Pattern and meaning across genres and disciplines: An exploratory study

Journal of English for Academic Purposes 4 (2005) 257–277 www.elsevier.com/locate/jeap

Pattern and meaning across genres and disciplines: An exploratory study Nicholas Groom* Department of English, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK

Abstract Work in corpus linguistics has led to the development of a theory of language as phraseology [Hunston, S., & Francis, G. (1999). Pattern grammar: A corpus-driven approach to the lexical grammar of English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sinclair, J. M. (1991). Corpus, concordance, collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sinclair, J. M. (2004). Trust the text: Language, corpus and discourse. London: Routledge.]. This paper investigates whether and to what extent phraseology, as exemplified by the grammar patterns it v-link ADJ that- (e.g. ‘It is clear that the problem of evidence continues to vex new historicist criticism’) and it v-link ADJ to-inf (e.g. ‘it is important to compare unemployment rates on a consistent basis’), varies or remains consistent across four multi-million word corpora representing two different genres (research articles and book reviews) and two different disciplinary discourses (History and Literary Criticism), and is therefore at least partly constitutive of these generic and discursive formations. A quantitative analysis of the corpus data reveals significant and systematic distributional trends across both genres and disciplines, and a qualitative analysis of concordance lines confirms that these trends are not arbitrary but motivated by genre-specific purposes and discipline-specific practices, respectively. The paper concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and pedagogical implications of the study, and by making suggestions for further research. q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Corpus linguistics; Phraseology; Variation; disciplinary discourse; Genre; English for academic purposes

* Tel.: C44 121 414 5670; fax: C44 121 414 5668. E-mail address: [email protected].

1475-1585/$ - see front matter q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2005.03.002

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1. Introduction One of the major achievements of corpus linguistics over the last two decades has been the identification of a close and systematic association between the structural patterns and semantic properties of naturally occurring language data (Francis, 1993; Francis, Manning, & Hunston, 1996, 1998; Hunston, 2001, 2003; Hunston & Francis, 1998; Hunston, Francis, & Manning, 1997; Sinclair, 1991). From this work has emerged a new theoretical perspective, which sees ‘meaning [as] attached to frequently occurring sequences rather than to their constituent lexical or grammatical items’ (Hunston, 2003, p. 32). This theory of language as phraseology, which Hunston and Francis (1999) have termed pattern grammar, rejects the traditional view of syntax and lexis as separate domains, and offers an alternative to formalist conceptions of language as a series of syntactically generated slots which the speaker or writer fills with grammatically, semantically and pragmatically acceptable lexical items. And whilst sharing much theoretical common ground with the Systemic-Functional linguistics of Halliday (cf. Firth, 1957; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004; Stubbs, 1993), it also casts doubt on the Hallidayan view of lexis as most delicate grammar (Hasan, 1987), that is, of lexical items as the terminal points of networks of system choices that begin at much higher levels of grammatical abstraction. Instead, pattern grammar views ‘semi-preconstructed phrases that constitute single choices’ (Sinclair, 1991, p. 110), as both the core unit of linguistic meaning and structure, and as the principal focus of linguistic analysis. (For further discussion see Hunston, 2002; Hunston & Francis, 1999; Partington, 1998; Sinclair, 2004; Stubbs, 2001a,b, 2003; Thompson & Hunston, 2005). As well as challenging a range of linguistic and lexicographical orthodoxies, pattern grammar has important ramifications for theories of genre and discourse, two research frontiers closely associated with the field of EAP. Specifically, if it is the case that ‘[t]here is ultimately no distinction between form and meaning’ (Sinclair, 1991, p. 7), then we should expect different written and spoken genres and different discourse communities to select or prioritise different phraseological patterns; the former on the grounds that they serve different communicative and institutional purposes and thus prioritise different rhetorical strategies (Askehave & Swales, 2001; Bazerman, 1988, 1994; Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995; Swales, 1990), and the latter on the grounds that they are characterised by different ideational interests and interpersonal practices (Becher, 1987, 1989; Hyland, 2000). And it would also be reasonable to anticipate a complex interaction of the two, such that each generic/disciplinary formation might have its own distinct (and always evolving) phraseological profile. The purpose of this paper is to test these hypotheses empirically, by focusing on one group of phraseological patterns across two academic genres—research articles and book reviews—and two academic disciplines—Literary Criticism and History. The patterns selected for analysis here will be referred to as ‘introductory it’ patterns throughout this paper (Francis, 1993). As the name suggests, introductory it patterns are phraseological units in which the dummy subject pronoun it is followed by a link verb such as BE, BECOME or SEEM, an adjective or noun group, and a finite or non-finite thatclause, to-clause, wh-clause or -ing clause. My specific focus will be on patterns with thatclause and to-clause complementation, as previous research has established these

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(albeit under various descriptive rubrics) as particularly salient in academic English (e.g. Biber, Conrad, & Reppen, 1998; Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999; Charles, 2000, 2004; Hewings & Hewings, 2002; Moore, 2002; Oakey, 2002; Thetela, 1997). After a brief review of this research, the methodology of the present study will be described. This is followed by a detailed analysis of the study’s principal results, and finally by a short discussion of its implications for research and pedagogy. First, however, it will be necessary to provide a little more detail on pattern grammar as a theory of language, and as an approach to empirical linguistic description.

