Arsalan Yaghoobi; Mohammad Amini Farsani; Behrouz Minaei-Bidgoli; Ali Asghar Taghizadeh
Abstract
Despite paradigmatic research advancements and movements in applied linguistics, the issue of rhetoric, which serves as one of the fundamental pillars of each paradigm, remains largely unaccounted for. Considering the commensurability of argumentation and meta-analysis, coupled with the increasing rate ...
Read More
Despite paradigmatic research advancements and movements in applied linguistics, the issue of rhetoric, which serves as one of the fundamental pillars of each paradigm, remains largely unaccounted for. Considering the commensurability of argumentation and meta-analysis, coupled with the increasing rate of meta-analytic studies in the field of applied linguistics, there arises a need to examine the argumentation behavior of applied linguistics’ meta-analysts. As such, following research synthesis techniques and an argument mining approach, we examined the academic argumentation genre of meta-analysis published in leading applied linguistics journals through argument-mining techniques in light of the modified Toulmin framework proposed by Qin and Karabacak (2010). The current study, employing the modified Toulmin framework, examined the argumentative writing components represented in the introduction section of 54 meta-analytic studies published in leading journals of applied linguistics through argument-mining techniques. Our findings highlight the complexity and argumentativeness of the meta-analysis genre. We further found that the Modified Toulmin Model is implementable for the task of argument mining, which can have a great impact on argumentation, meta-analysis, and argumentative academic writing. Implications and recommendations for academic argumentative writers and meta-analyzers are discussed.
Mohammad Amini Farsani; Esmat Babaii
Abstract
We have recently witnessed a growing awareness of methodological research issues in the field of applied linguistics, which led to what Plonsky (2017) has referred to as “methodological awareness” (p. 517). To make a positive contribution to this nascent movement, this study, drawing on synthetic ...
Read More
We have recently witnessed a growing awareness of methodological research issues in the field of applied linguistics, which led to what Plonsky (2017) has referred to as “methodological awareness” (p. 517). To make a positive contribution to this nascent movement, this study, drawing on synthetic techniques, sought to describe the cumulative and developmental status of research paradigms and substantive/topical issues in an EFL context. As such, we analyzed a sample of 663 unpublished applied linguistics MA theses which were distributed over a 30-year period. The cumulative results revealed the distribution of the studies in a good range of substantive issues with “researching language classroom issues” as the most frequent topic in the data set and “research methods or researching research methodology”, “psycholinguistics”, and “sociolinguistics” as the least frequent issues across a wide range of age groups, proficiency levels, and time span. As for the cumulative analysis of research approaches, the results revealed that about 72% of the included MA theses were quantitative; around 18% of the studies employed mixed methods research; and a smaller percentage of the studies (11%, n=72) used a qualitative research approach. Chronologically, a clear increasing pattern of research paradigms was notable across time. Implications for the research consumers (e.g., supervisors, journal reviewers, postgraduate students, and material developer) are discussed.
