Content area

Abstract

This article examines it-clauses with adjectival predicates in 240 English-medium articles by Polish and Anglophone authors representing medicine and psychology, aiming to investigate how disciplinary and linguacultural constraints affect the frequency, in-text distribution, and semantic, syntactic, and lexical variability of the structure. The study attempts to address a gap in previous research, which has not yet compared these two disciplines and linguacultural contexts to reveal how they differ in their use of the device to express the writer's stance. The results show that it-clauses are significantly more frequent in psychology and that the disciplines differ in the degree to which they exploit various aspects of the evaluative potential of the structure, although both use it most heavily in discussions, and prioritize to-infinitive clauses and evaluative predicates. The latter preference, as the study reveals, is marked only in Polish articles, where prominence is given to those features of it-clauses that are frequent in popular and non-native English writing. The features preferred in Anglophone articles are more typical of proficient writing.

Details

1009240
Title
It-clauses with Adjectival Predicates in English-medium Articles: Disciplinary and Linguacultural Considerations
Author
Szczyglowska, Tatiana 1 

 University of Bielsko-Biala (Poland) 
Volume
25
Issue
1
Pages
47-71
Number of pages
26
Publication year
2025
Publication date
2025
Publisher
Universidad de Murcia, Facultad de Letras
Place of publication
Murcia
Country of publication
Spain
Publication subject
ISSN
15787044
e-ISSN
19896131
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
Document type
Journal Article
ProQuest document ID
3251468781
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/clauses-with-adjectival-predicates-english-medium/docview/3251468781/se-2?accountid=208611
Copyright
© 2025. This work is published under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the "License"). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.
Last updated
2025-11-07
Database
2 databases
  • ProQuest One Academic
  • ProQuest One Academic