An Appraisal Analysis of Engagement in Published Review Articles in Applied Linguistics and Medicine: A Corpus-based Study

This study investigates how professional academic writers construct Engagement in the introduction, literature review and conclusion sections of review articles (RAs) published in Web of Science (WoS)-indexed journals. The Engagement subsystem from the Appraisal framework is used in the current analysis. The study adopts a comparative, mixed-methods, corpus-based research design. Two academic disciplines are selected for comparison: applied linguistics (AL), representing soft-applied disciplines, and medicine (MD), representing hard-applied disciplines. The results revealed that RAs of MD exhibit higher frequencies of monoglossic Engagement, particularly in the introduction and conclusion sections, compared to those of AL. Furthermore, the findings indicate a disciplinary variation in the distribution of heteroglossic Engagement. AL RAs include higher frequencies of expansive heteroglossic Engagement, which expands the dialogic space and conveys propositions as provisional and open for negotiation. In contrast, MD RAs show higher frequencies of contractive heteroglossic Engagement, which restricts the dialogic space and construes propositions as highly warrantable. These findings might be associated with the variation in the nature of knowledge and epistemological foundations across the soft-applied and hard-applied academic disciplines. The findings of this study have important pedagogical implications for academic writing instructors and curriculum designers. Consequently, this study makes the disciplinary-specific use of Engagement accessible to novice writers struggling to produce RAs that meet discoursal conventions in their disciplines.