Evaluative Meanings and Disciplinary Values

This volume explores an important aspect of researchon academic discourse and disciplinary culture, withexamples given from corpus-assisted discourseanalysis. The analysis proceeds through a detailedquantitative and qualitative analysis of the use oflanguage patterns in two large corpora of authentictexts. The empirical focus of the study will be ontwo 'soft-applied' disciplines (Becher & Trowler,2001), Applied Linguistics and Business Studies, asrepresented by two corpora of research articles drawnfrom 16 leading journals in each field. Comparison ofthe results for each corpus shows that there are manydifferences in form and meaning between the twodisciplines: it is argued that the features revealedby analysis shown are indicative of theepistemological characteristics of these twodifferent disciplinary discourses. This volume arguesthat these differences reflect the different academiccultures and norms of Applied Linguistics andBusiness Studies.