Abstracts Language, Literature, and Linguistic

A corpus-based cross-linguistic study of reporting structures in research articles of sociology and philosophy

by Saulė Aleknavičiūtė

Use of reporting structures is a crucial aspect of academic writing, as reporting in such a manner reflects how language was employed in a prior context when attributing propositional content to another source in a new setting (Hyland 2002). This research aims to investigate differences and similarities in the use of reporting structures between Lithuanian and English research articles within the fields of sociology and philosophy. Employing a corpus-based methodology, this study examines a dataset consisting of 40 research articles authored by English and Lithuanian writers in sociology and philosophy. The collected reporting structures, such as reporting verbs and phrases, were classified into categories of Research acts, Cognition acts and Discourse acts and their sub-categories introduced by Hyland (2002) and then analyzed to identify underlying patterns. The analysis focused on how these structures function within diverse cultural and disciplinary contexts. The findings reveal that the disciplines of sociology and philosophy share similarities in reporting structure usage, especially within the categories of reporting verbs. However, notable differences emerge between the languages: Lithuanian articles employ more reporting structures, while English articles use a broader variety of reporting verbs. These results show how different cultures across two disciplines attribute ideas to external sources through the use of reporting verbs and phrases. This study will aid research scholars in increasing their knowledge of selecting appropriate reporting structures for their academic writing.