Article published in:
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
Vol. 22:2 (2017) ► pp. 153–186

Multi-Dimensional Analysis, text constellations, and interdisciplinary discourse

| University of Birmingham
| University of Birmingham
| University of Cambridge
| University of Central Lancashire

Multi-Dimensional Analysis (MDA) has been widely used to explore register variation. This paper reports on a project using MDA to explore the features of an interdisciplinary academic domain. Six dimensions of variation are identified in a corpus of 11,000 journal articles in environmental studies. We then focus on articles in one interdisciplinary journal, Global Environmental Change (GEC). It is expected that these articles will diverge sufficiently to produce differences that are analogous to register differences. Instead of identifying these “registers” on external criteria, we use the dimensional profiles of individual texts to identify ‘constellations’ of texts sharing combinations of features. Six such constellations are derived, consisting of texts with commonalities in their approaches to research: the development of predictive models; quantitative research; discussions of theory and policy; and human-environment studies focusing on individual voices. The identification of these constellations could not have been achieved through an a priori categorisation of texts.

Keywords: Multi-Dimensional Analysis, interdisciplinary discourse, text constellations
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The language of academic disciplines
    • 2.1Multi-Dimensional Analysis
    • 2.2Disciplinary variation
  • 3.The Birmingham-Elsevier Environment Corpus
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1.Identifying and interpreting dimensions
      • 4.1.1Dimension 1: System-oriented vs. action-oriented
      • 4.1.2Dimension 2: Explicit vs. implicit argumentation
      • 4.1.3Dimension 3: Informality
      • 4.1.4Dimension 4: Conceptual discourse
      • 4.1.5Dimension 5: Text-focused vs. site-focused
      • 4.1.6Dimension 6: Non-research world vs. research world
    • 4.2Identifying constellations
  • 5.Results and discussion
    • 5.1Dimension scores and the 11 journals
    • 5.2The text constellations in GEC
      • 5.2.1Constellations 1, 5 and 3: Dimensional profiles
      • 5.2.2The other three constellations
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 16 October 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.22.2.01tho
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