This paper reports an investigation of the variation in the move structures and cognitive genres found in the methods sections of research articles (RAs) in a discipline with diversified research methods. Sixty-five RAs involving two research methods in applied linguistics, namely corpus-based studies and experimental research, were analyzed. The results showed that the methods sections of these RAs contained distinct move structures. These distinct move structures, along with the findings of previous studies on the move structures of various disciplines, suggested that the research method adopted in a study is a stronger factor than discipline is in determining the move structure of the methods section. The analysis of the cognitive genres used in the methods sections showed that authors typically require more than one cognitive genre to realize the major moves of the methods sections. However, this variation in the cognitive genres is low between the two patterns of study. These findings suggested that different research methods yield variations in the move structures of the methods sections. However, the cognitive genres that authors require to realize the move structures tend to be common.

Legal texts such as licensing agreements have achieved a certain degree of notoriety because of their complexity. An analysis of English used in licensing agreements would provide teachers of English for specific purposes (ESP) valuable information for preparing appropriate course materials. Recent theories on the role of a lexicon in language and language acquisition have indicated the importance of the collocational patterns of the key lexicon of an ESP genre (Sinclair, 1991;Hoey, 2005). Based on Hoey's (2005) theory of lexical priming, the current study examined primary lexical priming patterns through identifying the essential key lexical priming patterns of licensing agreements in high-tech industries and exploring their semantic and pragmatic associations. For this study, 60 samples of licensing agreements were randomly selected according to Biber et al. (1990) for determining the linguistic variability required for a sample text to be included in a specialized corpus. The results showed that the lexical primings of the studied keywords substantially converged both semantically and pragmatically. These findings on lexical primings provide an approximate plot illustrating how the semantic and pragmatic associations of the keyword lexical primings combined with the lexical primings constitute the linguistic basics through which the purposes of granting a license are served. Implications for the pedagogical applications of the findings are discussed.