Co‐selection Pattern of Self‐Mention and Verbs in Academic Discourse: A Functional Analysis of Research Articles Across Disciplines

ABSTRACT The co‐selection pattern of self‐mention and verbs represents a specific linguistic resource formed by the interplay of author‐focused personal pronouns and lexical verbs. Using four self‐compiled corpora of research articles (RAs), this study adopted a bottom‐up approach to comprehensively investigate the forms and functions of this pattern in four disciplines: Literature (soft‐pure), Biology (hard‐pure), Education (soft‐applied), and Information (hard‐applied). The results showed that (1) six distinct discourse acts were identified, which encompass subjective state expression, research act description, research finding presentation, textual information guidance, knowledge and theory construction, and inference and hypothesis formulation; (2) disciplinary variations were revealed, especially between soft‐pure and hard‐applied fields; and (3) each discipline displayed a unique tendency in utilizing this linguistic pattern, mirroring the distinct traits and nuances inherent to each field. The insights from this study contribute to a deeper understanding of this linguistic resource and its applications, with potential implications for teaching academic English writing.