Type, Pattern and Meaning of Subject it-extraposition in Applied Linguistics Research Articles

In the last two decades, several studies have focused on linguistic features of academic writing. One of the linguistic features that is frequent in academic writing and writers need to improve their use of it, is it-extraposition construction. The existing literature on subject it-extraposition has focused on syntactic analysis (type and pattern) of this construction and little attention has been given to semantic analysis (meaning). Thus, this study aims to study types, patterns and meaning of it-extraposition used in Applied Linguistics research articles. This study was run on a corpus of 20 research articles extracted from two journals of “English for Specific Purposes” and “Journal of English for Academic Purposes”. The research articles were published in regular issues of 2013-2014 issues of the journals. The findings showed the common extraposed subject clauses are that-clause followed by infinitive to-clause. The findings also showed that little attentions are devoted to the use of wh-clause and –ing participle clause. Concerning patterns of it-extraposed subject clause, two patterns of SP and SPC are the commonly used in Applied Linguistics research articles. The findings showed that Applied Linguistics writers are more concerned with expressing and evaluating their opinions and claims semantically. The findings of this study could help novice writers, especially novice non-native writers, to increase their awareness on how such construction is used syntactically and semantically by expert writers in writing research articles.