Intrasectional Variations of Phrase-Frames in Experimental Aerospace Engineering Research Articles

Authors

  • Xiaofang Zhang

    School of Foreign Languages, Institute of Social Technology, Suranaree University of Technology, Nakhon Ratchasima 30000, Thailand
  • Issra Pramoolsook

    School of Foreign Languages, Institute of Social Technology, Suranaree University of Technology, Nakhon Ratchasima 30000, Thailand

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30564/fls.v7i7.8930
Received: 3 March 2025 | Revised: 21 March 2025 | Accepted: 21 April 2025 | Published Online: 3 July 2025

Abstract

Despite the growing interest in phrase-frames (p-frames) in research articles (RAs), no study has compared p-frames across sections in RAs. This gap motivated us to explore intrasectional variations of p-frames in aerospace engineering (AE) RAs using a corpus-driven approach.  A corpus of 40 AE RAs was compiled and divided into four sections. Five-word p-frames meeting predefined criteria were extracted and manually filtered. Each of the four subcorpora was then searched for the instances of the identified p-frames, which were analyzed in terms of their structure and function. The results revealed notable variations in the structures and functions of p-frames across sections. Structurally, the Introduction, Methods, and Conclusion sections were dominated by other-content-word p-frames (types and tokens), while the Results and Discussion section preferred verb-based p-frames (tokens). Functionally, the Introduction, Methods, and Conclusion sections predominantly featured research-oriented p-frames (types and tokens), while the Results and Discussion section was dominated by text-oriented p-frames (tokens). For functional subcategories, resultative p-frames were preferred by the Introduction, Results and Discussion, and Conclusion sections, while procedure and quantification p-frames were more frequent in the Methods section, regardless of types and tokens. The results also showed a strong connection between p-frame structures, their functions, and the communicative purposes of the sections. We hope this study will contribute to EAP writing pedagogy in the AE discipline.

Keywords:

Intrasectional Variations; P-frames; Aerospace Engineering; Experimental Research Articles

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How to Cite

Zhang, X., & Pramoolsook, I. (2025). Intrasectional Variations of Phrase-Frames in Experimental Aerospace Engineering Research Articles. Forum for Linguistic Studies, 7(7), 36–47. https://doi.org/10.30564/fls.v7i7.8930

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Vol. 7 , Iss. 7 (July 2025): In progress

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Copyright © 2025 Xiaofang Zhang, Issra Pramoolsook

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This is an open access article under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License.