2. An introduction to pattern grammar The basic theory of pattern grammar rests on two simple but powerful observations, both of which stem directly from the empirical analysis of large-scale corpus data. The first is that the different meanings of polysemous words are signalled by different patterns; and the second is that words which share aspects of the same meaning share the same pattern. To illustrate the first of these observations, consider the following two citations, which also serve to illustrate the two phraseological patterns that form the empirical focus of the present study: [1] Boucicaut probably knew it was being written and it is possible that he even commissioned it (HA/JMH).1 [2] Bowyer has transcribed some passages from Drayton’s works so carefully that it is possible to see which edition she used (LA/EMLS). As can be seen, [1] assesses the likelihood or validity of something, while [2] assesses whether something is relatively easy or difficult to do. Clearly, this difference in meaning is not inherent in the word possible itself; but neither is it completely context-dependent and thus only retrievable via the occult workings of inferential pragmatics (Stubbs, 2001a). Rather, the claim is that the validity meaning is made by the syntagm ‘it plus link verb, plus the adjective possible, plus a that-clause’ (henceforward it v-link ADJ that, following the notation conventions of Francis et al., 1996, 1998), and the difficulty meaning is made by the syntagm ‘itClink verbCpossibleCto-infinitive clause’ (henceforward it v-link ADJ to-inf). In short, the pattern grammar argument is that the phraseological whole is semantically much more than just the sum of its parts. Furthermore, it is claimed—and here we turn to the second of the two observations stated above—that other adjectives which have a meaning related to the notion of validity will also have the it v-link ADJ that pattern, and adjectives having a meaning related to the notion of difficulty will also have the pattern it v-link ADJ to-inf, as illustrated in Table 1. The adjectives in these lists are not synonyms, of course, but they do form two clearly recognisable (and clearly differentiated) meaning groups. The relationship between meaning groups and structural patterns will be explored in more detail in Section 3. Here, it will be 1

The abbreviations in brackets refer to the corpus and journal from which each citation comes; for example, ‘History Articles’/’Journal of Medieval History’ in the case of citation [1]. A key for these abbreviations is provided in the Appendix.

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Table 1 Pattern and meaning in paradigmatic perspective ‘Validity’ It is

‘Difficulty’ Clear Inconceivable Obvious Possible True Unlikely Well-known

That

It is

Difficult Easy Feasible Hard Impractical Possible Simple

To-inf

enough to close with a note on terminology: in this paper, the word pattern will be used to refer to abstract representations such as it v-link ADJ to-inf, while the word sequence will refer to attested strings of words describable by such formulae (e.g. ‘it is possible to see which edition she used’).

3. An introduction to introductory it patterns As Francis et al. (1996, p. 518) point out, introductory it patterns are the default option in stretches of text where there are two pieces of new information, but no old or given information with which to introduce them. Thus, a statement such as ‘It is important to respect the integrity of Shelley’s poem’ (La/Ron) conforms to the general preference in English for end focus and end weight (Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartvik, 1985), whereas its canonical SVC alternative, ‘To respect the integrity of Shelley’s poem is important’, does not.2 Another key feature of these patterns is that the first piece of new information always evaluates the second one (Francis, 1993; Hunston & Sinclair, 2000; Sinclair, 1990). For writers of academic texts, this constitutes a valuable persuasive device; in the above citation, for example, the anticipated reader is invited to view ‘respect[ing] the integrity of Shelley’s poem’ as ‘important.’ (How empirical readers actually respond to such evaluative positioning is another matter, of course.) A third advantage of such patterns for writers of academic texts is that their use of it as grammatical subject disguises the highly personal and subjective nature of such evaluations, thereby ‘add[ing] to the impression of the presentation of objective, impersonal knowledge’ so valued in academic discourse (Hewings and Hewings, 2002, p. 368). Fourthly, large-scale corpus research has established that the adjectives that occur in these patterns fall into a limited number of broad meaning groups, which the present study will refer to as ADEQUACY, DESIRABILITY, DIFFICULTY, EXPECTATION, IMPORTANCE and VALIDITY, respectively. These groups are based (with slight adaptations) on the comprehensive account of introductory it patterns provided by Francis et al. (1998), and are reproduced here as Table 2. As can be seen, each meaning group can occur in both patterns with the exception of DIFFICULTY, which is restricted to the it v-link ADJ to-inf pattern. 2 Francis (1993) turns this observation into a more general argument against the whole notion of syntactic ‘canonicity’.

