Informal Features in English Research Articles by Non-Native Writers: A Diachronic Study

Informal Features in English Research Articles by Non-Native Writers: A Diachronic StudyInformal Features in English Research Articles by Non-Native Writers: A Diachronic Study

This study examines the (in)formality of research articles authored by Korean scholars, focusing on diachronic changes over a 50-year period. A total of 68 articles in the field of linguistics and applied linguistics were selected from a journal published in Korea and divided into two time periods: from 1955 to 1989 (109, 390 words) and from 1990 to 2012 (166,559 words). Four informal features identified as contributing most to the informality of NS academic prose were chosen for analysis: first-person pronouns, sentence-initial conjunctions/ conjunctive adverbs, unattended anaphoric pronouns, and imperatives. The data analysis shows that the overall occurrence of these features decreased in NNS writing, a pattern similar to that in NS texts. The decline in first-person pronouns and sentence-initial conjunctions, and the rise in unattended anaphoric pronouns and imperatives are attributed to various factors influencing the NNS writers’ choice of linguistic structures, including disciplinary conventions, first language influence, and formal instruction.