Gabriella Jenei: Referential Cohesion in Academic Writing • A descriptive and exploratory theory- and corpus-based study of the text-organizing role of reference in written academic discourse
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9. STAGE 5: THE NEW ANALYTICAL TOOL: REFERENTIAL COHESION IN RESEARCH ARTICLES AND MA THESES
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9.7. Summary and conclusions

9.7. Summary and conclusions

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In this chapter it was shown on the basis of the RCA of the current almost half-a-million-word research paper corpus that the analytical tool produces reliable results in the case of written academic texts. That the results gained provide a valid description of cohesive reference in written discourse analysis for a number of reasons. First, the RCA manages to provide access to more information about the phenomenon of reference in written texts than the simple frequency data of the different types of items that Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) original taxonomy yields. RCA is also an analytical tool that identifies not only individual cohesive ties but also longer chains of ties clearly discernible and the content of the chains accessible for lexical analysis. Marking sections and subsections of the texts analyzed in their corresponding RCA tables allows a comparison that leads to gaining cohesive reference information about texts section by section. This way it is possible identify differences between new and extended cohesive chains in RAs and MA theses.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

The quantitative analysis of the corpora does not immediately reveal differences in terms of cohesive reference. However, on closer inspection, it was found that the LTH corpus is set apart from the other two by containing shorter sentences and a lower ratio of academic vocabulary. Regarding longer chains, in both corpora there is approximately the same number of long chains overarching the whole text, but there are differences between how cohesive chains do or do not link sections of the text to each other. As regards the number of cohesive ties, the analysis revealed that, surprisingly, the LTH corpus had the highest ratio of cohesive items, but this has little significance to the quality of the text. However, qualitative analysis showed systematic differences between the frequency of item types. In addition, new and extended chains are also arranged in a different manner: in RAs there was a steady rise in the ratio of extended chains towards the end of the paper, while MA theses did not show this kind of pattern so clearly.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

This chapter also discussed how each type of reference item (pronouns, demonstratives, and comparatives) is used in the corpora and compared their use across the corpus of RAs and the high- and low-rated corpora of MA theses. Finally, we contrasted the two corpora of theses by both their types of errors and the frequency of errors in their sections. The findings do not only contribute to our current understanding of how referential cohesion unfolds in novice versus expert written academic discourse in English, but also yield a number of significant implications for EFL writing and EAP pedagogy. The pedagogical implications of the findings are discussed in the following chapter.
 
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