International Journal of English Linguistics, Issue: Vol.16, No.4

Scaffolded GenAI in Higher Education Academic Writing: An Exploratory Mixed-Methods Study of Self-Regulated Intercultural Learning

Sat, 09 May 2026 04:08:31 +0000

Scaffolded generative AI (GenAI) in higher education academic writing has attracted growing scholarly attention, yet empirical evidence remains limited regarding its effects on self-regulated intercultural learning (SRIL). This exploratory mixed-methods quasi-experimental study examined how scaffolded integration of a generative AI tool (QuillBot) influenced SRIL among first-year university EFL students. Ninety-two learners participated in a six-week academic writing intervention comparing a scaffolded-AI instructional condition with a non-AI control condition.

Pre-intervention quantitative data indicated widespread familiarity with GenAI tools but predominantly performance-centered engagement, characterized by intensive use during drafting and revising, high cognitive offloading, and only moderate self-regulation, intercultural engagement, and ethical–integrity AI engagement (EIAE). Qualitative analyses of interviews, reflective worksheets, writing artefacts, and instructor fieldnotes demonstrated that scaffolded AI mediation supported deeper planning, strategic feedback integration, reflective revision, intercultural interpretation, and ethical judgement. Learners in the scaffolded-AI condition produced denser and more nuanced evidence of SRIL than those receiving traditional instruction.

The results indicate that GenAI supports SRIL not through availability alone, but through instructional mediation that transforms AI use from procedural reliance into regulated, reflective, and ethically grounded academic writing practice. The study contributes empirical grounding for SRIL as an integrative pedagogical framework linking self-regulated learning (SRL), intercultural competence (IC), ethical AI engagement, and cognitive offloading, and highlights the central role of scaffolded instructional design in AI-mediated higher education writing contexts.

Legitimating Coal Transition: A Corpus-Based Comparative Discourse Analysis of Chinese and Western Media Coverage

Sat, 09 May 2026 04:10:00 +0000

This study investigates how Chinese and Western media construct discourse around China’s coal transition through a corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS) approach. Two specialized sub-corpora were constructed: a China Daily sub-corpus (30 texts) and a Guardian sub-corpus (25 texts), covering the period from September 2020 to September 2025. Keyword, collocation, and semantic prosody analyses were conducted using AntConc 4.3.1, followed by qualitative coding of legitimation strategies based on van Leeuwen’s (2007) framework. The keyword analysis reveals that China Daily’s discourse is characterized by quantitative and technical terms (percent, billion, development, intelligent, hydrogen), while the Guardian foregrounds crisis and evaluative vocabulary (climate, crisis, biggest, world). Collocation analysis shows that coal carries a managerial semantic prosody in China Daily (coal-rich, coal industry, coal consumption) but an eliminative prosody in the Guardian (coal plants, new coal, phase). The legitimation strategy coding identifies Rationalization as the dominant strategy in China Daily (53.8%), constructing coal transition as a data-driven, orderly process, whereas the Guardian employs a more balanced mix in which Moral evaluation (26.8%) plays a significantly larger role, framing China’s coal dependence through negative moral labels such as “addiction” and “crisis”. The study concludes that the two media outlets operate within notably different discursive models—“gradualist legitimation” versus “urgency critique”—and suggests that incorporating human-scale narratives and engaging more directly with moral vocabulary could enhance the international persuasiveness of China’s green transition communication.

Cross-Linguistic Influence in Saudi EFL Learners’ English Preposition Use: Evidence from a Controlled Arabic-to-English Translation Task

Sat, 09 May 2026 04:11:22 +0000

This study aims to investigate the errors that Saudi learners of English as a Foreign Language commit in the use of English prepositions using a translation task from Arabic to English. This study aimed to investigate how these learners perform in a specific subset of tasks that involve significant differences between English and Arabic in relation to the prepositions that must be used. Thirty-five male intermediate-level learners of English as a Foreign Language at a Saudi military academy were tasked with translating 28 sentences from Arabic to English under the condition that they had a time limit to complete the task and could not use a dictionary. The learners’ answers were coded for errors within the framework of error analysis, as well as for the source of the errors, whether interlingual or intralingual. A total of 229 errors in the use of prepositions in the learners’ answers were identified from the 980 coded answers. The most common type of error was substitution error (62.4%), followed by omission errors (20.5%) and addition errors (17.0%). Most of the errors were categorized as interlingual errors (83.0%), indicating that the learners’ errors in the use of prepositions were mostly due to the differences between the two languages, while the remainder were intralingual errors (17.0%). The majority of the errors in the answers from the Saudi learners were within a limited number of prepositional phrases. These included frames that described location, movement, and verbs or adjectives that used prepositions to describe the meanings of those words. These findings indicate that there are a small number of goals for the instruction of prepositions to be targeted by teachers of English as a Foreign Language to the Saudi learners. These findings are limited to the task that was created for this study because it required learners to perform translation errors.

