Differences across Disciplines

Differences across Disciplines

There are many. Hyland focused primarily in differences in citation, including number of cites, how they are incorporated, and what verbs are used.

Numbers of citations

Table 1

Rank Order of Citations by Discipline

RANK DISCIPLINE AV. PER PAPER PER 1,000 WORDS TOTAL CITATIONS
1 Sociology 104.0 12.5 1040
2 Marketing 94.9 10.1 949
3 Philosophy 85.2 10.8 852
4 Biology 82.7 15.5 827
5 Applied linguistics 75.3 10.8 753
6 Electronic engineering 42.8 8.4 428
7 Mechanical engineering 27.5 7.3 275
8 Physics 24.8 7.4 248

Totals 67.1 10.7 5372

How outside work is incorporated (quote, block quote, summary, generalization)

Table 2

Presentation of Cited Work (%)

DISCIPLINE QUOTE BLOCK QUOTE SUMMARY GENERALIZATION
Biology 0 0 72 38
Electronic engineering 0 0 66 34
Physics 0 0 68 32
Mechanical engineering 0 0 67 33
Marketing 3 2 68 27
Applied linguistics 8 2 67 23
Sociology 8 5 69 18
Philosophy 2 1 89 8

What verbs are used to introduce citations

Table 3

Reporting Forms in Citations

REPORTING STRUCTURES
DISCIPLINE PER PAPER % OF CITATIONS MOST FREQUENT FORMS
Philosophy 57.1 67.0 say, suggest, argue, claim, point out, propose, think
Sociology 43.6 42.0 argue, suggest, describe, note, analyse, discuss
Applied linguistics 33.4 44.4 suggest, argue, show, explain, find, point out
Marketing 32.7 34.5 suggest, argue, demonstrate, propose, show
Biology 26.2 31.7 describe, find, report, show, suggest, observe
Electronic engineering 17.4 40.6 propose, use, describe, show, publish
Mechanical engineering 11.7 42.5 describe, show, report, discuss
Physics 6.6 27.0 develop, report, study

Totals 28.6 42.6 suggest, argue, find, show, describe, propose, report

Type of citation— integral (cited within the sentence) versus nonintegral (cited in parenthesis). For example:

Integral: “John Jones claims that X is true (31).”

Nonintegral: “X is thought to be true (Jones 31).”

Table 4

Surface Forms of Citations (%)

DISCIPLINE NON-INTEGRAL INTEGRAL SUBJECT NON-SUBJECT NOUN-PHRASE
Biology 90.2 9.8 46.7 43.3 10.0
Electronic engineering 84.3 15.7 34.2 57.6 8.2
Physics 83.1 16.9 28.6 57.1 14.3
Mechanical engineering 71.3 28.7 24.9 56.3 18.8
Marketing 70.3 29.7 66.9 23.1 10.0
Applied linguistics 65.6 34.4 58.9 27.1 14.0
Sociology 64.6 35.4 62.9 21.5 15.6
Philosophy 35.4 64.6 31.8 36.8 31.4

Overall Averages
67.8 32.2 48.3 32.7 19.0