Backgrounding the Discussion Section of Medical Research Articles

Abstract

The discussion section is considered as a crucial part in the writing process of a research article (RA). Research writers find it difficult to write an effective discussion for their results and this could be due to the unawareness of the various move functions that shape this section. A rhetorical move is a sentence or group of sentences that serves a communicative function. This paper focuses on move Background information, its linguistic devices such as verb, tense, and self-reference and lexical bundles (LBs) including 3- to 5-word bundles that are used to construct this communicative move. The corpus of the study includes a total of 50 medical RAs discussion section which were selected from five prestigious journals in the field. The corpus was analysed in terms of the occurrence of move Background information, the linguistic devices associated with this move and the LBs that initiate it. The analysis of the move and the linguistic realizations was done manually and the identification of LBs was done using AntConc3.5.7w computer program. The findings revealed that 34 (64%) of the corpus included move Background information. This move was mainly employed to describe methodological aspects and restate the research purpose. These functions were characterized by the use of procedural verbs, first-person plural pronouns and simple past tense. Moreover, several 3 - 5 words LBs (e.g., we tested the hypothesis, this study was based on) were found to initiate move Background information. Further studies are needed to examine other obligatory and optional moves such as Explaining research findings and Indicating research limitations.