Constructing Criticality: A Corpus Contrastive Analysis of Applied Linguistics Literature Reviews

Literature review is a central element of academic writing, that enables researchers to identify gaps, position their studies, and synthesize prior work. Its effectiveness relies on criticality, which allows writers to evaluate existing knowledge, highlight strengths and limitations, and establish a foundation for new contributions. Developing this skill is crucial for producing coherent and persuasive review of literature. However, many student writers struggle to demonstrate criticality, as they tend to summarize previous findings without making a critical analysis or presenting their own perspective when reviewing the literature. This tendency weakens their ability to strike a balance between caution and assertion, and to project a convincing authorial voice. The current study examines how criticality is expressed in literature reviews through five strategies: hedging, boosting, attitude markers, disclaim markers, and self-mentions. To this end, two specialized corpora were compiled: the expert corpus (Expert Literature Review Corpus (ELRC), 1.26 million words) and the learner corpus (Malaysian Literature Review Corpus (MLRC), 696,494 words). Using Wordsmith Tools 6.0, a corpus-based contrastive analysis was conducted to identify the frequencies of linguistic devices associated with these strategies. Findings reveal that while both expert and student writers employed all five strategies, expert writers used them more frequently and with greater lexical variety. This suggests that experts are more adept at striking a balance between caution and evaluation, thereby constructing stronger criticality in their writing. The study underscores the importance of pedagogical support to help students move beyond reliance on hedging and adopt a broader range of linguistic resources that foster more critical and impactful literature reviews.