Table 2 A classification system for pattern/meaning associations (based on Francis et al., 1998, pp. 480–484 and 494–498)

DESIRABILITY

‘good/bad’ in general terms ‘appropriate to the circumstances’

it v-link ADJ that

it v-link ADJ to-inf

Rappaport should not be criticized for failing to reconcile this contradiction; it is enough that she introduces the shopping dilemma so thoughtfully It is regrettable that the essays were not better edited

It is insufficient to argue, with Alkon, that the scientific premise behind the creation of the monster in Frankenstein was not believable It is good to see a published version of Andrew WallaceHadrill’s stimulating thoughts on the domestic architecture of Rome Having discussed the opposition or ambivalence of humanists, like Erasmus and More, to colonization, it is appropriate to consider their relation to Montaigne It is difficult to imagine how any reputation could withstand these hagiographical excesses it is not surprising to find patrons being asked to arbitrate quarrels within towns

It is fitting, therefore, that Trevor Griffiths has chosen Lancashire as the focus of his investigation of British workers

DIFFICULTY

–

EXPECTATION ‘surprising and interesting’

It is interesting that Philip stresses the obedience of animals. but does not pick up the equally prominent biblical emphasis on other non-human tools of providence (LA/EMS) It is significant that the author never uses the term ‘possession‘ in his description of the events It is likely that the Brontes owned a copy of the fourth edition Interest rates on annuity rents remained constant throughout this period, so it is clear that market factors do not account for this variation

IMPORTANCE VALIDITY

‘likely’ ‘obvious’

It is important to notice the unavoidable foregrounding of racial violence in this incident it seems plausible to assume that the first list was compiled when the second one had already been completed It would be quite wrong to argue that all priests and doctors disinclined to support the Spanish Republic were somehow cruel and vindictive

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ADEQUACY

261

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At first glance, this apparent overlap might seem to undermine the basic claim that particular patterns are associated with particular meanings. But as Biber et al. (1999) point out, the frequencies of these meaning groups are not evenly distributed across the two patterns. In particular, the it v-link ADJ that pattern is principally associated with VALIDITY (Biber et al., 1999, p. 675), while it v-link ADJ to-inf is more closely associated with IMPORTANCE, DIFFICULTY and DESIRABILITY (p. 721).3 Finally, recent corpus-based work by Charles (2000, 2004) suggests that an even more fundamental form/meaning distinction can be made between these two patterns. At first glance, there may not seem to be much rhetorical difference between, say: [3] It is interesting that a decision was taken to tackle the thorny question of Kashmir at that particular time (HA/EJIH). and [4] It is interesting to note that these events were not held to pose a direct threat to Salazar (HA/CEH). However, Charles (2000) argues that it v-link ADJ to-inf sequences such as [4] above are indeed rhetorically distinctive, in that they help to confer what she calls an ‘appropriate academic persona’ on the voice of the writer. Sometimes (notably in the Methods sections of experimental research reports) this involves the well-documented strategy of preserving credibility through the deliberate obfuscation of agency (cf. Hyland, 1998). For example, the statement ‘it proved impossible to extract critical current data of any useful resolution’ is less face-threatening than its more confessional alternatives, such as ‘we found it impossible to extract.’, ‘we could not extract.’, etc. But Charles finds that it v-link ADJ to-inf is far more frequently used to construct a positive aura around the figure of the writer-as-researcher, by exploiting the fact that, in this pattern, the adjective evaluates a to-infinitive clause, and thus by implication evaluates the performer of the action indexed by the to-infinitive verb itself. In example [4] above, it is the process of noting, as much as the proposition being noted, that is evaluated as ‘interesting’—and, of course, it is the writer himself (for it is a ‘he’ here) who is doing this noting, and is therefore being interesting at this point in his text. Charles suggests that the writer himself or herself is identifiable as the focus of such evaluations in the vast majority of instances, but the underlying principle remains the same even in cases where the agent of the to-infinitive is clearly not the writer, as in [5] it is misleading to present Maistre as a precursor to fascism, as Isaiah Berlin and others have done (HR/AHR). 3 Biber et al. (1999) talk of ‘extraposed complement clauses’ rather than introductory it patterns, and analyse and label meaning groups somewhat differently, but their categories are sufficiently analogous for the above observations to be made. That said, it should be noted that Biber et al. (1999) do not espouse a phraseological view of language per se. Rather, they make the more conservative observation that certain words occur more frequently than others in certain grammatical environments, thereby maintaining a more traditional view of syntax and lexis as fundamentally distinct entities.

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What Charles’ work implies, then, is that a fundamental rhetorical distinction can plausibly be made between it v-link ADJ that as a pattern that evaluates propositions, and it v-link ADJ to-inf as a pattern that evaluates processes, and by extension the agents of these processes. In summary, the picture that emerges from the above review is of a complex set of pattern/meaning associations centred around two phraseologies with rather different semantic affordances.4 Given the now substantial body of work demonstrating linguistic variation within and across disciplines and genres at other levels of analysis (e.g. Atkinson, 1999; Conrad, 2001; Gledhill, 2000a; Luzon Marco, 2000; MacDonald, 1994; Moore, 2002), and given the broad consensus that such variation is not arbitrary but always rhetorically motivated (Hyland, 2000), it is reasonable to suppose that different genres and disciplines might make differential use of these phraseological resources. It is precisely this possibility that the present study aims to investigate.

