Linguistic realizations of rhetorical structure: a corpus-based study of research article abstracts and introductions in applied linguistics and educational technology

Abstract

The abstract and introduction of an article are at the forefront of an article. They are the first parts of an article to be read by the reader. How to write good abstracts and introductions can be challenging to novice writers. Although there has been considerable research on the rhetorical structure of research articles, these studies tend to focus on the generic structure or move structure of the article. What is equally important, and perhaps more useful to novice writers, is how each move can be realized linguistically. Most of the previous studies in this area are limited in that they focus on the distribution patterns of only one or two linguistic features in either the abstract or the introduction of the main article as a whole rather than examine the distribution of a more comprehensive set of features at the move level. Furthermore, it is sometimes hard for novice writers to distinguish the way they should write the abstract, which precedes the article and is independent of the article, and the introduction of the main article. These two genres are seemingly similar, yet they have distinctive move structures and linguistic characteristics. This study thus aims at examining a range of linguistic features of each of the abstract and introduction moves of research articles in two disciplines, applied linguistics and educational technology. A corpus of 40 research articles in these two disciplines was xml-tagged for moves and coded for a range of linguistic features to investigate what features are prototypical of each move. The analysis shows that a combination of features such as verb tenses, voice, modal verbs, stance words, self-reference words, and reporting verbs can help to distinguish moves. Variations across the two disciplines are also examined. These findings have pedagogical implications for academic writing courses for graduate students in general and for students from non-English backgrounds in particular.