Abstract

One of the basic goals of academic research is to explain the phenomena that researchers observe through causal relations. From a discursive perspective, however, how cause-effect patterns (CEPs) are reflected in academic writing is a major question to be investigated. Meanwhile, a problem is that sub-disciplines exploring human sciences may exhibit radical variations in terms of their discursive use of cause-effect patterns. Language studies is an umbrella term that encompasses many disciplines, including literature, language teaching, translation studies and linguistics. On a surface level, because such disciplines address language, one may assume that they follow similar ways of explaining language-related phenomena. This article is based on findings obtained from a study of the cause-effect patterns in 60 discussion sections randomly selected from 12 high-impact journals in four sub-disciplines of language studies. It aims to (i) categorise the types of the cause-effect patterns into ‘cause in focus’ and ‘effect in focus’, (ii) identify the most frequently used cause-effect signals, and (iii) ascertain whether there is any significant difference between the sub-disciplines in terms of their use of cause-effect patterns. Based on Fisher’s exact test, the findings reveal that a significant difference exists between the sub-disciplines in terms of their use of cause-effect patterns, and they also suggest that language teaching papers use the highest number of cause-effect patterns and thus were remarkably explanatory in explicating the phenomena they dealt with.

摘要

学术研究的基本目标之一是通过因果关系解释研究人员观察到的现象。然而，从话语角度来看，因果模式（CEP）如何在学术写作中体现是一个需要研究的主要问题。与此同时，一个问题是，探索人文科学的子学科在因果模式的话语使用方面可能会表现出根本性的变化。语言研究是一个涵盖许多学科的总称，包括文学、语言教学、翻译研究和语言学。从表面上看，由于这些学科涉及语言，人们可能会认为它们遵循类似的方式来解释与语言相关的现象。本文基于对 60 个讨论部分的因果模式的研究结果，这些讨论部分是从语言研究四个子学科的 12 种高影响力期刊中随机选出的。其目的是（i）将因果模式的类型分类为“焦点原因”和“焦点结果”，（ii）识别最常用的因果信号，以及（iii）确定是否存在任何子学科之间在因果模式的使用方面存在显着差异。基于Fisher精确检验，研究结果表明，各分支学科之间在因果模式的使用方面存在显着差异，并且还表明语言教学论文使用因果模式的数量最多，因此语言教学论文使用因果模式的数量最多。在解释他们所处理的现象时具有显着的解释性。