A Diachronic Study of Genre Variation in Academic Publishing: The Quarterly Journal of Economics (1965-2004)

Academic journals provide their audience with far more than a mere selection of recent articles. It is sufficient to glance at the table of contents (TOC) to appreciate the diversity of genres represented in their pages, often reflecting editorial efforts to increase the journal’s readership and scientific impact. Though less researched than research articles, these ‘lesser’ genres have attracted the attention of analysts for their pervasiveness and interpersonal significance within domains. The present study aims to shed further light on the generic dynamics of English-medium serials by examining a corpus of TOCs and specimen texts published in the world’s most influential economics journal over a forty-year period. The methodology developed for this purpose – which comprises both quantitative tools and manual investigation of generic cues – highlights the complexity of studying the diachronic dimension of standard(ising) forms of academic writing. It does not attempt, however, to link such evidence to any grand theory of generic change of the type postulated by Berge (1994). Albeit attractive, the explanatory value of such models (cf. also Vagle 2001) is essentially speculative and cannot be tested without recourse to insider knowledge, ethnographic data and historical details unavailable to the humble corpus linguist.