Comparing research articles in pulmonology and other disciplines

There have been many arguments for research-informed pedagogy in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classes, including medical English classes. While there has been a wealth of research on writing in English for medical purposes, there has been little research on academic research articles (RAs) specifically in the pulmonology domain with very little empirical information about linguistic patterning useful in materials design for writing instruction. The extent to which writing in that branch of medicine is similar to writing in hard sciences in general is unknown. The present study analyzes the linguistic features in a specialized corpus of pulmonology research articles and a comparison corpus of research articles from other scientific disciplines using three of the functional dimensions established by Biber (1988) that are relevant to academic writing—the first, third, and fifth dimension. Results indicate that in comparison to research articles in other hard sciences, pulmonology research articles have more densely packed information and less abstract information. Pedagogical implications for academic writing teachers of respiratory therapy students in EFL and ESL contexts and future research directions are discussed

Bridging the Gap: A SWOT Analysis Addressing Challenges in Hong Kong's Aviation English Training Industry

This study examines the factors that could influence the growth of the aviation English training industry in Hong Kong (HK). A document analysis approach was employed, using the SWOT as the analytical framework. The analysis focused on 32 publicly available documents published between 2019 and 2024, which discussed the industry, particularly HK-headquartered passenger aviation companies. The findings of this study showed that the development of the industry was driven by the diversity of training providers tailored for HK students and the local aviation market, in compliance with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) protocols, and the expansion of HK-based aviation companies. However, the sustainable development of the industry was hampered by several challenges. These challenges included the limited availability of customized courses for HK students and the local aviation industry, general talent shortages in the aviation sector, various institutional and operational constraints, and increasing competition from international online courses. The remaining sections of this paper provide recommendations for industry players and the HK government while also highlighting the academic contribution of this study

Spoken Philippine English in Professional Contexts: Reflections on Research and the Need for a Targeted Corpus

This article reflects on nearly two decades of research into spoken communication using corpora, particularly within professional and workplace settings in the Philippines, such as call centers and related industries. Drawing on this extensive body of work, the article explores the potential of corpus-based approaches to enhance our understanding of spoken discourse. A framework for corpus-assisted spoken discourse analysis (Friginal, 2024a) is discussed as a foundation for examining professional communication. Building on these insights, the development of a targeted Spoken Philippine English Corpus (SPEC) is proposed, aiming to systematically document and analyze the unique features of spoken professional English in the Philippines. The article underscores the broader implications of this work for language teaching, assessment, and professional training, advocating for the critical role of spoken corpora in capturing and supporting the evolving dynamics of English in professional contexts

Beyond expectations: (Applied) corpus linguistics and a framework for the study of spoken professional talk

The analysis of real-world, recorded, and transcribed texts (i.e., corpora) of professional, spoken communication in the workplace has been conducted quite successfully through corpus-based approaches (Friginal, 2024). Corpus linguistics is primarily a methodological research approach to the study of language, and specifically, discourse structure, patterns, and use (Biber et al., 2010; Thompson & Friginal, 2020), with corpora serving as datasets of systematically collected, naturally-occurring registers of texts utilized for a variety of purposes. The use of corpora has become a popular approach in the quantitative analysis of the linguistic characteristics of written and spoken language, in general, and sub-registers such as oral communication in the workplace, in particular (Egbert et al., 2022; Staples, 2015). Various findings have pedagogical and, more importantly, language policy applications. This paper focuses on the important contributions of an iterative corpus-based framework to examine linguistic patterning in telephone/telephony-mediated professional discourses so as to obtain novel understandings of how talk is used and construed in these domains. Current limitations, emerging contributions from generative AI applications, and a call to action proposing training and assessment models will be discussed

The case of task-oriented, polite discourse in intercultural aviation and customer service interactions

