| The misunderstanding and misapplication of expected generic conventions have become of increasing concern to the growing number of second language (L2) medical researchers attempting to publish their writing in national and international, English-language journals. This study provides a computational linguistic analysis of the genre of English-language biomedical research abstracts and posits how these conventions differ among native (NS) and nonnative speakers (NNS) of English. Based on a corpus of L1 (n = 500) and Korean L2 (n = 1000) English biomedical research abstracts, published in first-tier American and Korean biomedical journals, the systematic variations in linguistic features among the two groups is investigated and compared using Coh-Metrix, a computational tool designed to assess linguistic and rhetorical elements within texts. The significance of this research is not only to suggest reasons for the distancing and exclusion of L2 medical research from the mainstream, Euro-centric, English-writing community, but moreover, to suggest how the isolation and analysis of various linguistic components within this specific genre can be taught and applied to provide a powerful apparatus for the inclusion of L2 English writers into the future of international biomedical discourse.;Keywords: genre analysis, discourse community, English for specific purposes (ESP), computational linguistics, Coh-Metrix, biomedical research, nonnative speakers (NNS). |