4. Data and methods of the study The study reported here analysed the qualitative distribution and rhetorical functions of the patterns it v-link ADJ that- and it v-link ADJ to-inf across four corpora: HistArt, a 3.1million-word corpus of History research articles drawn from a range of recognised History journals; HistRev, a 3.2-million-word corpus of History book reviews drawn from among the same sources; LitArt, a 4-million-word corpus of research articles in Literary Criticism, again drawn from a range of recognised journals; and LitRev, a 1-million-word corpus drawn from the same sources as LitArt. (A full list of sources can be found in Appendix.) As the corpora are of different sizes, all frequency data reported in this paper will be presented as normalised figures, calculated per million words.5 The two genres selected for analysis were deemed highly suitable for present purposes, as their principal rhetorical purposes are both well-known and clearly differentiated. Research articles primarily function to construct and promote new knowledge claims (Bazerman, 1988; Swales, 1990), while book reviews primarily function to evaluate the knowledge claims of other researchers (Hyland, 2000; Motta-Roth, 1995).6 And although History and Literary Criticism are both text-based humanities disciplines, they too are more than sufficiently differentiated for the purposes of the present study. The mainstream view of History still prevalent in university curricula around the world is of an essentially impersonal discipline principally concerned with the accretion and empirically based interpretation of factual data (Carr, 1990; Fulbrook, 2002; Jenkins, 1995), whereas mainstream Literary Criticism is characterised by a much more explicitly subjective approach to evaluation, in which individual readerly judgement, sensitivity and ingenuity are valued attributes (Bennett and Royle, 2004; Eagleton, 1996; Klarer, 2004). 4 Apologies to Gunther Kress (2003) for appropriating the sense, but greatly reducing the scope of this useful formulation. 5 The corpora are of different sizes because they were originally compiled for other research purposes, which (among other things) required the collection of whole texts, rather than samples. 6 It could also be pointed out that the principal purpose of each genre is a subordinate purpose of the other.

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The corpus data were accessed using version 3.0 of WordSmith Tools (Scott, 1999), and each phraseological sequence was coded according to a classification system based on the taxonomies provided by Francis et al. (1998, pp. 480–484 and 494–498). The classification system itself was introduced earlier as Table 2. It should be stressed here that adjectives were not assigned to particular meaning groups on an a priori basis during the coding process. Rather, judgements as to the correct coding for each attested phraseological sequence were made by looking at the text (and where necessary the expanded co-text) of each individual concordance line. Although very time-consuming, this procedure did ensure a much higher degree of accuracy than could be achieved through automated corpus processing methods. For the most part, the semantic values attached to each adjective by Francis et al. (1998) were found to be appropriate for my data as well (itself an interesting finding), but differences were occasionally noted. For example, Francis et al. assign the adjective interesting to their SURPRISING AND INTERESTING meaning group (relabelled as EXPECTATION in the present study). But while my analysis revealed this coding to be appropriate for sequences featuring the link verb form is: [6] It is interesting to note here that William and Tutaynus are Norman names, yet as late as 1166 they relate themselves to the Lombard race (HA/JMH). it was not correct for sequences with would be: [7] it would be interesting to know more about general public reaction to the opinions that Doenecke studies (HR/AHR). Here, a coding of DESIRABILITY would clearly be more appropriate. This observation echoes the findings of a recent study by Hunston (2003), who suggests that patterns and meanings frequently vary according to the finite verb forms that introduce them, even when these different forms have the same lemma. Given that the interrelationship of form and meaning is precisely the focus of the present study, it was deemed necessary for the research reported here to control for this additional dimension of variability. As space does not permit detailed analysis of all finite verb forms occurring in it v-link ADJ that- and it v-link ADJ to-inf, the discussion presented below will focus exclusively on the three most frequent: is, seems and would be.7

5. Results and analysis The present analysis found significant, systematic and semantically motivated phraseological variation across all four corpora. Space does not permit a full treatment of findings, so the present discussion will be restricted to dominant pattern/meaning associations for each corpus only. As Tables 3–5 show, the dominant phraseology for each corpus varies according to all three variables of genre, discipline and finite verb form. 7 In fact, was is the second most frequently occurring link verb overall, but it was excluded from the present analysis because its overall frequency stems disproportionately from just one corpus—unsurprisingly, HistArt.

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Table 3 Dominant pattern/meaning associations for it is ADJ that/to-inf Corpus

HistArt HistRev LitArt LitRev

Dominant pattern (DP)

Dominant meaning (DM)

DP/DM co-occurrence Freq. per million words

As % of DP

As % of DM

it v-link ADJ that it v-link ADJ to-inf it v-link ADJ that it v-link ADJ to-inf

Validity Difficulty Validity Difficulty

149 102 114 143

78 69 61 64

99 100 96 100

Given this variational complexity, the qualitative analysis of concordance data that follows will discuss generic and disciplinary associations in turn, and treat each finite verb form separately. 5.1. Generic continuities The quantitative data above identify genre as the controlling variable for all introductory it patterns with is as finite verb (see Table 3). Also identified are generic continuities for research articles in the case of phraseologies beginning with it seems (see Table 4), and for book reviews in the case of phraseologies beginning with it would be (see Table 5). As the following qualitative analysis of concordance data will show, these associations are neither arbitrary nor coincidental, but very clearly motivated by the rhetorical purposes of each of the two genres in question. Table 4 Dominant pattern/meaning associations for it seems ADJ that/to-inf Corpus

