Introduction
In the age of technology and information exchange, many advanced academic papers and research reports are easily available. Through electronic access, it is easy for writers to incorporate or integrate information from previous works into their papers (Hyland, 2002; Hyland & Jiang, 2019). When writing academic papers, writers always interact with previously established ideas of other authors in the field. The writer must give credit to those sources they cite because it is indispensable for any claims made in academic papers be backed up by reasons which can be supported by earlier works in the field (Borg, 2000; Creme & Lea, 2003). Therefore, establishing credibility when writing an academic paper is important because linking one’s own research to the literature is a way of not only sharing the theoretical basis for one’s arguments but also to establishing “the reliability of the claim one reports” (Hyland, 2002, p. 37). The writer’s opinions should be strengthened with evidence derived from reliable sources rather than unsupported conjecture, beliefs, or unsubstantiated generalizations (Robbins, 2016). Attributing sources is thus one of the key features of citations, which play a vital role in the writing of academic papers.
The term citation has been defined by many scholars. According to Swales (2014), “citation is the most overt and most immediately obvious indication that a text is indeed academic” (p. 119). It is often considered an indication of a degree of sophistication in writing academic papers (Hyland, 2002; Zhao & Zhan, 2020). A citation is “the attribution of propositional content to another source” (Hyland, 1999, p. 341). A citation serves as a reliable source of information because it conveys the “status and reputation of individual scholars, academic departments, institutions, and scholarly journals” (Kafes, 2017, p. 442). The function of a citation is to allow writers to “construct their own authority and support their new knowledge claims” (Luzón, 2018, p. 171) and to situate their research in an existing state of disciplinary knowledge. According to Charles (2006), a citation shows “how a new piece of research arises out of and is grounded in the current state of disciplinary knowledge and thus constitutes an overt manifestation of the ongoing “conversation of the discipline” (p. 311). This means that a citation is a way of presenting the current state of disciplinary knowledge in a text in order for the writer to establish their own academic authority and credibility (Charles). For these reasons making references to previous works in the field shows a writer’s allegiance to a particular community or orientation (Hyland, 2002). In short, a citation is the way in which a writer acknowledges and integrates other people’s work into their own work. It can also be said that not only does the writer give credit to the sources being cited, but they also show the reader what the writer knows about the topic being studied.
Swales (1990, 2014) classified citations into two types: integral and non-integral. Sentences 1-2 (taken from Swales, 1990) below are examples of integral (1) and non-integral (2) citations, respectively.
(1) Brie (1988) showed that the moon is made of cheese.
(2) Previous research has shown that the moon is made of cheese (Brie, 1988). (p. 149)
Before discussing the details of the above two sentences, the terms used for the person who cites sources and those being cited need to be clarified. Thus, the present study has adopted G. Thompson and Ye’s (1991) idea that the citing person is referred to as the ‘writer’ and the cited person is referred to as the ‘author’.
In other words, the source in Sentence 1 above is foregrounded. The name of the cited author is the subject of the sentence. The author cited is clearly stated in the citation or is ‘author prominent’ as described by Weissberg and Buker (1990). Conversely, the information attributed to the sources is emphasized in Sentence 2. This means that this type of citation shifts the focus to the information rather than the author cited or it is ‘information prominent.’ Importantly, an integral structure requires the use of a reporting verb (e.g., show in Sentence 1), which is a key lexical device when citing outside sources.
Citing has been viewed as a crucial part of academic discourse and a discursive feature of scholarly publications (White, 2004) and it has been of much interest to English for academic purposes (EAP) researchers (Arsyad et al., 2018; Harwood, 2009; Lee et al., 2018; and Swales 1990. Other research studies have examined the use of citations in the texts of different cultures (Bahadorfar & Gholami, 2017; Kafes, 2017; Manourizadeh & Ahmad, 2011) or genres (Harwood, 2009; Hyland, 1999, 2000). For example, a large-scale investigation was carried out by Hyland (1999) in which the usage of citations in the abstracts of research articles from eight disciplines was examined. Hyland found that abstracts from the soft[1] science fields tended to use integral citations, while non-integral citations were pervasively found in the ones from hard science fields.
