List of tables

Part of

Variation in University Student Writing: A communicative text type approach
Larissa Goulart
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 117] 2024
► pp. xv–xviii

List of tables

Table 1.1Summary of studies investigating academic discourse using Biber’s (1988) Dimensions14

Table 1.2Summary of studies investigating academic Discourse through new multidimensional analyses17

Table 1.3Mean Dimension scores for essays across studies22

Table 1.4Summary of MD studies investigating university writing across university registers23

Table 1.5Summary of MD studies investigating university writing across disciplines28

Table 2.1Corpus of study35

Table 2.2Internal composition of the ETS corpus36

Table 2.3Internal composition of the British Academic Written English Corpus37

Table 2.4Internal composition of the corpus used in this study37

Table 3.1Characteristics of registers identified in MICUSP (Römer & O’Donnell, 2011, p. 170)50

Table 3.2Characteristics of registers identified in BAWE (Nesi & Gardner, 2012, pp. 36–42)51

Table 3.3Characteristics of registers identified in the ETS corpus52

Table 3.4Characteristics of registers identified in the BrAWE corpus (Goulart, 2021, p. 5)53

Table 3.5Shared registers in previous studies of university writing56

Table 4.1The framework of communicative purposes of university writing68

Table 4.2Distribution of communicative purposes in the corpus71

Table 4.3Minor purposes associated with each communicative text type72

Table 4.4Registers within the communicative text type of to give a procedural recount74

Table 4.5Registers within the Communicative text type of to Argue77

Table 4.6Registers within the communicative text type of to explain81

Table 4.7Registers within the communicative text type of to propose84

Table 4.8Registers within the communicative text type of to compare87

Table 4.9Registers within less frequent communicative text types90

Table 5.1Shared situational characteristics of university student writing94

Table 5.2Textual characteristics of communicative text types of university student writing96

Table 5.3The textual characteristics of communicative text types99

Table 5.4The textual characteristics of to give a procedural recount texts across disciplines102

Table 5.5The textual characteristics of to argue texts across disciplines105

Table 5.6The textual characteristics of to explain texts across disciplines106

Table 5.7The textual characteristics of to propose texts across disciplines109

Table 5.8The textual characteristics of to compare texts across disciplines110

Table 5.9Summary of textual and linguistic characteristics of university communicative text types112

Table 6.1Mean Dimension scores for Biber’s (1988) Dimensions117

Table 6.2Summary of linguistic features included in the final factor analysis121

Table 6.3Structure of three-factor solution123

Table 6.4Distribution of communicative text types across disciplines in Dimension 1130

Table 6.5Distribution of communicative text types across disciplines in Dimension 3143

Table 6.6Comparison of Dimensions identified in studies of university and academic writing147

Table 6.7Summary of the three identified dimensions of university writing150

Table 7.1Summary of results of previous studies that described the linguistic characteristics of essays154

Table 7.2The subcorpus of essays156

Table 7.3Communicative text types within essays across disciplines157

Table 7.4Summary of most common combinations of communicative purposes across disciplines166

Table 7.5The textual characteristics of essays across disciplines167

Table 7.6Number of texts in each communicative text type173

Table 7.7Most frequent combinations of purposes across disciplines175

Table 7.8Dimension 1 score means and standard deviations for essay communicative purposes178

Table 7.9Dimension 2 score means and standard deviations for essay communicative purposes180

Table 7.10Dimension 3 score means and standard deviations for essay communicative purposes183

Table 7.11Summary of MD analysis results for the register of essays across disciplines183

Table 8.1Summary of textual and linguistic characteristics of university communicative text types188

Table 8.2Combinations of communicative purposes across disciplines191

Table 8.3Textual characteristics of university writing across disciplines193

Table 8.4Co-occurrence of linguistic features in the MD analysis195

Table 8.5Summary of MD analysis results across communicative text types and disciplines196

Table 8.6Summary of the analysis of variation within essays200

Table 8.7Mean Dimension scores across disciplines202

Table 8.8Mean Dimension scores across text types203