Transitivity and its associated clausal semantic processes are assumed to bear textual representations of reality and encode authors' conceptions of the world in linguistic terms. Given this and the differential epistemologies featuring quantitative and qualitative research, the transitivity analysis of their associated academic reports gains salience. This study involved the comparative transitivity analysis of the discussion sections of 40 quantitative and qualitative applied linguistics research articles. Relative distributions of the six transitivity processes in systemic functional linguistics (relational, material, verbal, mental, existential, and behavioral) were investigated through a series of Chi-Square tests. Moreover, the most frequent processes in quantitative and qualitative discussions were in terms of their semantic associations. The results showed that mental, relational, and behavioral processes were the most frequent in both quantitative and qualitative discussions. In addition, qualitative research articles' discussions housed more mental and material processes, while quantitative research articles' discussions involved a significantly higher number of relational, verbal, and behavioral processes. However, frequent processes were semantically similar in the two corpora. The results are discussed regarding the ideological and generic associations of quantitative and qualitative research. The findings have implications for academic writing instruction and shed light on linguistically encoded reality in quantitative and qualitative research articles. تفاصيل المقالة

Metadiscourse markers are aspects of a text’s organization denoting a writer’s stance toward its propositional content. Given the ideological difference between quantitative and qualitative research in terms of determinacy, metadiscourse markers can be viewed as a venue through which writers’ epistemological positions are presented. The present study was designed to compare the use frequency of interactive and interactional metadiscourse markers in the discussion section of 20 quantitative and 20 qualitative applied linguistics research articles, with reference to Hyland's (2005) framework. The analysis involved the comparison of frequency counts of metadiscourse markers across the two corpora using a series of Chi-square tests. To that end, the results were computed and analyzed through SPSS. The results revealed significant differences in terms of the frequency of all interactive and interactional metadiscourse markers except for frame markers, evidentials, attitude markers, engagement markers, and boosters. The findings of study have important implications for academic writing instruction. تفاصيل المقالة

A sizeable body of research into instructed pragmatics roots from the noticing hypothesis: comparing im- plicit and explicit instruction. It is only recently that other theories, including the output hypothesis, have been researched as possible explanations of interlanguage pragmatic development. Pursuing the same line of research, the present study addressed the impact of collaborative output (CO) on the production of apologies. To this end, 51 EFL learners comprising a CO group (N=26) and a control group (N=25) par- ticipated in the study. The CO group underwent six 45-minute sessions of instruction on apologies, in which they received input in the form of written speech-act contained situations, followed by paired dis- course completion tasks. The results of the statistical analyses showed the significant improvement of the CO group on a 15-item written discourse completion test serving as both the pretest and the posttest. The findings warrant CO-based instruction as an apt approach to the instruction of pragmatics. تفاصيل المقالة