One of the lexical items of citation that has been investigated in the literature is reporting verbs (Charles, 2006; Liardét & Black, 2019; Marti, et al., 2019). The application of reporting verbs when citing other researchers’ work is a way of attributing content to another source as well as representing a significant rhetorical choice (Hyland, 2002; Liardét, & Black, 2019). It is an important rhetorical resource that allows the writer to either neutrally attribute the evidence to the source text or situate the position of their own view on the cited information. This means a writer constructs a stance on the cited sources. In addition, it is considered one of the most explicit lexico-grammatical aspects that shows the interaction between the voices of the writer and the author of the original source. A reporting verb was defined by Hyland (2002) as a lexical device that writers use to convey their own stance regarding the source being cited and to establish a connection with the reader. A reporting verb is a crucial stance in academic writing and its usage has been investigated extensively across genres and disciplines (Liardét & Black, 2019). Through reporting, writers can express their opinions on cited sources at different levels of evaluation. For example, in an integral citation, the writer gives great importance to the involvement of cited authors, and the subsequent reporting verbs neutrally report, support, or argue the research in order to situate them in one's own work. On the other hand, in non-integral citations, reporting verbs tend to be less evaluative and literally impersonal (Charles, 2006; Hyland, 1999, 2002; Marti et al., 2019; Swales, 1990).
However, integrating outside sources into research papers is a demanding task for inexperienced writers, especially non-native English writers (Borg, 2000). This is because to advance in this skill, writers need to understand the information clearly and to be able to restate that understanding correctly in their own words. Writers will possibly be accused of plagiarism if they fail to integrate original works properly (Borg, 2000). Also, the materials concerning citation practice as well as the use of reporting verbs o?ered to novice writers are considered inadequate (Hyland, 2002; Keck, 2014, Mansourizadeh & Ahmad, 2011; G. Thompson, & Ye, 1991; P. Thompson & Tribble, 2001; Zhao & Zhan, 2020). As Liardét and Black (2019) noted, students often use reporting verbs incorrectly. In other words, rather than using them strategically to express their point of view or stance and evaluate the cited sources, students often use “reporting structures arbitrarily, ineffectively synthesizing evidence” (p. 38). They either fail to employ reporting verbs or use a certain choice or structure repeatedly.
Several studies have investigated citation practice as well as reporting verbs in research articles (e.g., Arsyad et al., 2018; Hu & Wang, 2014; Samraj, 2013; Thieme & Saunders, 2018). These studies, however, differed in the sections of the research articles they examined. For example, Arsyad et al. (2018) studied citations in the introductions of research articles in medical sciences. Peng (2019) examined citations used in the literature review sections of doctoral theses written by home-grown and overseas-trained Chinese writers. Samraj (2013) analyzed the discussion sections of research articles and theses in the field of biology. and found that there were various rhetorical functions of citation used in Master’s theses and research articles. This suggests that each section features distinct rhetorical structures and patterns of citation use.
Many genre-related research studies have been centered on the discussion section of research articles (Basturkmen, 2012; Dudley-Evans, 1994; Lim, 2010; Peacock, 2002; Ruiying & Allison, 2003). This could be due to the important role it plays in this genre (Basturkmen, 2012; Ruiying & Allison, 2003). The discussion section is the most problematic section to write for both native and non-native speakers (Jaroongkhongdach et al., 2012; Swales, 1990; Swales & Feak, 2004). In the discussion section, the results are discussed by referring to the previous information found in the literature and then the writer shows how the results obtained from the research study are linked to the literature and can be generalized to benefit discourse communities (Basturkmen, 2012; Weissberg & Buker, 1990). The writer has more freedom in generating their thoughts than in other sections. That is, they have some flexibility in deciding which points need to be stated, highlighted, and contextualized to the field. The discussion section is more than simply a summary--it is more theoretical, general, integrated with the field, connected to the real world, and concerned with implications or applications (Swales & Feak, 2004).