HistArt HistRev LitArt LitRev

Dominant pattern (DP)

Dominant meaning (DM)

DP/DM co-occurrence Freq. per million words

As % of DP

As % of DM

it v-link ADJ that it v-link ADJ that it v-link ADJ that it v-link ADJ to-inf

Validity Validity Validity Desirability

23 6 23 15

95 76 85 60

96 95 94 94

Table 5 Dominant pattern/meaning associations for it would be ADJ that/to-inf Corpus

HistArt HistRev LitArt LitRev

Dominant pattern (DP)

Dominant meaning (DM)

DP/DM co-occurrence Freq. per million words

As % of DP

As % of DM

it v-link ADJ to-inf it v-link ADJ to-inf it v-link ADJ to-inf it v-link ADJ to-inf

Validity Desirability Desirability Desirability

9 17 9 21

43 65 46 70

97 100 100 100

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5.1.1. It is ADJ patterns As Table 3 shows, it is LIKELY/OBVIOUS that is the dominant pattern/meaning association for research articles in both corpora. While this emphasis on VALIDITY meanings is perhaps not surprising in itself, it is interesting to note that the concordance data bear out the distinction made in Francis et al. (1998) between two types of VALIDITY assessment; one based on prima facie evidence and appealing to notions of obviousness: [8] From the memoirs of a merchant of Patmos, one Iakovos Miliote, written around the year 1588, it is clear that the Patmiots regularly sailed not only throughout the eastern Mediterranean, but to southern Italian ports as well (HA/PAP). and the other providing more circumstantial evaluations based on appeals to plausibility: [9] While I have yet to find direct evidence that Eliot knew of Evangeline Adams’ 1914 trial and her subsequent vindication, there is considerable circumstantial evidence to suggest that it is likely that he did (LA/JML). The present data also support Hunston’s (2001) argument that the phenomenon of collocation is not restricted to individual words, but also applies to larger phraseological units and thus contributes to textual cohesion in more global terms. In particular, the present analysis found that the VALIDITY sequence it is true that (NZ155 across the two corpora) invariably pairs a concessive clause with a counterclaim: [10] while there is no doubt that Katherine is subjected to power, it is also true that she wields an irreducible force of her own (LA/EMLS). [11] This is surely an exaggeration on Villaescusa’s part, although it is true that both towers are quite high (HA/PAP). Hewings and Hewings (2002) interpret examples of the misuse of it is true that (and other attitude markers and emphatics, as they term them) found in their corpus of non-native MBA dissertations as reflecting a tendency among such student writers ‘to state propositions more forcefully than is appropriate’ (p. 381). However, the present analysis suggests that it is not that such phraseologies are inappropriately ‘strident’ (p. 378) in themselves, but that nonnative student writers may be unaware of (and therefore inadvertently violate) the form of longer-range textual prediction (Tadros, 1993, 1994) or prospection (Sinclair, 1995) that their use sets up. If the above findings for research articles are broadly in line with expectations, the finding that it is EASY/DIFFICULT to-inf is the dominant phraseology for book reviews across the two disciplines is somewhat more unexpected. Given the fundamental evaluative purpose of the book review genre as discussed earlier, it would be reasonable to expect the DESIRABILITY meaning group, which covers the basic good/bad evaluative polarity, to be prominent here. But the present data find DESIRABILITY to be relatively dispreferred in both HistRev and LitRev, only constituting 12.5% of all instances of it is ADJ to-inf across the two corpora. What academic reviewers seem to prefer to do instead is draw in various

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ways on the notion of DIFFICULTY. Closer analysis reveals that this phraseology furnishes reviewers in historical and literary critical journals alike with a wide and flexible range of evaluative possibilities. It is frequently used for both negative assessments of specific claims: [12] it is hard to accept Biancalana’s assertion that the extension of fee tails did not affect estate planning (HR/EHR). [13] it is impossible to accept Roston’s convenient claim that Eliot was insensible to the modern visual arts (LR/EIC). and for negative assessments of a book’s argument or organisational structure in more general terms: [14] It is not easy to pinpoint the central argument in Kelly’s rather wide-ranging work (HR/AHR). [15] Glazener packs each chapter so tightly. that it is hard to take in everything at once (LR/NCL). It is also used for negative evaluations of a more contextual nature, usually focusing on the book’s intended audience: [16] It is difficult to discern for whom Wills is writing (LR/EMLS). [17] It is difficult to see hard-pressed libraries investing in this text (HR/EHR). Praise tends towards the general end of the spectrum (cf. Hyland, 2000, pp 46–49), and (as with the negative evaluations above) typically features mental processes in the toinfinitive: [18] It is difficult to think of another scholar with such breath [sic] of comprehension and appreciation (LR/JML). [19] It is easy to imagine many an advanced seminar starting with this book as its foundational text (HR/AHR). This phraseology is also noteworthy in that it provides a particularly clear illustration of how academic writers use the it v-link to-inf pattern to construct an appropriate academic persona for themselves (Charles, 2000). Here, reviewers typically present themselves as struggling to be appropriately critical, objective and rational: [20] It is difficult to take issue with Miles’s conclusions (HR/AHR). [21] it is hard to fault Boehmer’s choice of texts and the perspicacity of her comments (LR/EIC). [22] It is hard to describe this extraordinary work without resorting to the language of wonders (HR/AHR). [23] It is difficult not [to] be bowled over by Hughes’s own remarkable essay on Coleridge (LR/RON).

