decoding difficulty, only quantitative research articles have experienced a significant rise. As a result, quantitative research articles have become higher in cognitive decoding difficulty than qualitative ones in the second historical period whereas no paradigmatic difference is found in the first period. These findings are discussed by considering the distinctive epistemological assumptions of the two research paradigms and against the background of ever-growing publication pressure. Hypotheses regarding the effect of the promotional language on both cognitive encoding and decoding difficulties are proposed to address the discrepancy between findings in this study and those in previous research. This study contributes to existing literature by revealing the nuanced patterns in academic writing within a specific discipline, thereby deepening our understanding of disciplinary writing.