Backgrounded Dependency in the Diachrony of English Absolutes

Wed, 27 May 2026 04:27:14 +0000

This paper reassesses the diachrony of English absolute constructions (ACs) from Old English to Present-Day English in order to identify their most stable constructional property. It argues that English ACs are best characterized not by full syntactic independence but by backgrounded dependency. Drawing on evidence from different historical stages, the paper shows that this higher-level property remains stable across time, although the cues supporting the identification and interpretation of ACs change substantially. As older morphological signals weaken, greater classificatory weight falls on augmentation, predicate-type expansion, and discourse-pragmatic and contextual cues. The analysis further shows that English ACs are best understood not as isolated structures, but as a distinct yet non-isolated node within a broader network of nonfinite constructions. Their history is therefore not a linear movement from dependence to independence, but a process of constructional reorganization within the nonfinite periphery. More specifically, the paper argues that diachronic continuity resides in a stable secondary-predication schema interpreted relative to a matrix clause and discourse frame, while variation reflects the redistribution of formal, semantic, discourse, and network cues. Backgrounded dependency thus provides a more adequate account of both continuity and change in the history of English ACs.

Narrating the Other: A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of Chinese Women in Le Monde and Le Figaro (2005–2025)

Thu, 14 May 2026 10:40:06 +0000

In an increasingly globalised media environment, news discourse has become a significant arena for constructing representations of women across national borders. Despite the increasing international visibility of Chinese women and the growing body of relevant research, their representation in European media remains relatively underexplored. This study examines how Chinese women are discursively constructed in two major French newspapers, Le Monde and Le Figaro, between 2005 and 2025. Combining corpus-assisted discourse analysis with van Leeuwen’s (2008) social actor representation framework, the study analyses co-occurrence patterns, strategies of nomination and categorisation, and the distribution of activation and passivation in the representation of Chinese women. The findings show that these representations cluster around four major semantic domains: sports, marriage and family, migration, and commerce and consumption. Narratives of individual achievement tend to be realised through nomination and activation, whereas topics associated with social problems are more often framed through categorisation and passivation. This asymmetry produces a representational paradox: individual Chinese women are selectively highlighted, while Chinese women as a collective are more often problematised and constructed as a generalised Other. The study demonstrates how seemingly neutral linguistic choices participate in the ideological construction of gendered and cultural otherness.

Redefining English Absolutes: Boundary Diagnostics, Prototype Structure, and Diachronic Implications

Wed, 27 May 2026 04:28:53 +0000

English absolute constructions (ACs) are peripheral predicative structures whose category boundaries remain difficult to define, especially where canonical participial patterns shade into augmented, nonverbal, infinitival, or neighboring constructions. This paper aims to provide a boundary-sensitive account of English ACs by specifying how category membership can be diagnosed and how diagnostic cues change across historical periods. Using a qualitative, corpus-informed design, it triangulates representative tokens from diachronic corpora and selected texts with previous descriptive, formal, functional, constructional, and corpus-based studies. The analysis shows that ACs cannot be delimited by a single feature such as formal detachment, overt subjecthood, or adverbial meaning. Instead, membership depends on the convergence of formal, semantic, and contextual diagnostics, including local predication, structural marking, subject anchoring, semantic relation, semantic recoverability, clause position, coreference, and register conditioning. The paper models the category as prototype-structured, distinguishing central ACs, peripheral but network-internal ACs, and neighboring non-AC constructions. It further shows that diachronic continuity lies not in one invariant surface form, but in the reweighting of diagnostics as morphology weakens and augmentation, predicate diversification, position, coreference, and register become more important. The paper concludes that boundary variation is a principled feature of the AC category rather than a classificatory defect.