However, in order to integrate the findings and the knowledge in the field, the writer must persuade the readers and gain the discourse community’s acceptance (Hyland, 2010). The writer goes beyond merely presenting their findings objectively and arguing their own points of view about their studies, as they tend to present the obtained knowledge in a way that “readers are likely to find persuasive” (Hyland, 2005, p. 176). They need to relate or make the connection between the findings of their study and the existing knowledge or literature (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2008; Cargill & O'Connor, 2009; Dörnyei, 2007; Mackey & Gass, 2016; Paltridge & Starfield, 2007). Such attempts to critically engage with or contextualize literature inevitably involves citation integration. Giving appropriate credit to the cited sources is not only challenging but also important when writing academic papers (Charles, 2006).
As mentioned earlier, citation in academic writing is important, and the challenges involved in composing discussion sections have been widely acknowledged. However, little attention has been given to how citations are used specifically in the discussion sections of research articles in applied linguistics, particularly in contexts such as Southeast Asia or Thailand.
The study analyzed the citations and reporting verbs employed in the discussion sections of research articles in applied linguistics. The comparison of the two corpora was to gain an insight into the similarities and differences of citations in the discussion sections of research articles written by Thai writers and published in journals in Thailand compared to those published in well-known international journals.
The present study attempts to answer the following questions:
1. What are the forms of citations used in the discussion sections in the two corpora?
2. What are the preferred reporting verbs used in integral citations in both corpora?
The results of the citations are expected to yield valuable insights into their use by writers, especially Thai writers. Additionally, the findings will potentially provide a practical guide for novice non-native English speakers to increase their awareness of the correct use of citations.
Method
Corpora compilation
Two corpora were used in the present study: an international and a Thai corpus. Each of them contained twenty discussion sections in English from research articles in applied linguistics in accredited and peer-reviewed journals. Purposive sampling was used in selecting the journals. The discussion sections in the international corpus were taken from four highly prestigious journals: English for Specific Purposes, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, Journal of Phonetics, and System. They were published from 2019 to 2020 by Elsevier and can be accessed at https://www.elsevier.com/about. The Thai corpus contained 20 discussion sections written in English by Thai writers and published from 2015 to 2020 in peer-reviewed journals: PASAA, Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Studies, The New English Teacher, and LEARN Journal: Language Education and Acquisition Research Network. Those in the Thai corpus were taken from journals accredited by the Thai-Journals Citation Index Center (TCI) and the Asian Citation Index (ACI), which can be tracked via https://tci-Thailand.org. Besides these indexes, the PASAA journal was also included in the SCOPUS list. The criteria for the selection of the journals in both datasets were based on popularity, online accessibility, and journal indexing, and five discussion sections were taken from each journal. The selection was restricted to only the discussion sections, with no other sections included. Thus, combined discussion sections with conclusions or other sections were excluded. The selection was of only one discussion section from each volume or issue, taking from the most recent one until reaching the target number. and concluded when five discussion sections had been collected from each journal. In the Thai corpus, only the discussion sections written by Thai authors were included. However, in the international corpus, any nationalities except Thai were selected.
Each discussion section was selected because of its importance and characteristics. Writing a good discussion is a challenging task for inexperienced writers, and it is considered more difficult for non-native English writers, as this section often requires presenting personal interpretations and evaluations of the research findings rather than simply reporting facts (Samraj, 2013). The points of view in the discussion section are interpretative, allowing the authors to contextualize and generalize their research findings to the discourse communities (Swales & Feak, 2004; Weissberg & Buker, 1990). Thus, writers need to present and argue their own points of view in a manner that effectively convinces the reader (Hyland, 2005). The discussion section was chosen due to its considerable importance and the difficulties in developing an appropriate argument.
The applied linguistics field was selected because Hyland (2002) found that research articles in this field showed a relatively high use of citations. Furthermore, Marti et al. (2019) stated that researchers in applied linguistics are better at exhibiting disciplinary characteristics than those in other disciplines. For example, they know how to draw conclusions and link existing knowledge to new findings. Therefore, it would be useful to investigate the citations and the linguistic resources employed in research articles from the applied linguistics field written by native Thai writers and compared to those written by authors of other nationalities who published their papers internationally.
