‘The goal of this analysis …’: Changing patterns of metadiscursive nouns in disciplinary writing

The last 50 years have seen considerable changes in both research and publication practices international English-medium arenas, also witnessed a shift argument styles academic texts over these (e.g. Hyland Jiang, 2019). However, little attention was given to the rhetorical roles of nouns diachronic studies professional writing. This is surprising since writing an extremely noun-heavy register novice writers often find nominal expressions difficult. In this study, we examine what are called metadiscursive nouns, type unspecific abstract our corpus disciplinary see whether they increased recent decades. It found that N pattern most frequent overall, but hard scientists made use quality promote value their outcome while soft disciplines prefer evidential for factual support knowledge claims. All point need include into repertoire metadiscourse emphasise functions course using English purposes.