Discourses of Youth Empowerment in the Bahraini Media: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 03:16:02 +0000

Youth empowerment has gained prominence as part of Bahrain Economic Vision 2030, resulting in the rise of countless initiatives aimed at empowering youth across diverse fields. Simultaneously, official media outlets in Bahrain have continued to report on and engage with these latest developments. This study employs Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework to identify and examine the dominant Discourses of youth empowerment and the subject positions constructed for the youth in Bahrain. Furthermore, it critically assesses the power of these official Discourses in constructing the values and beliefs within this social group. A mixed-methods approach was used, consisting of text analysis of youth empowerment initiatives’ titles and articles published in official media outlets, as well as a survey administered to 73 Bahraini youth. The findings indicate that the official media in the Kingdom generally constructs a positive representation of youth in Bahrain, emphasizing their contributions through their talents, achievements, and service to the nation. Three dominant Discourses were identified: Discourses of Patriotism, Discourses of Unlimited Potential, and Discourses of Pride. Moreover, the official discourse emphasizes youth inclusion and agency, thereby positioning youth as active contributors to the Kingdom’s future. The analysis of survey responses further suggests that Bahraini youth have largely internalized this positive narrative and do, in fact, identify with the dominant Discourses and subject positions made available to them. Overall, the findings demonstrate the influential role of the official discourse in constructing representations of youth and highlighting the potential positive implications of such representations. Future research is needed to examine the unofficial Discourses surrounding youth empowerment.

Investigating the Use of Synaesthetic Metaphor in Commercials

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 03:17:17 +0000

This empirical study investigates the effectiveness of synaesthetic metaphors in commercial advertising, focusing on their cognitive perception among college students and subsequent influence on purchase decisions. Synaesthetic metaphor, a cognitive mechanism that blends sensory modalities, is increasingly used in advertising to create vivid and memorable messages. Drawing on multimodal metaphor theory, the study examines how sensory blending operates psychologically in advertising contexts. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 233 undergraduates across four academic years, analyzing three advertisement formats: text-only, image-text, and video-text. The results reveal significant gender differences and a positive correlation between educational level and metaphor comprehension. Advertisements combining images and text yield the highest recognition accuracy, indicating that multimodal presentation enhances comprehensibility. Notably, 62.66% of respondents agree that synaesthetic metaphors increase their desire to purchase. Statistical analysis shows significant positive correlations among metaphor recognition, perceived watchability, and purchase intention. A one-way ANOVA confirms that advertisement format significantly affects metaphor recognition, with image‑text ads performing best. These findings offer theoretical insights into cross-modal cognition and practical guidance for advertisers aiming to engage younger, media‑savvy audiences. The study underscores the importance of clear metaphorical design, audience segmentation, and multimodal integration in advertising strategy.

Interpersonal Meta-Discourse and Political Persuasion: Toward an Integrated Framework of Persuasive Legitimacy

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 03:19:16 +0000

Political persuasion in contemporary contexts is increasingly shaped by polarization, crisis communication, and digitally mediated discourse, highlighting the need to understand better the linguistic mechanisms through which legitimacy is constructed. This study provides a critical review of theoretical and empirical developments on interpersonal metadiscourse in political discourse from 2005 to 2025. Drawing on Hyland’s model of stance and engagement, the review examines how interpersonal metadiscourse intersects with classical rhetorical appeals (ethos, pathos, logos), socio-cognitive models of persuasion, and critical discourse approaches to ideology and power. The analysis reveals that existing research remains theoretically fragmented, geographically skewed toward Western democratic contexts, and limited in its treatment of crisis and authoritarian discourse. In response, the study proposes an integrated framework in which interpersonal metadiscourse functions as a mediating layer that linguistically realizes rhetorical appeals within broader ideological and power structures, ultimately contributing to the construction of persuasive legitimacy. By bridging micro-level linguistic analysis with macro-level theories of persuasion and ideology, the study offers a more comprehensive conceptual model and identifies directions for future research, particularly in cross-cultural, multimodal, and AI-mediated political communication.

Three-Word Lexical Bundles in ChatGPT-Generated Reading Scheme Texts and Human-Authored RAZ Texts

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 03:20:50 +0000

Given the growing use of AI-generated materials in language education, it is essential to examine their linguistic characteristics compared with traditional human-authored texts. This study aims to compare the use of three-word lexical bundles between ChatGPT-generated reading scheme texts and human-authored Reading A-Z (RAZ) materials. Based on two comparable corpora of 403 texts each with similar token counts, three major differences were identified. First, the ChatGPT corpus uses nearly five times as many three-word bundles as the RAZ corpus. However, the RAZ corpus repeats the same bundles more often within a small number of texts. Second, the most frequent bundles in the ChatGPT corpus mainly focus on natural phenomena, whereas those in the RAZ corpus center on humans or animals. Third, the ChatGPT corpus exhibits greater structural variety in lexical bundles, including clause-related and exclusive adjective-related bundles, while the RAZ corpus favors verb- and noun-related bundles. These findings suggest that the ChatGPT corpus prioritizes linguistic variation, descriptive natural settings, and greater syntactic complexity, whereas the RAZ corpus emphasizes learnability, repetition, and child-engaging content. Pedagogically, AI-generated reading materials may require increased repetition, simplified structures, and more learner-centered topics to better support young learners’ vocabulary acquisition, reading fluency, and engagement.

