Commenting on Findings in Qualitative and Quantitative Research Articles’ Discussion Sections in Applied Linguistics

Leila Dobakhti

doi:10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.2n.5p.145

Abstract

Research articles have received a wide interest in discourse studies particularly in genre analysis over the last few decades. A vast number of studies have focused on identifying the organizational patterns of research articles in various fields. However, to date, no study has been conducted on generic structure of qualitative and quantitative research articles. This study investigates the importance of commenting on findings in Discussion section of qualitative and quantitative research articles and the strategies that these two types of articles employ in making comments. The analysis shows that while commenting on findings is an important feature in both sets of articles, different strategies of commenting are favored in each type of articles. The differences can be attributed to the different epistemology of qualitative and quantitative research.

Highlights

Research articles ( RAs) have received a wide interest in discourse studies over the last few decades
The findings showed that in terms of overall frequency, the move of Commenting on Findings was the second most occurred move in the qualitative sub-corpus and the first most occurred move (56 occurrences, 26% of all the moves identified in the sub-corpus) in the quantitative subcorpus
In this paper, which is part of a large-scale study, we reported our findings of investigating the move of Commenting on Findings in 15 qualitative and 15 quantitative RAs

Summary

Introduction

Research articles ( RAs) have received a wide interest in discourse studies over the last few decades. Writing a research report is a challenging task for writers as they need to be familiar with the norms of their discourse community to establish the importance of their research and to show that their study is worthy of attention. To be able to negotiate with their discourse community and persuade them to accept their knowledge claims, writers are required to present their research in a way that to be in line with their audience’s expectations (Hyland, 2005a; Koutsantoni, 2006). One attempt to identify the discourse community norms has been made by genre analysts. The function of genre is “to mediate between social situations and the texts that respond strategically to the exigencies of those situations” (Swales, 2009, p. 14)

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