Phraseological patterns in reporting clauses used in citation: A corpus-based study of theses in two disciplines

This study investigates the phraseological patterning that occurs in reporting clauses used to make references to others’ research. It examines finite reporting clauses with that-clause complement and draws upon two corpora of theses written by native speakers in contrasting disciplines: approximately 190,000 words in politics/international relations and 300,000 words in materials science. The findings show that both disciplines use significant numbers of these reporting clauses and that they most frequently occur as integral citations with a human subject. Following the work of [Francis, G., Hunston, S., & Manning, E. (1996). Collins cobuild grammar patterns 1: Verbs. London: HarperCollins], the reporting verbs are analysed into semantic groups. Further evidence of patterning is found in both the verb groups and the tenses that occur. In both corpora, the most frequent verb group is argue (e.g., argue, note, suggest) and the most frequent tense is present (e.g., Skinner arguesthat…). In materials science, however, there are almost as many instances of the find/show verb group (e.g., show, find, observe) and these occur predominantly in past tense (e.g., Sun (1990) showedthat…). The rhetorical functions of these patterns are discussed and explanations proposed based on genre and discipline. This research underlines the importance of phraseology in academic writing and ends by suggesting how working with patterns can be beneficial in raising students’ language awareness.