An Ecological Discourse Analysis of Participants’ Roles in Chi Bi Fu and Its Two English Translations: A Transitivity Perspective

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 10:03:24 +0000

Discursive turn and ecological turn serve as catalysts for the burgeoning of ecolingustics. As the central paradigm of ecolinguistics, ecological discourse analysis aims to analyze all discourses from the perspective of ecology. The literature to date suggests that, at present, most of the studies about ecological discourse analysis are limited to natural ecology, and the applications of transitivity in the ecological discourse analysis mainly focus on processes. Therefore, based on the ecosophy of “Holism”, this study applies transitivity focusing on participants to the ecological discourse analysis of Chi Bi Fu and its two English translations, aiming to shed light on the ecological roles of concrete participants in the interpretations of “three dimensional ecology”. The results reveal that five types of concrete participants jointly delineate the universal equality of natural ecology, the optimistic transcendence of spiritual ecology, and the dialectical unity of social ecology. Natural inanimate participants are the implementers of natural ecology and the carriers of spiritual ecology; non-natural inanimate participants play the auxiliary roles of expressing spiritual ecology; human animate participants experience spiritual ecology; non-human animate participants are the implementers of natural ecology and the coordinators of spiritual ecology; and integrated participants act as the inspirations of “three dimensional ecology”. This study further argues that the transitivity-based translation strategies may lead to the passive, backgrounded, and implicit ecological roles of the original concrete participants, thereby influencing the ecological representations of the source text.

Human-AI Collaboration in Bidirectional Multilingual Institutional Translation

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 10:06:08 +0000

Recent research on large language model translation has largely focused on product-oriented comparisons between human and machine output, in which human-AI collaboration is typically narrowed to post-editing. This article argues that an approach overlooks how translation quality is shaped through decision-making in the translation process. Drawing on process-oriented perspectives in translation studies (Toury, 2012), it reconceptualizes human-AI collaboration as a redistribution of decision-making between human translators and large language models. Using the UN Women Strategic Plan (2022–2025), translated bidirectionally across English, French, and Chinese as its corpus, the study examines this collaboration through a controlled API-based method. Human translators design prompts, set parameters, and structure workflows, thereby constraining and guiding model execution, while LLMs perform large-scale text generation within these conditions. Evaluation using COMET and BERTScore shows consistently mid-to-high semantic quality across language directions. From a process-oriented perspective, the study shows how translation quality in multilingual institutional contexts is shaped by human-defined constraints on model execution.

A Sociological Interpretation of the Stylistic Evolution in the English Translations of San Zi Jing: A Corpus-Based Study of the English Translations by Herbert A. Giles and Zhao Yanchun

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 12:56:02 +0000

As a canonical Chinese primer, San Zi Jing (The Three-Character Classic) has an English translation history spanning over two centuries, during which translation styles have exhibited significant diachronic variation. However, existing research predominantly focuses on static assessments of translation quality. Such studies fail to elucidate why translators’ linguistic decision-making exhibits a paradigm shift from a “heteronomous interpretation” to a “reassertion of translator subjectivity,” nor do they address the underlying sociological generative mechanisms. Adopting a corpus-based approach, this study conducts a multidimensional quantitative comparison of the English translations by Herbert A. Giles (1900) and Zhao Yanchun (2014) across three dimensions: lexical metrics, syntactic features, and discourse-level interpersonal dynamics. The data reveal that Giles’s translation constructs an explicating dialogic space via high-frequency function words and complex syntactic structures, reflecting the pragmatic habitus of early translators vying for symbolic capital within the sinological field. In contrast, Zhao’s translation achieves strict formal and semantic fidelity to the source text through exceptionally high lexical density and a trimetric rhythm. This demonstrates contemporary translators’ efforts to reconstruct the aesthetic discourse of Chinese classics by leveraging cultural capital under the “Chinese Culture Going Global” initiative. Ultimately, the study concludes that the evolution of translation style is essentially a textual representation of capital competition and structural power dynamics within the translation field, thereby providing replicable quantitative evidence for understanding the sociological mechanisms shaping the translation styles of Chinese canonical texts.

