Part of
Variation and Change in Spoken and Written Discourse: Perspectives from corpus linguisticsEdited by Julia Bamford, Silvia Cavalieri and Giuliana Diani
[Dialogue Studies 21] 2013
► pp. 223–238
Edited by Julia Bamford, Silvia Cavalieri and Giuliana Diani
[Dialogue Studies 21] 2013
► pp. 223–238
13. The difference a word can show
A diachronic corpus-based study of the demonstrative ‘this’ in tourism research article abstracts
This paper explores discoursal change in research article abstracts in tourism studies. Based on a corpus of research article abstracts published over a span of thirty years in three prominent academic journals, changes in the patterns of use of the demonstrative ‘this’ are investigated. Findings show that it is increasingly used with a narrow range of lexical items which seem to signal change in the way authors introduce their research to the discourse community and persuade readers to continue to read the research article.
