Is academic writing less passivized? Corpus-based evidence from research article abstracts in applied linguistics over the past three decades (1990–2019)

Zhijun Li ()
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Zhijun Li: Huaqiao University

Scientometrics, 2022, vol. 127, issue 10, No 9, 5773-5792

Abstract: Abstract The passive voice is an essential construction for packaging information. Previous studies observed a trend that academic writing in the late half of the twentieth century witnesses a noticeable decline in the use of the passive voice. Unfortunately, indications of such trend in current academic writing are suggestive and diachronic investigation of passivization in the part-genre of research article abstracts receives little attention. To further attest the trend regarding passivization, this study tracks the evolution of passive uses as well as its relation with active uses initiated by personal pronouns in research article abstracts in applied linguistics. To this end, qualitative and quantitative analysis were conducted on a self-built corpus of 2707 abstracts published in four authoritative applied linguistics journals between 1990 and 2019. The abstracts were grouped into single- and co-authored ones using a self-compiled Visual Basic for Application Excel program and the data were statistically analyzed using SPSS Statistics 17.0. It is found that the occurrence of the passive voice displays an overall declining trend and a significantly negative correlation with the incidence of personal pronoun active uses over the three decades, particularly in co-authored abstracts. Surprisingly, a synchronous dwindle is also detected in the occurrence of personal pronoun active uses in co-authored abstracts, particularly in the latest decade. These findings suggest a shift towards an increasingly informational, efficient and reader-friendly style in abstract writing and give implications to academic writing and English for Academic Purposes instruction.

Keywords: Academic writing; The passive voice; Abstract; Personal pronoun actives (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1007/s11192-022-04498-0

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