Form and function of citations in discussion sections of master's theses and research articles

Abstract

The use of source texts in academic writing has been explored in at least two groups of EAP studies, those on the reading-writing connection in student writing and those on citation practices in disciplinary discourse. In recent years, there have been a growing number of studies on the rhetorical functions of intertextual links in different academic genres such as research articles and theses, and studies have also compared citation use by novice and more established writers. Following a brief analysis of citation forms, this article explores the functions of source text use in the discussion sections of master's theses and research articles from biology using two typologies, one created by Thompson (2001, 2005) and, the second, an expanded model described in this paper, which reflects the rhetorical progression of this part-genre. Previous genre studies have only referred to the use of literature in one move in discussions, “commenting on results.” However, the results of this study show that intertextual links are used for a variety of rhetorical functions throughout discussions in master's theses and journal articles. This article concludes with a discussion of implications from this study for the EAP classroom to facilitate the development of advanced second language writers.