The very first sentence in research article introductions: A rhetoric comparative approach

Abstract

The current study explores the rhetoric and stylistic properties of the very first sentence that scholars generate in their research article introductions. The study draws upon a corpus of 502 sentences written in the fields of linguistics and translation, half of which are collected from national low-impact journals affiliated with Gulf universities in the Middle East while the other half are elicited from international high-impact journals. The study shows that half of the authors in high-impact journals as opposed to a quarter of the authors in low-impact journals provide citations to their very first sentence. These preferences are accounted for by the distinction drawn by Swales (1990) between centrality claims and topic generalizations under Move 1. Contra the predictions made by Create A Research Space Model proposed by Swales (1990, 2004), the results show that the authors of high-impact journals are more liberal in starting their introduction with a sentence of Move 2 or 3 type. In contrast, the authors of low-impact journals prefer to begin with a sentence of Move 1 type that is shorter in word count, more metaphorical, less academic as well as full of typos and grammatical errors.