Citation analysis
The analysis of citations employed in each discussion section was based on Swales’ (2014) citation categories, which were classified into integral or non-integral. In an integral citation, the cited author(s) can function as the subject of the sentence (Table 1). In contrast, a non-integral citation may or may not contain a reporting verb, with cited authors appearing either in parentheses or other devices elsewhere in the paper (Swales, 1990).
For ease of reference, each discussion section in each corpus was listed from one to twenty, for example, I1 for discussion section number 1 from the international corpus, or Th1 for discussion section number 1 in the Thai corpus. G. Thompson and Ye’s (1991) ideas were adopted, whereby the citing person is referred to as the ‘writer’ and the cited person as the ‘author’. There were two stages of the investigation. First, the analysis focused on the frequency of citation usage in the discussion sections in the two sets of data, and the citations were classified according to whether they were integral or non-integral. Then the functions of the integral citations were further categorized as shown in Table 1 above. Afterward, the integral citations with ‘Author as subject’ were analyzed to establish their reporting verbs and tense usage. Although reporting verbs could be taken from other types of integral citations, the present study focused only on ‘Author as subject.’ This is because in this type of citation the name of the author was clearly identified as the subject of the citation. When the author is an agent of the citation, the use of the reporting verb expresses the author’s voice and tone toward the information cited. Also, an integral citation with ‘Author as subject’ shows how the writer credits the author(s) cited in their papers.
Reliability of the analyses
Text analysis is subjective in nature because it depends largely on the coder. According to Peng (2019), there might be mistakes in the classification of reporting verbs. Therefore, another coder was invited to analyze both corpora in order to enhance analytic validity on the basis of inter-rater agreement (Orwin 1994, as cited in Kanoksilapatham, 2005). Although the invited coder had experience in coding text for analysis, the researcher introduced and explained the process of identifying citations and reporting verbs. Frameworks on citation by Swales (2014) and reporting verbs by Hyland (2000) were introduced to the coder. The researcher and the invited coder identified the texts separately and discussed their results after the coding was completed. The results of the two independent coding procedures showed a high inter-rater reliability rate (over 90%). In cases of disagreement, the two coders negotiated until full agreement was finally achieved.
Results and Discussion
To answer the research questions, information about the frequency of citations and reporting verbs, as well as tense usage is occasionally addressed in this section. As mentioned above, the present study followed G. Thompson and Ye’s (1991) suggestion that the citing person should be referred to as the ‘writer’ and the cited person as the ‘author’.
Occurrence of citations
As noted before, an integral citation means the cited authors and reporting verbs are highlighted. In the non-integral citations, cited authors appear either in parentheses or are signaled by other devices elsewhere in the paper, and reporting verbs tend to be less evaluative and literally impersonal (Swales, 1990). The occurrence of both types of citations in the corpora is presented in Table 2.
Table 2: Occurrence of integral and non-integral citations in the two corpora
The citations found in the two corpora were different in some respects (see Table 2). The frequencies of the occurrence per one thousand words of the two corpora were 8.21 for the international corpus and 7.57 for the Thai corpus. This means the density of citations in the two corpora was slightly different. However, the most notable difference was in the use of citation types in each corpus. The number of non-integral citations was higher than that of integral citations in the international corpus and much lower in the Thai corpus. Conversely, the integral citations in the Thai corpus were nearly two times higher than the non-integral citations. Compared to previous findings, the densities of citations per one thousand words of the two corpora in the present study were higher than those found in Dobakhti and Zohribi (2018). Notwithstanding, they were less than those found in Swales’ (2014) study, which analyzed a students’ corpus where the occurrence of citations was around 12 in one thousand words.
