Language used in Economic Journals: A Descriptive Study

Abstract

This research makes an effort to analyze and describe the language used in economic journals in terms of Sentence Types, Tense, Voice, Aspect and Sentence Length. This research is descriptive one which is based on the secondary sources of data. The data for the study were judgmentally collected from three journals viz. “Country Economic Review”, “Journal of Economic Perspectives” and “The Economic Journal of Nepal” published from the Philippines, the USA and Nepal respectively. The total sample population of the study consists of forty-five texts. The required data was collected using observation as the data collection tool. The outcomes possessed from the texts of economic journals were tabulated on the basis of collected data and linguistic characteristics. Then simple statistical tools were used to analyze the data by calculating the average and percentage. By using the data, an effort has been made firstly to compare the language of economic journals between two non-native journals and secondly, the language used in native and non-native texts of economic journals has been compared to find out the usual tendency of writing within economic journals. This study found that complex sentences are maximally used, the differences have been found in the use of simple and compound sentences. In case of tense, non-past tense is frequently used than past tense. Regarding voice, active voice is highly used than passive one. Simple aspect is maximally used, perfective one is more frequently used than progressive aspect. In terms of sentence length, native texts are found a bit longer than that of non-native ones. This Thesis is composed of four chapters and each chapter is divided into necessary headings and sub-headings. Chapter one deals with general background, review of the related literature, objectives, significance of the study, ESP: a brief synopsis, language of economics and definition of the terms. Chapter two presents the methodology of the study, sources of data, sampling procedure and tools for data collection, process of data collection and the limitation of the study. Chapter three consists of the analysis and interpretation of the collected data. In this section both statistical tools like average and percentage and descriptive approaches have been used to reach to the conclusion. The comparison is done between native and non-native texts. Chapter four discusses the findings and recommendations based on analysis and interpretation of this study. The references, appendices and some samples of economic texts are included.