Abstract：Through a quantitative content analysis of the research methods in Business English (BE) studies published in CSSCI and SSCI journals from 2007 to 2017, this paper finds that: (1) In research design, both domestic and overseas studies emphasized BE education, while international academia witnessed more BE discourse studies; both domestic and overseas studies were mainly based on linguistics, but more interdisciplinary studies were published in SSCI journals; a wider range of business genres, spoken and computermediated genres in particular, were investigated by overseas researchers. (2) In data collection, nonprobability sampling was widely applied both at home and abroad, while surveys, interviews and observations were more frequently used by overseas researchers. (3) In data analysis, mixed and qualitative methods were the mainstream in overseas studies, while quantitative methods were preferred domestically; in addition, domestic researchers made full use of corpus tools. (4) Reliability and validity tests were inadequate in both domestic and overseas studies. The paper is concluded with implications for domestic BE studies.
2018, Vol. 185 