Applied corpus linguistics (ACL) as a methodological approach in language and social research has contributed important linguistics-based explications of discourse with critical language policy implications. ACL is understood to include the use of corpus resources, techniques, and tools in order to, for example, examine patterning in public discourses so as to obtain novel understandings of how language is used and construed in specific contexts (Thompson & Friginal, 2020). This paper presents results of two interrelated (case) studies exploring corpus distributions, in particular, of politeness markers, in aviation English communication and outsourced call center interactions. Both specialized corpora, Cross-Cultural Aeronautical Communication Corpus (CCACC) and Corpus of Outsourced Customer Service Calls (Co-CSC) are annotated across socio-cultural structures and task dimensions of interaction in these settings, focusing especially upon speakers’ role-relationships, discoursal goals and objectives, cultural identities, and power dynamics (Baker, 2021; Egbert, Biber, & Gray, 2022; Vine, 2020). Distributions of grammatical politeness markers (e.g., thanks, let's, and speech acts, polite requests, apologies, etc.) are interpreted by focusing on their macro and micro policy implications, especially highlighting emerging mismatches between linguistic realities (i.e., from corpora) and industry expectations

Discipline, level, genre:Integrating situational perspectives in a new MD analysis of university student writing

While there have been many investigations of academic genres, and of the linguistic features of academic discourse, few studies have explored how these interact across a range of university student writing situations. To counter misconceptions that have arisen regarding student writing, this paper aims to provide comprehensive linguistic descriptions of a wide range of university assignment genres in relation to multiple situational variables. Our new multidimensional (MD) analysis of the British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus identifies clusters of linguistic features along four dimensions, onto which academic disciplines, disciplinary groups, levels of study and genre families are mapped. The dimensions are interpreted through text extracts as: (1) Compressed Procedural Information vs Stance towards the Work of Others; (2) Personal Stance; (3) Possible Events vs Completed Events; and (4) Informational Density. Clusters of linguistic features from the comprehensive set of situational perspectives found across this framework can be selected to inform the teaching of a ‘common academic core’, and to inform the design of programmes tailored to the needs of specific disciplines

From Tradition to Innovation? A Diachronic Corpus Analysis of Simplified Technical English in Aviation

Reading comprehension and fluency are fundamental for successful text processing, particularly in high-stakes environments like aviation maintenance where unclear technical documentation can have fatal consequences. This risk is amplified by the significant proportion of non-native English speakers in the global aviation maintenance workforce. While Simplified Technical English (STE) was introduced in the mid-1980s as an international specification to address these challenges and has evolved through continuous user feedback, its effectiveness in reducing text complexity and improving comprehension remains underexplored. This research examines language changes in aviation maintenance documentation from pre-1990 to 2024, analyzing linguistic variations across two generations of technical manuals for a widely used narrow-body commercial aircraft from an 8.2-million-word corpus. Employing Biber\u27s Multi-Dimensional Analysis (1988) alongside Coh-Metrix (Graesser et al., 2004), the study uncovers significant linguistic variations: later-generation texts demonstrate higher levels of interactive and accessible plain language style (Dimension 1), while higher Dimension 6 scores indicate enhanced real-time informational elaboration oriented towards immediate contextual demands. Follow-up experiments isolating eight distinctive linguistic features reveal that linguistic simplification can be a double-edged sword; while enhancing accessibility, it may inadvertently diminish essential textual attributes that facilitate comprehension. This research offers valuable insights for future STE development, emphasizing the need to balance immediate comprehensibility and operational safety with the preservation of textual cohesion and appropriate linguistic complexity

Analysis of results in Dependability Benchmarking: Can we do better?"

©2013 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Dependability benchmarking has become through the years more and more important in the process of systems evaluation. The increasing need for making systems more dependable in presence of perturbations has contributed to this fact. Nevertheless, even though many studies have focused on different areas related to dependability benchmarking, and some others have focused on the need of providing these benchmarks with good quality measures, there is still a gap in the process of the analysis of results. This paper focuses on providing a first glance at different approaches that may help filling this gap by making explicit the criteria followed in the decision making process.This work is partially supported by the Spanish project ARENES (TIN2012-38308-C02-01), the ANR French project AMORES (ANR-11-INSE-010), and the Intel Doctoral Student Honour Programme 2012.Martínez, M.; Andrés, DD.; Ruiz García, JC.; Friginal López, J. (2013). Analysis of results in Dependability Benchmarking: Can we do better?". IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/IWMN.2013.6663790