A Comparative Study of Abstract Length and Relative Clause Usage in Abstracts of Educational Research Articles

s in research articles (RAs) serve a critical role in summarizing key findings and capturing readers' interest. However, linguistic strategies employed in abstracts can vary significantly based on authors' linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Accordingly, this study investigates differences in relative clause usage and abstract length between Anglophone and Turkish non-Anglophone authors in education research article abstracts (RAAs). Using a corpus of 106 RAAs, with 56 authored by Anglophones and 50 by Turkish non-Anglophones, descriptive statistics and log-likelihood (LL) analysis were applied to examine these linguistic features. Findings reveal that Turkish authors tend to produce slightly longer RAAs, although with greater variability, likely influenced by inconsistent journal guidelines. In contrast, Anglophone authors use relative clauses more frequently and favor non-reduced forms significantly more than their Turkish counterparts, reflecting differing syntactic preferences and stylistic conventions. These results underscore the impact of linguistic background on academic writing practices, highlighting the need for targeted interventions to support non-native English-speaking authors in achieving greater clarity and conciseness. Practical implications include the development of instructional resources to enhance the syntactic efficiency of abstracts, which is critical for improving their acceptance in international journals. Limitations of the study, such as the exclusion of multi-authored papers and the focus on unstructured abstracts, suggest avenues for future research

Linguistics · Mathematics education · Political science · Sociology · Turkish · Educational Assessment and Pedagogy · Educational Methods and Analysis · Philosophy · Psychology