Research

Title of thesis

A corpus-based study of shell nouns in academic writing: diachronic and disciplinary variation

Description of thesis research

Academic writing has long had the reputation of heavy reliance on nominalized structures to condense information into relatively fewer words. A distinguishing feature of academic writing, when compared to everyday spoken discourse, is its lavish use of abstract nouns to create information-dense texts (Biber & Gray, 2011). Among them, shell nouns have attracted considerable academic attention. Shell nouns (e.g., problem, notion, fact, idea) refer to those unspecific general nouns that serve as a “conceptual shell” (Schmid, 2000) and whose meaning is complemented by reference to a more specific stretch of information in its immediate context. Previous studies have established shell nouns as an indispensable linguistic resource for academic writers to mark their stances and attitudes and create lexical cohesion (Aktas & Cortes, 2008; Charles, 2003, 2007; Gray, 2010; Gray & Cortes, 2011; Jiang, 2015). However, they have largely failed to address the nominalizing potentials inherent in shell nouns. In my research, shell noun constructions are viewed as instances of nominalization that are functionally interchangeable with their congruent linguistic resources (e.g., reporting verbal clauses, evaluative adjective clauses) to achieve different linguistic styles (i.e., compressed versus specific).

Drawing on a self-complied corpus of research articles across four academic disciplines and two historical periods, my study seeks to conduct a corpus-based analysis of shell nouns to examine if they vary systematically across four disciplines representing the hard-pure, hard-applied, soft-pure and soft-applied domains of knowledge (Becher & Trowler, 2001) and over a span of 40 years. In particular, attention will be given to how shell noun constructions have varied along with their congruent lexico-grammatical constructions. The study is expected to generate fresh insights into the use of shell nouns in academic writing because, to reach a full understanding of these linguistic resources, one needs to look into both nominalised entities (i.e., shell nouns) associated with a condensed writing style and the concomitant use of their congruent linguistic structures closer to our everyday use of language.

In general, the study is guided by the following research questions:

1. Did the use of shell nouns in research articles vary across a span of 40 years? How did the diachronic change of shell noun use, if any, relate to the use of their congruent linguistic forms?
2. Did the use of shell nouns in research articles vary across disciplines? How did variations in shell noun use, if any, relate to the use of their congruent linguistic forms across the disciplines?

Service

• Hall Tutor, Orange Hall, Homantin Halls, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University