A Corpus based analysis of the application of “concluding transition signals” in academic texts

• Main Authors: Mohammad Saber Khaghaninejad, Mehrnoosh Eslami, Samaneh Yadollahi, Seyed Mohammad Jafari
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2021-01-01
• Series: Cogent Arts & Humanities
• Subjects: concluding transition signals; corpus analysis; academic texts; corpus of contemporary american english (coca)
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2020.1868223

This corpus-based study aimed at investigating Concluding Transition Signals’ (CTS) frequency, functions, and grammatical formula within the academic texts. Accordingly, nine CTSs were taken based on thetaxonomy described in the introduction section. Then, 400 different samples of CTSs were selected and analyzed within the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) both qualitatively and quantitatively. Findings revealed that the frequency of concluding terms were varied based on both the nature of the CTSs and the genre in which they were employed. The first three most widely used CTSs were “thus,” “finally” and “in short” with a high frequency of occurrence in “Geography” and “Social Sciences” genres. Moreover, the analysis indicated that these nine terms can have diverse textual functions from which “summarizing of the paper’s main points,” “suggesting the results or consequences” and “evoking a vivid image of the discussion” were the most prevailing ones. Furthermore, the results implied that CTSs were mostly used in the initial position of the main clause rather than within the subordinate clauses. Comparing to subordinate or relative clauses coming after the concluding terms, main clauses are also preferred to be used by the authors. The study includes some extracts from the academic texts and provides implications regarding the academic writing instructions.