A Corpus-Based Cross-Disciplinary Study of Unattended Anaphoric Pronouns in L2 Postgraduate Theses
Main Article Content
Emmanuel Kyei
Esther Serwaah Afreh
Osei Yaw Akoto
Wilson Awiah Jujugenia
Kofi Soadwah
This study examines unattended anaphoric pronouns in postgraduate theses across four academic disciplines (English, Economics, Biology, and Civil Engineering) from a Ghanaian public university, focusing on the period between 1980 and 2022. A corpus-based analysis and the analytical framework from Chang and Swales (1999), adapted by Hyland and Jiang (2017), was adopted to investigate the differences in the occurrence and use of unattended anaphoric pronouns across these disciplines. It also explored the verbs most commonly associated with unattended anaphoric pronouns within the theses. The findings revealed significant discipline-specific patterns in the use of unattended anaphoric pronouns, with distinct preferences in verb usage across English, Economics, Biology, and Civil Engineering. In the analysis of unattended anaphoric pronouns, “this” was the most frequently used across all disciplines, with Economics exhibiting the highest frequency at 15.95 per 10,000 words. The collocational pattern “this is/was” was the most frequently used in the corpora. The study concludes that the academic discipline influences reference strategies, offering insights into the structural and rhetorical features of postgraduate writing in these fields. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of how disciplinary discourse shapes academic writing practices in Ghanaian postgraduate education.
Anthony, L. (2022). AntConc (Version 4.0.5) [Computer Software]. Waseda University. https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software.
Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C., Khosravinik, M., Krzyżanowski, M., McEnery, T., & Wodak, R. (2008). A useful methodological synergy? Combining critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to examine discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press. Discourse & Society, 19(3), 273-306.
Becher, T. (1989). Historians on history. Studies in Higher Education, 14(3), 263-278.
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G. N., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Pearson Education.
Chang, Y. Y. & Swales, J. M. (1999). Informal elements in English academic writing: Threats or opportunities for advanced non-native speakers? In C. Candlin, & K. Hyland (Eds.), Writing: Texts, processes and practices (pp.145-167). Longman.
Dahl, T. (2004). Textual metadiscourse in research articles: A marker of national culture or of academic discipline? Journal of Pragmatics, 36(10), 1807-1825.
Dahl, T. (2008). Contributing to the academic conversation: A study of new knowledge claims in economics and linguistics. Journal of Pragmatics, 40(7), 1184-1201.
Ebrahimi, S. F., & Fakheri, S. A. (2019). Features of informality in Applied Linguistics research articles published in Iranian local journals. Romanian Journal of English Studies, 16(1), 135-143.
Flowerdew, J. (2006). Use of signalling nouns in a learner corpus. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 11(3), 345-362.
Galti, A. M., Abdullahi, A. A., Goni, A. A., & Gbeyonron, C. I. (2018). Use of anaphoric demonstrative pronoun this in research article writing of Nigerian authors. Journal of English Research, 4(5), 32-35.
Gao, X. (2020). A comparable-corpus-based study of informal features in academic writing by English and Chinese scholars across disciplines. Ibérica, 39, 119-140.
Gray, B. (2010). On the use of demonstrative pronouns and determiners as cohesive devices: A focus on sentence-initial this/these in academic prose. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 9(3), 167-183.
Gray, B., & Cortes, V. (2011). Perception vs. evidence: An analysis of this and these in academic prose. English for Specific Purposes, 30(1), 31-43.
Greenlaw, S. A. (2003). Using writing to enhance student learning in undergraduate economics. International Review of Economics Education, 1(1), 61-70.
Grigoriev, I., & Sokolova, A. (2019). Corpus based analysis of first-person pronouns in research proposals written by Russian students. Journal of Teaching English for Specific and Academic Purposes, 7(4), 423-430.
Hadgraft, R. G., & Kolmos, A. (2020). Emerging learning environments in engineering education. Australasian Journal of Engineering Education, 25(1), 3-16.
Hunter, K., & Tse, H. (2013). Making disciplinary writing and thinking practices an integral part of academic content teaching. Active Learning in Higher Education, 14(3), 227-239.
Hyland, K. (2013). Writing in the university: Education, knowledge and reputation. Language Teaching, 46(1), 53-70.
Hyland, K., & Jiang F. (2016a). Change of attitude? A diachronic study of stance. Written Communication, 33(3), 251–274. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088316650399
Hyland, K., & Jiang, F. (2016b). ‘We must conclude that…’: A diachronic study of academic engagement. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 24, 29-42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2016.09.003
Hyland, K., & Jiang, F. K. (2017). Is academic writing becoming more informal? English for Specific Purposes, 45, 40-51.
Jiang, F., & Wang, F. (2018). ‘This is because…’: Authorial practice of (un) attending this in academic prose across disciplines. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 38(2), 162-182.
Jin, H. (2019). On the anaphoric use of demonstratives this/these in L2 academic writing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 38, 62-74.
Kuhi, D., Sharghinezhad, B., & Rezaei, S. (2020). Informality in academic discourse: A cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary investigation. The Asian ESP Journal, 16(3), 180-208.
Kyei, E., Afreh, E. S., Akoto, O. Y., & Sarfo-Adu, K. (2025). Informality in Ghanaian postgraduate theses: A cross-disciplinary perspective. Journal of Languages for Specific Purposes (JLSP), 12, 127-147.
Lee, J. J., Tytko, T., & Larkin, R. (2021). (Un) attended this/these in undergraduate student writing: A corpus analysis of high-and low-rated L2 writers. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 50, 100967.
Liu, D., & Jiang, P. (2009). Using a corpus‐based lexicogrammatical approach to grammar instruction in EFL and ESL contexts. The Modern Language Journal, 93(1), 61-78.
Melissourgou, M. N. & Maruster, L. (2017, June 22-22). Changing trends in research articles: Investigating informality. [Paper presentation], 38th TABU Dag, Groningen, Netherlands.
Melissourgou, M. N., Maruster, L., & Frantzi, K. T. (2019). The Research article: Stylistic variation across disciplines and change over time. In K. Divini (Ed.), Options, practices and possibilities of EAP and ESP practitioners. 2nd international EAP and ESP conference. University of Crete, (pp. 44-57), Disponível em.
Petch-Tyson, S. (2000). Demonstrative expressions in argumentative discourse. Corpus-based and computational approaches to discourse anaphora, Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 3, 43-64.
Rayson, P., & Garside, R. (2000). Comparing corpora using frequency profiling. Proceedings of the Workshop on Comparing Corpora, held in conjunction with the 38th annual meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), pp. 1-6.
Swales, J. M. (2005). Attended and unattended “this” in academic writing: A long and unfinished story. ESP Malaysia, 11(1), 1-15.
Wulff, S., Römer, U., & Swales, J. (2012). Attended/unattended this in academic student writing: Quantitative and qualitative perspectives. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 8(1), 129-157.