Metadiscursive Practices: A Corpus-Based Study of Attitude Markers in the Abstracts of Pakistani Ph.D. Theses of Pure Sciences and Social Sciences

Abstract

This study attempts to compare and analyze the use of attitude markers in Ph.D. theses from two disciplines of Social and Pure Sciences written in English. The study aims to find and observe the types of attitude markers employed by the researchers of Social and Pure Sciences. It has also tried to explore how the researchers of these disciplines clarify their stance through the use of attitude markers. The corpus of this study contains 100 published theses taken from the HEC website. The sub-corpora contain 50 theses of Pure Science (Physics, Chemistry, Biology Medicine & Health, and Botany and 50 theses of Social Science (English Linguistics, Education, Economics, History, Sociology, and Anthropology). The frequencies of attitude markers have been counted and compared. A mixed method approach (qualitative and quantitative) has been employed. It has been analyzed that the scholars of Social Science use more attitude markers in their writings as compared to scholars of Pure Sciences. By using the attitude markers scholars can not only indicate their presence in the text but also show their opinions, feelings, and personal point of view in their writing.