Informality in Applied Linguistics Research Articles: Comparing Native and Non-Native Writings

Abstract

This quantitative-qualitative study aimed to fathom out whether and how informal features are exploited in articles of applied linguistics written in English by natives and non-natives. To this end, a corpus of 200 articles was compiled. We employed the classification of informal features proposed by Chang and Swales (1999) representing 10 informal features in academic writing. The AntConc software was used, along with manual search, to detect the informal features. The frequency, percentages, and the density per 1000 words of each informal feature were calculated. The results revealed that informal features are utilized more frequently in native articles than non-native ones, with no significant differences in the two corpora in terms of their most and least frequent informal features. Sentence initial conjunctions are the most recurrent informal features, while exclamation marks are employed the least frequently in both native and non-native articles. Implications for EAP courses are delineated in the study as well.