The relationship between the specificity and linguistic distinctiveness of research disciplines

Abstract

English for Academic Purposes (EAP) recognises that academic language varies according to disciplinary context and that learners’ linguistic needs are shaped by the norms of specific fields. This study investigates whether grammatical patterns in research article abstracts (RAA) differ across levels of disciplinary specificity. A Multidimensional Analysis (MDA) was conducted on a large corpus of RAAs, which were classified according to the Web of Science hierarchy at three levels of disciplinary granularity. Independent t-tests were then used to compare Mean Dimension Scores across disciplinary groups for each of the extracted MDA dimensions. The results show significant differences at the broadest level (e.g. Social Sciences compared to Physical Sciences), driven mainly by variation in tense and authorial stance (past-oriented empirical reporting versus present-oriented author-focused framing), nominalisation and phrasal complexity versus quantitative and conditional features, and evaluative predicative constructions. Smaller but still significant differences were also found at more fine-grained levels of classification, including between related subdisciplines such as Mathematics and Statistics & Probability. Overall, the findings suggest that grammatical variation in academic writing is systematic across multiple levels of disciplinary organisation, indicating that disciplinary specificity in EAP extends beyond broad ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ science distinctions to more fine-grained subdisciplinary differences.