Engagement in Pakistani Academic Research Discourse - A Cross-disciplinary Analysis of PhD Theses in Natural and Social Sciences

Oct 15, 2026

This study investigates the rhetorical choices of engagement features in Pakistani Academic Research Discourse (PARD) across natural and social sciences. Using Hyland’s Interaction Model, it examines how writers apply reader pronouns, directives, questions, shared knowledge, and personal asides to define and maintain disciplinary knowledge territories. The corpus includes 120 Pakistani PhD theses, analyzed with AntConc for word lists, keywords, and concordances, revealing stronger reader engagement in social sciences and highlighting the need for further research.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages11

Reading Time28 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Research objectives

Literature Review

Hyland’s (2005) Interaction Model

Engagement in Pakistani Academic Research Discourse: A Cross-disciplinary Analysis of PhD Theses in Natural and Social Sciences Moazzam Ali Malik *, Muhammad Islam** and Muhammad Shahbaz*** Abstract This study investigates the rhetorical choices of the engagement features in Pakistani Academic Research Discourse (PARD) of natural and social sciences. Using the ‘Interaction Model’ (Hyland, 2005), it explores how the writers of different disciplinary cultures employ engagement features to define and maintain their knowledge territories in their respective fields. Hyland’s (2005) typology of engagement features includes; reader pronouns, directives, questions, shared knowledge and personal asides as linguistic elements of engagement. The corpus data for this study comprised 120 PhD theses produced by Pakistani scholars in the domains of natural and social sciences. This data was accessed from Pakistan Research Repository ([www.prr.hec.gov.pk](www.prr.hec.gov.pk) ); and after cleaning, it was transferred into the text-file format. Corpus analysis tool AntConc 3.4.4w was used for generating Word-lists, Keywords, and Concordances to explore engagement features from PARD. The findings reveal that, in PhD theses of the social sciences, authors make more use of reader’s pronouns, directives, questions, and appeal to shared knowledge than in the natural sciences. The study concludes by emphasizing the need for more research to understand how, discursively, knowledge communities of natural and social sciences are established. The findings of the study may be used to develop English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses and resources aimed at improving the academic writing skills of new researchers. Keywords: Engagement, academic research, social sciences * Assistant Professor, Department of English, [University of Gujrat. Email: moazzam.ali@uog.edu.pk](University of Gujrat. Email: moazzam.ali@uog.edu.pk)[ ](University of Gujrat. Email: moazzam.ali@uog.edu.pk)**Assistant Professor, Department of English Language Teaching & Linguistics, IER, University of the Punjab, [Lahore. Email: mislam.ier@pu.edu.pk](Lahore. Email: mislam.ier@pu.edu.pk) ***Department of English, GC Women University, [Sialkot. Email: m.shahbaz@gcwus.edu.pk](Sialkot. Email: m.shahbaz@gcwus.edu.pk) Introduction Hyland (2008) considers academic discourse as a form of social interaction in academic settings which involves the established practices of language use. Academic discourse is characterized by its academic settings in which it is produced to create knowledge (see, Mu, Zhang, Ehrich, and Hong, 2015) . According to Fairclough (2013) and Gee (2004)“discourse” is a term not limited to the use of language for communication, rather it is a means to the social construction of subjective positions and identities. Similarly, an academic discourse not only propagates academic ideas and arguments, but it also establishes a scholar’s identity and situates him/her in a discipline-specific discourse community. Academic research discourses are empirical endeavors to seek objective reality; and, therefore, they are aptly referred to as the discourses of “truth” (Lemke, 1995, p.178) . Nevertheless, ‘objectivity’ is a hazy term used to explain the discursive orientation of the academic discourses (Megill, 1994) . Both in the natural and social sciences, it is usually acknowledged that the research discourse is an impersonal discourse in which researchers objectively present their arguments. Comparatively, in natural sciences, research discourses rely more on the objective approaches for verifying the observable facts in the real-world (Panday, 2014).On the other hand, the social sciences depend more on the rhetorical features and linguistic strategies to discursively construct their disciplinary knowledge (Fuller, 1991) . Discourses in both these domains attempt to present convincingly an interpretation of the phenomenon; however, the arguments proposed by an autho

FAQs

What engagement features does the study focus on?

The study focuses on reader pronouns, directives, questions, shared knowledge, and personal asides as engagement features in academic discourse.

How is the research conducted and analyzed?

A corpus of 120 Pakistani PhD theses from natural and social sciences is compiled and cleaned, then analyzed using AntConc 3.4.4w to generate word lists, keywords, and concordances.

What are the key findings comparing natural and social sciences?

In social sciences, authors use reader pronouns, directives, questions, and appeals to shared knowledge more than in natural sciences.

Oct 15, 2026

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