Logical Connectors in the Discussion Sections of Research Journal Articles

Abstract

In research articles (RAs), the writers always express their arguments especially in discussion section. In this case, most of the writers tend to relate one idea to another to make their ideas coherent. This research article is done to investigate the logical connectors used by the writers of research articles, especially the logical connectors of three categories: logical connectors, frame markers, and Code Glosses. These linguistic devices are commonly used by the writers in academic or research articles (RAs). This is a qualitative research using the documents for analysis. These documents are taken from the research articles published in the academic journals which are collected by means of purposive sampling from the discussion sections of the RAs. The instrument used is called Taxonomy of Textual Meta-discourse. The results show that the writers have different strategies in using the logical connectors depending on which point they relate the ideas in the discussion sections. The results are expected to provide the readers with some logical connectors and some perspectives of the strategies of using logical connectors in research writing especially in the discussion sections. It is recommended that the research writers use logical connectors for making the ideas coherent.Keywords: Linguistics, logical connectors, frame markers, code glosses, Textual Metadiscourseanalysis, academic journal articles, research articles (RAs), Indonesia