سید فواد ابراهیمی

The present study examines the application of metadiscourse markers according to Hyland’s (2005) metadiscourse model in laboratory sections. The researchers manually searched an 80580-word corpus of eight laboratory sections collected from the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English to identify different types and functions of metadiscourse markers. As shown by the findings, interactional metadiscoursal markers had a higher frequency in laboratory sections than interactive ones. More specifically, the speakers relied mostly on engagement markers (a metadiscourse marker with interactional function) followed by code glosses (a metadiscourse marker with interactive function). As implied, audience involvement through engagement markers and facilitating their comprehension through code glosses are the primary functions of metadiscourse markers used in a laboratory. It is possible to incorporate this finding into the syllabus designed to teach academic spoken genres, including laboratory sections.

The present study investigated the tense and aspect from morphological and phonological perspectives in the Bakhtiari dialect as a linguistic variety of the Persian language. This dialect is used in four provinces of Charmahal and Bakhtiari, Isfahan, Kohgiloye and Boyerahmad, and Khuzestan. The method of the study is descriptive which has been conducted through field study. Data were collected in Charmahal and Bakhtiari provinces and the north of Khuzestan province. About 10 hours of peoples' daily conversations were recorded and analyzed based on Katamba and Stonham (2007). Results showed that the future and past tenses of this dialect have attached auxiliary verbs of "be "pronounced as "bid", "vi" or "bi". The bound morpheme of /e/ is initially attached to the verb stem which shows no perfect aspect of this structure. Thus, the perfect aspect cannot be seen in this dialect; therefore, simple past or past perfect tense is used interchangeably. Past perfect aspects can be seen as a frequent structure in this dialect. The results of this study can help linguistics arrive at a complete picture of Bakhtiari's verbal constituents. It also may be a guide for investigating other Persian language dialects regarding their grammatical structures.

Hedging and boosting are significant communicative resources to construe and attain persuasion in different fields and particular genres of academic writing. Hedges allow the researcher to address possible problems, raise objections or anticipate opposition to the research claims while contributing something new to the ongoing dialogue in a research field. Boosters enormously help to achieve the essential writers’ need to convince their readership of the truth in their propositions. They are mainly used whenever writers consider it not too risky to include them in their propositions. This study aims to investigate the frequencies and functions of hedges and boosters in academic students' essays. To meet this end, 96 students' essays (a total of 269.428 words) were selected from the Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Papers (MICUSP), including English and Psychology disciplines. The corpus was analyzed based on Abdollahzadeh (2019)classification of hedges. The results showed that hedges and boosters were frequent enough to be considered in teaching writing, either reducing or increasing the force of written utterances. The results of this study could be used directly in the syllabus designed for academic essay writing.

 acts as an important device to manage information and to let the reader decide whether it is merit to continue reading the research article. In this paper, we intend to investigate the frequencies and discourse functions of types of grammatical subject (unmarked theme) used in research article abstracts from four disciplines. To this end, 300 research article abstracts were randomly selected (75 from each discipline) from leading prestigious journals in the four disciplines namely Applied Linguistics, Economics, Agriculture, and Applied Physics, and were analyzed based on Gosden’s (1993) classifications that include 16 types of grammatical subject. The results indicated that only six types of grammatical subject were used in the corpus and the frequencies of these types varied across the four disciplines. Besides, the results reported high similarities concerning the discourse functions served using the grammatical subject types. Thus, it could be concluded that the selection and discourse functions of the grammatical subject types are imposed by conventions of writing research article abstracts. The results could add to the existing knowledge of writing research article abstract in the analyzed disciplines by increasing awareness concerning selections of grammatical subject types.

This study aimed to investigate the grammatical complexity based on Biber, Gray, Staples, and Egbert’s (2020) linguistic description in research articles published in Iranian local journals and international journals. The corpus of the study included 40 Applied Linguistics research articles, 20 published in Iranian local journals and 20 in international journals in 2019-2020. The research articles were selected through purposive sampling from two Iranian journals, namely Journal of Research in Applied Linguistics and Journal of Teaching Language Skills, and two international journals, including Journal of English for Specific Purposes and System Journal. The research articles were analyzed in terms of three dimensions of grammatical complexity, including the structural types, syntactic functions, and specific structural/syntactic features. Moreover, for intra-rater consistency, the researcher re-analyzed the corpus after one month to see whether the same results were found. According to the results, in terms of the first dimension, i.e., the structural types, the frequencies of structures indicating higher grammatical complexity (non-finite dependent clauses and dependent phrases) outnumbered the frequency of structures showing lower grammatical complexity (finite dependent clauses) in both local and international journals. Concerning the second dimension, i.e., syntactic function within the structural type, the frequencies of more complex syntactic functions were higher than those of simple functions in both sets of research articles. Concerning the third dimension, i.e., specific structural/syntactic features, both groups of writers preferred to use more complex specific structural/syntactic features than simple ones.

This study intends to investigate the realizations and functional patterns of shell nouns in Applied Linguistics research articles.  To this end, fifty research articles in the field of Applied Linguistic were selected from Journal of English for Academic Purposes and journal of English for Specific Purposes published by Elsevier.  The articles were analyzed for the realizations of shell nouns based on the list suggested by Hinkel (2004).  As to the functional patterns, Schmid’s (2000) classification of functional patterns of shell nouns was also adopted.  Findings reported that some shell nouns are used more frequently while some were put aside.  Findings also reported that writers of research articles in the field of Applied Linguistics used functional patterns suggested by Schmid (2000).  Findings of this study could have implications by raising the awareness of writers of Applied Linguistics research articles, especially in EFL contexts, concerning the use of shell nouns and functional patterns in which shell nouns are used.

Cohesive frames are linguistic elements that precede the grammatical subject in the main clause. This study investigated the frequencies and communicative purposes of cohesive frame types in results and discussion section of research articles from 4 disciplines. To run this study, 40 results and discussion sections of research articles were selected from 4 disciplines, namely Applied Linguistics, Psychology, Chemistry and Environmental Engineering (10 from each discipline). Then, the corpus was analyzed using Ebrahimi’s (2014) taxonomy of cohesive frame types. The results showed that writers of the four sets of results and discussion section of research articles showed similarities and differences concerning the frequencies and communicative purposes served through the use of cohesive frame markers. frequencies and communicative purposes of cohesive frame types were imposed by the rhetorical functions of results and discussion section and disciplinary conventions of writing. The results may have implications for teaching students in writing the results and discussion section of research articles, particularly for non native novice writers of English.