Abstract
Following an exploration of engineering programmes in higher education, and a review of literature on engineering registers, genres and disciplines, this paper asks if there is a register for engineering. Word frequencies, n-grams and frequent n-grams in context were analysed in a 7.3 million word corpus created from four sections (Introduction, Materials & Methods, Results & Discussion, Conclusion) of over 1000 articles in civil, electrical and mechanical engineering. From systemic functional linguistics (SFL) perspectives, this reveals how engineering is construed through language that reflects the social context of high impact, open access, multi-modal, 21st century, international journal article publication, with multiple author roles, and prescribed genres, where reviewers focus on problem solving and facts, rather than persuasive claims.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 65-101 |
| Number of pages | 39 |
| Journal | Language, Context and Text: The Social Semiotics Forum |
| Volume | 1 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 4 Feb 2019 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Feb 2019 |
| Event | Second Halliday-Hasan Forum on Language: Registerial Perspectives on Disciplinary English Study - Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China Duration: 1 Dec 2017 → 3 Dec 2017 |
Keywords
- academic English
- engineering register
- corpus linguistics
- systemic functional linguistics (SFL)
- research article genres
- English as a Lingua Franca
- online publication contexts
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Sheena Gardner
- Research Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities - Professor of Applied Linguistics
Person: Teaching and Research