Many research studies have reported the use of non-integral citations (Bahadorfar & Ghlami, 2017; Hyland & Jiang, 2019; Samraj, 2013; Swales, 2014; P. Thompson, 2012). The preferences for citation usage may be influenced by a variety of factors, including disciplinary conventions, writer expertise, and the need to maintain a coherent flow of the text. As P. Thompson (2012) suggested, the use of non-integral citation allows writers to focus directly on the information or research being presented and it helps to keep the texts flowing smoothly. These are possible reasons to explain the extensive use of non-integral citations in the international corpus. Hyland and Jiang (2019) investigated the use of citations in academic texts in several disciplines and they found a high preference for non-integral citations. Similarly, the non-integral form was used frequently in research articles from both soft and hard sciences over the past 50 years. The “writers are moving towards a rhetorical style which gives less prominence to other authors” (p. 74). Writers preferred to adapt the author’s ideas to support their work rather than foreground the originators. Mansourizadeh and Ahmad (2011) compared the citations in research papers written by non-native expert writers and novice writers in English. They found that expert writers used non-integral citations more extensively than novice writers. Also, the writers in hard science fields depended heavily on non-integral citations in theses (Bahadorfar & Ghlami, 2017). P. Thompson and Tribble (2001), who analyzed doctoral theses, reported that writers in hard science referred to other texts using non-integral citations two times more frequently than integral citations, while writers in soft sciences used more integral citations than non-integral citations. They explained that it is possible that in long texts, writers tended to elaborate and give greater prominence to the authors in citations. Peng (2019) identified literature review sections of theses written by Chinese domestic- and overseas-trained writers, and the findings showed that the overseas-trained writers used a greater number of non-integral citations than the writers trained in China.
In a study that looked at the discussion parts of research articles in applied linguistics, the international writers surprisingly did not use any integral citations (Dobakhti & Zohrabi, 2018). They reported that their corpus consisted overwhelmingly of non-integral citations. In a study by Kafes (2017), experts tended to use citations more than novice writers and the employment of non-integral citations was three times higher than that of integral citations. These findings are in line with the results of the present study in which it was found that international writers preferred to associate their study with the literature by using non-integral references as opposed to those in the Thai corpus. This indicates that the authors in the international corpus placed greater importance on contextualizing their research studies into the existing knowledge in their fields. They gave more emphasis on discussing and evaluating their findings. This example can be used as a practical guide for teaching an academic writing class. Such results may raise the awareness of non-native writers and show them how to cite outside sources in papers they wish to publish internationally.
Extensive use of non-integral citations in the international corpus suggests that the writers do not want to interrupt the flow of the text’s logical and coherent presentation and non-integral citations allow them to develop a voice of authority (Mansourizadeh & Ahmad, 2011; P. Thompson, 2012). However, this explanation may not apply to the case of the Thai writers in the present study because they preferred turning the focus to the cited authors by allowing the reader to see the claims made by the cited authors directly without interruption. The Thai writers were reluctant to justify or evaluate the sources, as was also found in Hu and Wang’s study (2014). In their study, non-native Chinese writers tended to use integral citations in their Chinese research articles. Also, this finding is similar to the one in Mansourizadeh and Ahmad’s (2011) study, which analyzed citations used by non-English experts and novice Malaysian writers. They found that novice writers tended to use single sources, citing them without synthesizing or integrating them effectively into their writing, which was different from the experts, who preferred to use both types of citations fluently and smoothly. In the present study, it is assumed that the extensive use of integral citation is perhaps due to the Thai writers’ lack of certain skills or a lack of confidence in synthesizing and contextualizing the text source texts in their own words. Integrating prior findings in convincing ways may be rather challenging for them. This issue offers an interesting topic for further in-depth investigation.
Frequency of reporting vs. non-reporting verbs in non-integral citations
As stated previously, the verbs in non-integral citations can be categorized as reporting and non-reporting (Swales, 2014):
Reporting
The trend showed that the reflector was able to use the learning methods as same as the theorist and also correlated to introverted personality (Lawrence, 1982, as cited in Felder and Silverman, 1988, p. 678). (Th5)
Non-Reporting
Semi-peripheral scholars from the hard sciences are also more accepting of academic monolingualism, and they perceive fewer disadvantages (Ferguson et al., 2011). (In1)
Table 3: Frequency of reporting verb vs. non-reporting verbs in non-integral citation
After analyzing information, it is clear that the non-reporting type prominently occurred in both corpora (see Table 3). The use of “non-reporting” depends heavily on a writer’s writing skills. A topic or point is focused on and becomes the subject of the citation sentence. To integrate the cited sources into their texts correctly and reliably, writers are expected to clearly understand the ideas in the cited sources. The number of occurrences of non-reporting citations was different from that of the reporting citations in both datasets.
