Positive covariation or trade-off? A cross-disciplinary investigation of shell nouns and their congruent expressions in research articles

Despite considerable attention to their textual/semantic/cognitive functions, shell nouns have rarely been examined as linguistic resources of nominalization in relation to alternative, congruent expressions (e.g., reporting clauses and evaluative clauses) to map out how such linguistic resources are used in academic writing. This cross-disciplinary study examined the use of shell nouns in 240 research articles drawn from four disciplines (physics, chemical engineering, sociology, and education) that represent two disciplinary groupings (i.e., hard/soft disciplines and pure/applied disciplines). Statistical analyses of shell nouns and their alternative, congruent constructions revealed that the two soft disciplines used shell nouns in all functional (sub) categories and their congruent constructions significantly more frequently than the two hard disciplines did. By contrast, few significant differences were found between the pure and applied disciplines in the use of shell noun constructions and their alternative expressions. Further correlational analyses pointed to a positive covariation rather than a trade-off between shell noun constructions and their congruent expressions in the construction of disciplinary knowledge. The observed patterns of use are attributable to the prevalent knowledge legitimation codes and the distinctive textual styles characteristic of hard and soft disciplines.