Identifying Varietals in the Discourse of American and Korean Scientists: A Contrastive Corpus Analysis Using the Gramulator

In this study, we identify systematic discourse characteristics in the academic writings of Korean and American scientists. Specifically, we employ Contrastive Corpus Analysis (CCA) using the computational tool, The Gramulator to extract statistically improbable “n gram” features that occur across texts. The results indicate that Korean scientists use non standard varietal forms of English (i.e., forms that are correct but relatively uncommon with their American counterparts). We conclude that the Korean scientists’ use of these varietals may be a key factor in interpreting and evaluating their work as non protypical in terms of discourse style. Our findings bring to light language characteristics and a methodology that may be helpful to language learners as well as materials developers.