Frequency of integral citations
Table 4: Frequency of integral citation type
The number of citations in the international and Thai corpus was 101 and 94 respectively (see Table 4). Also, the most frequent option for integral citations in both corpora was ‘Author as subject.’ However, the second most frequent citation was different in the two corpora. The ‘Author as agent’ was ranked second in the international corpus, while ‘Author in NP’ was ranked second in the Thai corpus. The function of the five types of integral citations with the examples extracted from the two corpora are as follows:
Author as subject
As stated earlier, this type of citation is used when the cited author is presented at the beginning of the citation sentence as the subject of the sentence, which is followed by the date in parentheses and then by the information as shown in Examples 1 and 2. This means that the author’s name is given more emphasis; it is a person-focused citation. The frequency of this type of citation was the highest in both corpora (see Table 4). The reporting verb is clearly stated, whether in the present tense ('Suggested' in Example 2) or the past tense ('Explain' in Example 1).
(1) Corcoran (2018) suggested that scholars be trained in a critical approach to ERPP, not only learning to analyze the conventions adopted in international journals but also becoming aware of local practices and their position in the international community (In1)
(2) Peters (2014) and Skehan (1998) further explain that the learning burden of collocations is probably due to the fact that learners have difficulty processing the actual properties of a certain collocation in comparison with those of a single word. (Th8)
The extensive use of this type of citation is similar to those found in previous research studies. According to Hyland (2002), for example, authors in the soft sciences cite outside sources more with ‘Authors as the subject’ being the frequent form of citations for them, while in the hard sciences the writers tended to use fewer citations and downplayed the role of authors. Hyland (2002) believed that this difference may result from disciplinary conventions. Swales (2014) analyzed students’ papers and found that ‘Author as subject’ was the most common type of citation.
Author as agent
In the use of this citation, the writer assigns responsibility for the claim to the cited author. The writer tries to attribute any objections to the truth or correctness of the reported proposition of the author instead of the writer’s evaluation. The findings showed different degrees of citation usage in the two corpora. The writers in the international corpus used this type more frequently than the Thai writers, accounting for 20% in the international corpus compared to only 8% in the Thai corpus. Consider the following examples.
(3) As seen in the studies by Gardner (1985) and Williams and Burden (1997), attitudes towards the L2 culture and cross-cultural interests are major components of L2 learning motivation. (In16)
(4) As pointed out by Little (1995), in any case, the time constraints usually are a key factor in shaping every program of language teaching, which tends to strictly limit direct learner training. (Th19)
Author as adjunct
According to Swales (2014), the author’s name in this type of integral citation is part of a phrase or a clause. By its function, the adjunct implies that something has been attached to the main part. Without this adjunct citation the independent clause is still comprehensible. The usage of this type of citation was not significantly different in the two corpora. Some prepositions were used to signal this type of citation such as according to, with, as. These words can be used in the form of a phrase or a clause.
(5) As Hyland (2016) notes, “stance is always expressed in relation to some set of expectations so that personal judgments are convincing” (p. 254). (In15)
(6) According to Perl (1980), it is said that the students would write much and with more accuracy if they wrote about themselves or their interests. (Th3)
Author in NP
This is a concept-focused citation. This type of integral citation allows authors to engage with the literature. For example, the “writers tended to show greater conceptual integration of the cited sources” (Swales, 2014, p. 133). The analysis revealed that ‘Author as NP’ was ranked the second most frequently used form of citation in the Thai corpus, while it was ranked third in the international corpus. Similarly, a concept-focused citation or ‘Author in NP’ was found frequently in Lancaster’s (2012) study, and it ranked second in Swales’ (2014) study. Most linguistic signals were conceptual-related nouns such as hypothesis, analysis, objections, focus, emphasis, model, view, and approach.
