Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
The 6th International English for Specific Purposes Conference, Ankara, Türkiye, 1 - 02 Kasım 2024, ss.24
Influenced by various linguistic and situational factors, formality is a multifaceted characteristic of academic writing, essential for clear language use and appropriate stance expression (Dixon et al., 2024; Hyland & Jiang, 2017; Larsson & Kaatari 2019). This complexity is notably pronounced in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) contexts, where writers from diverse linguistic backgrounds engage with different disciplinary norms, and editing practices (Flowerdew, 2019; Mauranen et al., 2010; Murillo, 2018; Rowley-Jolivet, 2017; Soler & Wang, 2019). Given these complexities, this study aims to investigate the intricate characteristics of (in)formality in edited and unedited ELF academic writing compared to English as a Native Language (ENL) writing. Three corpora of 140 research papers (420 total) from hard and soft sciences, representing nine first language backgrounds, were analyzed via the Multidimensional Analysis Tagger 1.3.3 (Nini, 2019) and AntConc 4.2.4 (Anthony, 2024). The analysis focused on the frequency of 14 (in)formality features from Hyland & Jiang (2019) and Larsson et al. (2023), revealing that contractions and listing expressions occur significantly more frequently in unedited ELF texts, whereas unattended demonstratives and relative clauses are more common in edited ENL texts. Among the formality features, pre-modifying nouns were predominantly used in edited ENL texts, while prepositional phrases were more frequent in ELF texts. The limited use of informality in the edited ELF corpus suggests editing reinforces academic writing conventions. Further analysis reveals that both discipline and native language significantly influence variations in writing styles. For example, unedited texts by L1 French writers in soft sciences frequently use informality features such as contractions and questions, unlike edited hard science texts by ENL writers commonly using the formality feature of pre-modifying nouns. These findings underscore the need for further research into how different linguistic features shape perceptions of formality across various academic contexts.