The Naked Truth about the Naked<i>This</i>: Investigating Grammatical Prescriptivism in Technical Communication

Technical Communication Quarterly Apr 2014

The Naked Truth about the Naked<i>This</i>: Investigating Grammatical Prescriptivism in Technical Communication

Ryan K. Boettger University of North Texas ; Stefanie Wulff University of Florida

Abstract

The decision to follow the demonstrative this with a noun phrase is important to students’ writing development. Previous research has emphasized when students should not attend this rather than studying why students make the choice. Using a corpus-linguistic approach, we investigated 1,999 instances of (un)attended this in student technical and academic writing. High shares of unattended this were found in both text types as well as in original and revised drafts.

Journal: Technical Communication Quarterly
Published: 2014-04-01
DOI: 10.1080/10572252.2013.803919
Open Access: Closed
Topics: technical communication

Citation Context

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