Evaluative Prosody in the Collocations Used in Introduction Sections of Scientific English Articles of Hard and Soft Disciplines

Leila Ghaemi ¹ ( Department of English, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran )
Nesa Nabifar ² ( Department of English, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran )
Davud Kuhi ³ ( English Language Department, Maragheh Branch, Islamic Azad University, Maragheh, Iran )

Submited date : 2022-12-12 Accepted date : 2023-02-28

Keywords: "collocations", "evaluative prosody", "hard and soft disciplines", "introduction sections",

Abstract :

AbstractThis study investigates the collocations, as specific type of multiword sequences that frequently occur in the scientific writing of hard and soft disciplines based on Hoey's (2005) model. The study also extends the semantic prosody of collocations in general words across disciplines. To this end, the introduction sections of 1000 research articles (RAs) from two disciplines of soft and hard were gathered from disciplines of applied linguistics, sociology, and psychology under the category of soft science and from the majors of computer science, chemistry, physics and medicine under the category of hard science in order to find a relationship between these two types of RAs with differences in discipline and the authors’ use of collocations and their semantic prosody. In this study, function words containing articles were ignored that their rates and frequencies were higher than the content words, including specific and general words. The findings indicated that the collocates of general words expressed the positive, negative, and neutral senses and being in soft or hard science did not affect their semantic prosody. It means that the general words directly expressed the meaning they transferred to the reader, without the interference of the context. The results can result in collocation teaching, which is a popular genre of academic writing assigned across disciplines as well as in language-related courses.

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