EXPLORING INFORMALITY IN GHANAIAN POSTGRADUATE THESES FROM A CROSS-DISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Informality arguably has permeated almost every domain of language use in academia. This study thus explores informality in L2 postgraduate theses across four disciplines (i.e., English, Economics, Biology, and Civil Engineering). Using a corpus-based analysis and Chang and Swales’ (1999) informality model, we identified 4,003 tokens of informal features categorised into eight types: sentence-initial conjunctions/conjunctive adverbs, unattended anaphoric pronouns, first-person pronouns, listing expressions, sentence-final prepositions, split infinitives, second-person pronouns, and direct questions. We found that sentence-initial conjunctions/conjunctive adverbs, unattended anaphoric references, and first-person pronouns were preferred across the four disciplines, collectively accounting for 92% of all informal features. Moreover, disciplinary differences in using informal features were evident, with significant variations between soft and hard disciplines. The study provides insights into how L2 postgraduates navigate disciplinary norms and conventions in their theses.

Keywords

• academic writing
• corpus-based analysis
• disciplinary variation
• postgraduate theses