It is now generally accepted that academic writing is a social activity by which the authors negotiate with their audience to gain community acceptance for their findings. One of the ways to achieve such an acceptance is by establishing intertextual links to prior research using citation. Despite a vast research on the topic and suggestion of typologies for the form and function of citation in academic writing, few studies have focused on the rhetorical functions of citations. Using Swales' (1990) and Samraj’ s (2013) typologies and analyzing 45 research articles from five high impact factor journals in the field of Applied Linguistics, this paper aims to identity the forms and rhetorical functions of citations in the Discussion sections of these articles. The analysis of the forms shows an overwhelming tendency towards using non-integral citations. Studying the functions of citations indicates that citations are used with various rhetorical functions: to compare the findings; support the explanations; to support the interpretations; and to support the recommendations. It is concluded that by referring to literature, applied linguists contextualize their propositions and try to use it as a support for their research claims in order to persuade their audience of their research outcomes soundness. The findings can enhance our understanding of the reasons behind choosing citations in various parts of discussion section and can be turned into pedagogical materials and raise rhetorical consciousness through teaching those choices explicitly to ESL students.

Academic writing is one of the important skills in higher education and as a social phenomenon can be investigated for ideological manipulations. This study tries to unveil the westernized hegemonic discourse such as legitimation patterns in academic discourse of Iranian applied linguists in three major research paradigms. To this end, five-point classification of van Leeuwen’ s (2008) authorization’ s category was used as our analytic framework. The published articles of Iranian academic-scholarly journals were critically analyzed for the observed frequencies of the mentioned classifications and Chi-square tests were used to statistically investigate the associations between authorization’ s patterns and research paradigms. The results revealed statistically significant associations between quantitative and qualitative research methods on one hand and between qualitative and mixed-methods on the other hand. Accordingly, the results of this study may shed some lights on the domination of positivist’ s ideology in academic writing of the applied linguists in Iran. In this respect, the policy makers in the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology, along with editorial boards of Iranian journals in the field of applied linguistics, may change the globalized and westernized view of education into more locally oriented approaches. Furthermore, professors and students may adopt more democratic views in their research and reporting studies.

abd al-qahir al-jurjani is considered to be one of the renowned pioneer in language and literary studies. He is distinct from his contemporaries because of his theory of Order. His theory of Nazm demonstrates his great ingenuity in linguistics. Al-Jurjani—a renowned Iranian linguist and litterateur—raised and discussed a range of issues in structuralism centuries ago. The present study compares Jurjani’s views with that of others linguists particularly Saussure’s and Chomsky’s. Adopting a descriptive-analytic approach, the article concludes that Jurgani’s views are very similar with those of contemporary linguists. Jurjani’s view that standard language is structured, systematic and coherent, that the relation between signifier and signified is arbitrary and that contexts determine the meaning and aesthetic value of a word are all among the issues that structuralists raised and discussed centuries after Jurjani.

Conducting qualitative research in applied linguistics seems to have some challenges. Hence, this study aimed to investigate the challenges of applied linguists across different research abilities to conduct qualitative studies. To that end, the biographical narratives, authored by 13 applied linguists, were collected. Then, the narratives were analyzed through qualitative data analysis principles, including organizing and familiarizing, coding and reducing, and interpreting and presenting (Ary et al., 2014). The findings showed that applied linguists face four challenges: methodological issues, technical issues, ethical issues, and qualitative research dissemination while doing qualitative research. The findings also indicated similarities and differences among applied linguists' challenges across different research abilities. It can be concluded that teaching qualitative research is more than mere lecturing about qualitative concepts. Thus, there should be practice-based instruction on qualitative research for applied linguistics students. Moreover, there should be a community for addressing pedagogical dialogs among applied linguists about doing qualitative research.