Unveiling the Argumentative Nature of Meta-Analysis in Applied Linguistics: An Argument Mining Approach

Despite paradigmatic research advancements and movements in applied linguistics, the issue of rhetoric, which serves as one of the fundamental pillars of each paradigm, remains largely unaccounted for. Considering the commensurability of argumentation and meta-analysis, coupled with the increasing rate of meta-analytic studies in the field of applied linguistics, there arises a need to examine the argumentation behavior of applied linguistics’ meta-analysts. As such, following research synthesis techniques and an argument mining approach, we examined the academic argumentation genre of meta-analysis published in leading applied linguistics journals through argument-mining techniques in light of the modified Toulmin framework proposed by Qin and Karabacak (2010). The current study, employing the modified Toulmin framework, examined the argumentative writing components represented in the introduction section of 54 meta-analytic studies published in leading journals of applied linguistics through argument-mining techniques. Our findings highlight the complexity and argumentativeness of the meta-analysis genre. We further found that the Modified Toulmin Model is implementable for the task of argument mining, which can have a great impact on argumentation, meta-analysis, and argumentative academic writing. Implications and recommendations for academic argumentative writers and meta-analyzers are discussed.