2
Using grammatical metaphor can enhance the quality of both written and spoken language by substituting one grammatical class or structure with another. Previous studies have explored its use across languages, disciplines, and academic writings, especially in research articles—an important component of postgraduate education. Despite numerous articles highlighting its importance, no study has explored its use specifically in discussion sections of research papers, which are crucial for expressing the researcher's opinions and perspectives. Applying grammatical metaphor in research article discussions is helpful in building coherence and reinforcing arguments. The present study compared the forms, functions, frequencies, and distributions of grammatical metaphors in the discussion sections of research articles from hard fields (i.e., astrophysics, physics, and medicine) and soft fields (i.e., psychology, social sciences, and linguistics). The stratal model, which divides grammatical metaphor into three main subcategories (i.e., ideational, interpersonal, and textual metaphor), was used for the above-mentioned purposes. Results showed that the experiential metaphor was the most prevalent type of metaphor before the textual metaphor. There were significant differences in the use of experiential and textual metaphors across disciplines. Experiential metaphors, such as shift to noun, were more prevalent in soft disciplines, while hard disciplines tended to use shift to quality more. Some types of textual metaphor (i.e., text referencing, internal conjunction, and total use of textual metaphor) were more frequent in soft disciplines. Grammatical metaphor can provide valuable instructional insights for teachers, materials developers and students by making them aware of how to write more academically and how to develop their arguments more persuasively.
3
Using intensifiers is a significant linguistic strategy through which individuals can
manipulate the degree and the force of their utterances. How men and women use this
specific language elements differ from one another (Holmes, 1995; Ito & Tagliamonte,
2003; Lakoff, 1975). Focusing on the use of these linguistics resources by male and female
politicians, this study seeks to investigate how gender differences influence the use of
intensifiers in the tweets posted on X (formerly Twitter) platform. Additionally, the study
explores the most frequently used category of intensifiers, iteration, and co-occurrence
forms of intensifiers. To this end, 36,478 tweets (1,309,852 words) of 50 native Englishspeaking politicians were manually collected over a one-year period. The data were first
analyzed using AntConc to generate frequency lists and concordance lines for the
intensifiers identified in the corpus. The results were then organized and coded in Microsoft
Excel for further quantitative analysis. Finally, the data were imported into SPSS, where a
Chi-square test was conducted to examine the relationship between gender and intensifier
use. Drawing on the classifications of Quirk er al. (1985) and Van Mulken and Schellens
(as cited in Mombarg, 2023), 4757 tokens of intensifiers were found in the dataset.
Omissible intensifiers were found to be the most frequently used category of intensifiers.
The results also revealed the significant gender-based difference in the use of intensifiers,
with male politicians showing a higher tendency to use them. Male politicians tended to use
intensifiers so, almost, and entirely more than their female counterparts whereas female
politicians used extremely, completely, and nearly more These findings demonstrate that
gender influences not only the frequency but also the communicative functions of
intensifiers in political language.