How do applied linguistics researchers structure coherence relations in the process of establishing a niche for their research?

Abstract

AbstractThis study is an extension of previous research on how writers of research articles (RAs) structure their texts to be coherent in the process of achieving communicative purposes of the RA genre. It examines how RA writers relate sentences in establishing a niche for their studies in the introduction section. Genre analysis methods and Rhetorical Structure Theory are used to analyse 40 applied linguistics RA introductions. The findings show that the RA writers who establish a niche by indicating a gap in previous research tend to use a concessive or contrastive relation to relate the gap statements to the descriptions of previous studies. The writers who establish a niche by indicating how their studies would extend previous research in the field tend to use a background relation to claim a niche based on the specific studies. The writers who indicate a real world problem for the niche establishment tend to use a background relation to reveal a niche based on contextual information surrounding the problem. Possible reasons for the selection of the relations are discussed in terms of the influence of the nature of the RA genre and/or the applied linguistics discipline.