(7) The above findings lend empirical support to Levis' (2007) view regarding the need to offer explicit guidance or instruction in order to maximize the effects of computerized visualization cues. (In20)
(8) The findings of this present study also confirm Biber et al.’s (2011) hypothesis that more proficient writers would rely more on the final-stage feature than less proficient ones. (Th7)
E. Author (other)
This type of integral citation is grouped separately since its usage was infrequent or rare (Swales, 2014), and in the present study, it was the least used in the Thai corpus. However, the occurrence of this type was ranked third in the international corpus. In this citation type, the cited author is referred to with less involvement in the proposition. Authors are named merely to confirm or validate the cited sources.
(9) This finding is consistent with the results of previous studies that reported a close relationship between teacher motivations and family economic status (Watt & Richardson, 2008) yet different from Dündar (2014), who did not find a significant effect of socioeconomic status on teacher motivation. (In16)
(10) This finding is in line with several studies, such as Razmjoo and Kazempourfard (2012), Sadeghi and Mahdipour (2015), and Zareian et al. (2015). (Th6)
The discussion now moves on to the second research question, which explores the preferred reporting verbs employed in integral citations across both corpora.
Reporting verbs
The reporting verbs in the two corpora which were taken from ‘Author as subject’ citations or ‘Human subject’ (Charles, 2006, p. 316) are presented in Table 5.
Table 5: Reporting verbs in author as subject citations
Reporting verbs are important textual features in citation practice because they communicate the author’s idea and understanding of the information cited. According to Nelson and Castelló (2012), reporting verbs in citations reflect writers’ attitudes toward the cited work. Reporting verbs taken from author-as-subject citations were close to the author’s viewpoint. They are powerful words in the citations, which convey the author’s opinion of an individual study and are highly visible (Charles, 2006). Below are some reporting verbs used in the citations.
(1) Burns et al. (2007) report a similar effect of boundary fine-tuning in their study with English-learning infants between 6 and 20 months of age. (In 9)
(2) Ozaki (2011) also supports that the first language enables Japanese learners to enhance their knowledge of second-language collocations. (Th8)
In Sentence 1, the verb report suggests a neutral stance, presenting the study’s findings as factual and reliable. In contrast, Sentence 2 uses the verb supports, which implies agreement or positive alignment between the cited study and the author’s own argument. This shows that the use of reporting verbs helps readers infer how the author perceives the credibility, relevance, or value of the referenced research.
The past form found was the most frequently used reporting verb in both corpora in the present study, while this verb was ranked second in Swales (2014). The verb find is to discover something, either by searching or unexpectedly, or to figure out how to achieve something” (Cambridge Dictionary). In other words, it is commonly used to report research results, showing that something has been learned or concluded through study or analysis. Marti et al. (2019) found that suggest, find, argue, show, claim, and state were the most frequently used verbs in the list of reporting verbs, while the verb suggest was ranked the highest in a study carried out by Kwon et al. (2018). However, suggest was found three times in the international corpus and only one time in the Thai corpus. Verbs concerning thinking or believing such as think, assume, and feel were somewhat higher in ranking in some previous studies (Charles, 2006; Kwon, et al., 2018; Swales, 2014), but there was none in the present study. This difference suggests that the use of reporting verbs in applied linguistics is different from that of hard and social sciences.
Reporting verbs can be classified as a) factive (the writer presents the reported information as true), and b) non-factive (the reporting verbs do not indicate any judgment on their reliability) (Hyland, 2002; Swales, 2014). In the present study, there were three verbs (find, demonstrate, show) in the international corpus and three verbs in the Thai corpus (find, reveal, assert) which were clearly factive. These words are italicized in Table 5. From the findings, most of the reporting verbs were non-factive reporting verbs. This is in accord with those found in Hyland (2002) and Swales (2014). As explained by Swales, the use of non-factive reporting verbs is a sign that “authors are not perceiving findings from their literatures as necessarily valid, but rather are subjecting them to various kinds of intratextual reassessment” (p. 125). On the contrary, the findings in Jaroongkhongdach (2015) were different from those of the present study. He found that the reporting verbs written by experts in research articles in applied linguistics articles contained both factive and non-factive types, while those used in the citations written by novice Thai writers were mainly factive. This difference between his study and the present study could be used to raise awareness of students in the applied linguistics field when citing outside sources.
