Shell nouns. Use of the shell nouns ‘issue’ and ‘problem’ through different academic sub-disciplines (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English - Pedagogy, Didactics, Literature Studies, grade: 2,7, RWTH Aachen University, language: English, abstract: This term paper is concerned with shell nouns, more precisely with the shell nouns ‘issue’ and
‘problem’ and their frequency and function through different academic sub-disciplines.
According to the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), both of these nouns
are popular used in academic writing and are therefore worth investigating, especially in
occasions they function as shell nouns since shell nouns are an important feature of academic
writing. Following Flowerdew (2003b: 1), an essential scholar in the field of signalling nouns,
the term he uses for shell nouns, signalling nouns may inter alia function as cohesive devices,
because they draw connections across and within clauses. As writers want their academic
texts to be as cohesive and coherent as possible, shell noun research is significant.
Other eminently respectable scholars in the field of shell nouns are Halliday&Hasan (1976),
who use the term general nouns, Francis (1986) who calls them anaphoric nouns, Ivanic
(1991) uses the term carrier nouns and finally Schmid (2000) labels them as shell nouns. As
the title of this term paper implies the term shell nouns, I will primarily refer to Schmid’s
research.
Moreover, it is noticeable that the shell nouns ‘issue’ and ‘problem’ have an akin meaning,
hence the question arises which shell noun is used more often through the different subdisciplines
of academic texts and due to what reasons. And are there any similarities and/or
differences in the use of the shell nouns ‘issue’ and ‘problem’ through the different subdisciplines
of academic texts?
The aim of my paper is to find answers for the before mentioned questions. In the following
section, named conceptual framework, I will give a definition of shell nouns, demonstrate
different patterns in which shell nouns are used and explain the function of shell nouns. In
addition, I will name the sub-disciplines of academic texts that are important for my study.
After that, information about the corpus and the method I used for my investigation will be
provided. Next, I will present, supported by screenshots and diagrams, and discuss my
findings. Further, there will be a summary of my results and I will check, if there are any
answers to my questions. Last but not least, I would like to give an outlook for future studies
concerning shell nouns.