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as struggling to be appropriately fair and reasonable: [24] such mistakes... come a little too thick. It is difficult to stop picking them up (LR/RON) [25] It is hard to be patient with these rambling discussions (HR/AHR). and as struggling to provide a thorough or representative account of the book under review, whether for good or ill: [26] It is difficult to do justice to such a magisterial project (LR/RON). [27] In a brief review, it is difficult to address the full range of problems that plague this book (HR/AHR). An alternative use of this phraseology, often found at the beginning of review articles, is to evaluate the goal of book (rather than the task of the reviewer) as difficult to achieve: [28] It is almost impossible to do justice to a writer as voluminous and varied as Erasmus in a single volume biography (LR/EMLS). [29] It is not easy to turn conference proceedings into a book (HR/AHR). Such sequences also have a text-cohesive function, in that they ‘prospect’ (Sinclair, 1995) an evaluation of the degree to which the text under review has succeeded in meeting this challenge: [30] it is not easy to come up with a fresh interpretation of the French Reformation. William Monter, however, has managed to accomplish this feat in his latest work (HR/AHR). As might be expected, this empathetic critical strategy also lends itself particularly well to the mitigation of negative evaluations: [31] The organization of sections is somewhat confusing at times, a product of the diffuse issues and personalities involved. It is not easy to write coherently about so loosely coupled a polity as the Habsburg monarchy (HR/AHR). 5.1.2. It seems ADJ patterns As Table 4 shows, genre is the main controlling variable for this phraseology in research articles across the two disciplines. And as before, concordance analysis reveals a motivated association between the it v-link ADJ that pattern and the VALIDITY meaning group in both corpora. This association suggests that it seems ADJ that, like it is ADJ that discussed above, is first and foremost a resource for claim making: [32] it seems clear that lineage was being used as a tool to express status (HA/JMH). [33] it seems likely that Jonson and Donne were already well acquainted in the early 1590 s (LA/EIC).

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Table 6 Distribution of adjectives across two validity phraseologies

HistArt

LitArt

It is LIKELY/OBVIOUS that -

It seems LIKELY/OBVIOUS that -

clear (117); possible (86); true (67); likely (59); probable, unlikely (25); evident (22); obvious (15); well known (13); certain (12); impossible (7); apparent, conceivable (6); arguable (4); doubtful, undeniable (3) clear (123); true (88); possible (82); likely (51); unlikely (28); evident (17); apparent (14); certain (12); well known (12); obvious (11); probable (12); conceivable (7); impossible (4)

likely (34); clear (13); unlikely (7); possible (5); impossible (4); plausible (3); certain, probable (2); obvious (1)

likely (37); clear (23); unlikely (13); improbable (6); doubtful, obvious, possible (3); evident, impossible, probable (2); certain, inconceivable, plausible (1)

Please note that adjectives not occurring in the alternative pattern are highlighted in bold.

The difference between the two phraseologies is that the former is more associated with evidential obviousness, while the latter is more associated with circumstantial likelihood, as Table 6 makes clear. 5.1.3. it would be ADJ patterns As with the it is ADJ variant discussed earlier, the to-infinitive pattern dominates sequences beginning with it would be in HistRev and LitRev. However, DESIRABILITY rather than DIFFICULTY is the main meaning group. Interestingly, negative sequences always have a positive evaluative function, presenting the reviewer as being aware of the need to avoid making unreasonable judgements: [34] it would be quite unfair to leave the impression that such writing characterizes the whole work (HR/EHR). [35] it would be unfair to argue that Poole should have immersed herself fully in such developments (LR/EMLS). while positive sequences are always focused on the book or author under review, and (in a neat reversal of the above) always constitute negative rather than positive evaluations: [36] In general, Ruf’s book is persuasive, but it would be helpful to locate the village more firmly in larger contexts (HR/AHR). [37] It would be helpful to have more introductory information.. Nevertheless, MEMEM is a valuable source for linguistic and philologic research in early modern English (LR/EMLS). As the above examples illustrate, however, such criticisms tend to be constructive in spirit, and are almost invariably located within the context of a more positive overall assessment. Indeed, this phraseology also provides a highly conventionalised rhetorical bridge between the (often negative) detailed critique (see Section 5.1.1 above) and the (usually positive) closing comments that constitute the third and fourth moves of the generic structure of book reviews proposed by Motta-Roth (1995) (see also Hyland, 2000, p. 54):

