A Comparison of Citations in the Discussion Sections of English Research Articles Written by International and Thai Writers

Topics relevant to the use of citations in academic texts have been investigated in various cross-linguistic and cross-disciplinary research studies. This study explores citations in the discussion sections of research articles in applied linguistics written in English by Thai writers compared to those written by international writers. Two corpora (an international corpus and a Thai corpus) were compiled and analyzed to investigate the similarities and differences in the use of citations and their linguistic features. Twenty discussion sections from each corpus were analyzed using Swales’ (2014) citation framework. The reporting verbs used in integral citations were also examined. The results showed that non-integral citations were dominant in the international corpus, while integral citations outnumbered the non-integral citations in the Thai corpus. Non-factive reporting verbs in the past tense were found frequently and found was the preferred reporting verb in both datasets. The findings of this study provide a picture of how Thai writers incorporate outside sources in their research papers when compared to those of international writers. The findings may lead to pedagogical implications for how citing is taught in the field of applied linguistics with respect to developing material regarding the integration of sources in EFL writing classes.