The problem There has been much recent discussion in studies of academic literacy around the need to address disciplinary differences An understanding of the ways in which disciplines use language differently and hence mean differently, is fundamental to providing meaningful academic language support for students and researchers. It is also especially relevant in an evolving academic context in which inter-disciplinary or trans-disciplinary study and research are actively encouraged. Effective inter-disciplinary collaboration relies on a better understanding of disciplinary differences To date studies of disciplinary differences in applied linguistics have been dominated by two orientations corpus-based quantitative studies of distributions of discrete linguistic features and/or ethnographic studies that choose to largely ignore language in favour of observations of 'activity Engaging with sociological theorisations of knowledge Bernstein Maton)has suggested a number of fruitful directions for the linguistic analysis and explanation of disciplinary differenceThe problem… There has been much recent discussion in studies of academic literacy around the need to address disciplinary differences. An understanding of the ways in which disciplines use language differently, and hence mean differently, is fundamental to providing meaningful academic language support for students and researchers. It is also especially relevant in an evolving academic context in which inter-disciplinary or trans-disciplinary study and research are actively encouraged. Effective inter-disciplinary collaboration relies on a better understanding of disciplinary differences. To date studies of disciplinary differences in applied linguistics have been dominated by two orientations: - corpus-based quantitative studies of distributions of discrete linguistic features, and/or - ethnographic studies that choose to largely ignore language in favour of observations of ‘activity’. Engaging with sociological theorisations of knowledge (Bernstein; Maton) has suggested a number of fruitful directions for the linguistic analysis and explanation of disciplinary difference