An Analysis of the Commenting on Results Move in Applied Linguistics Research Articles

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to provide a fine-grained description of the rhetorical strategies, linguistic indicators, and semantic resources employed in the Commenting on Results move in the Discussion section of research articles (RAs). 30 RAs in the field of Applied Linguistics were used as the data of the study. All the Result-Comment Sequences were extracted from the data and analyzed for the identification of the steps and sub-steps embedded in the Commenting on Results move. The analysis of the data reveals that comments in the Result-Comment Sequences were enacted to realize five broad rhetorical strategies of interpretation, explanation, comparison, evaluation, and suggestion. Typical linguistic indicators used for realizing the rhetorical purposes were also identified in the study. The analysis of the sub-steps which primarily concerns semantic resources used to make knowledge claims in each rhetorical step indicates that various combinations of semantic resources (literature, observation of the data, design features of the study, the author’s own logical inference, etc.) were utilized for each step and those resources were found to contribute to the construction of the knowledge claims made in the Commenting on Results move. The findings of the study have pedagogical implications for English for Academic Purposes instruction.