A Corpus-Based Genre Analysis of Pakistani PhDThesis: ACross-Disciplinary Approach
Hina Manzoor
Assistant professor, Department of English linguistics and Allied studies, NED University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi
Abstract
Writing is a social practice engaged in by the audience of a discourse community. Written texts encompass different types of academic Writing for specific readers. PhDthesis is in the academic writing category, containing the writer's original researchwork and findings produced to present to their immediate readers. PhDstudents complete their thesis by adhering to particular writing conventions aligned withthenorms of their discourse community. The thesis writers maintain communication withreaders through meta-discourse markers in the text. The study aimed to analyze thedistribution of meta-discourse features in the PhD thesis abstract, results/discussion, and conclusions sections across two fields of study: engineering and social sciences. Amixed-method approach was employed for data analysis. The corpus of the studyconsisted of ten PhD student theses: five from engineering and five fromsocial sciences. Qualitative analysis was conducted using AntConc software, emphasizingfive interactive meta-discourse markers from Hyland’s model. Moreover, SPSSwas used to validate the results through an independent sample t-test to test the hypothesis. The findings revealed a nearly identical distribution of meta-discourse markers amongthe two disciplines, with transitional markers being more prevalent than other markers. The study concludes with significant recommendations for future research, suggestingthe integration of interactionist markers to facilitate more comprehensive comparisons between the two disciplines.
Keywords: Corpus, meta-discourse, PhD thesis, social sciences, engineering
