A Multi-Dimensional Analysis of Research Article Discussion Sections in an Engineering Discipline: Corpus Explorations and Scientists’ Perceptions

Writing discussion sections of research articles (RAs) is difficult for novice scientists. The study investigates patterns of linguistic characterizations in discussion sections of RAs in chemical engineering. Around 240,000-word corpus was compiled using 213 discussion sections extracted from 20 disciplinary journals. Multi-dimensional (MD) analysis proposed by Biber was used to capture linguistic co-occurrence patterns based on a constellation of features across collected texts. The MD results show six salient linguistic patterns: (1) Involvement and interactivity; (2) Description versus Narration; (3) Expression of attitude; (4) Informational production; (5) Framing scientific claims; and (6) Expression of denial. Discourse-based interviews were then conducted with eight professional scientists to elicit their perception of MD findings concerning their reading experience and understanding of established writing conventions. The implications for EAP professionals are proposed as to the explicit instruction on teaching novice writers how to employ stance expressions strategically in academic writing.