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[38] it would be churlish to end on a negative note (HR/EHR). It would be unfair to conclude on such a critical point (HR/AHR). it would be unjust to conclude by caviling (HR/AHR). It would be wrong, however, to end on a negative note (HR/EHR). Interestingly, while this bridging phraseology is common in HistRev, it does not occur at all in LitRev. Because of the size differences between the two corpora noted earlier, it is perhaps unwise to conclude too strongly that this bespeaks a desire on the part of styleconscious literary critics to avoid anything that might appear cliche´d. However, there are a significant number of phraseological differences across the four corpora for which it is much easier to propose a disciplinary discourse-specific rationale, and it is to these differences that we now turn. 5.2. Disciplinary differences The quantitative data presented in Tables 3–5 above also find pattern/meaning associations of an apparently discipline-specific nature. Concordance analysis again confirms the rhetorically motivated nature of these associations, as will be discussed below. 5.2.1. It is ADJ patterns As Becher (1989) points out, all Humanities disciplines are fundamentally reiterative in that they are obliged to revisit and reinterpret material already studied by previous researchers. However, the present study finds that historians and literary critics persuade readers to accept their reinterpretations of the familiar in markedly different ways. For example, analysis of the concordance data for the it is ADJ that pattern reveals that the notion of evidential obviousness is not consistent across the two disciplines. In particular, evidence in LitArt can (and frequently does) include previously introduced aspects of the writer’s interpretation of the text under discussion, as in the following: [39] If the poem emphasises the poet’s independence, it is clear that in the ’Ode to Psyche’ the woman/goddess is seen as a highly eroticised object which exists only by the grace of the poet’s desire (LA/RON). Such ‘if you accept my previous argument, then this proposition is clear/obvious’ sequences are not a salient feature of the HistArt data, perhaps reflecting a greater emphasis on the empirical grounding of claims in History than is expected—or even possible—in Literary Criticism (MacDonald, 1994; Nash, 1990; cf. Nelson, Megill, & McCloskey, 1987; Stockton, 1995; Young & Leinhardt, 1998). These different forms of evidentiality and norms of critical practice inform a number of other discipline-specific phraseologies, as will be seen below. 5.2.2. It seems ADJ patterns The dominant it seems patterns in both HistRev and LitRev are motivated by the same underlying rhetorical goal: to evaluate the claims of the book under review. But marked phraseological differences between the two corpora suggest that historians and literary

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critics approach this genre-specific task in rather different ways. HistRev is dominated by it seems LIKELY/OBVIOUS that sequences assessing the validity of the reviewed book’s interpretation of the historical record: [40] In 1955 he was finally made a deputy governor, but it seems clear, though Muirhead has not been able to find conclusive evidence, that anti-Semitic feeling impeded his promotion (HR/AHR). [41] one must question the argument that control was a primary objective. It seems more likely that worker protest, organized and unorganized, made company officials aware of worker needs and the company responded (HR/AHR). LitRev, in contrast, is dominated by the to-infinitive pattern, and the semantic focus shifts from VALIDITY to DESIRABILITY, and thus from the impersonal evaluation of autonomous written arguments to the highly personalised evaluation of individual scholarly acts: [42] Though, by the 1890s, the grand narrative of religion was under threat from scientific theory. it seems a little wilful to assume that the predicament necessarily meant the complete collapse of human identity (LR/RON). [43] It seems overly optimistic to assume that women under patriarchy in the early modern period could establish an ‘authentic’ female space (LR/EMLS). 5.2.3. It would be ADJ patterns A similar case of broadly similar rhetorical goals with discipline-specific phraseological realisations is found in the data for it would be patterns in research articles. Both historians and literary critics predominantly use the pattern it would be ADJ to-inf to deal with anticipated objections to the text’s argument as it unfolds (Thompson, 2001). But the HistArt data evidences a greater concern with persuading the reader to reject plausible alternative interpretations, especially those which seem to have some evidential basis: [44] Their identities may have been fluid, but it would also be wrong to see them as cynical chameleons (HA/AHR). [45] Despite this entrenched habit of thought, it would be erroneous to characterize the Chinese view of history as one of continuous decline from the pinnacle of the Three Dynasties (LA/PAP). whereas the LitArt data leans towards persuading readers to accept interpretations which might at first glance seem rather far-fetched. This is done by prefacing them with extreme or straw man positions, in contrast with which they may seem more reasonable: [46] While it would be naive to identify Utopia with any one of these geographical features, it is important to note there are plenty of islands in the Indo-Pacific Region that could have served as prototypes for Utopia (LA/EMLS). [47] It would be rash to argue that ‘Punishment’ originates in a misreading of Larkin’s poem.. Nevertheless, it would seem that Heaney draws on Larkin’s example when he gives poetic expression to that response (LIT/JML).

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Once again, these different emphases are reflected phraseologically, in characteristic meaning group preferences for VALIDITY and DESIRABILITY, respectively.

