Discourse organising nouns in American and Greek university students’ argumentative essays: A contrastive study

Abstract

This paper investigates how argumentation is constructed through nouns in argumentative essays. Data are drawn from the Greek Corpus of Learner English (GRICLE) and two native corpora (LOCNESS and PELCRA).  The study focuses on illocutionary, language activity and mental process nouns (cf. Francis 1994). Native speakers use more discourse organising nouns than Greek students and incorporate them effectively in their argumentation. These nouns have a clear cohesive function, can be modified by adjectives or a reference can be made to them. Greek students use those nouns mostly to refer to the prompt of the essay and provide agreement or disagreement with the topic