Heterogeneity and Phonetic Variation in Pakistani English: A Comprehensive Scoping Review of Cross-Linguistic Influence

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 13:07:53 +0000

Kachru (1994) classifies Pakistani English (PakE) in the outer circle. Spoken in governmental, educational and business institutions, it is influenced by Urdu and various local languages, creating the need to outline their impact on vowels and consonants of Standard British English’s (SBE), resulting in the formation of PakE. Current sociolinguistic use puts PakE in the nativization phase of Schneider’s Dynamic Model of Post-Colonial Englishes (2007). This scoping review aims to compile and critically analyze consonants and vowels of PakE relative to SBE through a thorough literature search, to identify shared consonants between SBE, Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, Balochi, Saraiki, and Urdu. Articles (N = 2434) on PakE phonology (consonants and vowels) were limited to studies of bi/multilingual Pakistani adults exposed to English; selected through databases PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Ebsco Discovery-UKM, access portals Research4Life Hinari-WHO, ResearchGate, and Academia. Results of included articles (n = 83) showed variations of SBE with its phonetic inventories in literature manifesting (1) absence of aspirated stop allophones (2) rhoticity: retroflexion of alveolar stops /t→ʈ;d→ɖ/ and palatalization of approximants/alveolar trills /ɹ→r/ (3) dentalization of fricatives /ð→ḏ,Ө→ṯh/ (4) Alteration of several vowels: diphthongs→monophthongs. This scoping review re-iterates, unique phonological features of PakE influenced by heterogeneity among bi/multilingual Pakistanis. It sets structural standards for PakE phonology, suggesting possible progression into the endonormative phase-four of Schnieder’s dynamic model and it lays the foundation for understanding phonological acquisition and defining educational norms of PakE for Pakistani children. It provides a base for establishing criteria of teaching English and developing norm-referenced clinical assessments for children.

Interpersonal Metadiscourse as a Persuasive Strategy in Bashar Al-Assad’s Political Speeches: A Discourse-Analytical Study

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 13:10:04 +0000

Political speeches play an important role in shaping how political events are interpreted and in constructing leadership legitimacy. Although rhetorical persuasion in political discourse has been widely examined, the linguistic mechanisms through which persuasion is realized remain underexplored, particularly in Arabic political contexts. This study investigates the role of interpersonal metadiscourse as a persuasive strategy in selected political speeches by Bashar Al-Assad. Using qualitative discourse analysis, the study draws on Hyland’s model of interpersonal metadiscourse and Aristotelian rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos. The findings show that both interactive and interactional markers contribute significantly to persuasion. Interactive markers, including transitions, frame markers, and evidentials, support the logical organization of arguments and strengthen logos. Interactional markers, such as attitude markers, engagement markers, self-mentions, boosters, and hedges, help construct credibility, emotional alignment, and audience involvement, thereby reinforcing ethos and pathos. The study contributes to political discourse research by demonstrating how interpersonal metadiscourse functions as a linguistic mechanism for constructing authority, legitimacy, and audience engagement in crisis-oriented political persuasion.

Naming Anomalies in University Presses Across Five Countries: A Chomskyan Analysis

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 07:25:00 +0000

What structures are employed in the English names of university presses across Anglophone states (UK, US, Australia, Canada) and China? Do they conform to Government and Binding Theory (GB)? Or do they exhibit severe anomalies? If anomalies exist (in our data collected by February 2026), what types are prevalent? This study analyzes the naming structures of university presses in these five countries mainly through the lens of GB. There are six categories of press names: 1) Top.+Uni.+Press, 2) Uni.+Top.+Press, 3) Des. (abbr. containing Uni.) + Press, 4) Name+Uni.+Press, 5) Top.+Des.+Uni.+Press, 6) Miscellany. University presses in the four English-speaking countries primarily utilize structures 1) to 4), indicating a systematic avoidance of names containing dual designators or a combination of toponyms and designators. In contrast, China’s university presses (in Chinese) are predominantly categorized under 1) and 5), while the English versions of Chinese presses fall mainly in Categories 1), 5) and 6). Press names (for five countries) in Categories 2), 3), and 6) represent a critical area of violation of GB. Their “correct” structural and semantic interpretations that align with expectations are in substance the result of arbitrary “publisher-pruning.” Eight suggestions are proposed about press naming and translating. The analysis and suggestions may help improve (future) press naming and its translation, and may offer a useful reference for future in-depth research on topics centering around press and university names.

Reviewer acknowledgements for International Journal of English Linguistics, Vol. 16, No. 4

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 02:00:57 +0000

Reviewer acknowledgements for International Journal of English Linguistics, Vol. 16, No. 4, 2026