Communicative moves in the discussion section of research articles

Abstract

This paper describes an analysis of communicative moves in discussion sections across seven disciplines—Physics, Biology, Environmental Science, Business, Language and Linguistics, Public and Social Administration, and Law. While introductions in academic writing have received attention recently, much less research has investigated discussion sections and there has been little investigation of their move structure, including interdisciplinary and NS/NNS variation. Findings in these areas have clear relevance for the teaching of ESP: the rapid growth in the number of research writers, and the need to teach them discipline-specific research writing, makes these factors increasingly important. Research articles (RAs) were analysed in terms of Dudley-Evans's 1994 model. The total corpus was 252 RAs (36 from each discipline, 1.4 million words). A number of marked interdisciplinary and NS/NNS differences were found in the type and number of moves and move cycles. Conclusions are that the findings have relevance for the teaching of research writing. They may help ESP teachers inform learners of typical move sequences and also how much flexibility the genre allows regarding obligatory and optional moves and cycles, and the optimal order of moves. A revised model for the discussion sections is also put forward.