6. Discussion and conclusions As an exploratory study of two patterns in two genres and two disciplines within just one broad faculty grouping, the present study cannot claim to have proved (nor has it sought to prove) that academic genres and disciplinary discourses can be described and differentiated in terms of their preferred phraseologies. What it has demonstrated, however, is that this hypothesis is well worth pursuing on a larger and more ambitious scale in the future. The two grammar patterns it v-link ADJ that and it v-link ADJ to-inf have been found to vary in systematic ways across the four corpora studied here, as predicted by the theoretical work of Hunston and Francis (1999), Sinclair (1991, 2004) and others. Throughout the foregoing analysis it has been argued that these phraseological preferences correlate strongly with the different communicative priorities and epistemological precepts of the two written genres and disciplinary discourses studied here. This in turn suggests that larger-scale corpus analysis may indeed reveal some kind of phraseological profile by means of which a particular genre or discourse might, in whole or in part, be identified. Clearly, further work is needed in order to investigate whether the present study’s findings hold true within and across a broader range of genres and disciplines, and within and across the other major faculty groupings of the academy. The question that arises at this point, then, is: how should such work proceed? One possible corpus-based approach would be to use computational tools to identify all the grammar patterns used in different specialist corpora of the kind studied here, thereby providing an exhaustive pattern profile for particular generic/disciplinary formations. Work is already under way to develop robust pattern parsing software based on the verb pattern descriptions compiled by Francis et al. (1996), and the initial results of trial versions of this software are highly promising (Mason, 2004; Mason & Hunston, 2004). The results of the application of such software to specific academic genres and/or disciplines would clearly be of great interest not only to researchers and practitioners in EAP, but also to applied linguists in general, as well as to scholars in computational fields such as natural language processing and information retrieval. Another approach also currently under development (Groom, in preparation) is methodologically more corpus-driven than corpus-based (Tognini-Bonelli, 2001), in that it does not work with pre-specified search items, or with tagged or parsed corpus data. Rather, this approach uses statistically selected high-frequency words such as prepositions and determiners as probes for significant phraseological sequences in large-scale corpus data, a method pioneered by Gledhill (1995, 1996, 2000a,b) in his groundbreaking work on scientific research articles. This approach is much more labour-intensive than its corpusbased alternative, and cannot easily be applied to modern mega-corpora such as the Bank of English or the British National Corpus. However, it is more sensitive to subtler shifts of meaning such as that observed in the case of ‘it is interesting’ versus ‘it would be interesting’, and to clause-collocational patterns such as that observed in the case of ‘it is true that’ discussed earlier. Above all, it is clear that a synergy between these approaches,

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as well as a constructive dialogue with others (e.g. Biber, Conrad, & Cortes, 2004; Cowie, 1998; Fillmore & Atkins, 1994; Hyland & Tse, 2005; Stubbs & Barth, 2003) is highly desirable for the future development of phraseology as a research frontier in general. Finally, although the primary motivation for this study is not pedagogical, its findings do have some implications for EAP and academic literacies pedagogy. In general, the study may be regarded as offering clear empirical support for Hyland’s (2002) argument that EAP/ESP must be as specific as possible in both its lesson content and its class composition. However, it also offers hope to the majority of teachers whose institutional constraints preclude such pedagogical luxuries. In such situations, a common compromise between principle and practicality is to divide students into groups along broad faculty lines (e.g. Humanities, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, etc.) except, perhaps, where a particularly strong academic, demographic and/or economic warrant exists for the creation of single-discipline classes (e.g. Medicine, Law, Business, etc.). A current version of good practice in this heterogeneous milieu is to organise the syllabus in whole or in part around the major genres that students are likely to encounter in their studies, and to present generalisations about the linguistic and rhetorical features of these genres not as models to be applied, but as hypotheses for students to test by investigating authentic texts and practices in their own disciplines, thereby allowing considerations of subject specificity and disciplinary variation to inform classroom discussion (Johns, 1997). The present study’s observations of subtle disciplinary differences within broader generic continuities would seem to provide some additional linguistic support for the pedagogic arguments that have already been offered in favour of such approaches (e.g. Swales and Feak, 1994, p. 2–3). At the very least, as ever more academic English goes online, and as corpus analysis software becomes ever more accessible and user friendly, it is becoming increasingly easy to compile and access specialist corpora which students and teachers could use for precisely such empirical investigations in the EAP classroom (Cheng, Warren, & Xu, 2003; Cobb, 1997; Johns & King, 1991; Sripicharn, 2002; Wichmann, Fligelstone, McEnery, & Knowles, 1997). And it is to be hoped that such work, both within and beyond the classroom, will ultimately help to establish phraseology as a central component of language pedagogy and linguistic theory alike.

Acknowledgements The author would like to thank the UK Arts and Humanities Research Board for funding the research from which the present paper derives. The author would also like to thank Susan Hunston, Carole Patilla and the two anonymous reviewers of this paper for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Appendix. Key to abbreviations and list of sources Corpora HA History research articles LA Literary Criticism research articles

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HR History book reviews LR Literary Criticism book reviews Journals AHR CEH EHR EJIH JMH PAP EIC EMLS EMS JML NCL RON

American Historical Review Contemporary European History English Historical Review Electronic Journal of International History Journal of Medieval History Past and Present Essays in Criticism Early Modern Literary Studies Essays in Medieval Studies Journal of Modern Literature Nineteenth Century Literature Romanticism on the Net

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Nicholas Groom is a doctoral candidate in corpus linguistics at the University of Birmingham, UK, where he also teaches Modern English Language and Applied Linguistics at undergraduate level. He has taught EFL, EAP and Academic Literacies in schools and tertiary institutions in England, Japan, Indonesia, Australia, Vietnam and Thailand.