A Corpus-Based Study on the Use of Reporting Verbs in Applied Linguistics Articles

Reporting verbs is one of the most important issues in writing academic paper because they are used to express the process and reliability of claims to support authors’ writing. Therefore, the current study aimed at investigating (1) the most frequently used category of reporting verbs in applied linguistic articles and (2) how the category used in the citation process is used. 52 articles from three applied linguistic journals were analyzed using Antconc software’s concordance function. This study focused on reporting verbs used in the literature review section since it consists of more reporting verbs than other sections in articles. The reporting verbs in the articles were analyzed into a concordance line and then were classified into Hyland’s Framework of reporting verbs (2002). The results of the study showed that the uses of reporting verbs were classified into research acts, which was the most frequent use of reporting verbs, discourse acts, and cognition acts respectively. The study also presented the frequently used of reporting verbs in different subcategories of the research, discourse, and cognition acts. Additionally, reporting verbs were examined to investigate the verb forms and voices used in applied linguistic articles. The use of reporting verbs according to Hyland’s (2002) framework, verb forms, and voices are also discussed.