A Comparison of Rhetorical Move Structure of Applied Linguistics Research Articles Published in International and National Thai Journals

Abstract

The rhetorical organization of research articles has attracted extensive attention in genre study, and the focus of move-based analysis is on the textual function. The primary aim of the present study was the comparison of the rhetorical moves of English research articles in the field of Applied Linguistics written by Thai first authors and published in national Thai journals with those written by authors of different nationalities and published in international journals. Each of the two corpora was represented by 30 English research articles with sections of introduction, method, results and discussion. These sections were examined according to different move models: Introduction: Swales (2004), Methods: Peacock (2011), and Results and Discussion: Yang and Allison (2003). The study provided detailed rhetorical structures of research articles from both corpora with linguistic features used in each move. It was found that the frequency of rhetorical move occurrence of the two corpora was quite similar, but there were some differences in how gaps in research were established and in how credibility of the data analysis was gained. The findings of this study provide a picture of how research articles of the two corpora are written. This may lead to implications for English for Academic Purposes teachers and researchers and novice writers in Applied Linguistics.