Reporting verbs in the past form were the most frequent choice in both corpora with the present simple tense being the second most preferred tense. However, the use of the present tense in the international corpus was nearly similar to the past tense. This suggests that both tenses are used frequently by the writers in the international corpus. Tense usage in a citation is one of the most important linguistic features when reviewing academic papers. According to Swales and Feak (2004), three tenses are commonly used in citations. The past tense is used when referring to a single study, while the present perfect tense is always used to link an area of inquiry to the research being conducted, and the present tense is used when mentioning general facts or information existing in the field. In Jaroongkhongdach’s (2015) study, the expert writers used three types of tenses (present simple tense, present perfect tense, and past simple tense), but Thai novice writers preferred citing outside sources using the present simple tense. This was different from the Thai writers in the present study. They tended to use the past simple tense more than the present simple tense. To some extent, the differences in tense usage might reflect the writer's experience and language background regarding citation practice.
Conclusion
The present study identified the types of citations used in the discussion sections of research articles in the field of applied linguistics published in English in journals in Thailand and internationally. The study aimed to investigate whether the citation practices in the discussion sections of research articles written by Thai writers were different from or similar to those of international writers. Although the number of citations found in the international corpus was higher than those in the Thai corpus, the average occurrence per one thousand words was not very different, showing 8.21 in the international corpus and 7.57 in the Thai corpus. However, there was a distinct difference in the use of integral and non-integral citations. In the international corpus, there was greater use of non-integral citations than integral citations. On the contrary, the usage of integral citations was nearly twice that of non-integral citations in the Thai corpus. The Thai writers tended to give importance to the author’s role in the propositions rather than justifying or evaluating the cited information. They were likely to describe what was found by the cited authors as demonstrated by their use of the verb found as the reporting verb. The use of citations by Thai writers in the present study could reflect their experience citing. This might be affected by linguistic background, writing experience, or ethnolinguistic norms of communication (Hu &Wang, 2014). Based on these findings, it can be inferred that non-integral citation was preferred by international writers, while Thai writers tended to use integral citations. This finding agrees with the claim made by Mansourizadeh and Ahmad (2011) that expert writers use citations as a means of supporting and establishing links between the cited information and their own ideas, while novice writers tend to use citations to indicate their knowledge of the literature.
It is expected that a larger corpus could yield useful insights into the common characteristics of citations produced by writers in certain groups and with certain backgrounds when writing the discussion sections of research articles. However, with a manageable corpus size in the present study, the findings to some extent will benefit the pedagogical implications of teaching and learning how to cite outside sources in texts. This would especially benefit novice and Thai writers by providing a clear picture of how to reference outside sources in their texts. As Hu and Wang (2014) suggested, citations should be taught or integrated into writing classes as a situated literacy practice. EFL students should be taught how to make intertextual links (i.e., citations) in their academic writing (Samraj, 2013). The differences found in the use of citations in the present study can offer authentic guidelines for unskilled writers to develop their understanding of, and capacity to form, appropriate citations in their academic texts (P. Thompson & Tribble, 2001). Also, text analysis relevant to citation practice used in different fields could broaden students’ knowledge of the differences and similarities in citation practice in different contexts. Thus, it is expected that students will be able to gain a fuller understanding of the linguistic and disciplinary role of citations in their fields of study.
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[1] According to Hyland (2005), soft science disciplines such as sociology, education, literature, and linguistics deal with more interpretive, context-dependent knowledge, whereas hard science disciplines like physics, Chemistry, Engineering and biology focus on objective, measurable facts and tend to present knowledge as certain and universal.”
