Digital story grammar (DSG) is a methodology that combines narrative theory and computerised text analysis. The methodology offers new ways of identifying patterns in narrative identity work and examining how these patterns relate to social structures such as gender and social class. DSG works through an algorithm that identifies narrative units…

This corpus-based study explores the expression of gratitude in the acknowledgement section of doctoral dissertations in both English and Arabic. The objective is to analyse how gratitude in academic discourse is structured in these languages and to explore any differences related to gender. The study examines 80 dissertations (40 in English and…

This study emerged as a result of insufficient knowledge and descriptions of the behavioural profiles of the near-synonym English verbs, "increase" and "rise," by non-corpus-based traditional reference sources used by students. We explored the behavioural characteristics of this group of near-synonym verbs using the British…

This paper examines how quotations are linguistically constructed by expert contributors in US, UK, and Australian opinion texts, vis-à-vis their form, function, and processes. Cope's (2016) study found that authoritative expert contributors integrated a considerable number of quotations on blame and responsibility for the global financial crisis…

As an important yet intricate linguistic feature in English language, synonymy poses a great challenge for second language learners. Using the 100 million-word British National Corpus (BNC) as data and the software Sketch Engine (SkE) as an analyzing tool, this article compares the usage of "learn" and "acquire" used in natural…

Theories of reference assume that the referent's salience in the discourse context affects the choice between pronouns and definite noun phrases or names. We examined whether and how the referent's inherent properties affect the choice of expressions by investigating animacy. Experiment 1 showed that pronouns were more frequent for animates than…

This paper reports findings from a study on the discourse functions of basic "wh"-clefts such as "what our brains do is complicated information processing" in 160 lectures drawn from the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus. Like much linguistic research on this academic genre, the investigation is motivated by the…

It is widely accepted that learning to use sources is difficult, especially for international postgraduate students, but to date, few longitudinal studies have been carried out in this area. Therefore, this two-year UK-based study aims to help fill this gap by examining the source use of three Chinese postgraduate students of business, technology…

This paper presents a comprehensive overview of lexicogrammatical devices which highlight important or relevant points in lectures. Despite the established usefulness of discourse organizational cues for lecture comprehension and note-taking, very little is known about the marking of relevance in this genre. The current overview of…

A refinement of the verbal process category of MAK Halliday's System of Transitivity makes it possible to distinguish three sub-categories of verbal process: positive, negative and neutral. This in turn makes possible an analysis of negative verbal processes used in a corpus of 50 news texts from the "UK Times" which reveals some of the…