ABSTRACT
This chapter utilizes quantitative and qualitative information about selected lemmas as a resource for investigating the characteristics of the four journals. The four journals are: Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, Global Environmental Change, Plant Science, and Resource and Energy Economics. The lemmas were selected from a list derived on grounds of linguistic form: all the adjectives, nouns and verbs on the list are attested to occur with appositive that-clauses. All the selected lemmas play a role in marking the epistemic status of propositions that combine to form disciplinary knowledge. Status markers have a particular role to play in construing complex disagreement in academic discourse. Investigating the comparative frequency of status markers in the four journals is likely to lead to insights into their disciplinary character. The contrast between the status markers studied is designed to highlight the differences between the four journals studied and also to bring into focus issues of (inter-)disciplinarity in them.
