Writing academic papers is an important part of our future graduate study career, while language is the most outstanding characteristic of academic writing. The language features used by authors are of vital importance, because language is not only the carrier of papers’ content but also the vehicle that authors use to present their research findings. In order to make preparation for my future’s academic writing, I will analyze the language features of the article “Human Capital and CEO Compensation during Institutional Transitions” (Peng, Sun & Markóczy, 2015). from Journal of Management Studies. My analysis will cover some important language features including the level of language formality, the specialized vocabulary and the language structure.
Levels of Language Formality
The level of language formality we choose for writing should always adapt to our target readers and our purpose of writing the paper. For academic paper,the audience are normally specialized people who already know something about the theme. And the purpose of the academic writing is to present research results in a particular discipline. Hence, for graduate students, we should try to use more formal language in our academic writing. The level of language formality can be measured by some standards as follows. Contractions: According to Swales and Feak (2012), contractions are not common in most of fields. And I found that the paper under analysis tried to avoid using contractions. For example, “The market transition argument does not claim that…” (Peng et al., p.118) In my opinion, the reason authors avoid using contractions is because using contractions may be considered unprofessional.
Negative Form: Swales and Feak (2012) also suggested that some authors are more likely to use specific negative forms instead of others. For instance, they prefer using “no” to using “not…any”. And I found something similar in the article, such as “…CEO compensation refers to cash (salary and bonus) only, with no long-term incentive plans such as stock options.” (p.118) And in some sentences, authors use “little” rather than using “not…much”, such as “The correlation matrix suggests little problem of multicollinearity.” (p.119) These forms authors choose to use are considered more formal expressions.
“You” Pronoun: Furthermore, Swales and Feak (2012) suggested that authors in some disciplines are more willing to use passive voice without calling the audience “you”. I think the reason is that they try to avoid using the first or second person point of view in order to make the article more objective. This situation can be seen in the article when authors say, “At least two schools of thought can be identified in this literature.”, “Finally, while the cross-country generalizability of our findings remains to be seen…” (Peng et al., 2014)
Direct or Indirect Questions: Swales and Feak (2012) also stated that indirect questions are more commonly seen in academic writing since they are considered more formal. This can be seen when authors say, “we advocate three reasons as to why CEOs’ international experience translates to higher compensation.” (p.119) However, at the beginning of the article, authors also used a direct question as a hook to draw readers’ attention, “What then drives the compensation of CEOs with different types of human capital” (p.119)?
Adverbs Placement English adverbs commonly occur at the beginning and the end of the sentence. However, according to Swales and Feak (2012), it is not formal to put the adverbs in the initial or final positions of the sentences. In the article under analysis, this situation can be seen in some places such as, “We pay attention to the role played by two important corporate governance mechanisms, politically connected outside directors and compensation committee.” (p.120) In my view, the reason that most of the adverbs in the article are placed in mid-position is to enhance the seriousness of the paper.
Specialized Vocabulary Because the target readers of this article are usually specialized people in the discipline of Management, this article used some specialized vocabulary without giving definitions. For example, authors used some terms such as “market transition” and “power conversion” in the article as subtitles. People who have no background knowledge about business can not understand them. Because the meaning they convey in management are more than their literal meaning. What’s more, authors used some discipline specific acronyms in the article. For example, “ROE” is short for return on equity, and “CEO” is chief executive officer in short. Using specialized vocabularies can not only make our writing clearer but also more concise. When we are writing academic papers in future graduate studies, we should try to use more jargons in our discipline to make our paper more professional and academic.
Language Structure
Verbs Tense Finite verbs can indicate the time. Most of the finite verbs in this article are used in simple present tense. It may be because that the academic papers are usually talking about the “facts”. In the article, authors used simple present tense to make statements. For example, “The theory suggests that …”, “The ICC on a dependent variable shows…” (p.118) And I found that when authors cite the previous research, they usually use simple present tense. However, when they mentioned some findings or data, they used past simple tense. For example, “…the exchange rate during the 2001–11 period was…” (p.119) This may suggest that we should use simple present tense in most cases and use other tenses when we are talking about something specific in our academic writing. For non-finite verbs, authors used many “–ed” form in this article. For example, “…human capital embodied in political ties affords…” “the net income divided by equity…” (p.119) This may indicate that we can use non-finite verbs in our writing to make our sentence more concise without saying too much introductory words such as “that”. In conclusion, authors use both finite and non-finite verbs in this article which make the sentence structure more varied.
Determiners In this article, most of the determiners are presented in the form of demonstratives. Authors use “this”, “that” and “those” many times. For example, “This is because it permits us…” “…especially for those with political ties…” They usually appear when authors are trying to refer to the information that they mentioned before. This suggests that we can use determiners in our academic writing to reduce repetition and make a good cohesion of the ideas.
Noun Phrases Many noun phrases can be seen in this article. For example, “the level of marketization of the region”, “the context of intensifying global competition” and “a focus on the impact of different forms”. By using the noun phrases, authors can show the features of the subject and tell us what the author really want to talk about. For instance, by using noun phrases “the tremendous regional diversity within China”, authors identified the “diversity” as “tremendous” and in “China”; by saying “the level of marketization of the region”, authors tell us that “the level of marketization” is what they want to talk about instead of other factors about “the region”. It may indicate that we can try to nominalize more sentences in our academic writing because noun phrases can convey a lot of information concisely. Moreover, by using noun phrases, we can avoid using separated short words, which makes our writing more professional and academic. In conclusion, by analyzing this article, I got inspired by the usage of language formality, the specialized vocabulary and the sentence structures in the article. And I will definitely apply them in my future academic writing.
References Peng, M. W., Sun, S. L., & Markóczy, L. (2014). Human capital and CEO compensation during institutional transitions. Journal of Management Studies, 52(1), 117-147. doi:10.1111/joms.12106 Swales, J., & Feak, C. (2012). Academic writing for graduate students. Essential tasks and skills. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan.