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Article In:
Concentric
Vol. 50:2 (2024) ► pp.293–320

Circumstantial and tactic augmentation

Unfolding interactive information structure in the method section of applied linguistics RAs

| Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz
| Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz
| University of New South Wales
The present study attempts to unveil patterns in interactive information structure of clause enhancement that conventionalize the actual representation of circumstantial elements which add information about time, place, manner, means, and reason/cause through circumstantial augmentation, tactic augmentation, or connectives in method sections of research articles (RAs). The dataset consisted of 120 method sections of randomly selected empirical RAs from ISI-indexed Q1-ranked applied linguistic journals published between 2020 and 2022. The results of the study point to a significant distinction in hypotactic augmentation to register circumstantial information in comparison to other choices available to authors. Moreover, the most striking observation to emerge from the data is that a logical information structure of circumstantial meaning is mostly facilitated through hypotactic non-finite enhancement rather than its finite counterpart. This viable preference lies in elliptical, evincing, and expressive functions of hypotactic clauses that make comprehension more attainable to the readers and assist authors in fulfilling the generic conventions and communicative purposes of academic writing and managing interactive information structures. A major theoretical implication of the current research entails the significance of the interactive functions of the options available to authors which can impose priorities on the system of choices within the context of information.
Keywords: circumstantial augmentation, circumstantial meaning, clause, interactive information structure, tactic augmentation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
  • 3.The rationale for the study
  • 4.Method
    • 4.1The corpus collection
    • 4.2Corpus coding
    • 4.3Corpus analysis
  • 5.Results and discussion
    • 5.1The elliptical function
    • 5.2The evincing function
    • 5.3The expressive function
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
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