Research Article Discussion Research Articles

ACADEMIC CONFLICTS IN RESEARCH ARTICLE DISCUSSIONS: THE CASE OF INDONESIAN AND MALAYSIAN AUTHORS

Since academic authors aim to enhance the value of their current research findings compared to earlier studies, understanding how to convince journal gatekeepers is crucial. This study analysed the use of academic conflict units in English research article discussions (RADs) published in reputable Indonesian and Malaysian journals within the discipline of language education. The analysis employed four academic conflict units as an analytical framework. The results revealed that both Indonesian and Malaysian RADs tended to employ proposing claims (PC), but the other three academic conflict units, namely, inconsistency indicator (II), opposing claims (OC), and conflict resolution (CR) were rarely used. Regarding gaining visibility and recognition in international knowledge sharing, this finding appears to contradict English RADs written by native English authors published in highly reputable journals. It also suggests that authors discuss their research findings by establishing a global context, comparing them with international literature, and concluding their research articles by considering broader impacts. This finding may offer insights into the literature and draw implications for designing academic writing instruction.

An Exploration of Key Phrase Frames in Business Management Discussions for EAP Teaching

The interest in the phraseological nature of language generated many studies on phraseology in different genres. The focus of the current study is on key phrase frames in business management research article discussions. Key phrase frames are recurrent phraseological expressions with a variable slot and are specific to the studied context, for example genre or discipline. The analysis of the study is based on a corpus of research article discussions, extracted from six leading journals in business management, published between 2017 and 2021. Four-word phrase frames in the corpus were searched using the KfNgram program and refined based on the exclusion criteria to generate a list of phrase frames that was compared with the Corpus of Contemporary American English.The comparison yielded a total of 63 four-word key phrase frames in business management that were analyzed following Biber and Gray's (2013) structural classification and Simpson-Vlach and Ellis's (2010) functional taxonomy. In terms of structure, most key phrase frames were found to be non-verb content word frames while functionally, most serve referential discourse functions. The results suggest that phraseological variation in business management is associated with both lexical and grammatical constructions. These findings are crucial as they have implications on discipline-specific academic writing. most key phrase frames were found to be non-verb content word frames while functionally, most serve referential discourse functions.The results suggest that phraseological variation in business management is associated with both lexical and grammatical constructions. These findings are crucial as they have implications on discipline-specific academic writing. most key phrase frames were found to be non-verb content word frames while functionally, most serve referential discourse functions. The results suggest that phraseological variation in business management is associated with both lexical and grammatical constructions. These findings are crucial as they have implications on discipline-specific academic writing.

“Contrary to findings from previous studies …”: Paradigmatic and ethnolinguistic influences on disagreement negotiation in research article discussions

Academic disagreement is integral to knowledge construction in academic writing. The present study reports on a two-level analysis of academic disagreement in discussion sections from an integration of cross-linguistic and cross-paradigmatic perspectives. Based on a corpus of 80 applied linguistic research articles (RAs), this study examined whether functional components and engagement realizations of academic disagreement differed between Chinese and English RAs and between quantitative and qualitative RAs. Results demonstrated that English RAs negotiated with alternative views more often than Chinese RAs. Quantitative RAs more frequently settled academic disagreement with detailed explanations or supportive evidence than qualitative RAs. Chinese qualitative RAs differed markedly from other RA groups. These differences were attributable to culturally preferred discursive strategies, paradigmatically valued epistemological norms, and socially oriented views of the scientific approach. This study sheds light on how to implement interpersonal strategies to manage scholarly disagreement in different varieties of academic writing.

Investigating interactive metadiscourse markers in research article discussions published in varied journal levels (local, national, and international)

Interactive metadiscourse markers in the discussion section of a journal play a crucial role in engaging the reader and facilitating a more dynamic interaction. In a discussion journal section, interactive metadiscourse markers may include phrases or expressions that invite the reader to consider alternative viewpoints, respond to the presented ideas, or reflect on the implications of the research findings. This research investigated interactive metadiscourse markers in research article discussion of language teaching within 30 articles published in local, national, and international journals. A mixed-methods approach was adopted and the instrument used in this research was a checklist designed to analyze interactive metadiscourse. The result of the inter-rater agreement of the co-rater and researcher indicated a kappa value of 90.2% (co-rater and researcher respectively) because it shows excellent agreement (above 80%). It shows that the highest frequency used of interactive metadiscourse category is transitions markers in the three-level journals. Evidential markers took the second position in frequency used followed by code glossed in third frequency. Endophoric markers and frame markers are less used by the writers in the article discussions. The research articles published in international reputable journals show the highest number of using interactive metadiscourse devices than the articles published in local and national journals.

Exploring disciplinary authors’ conflict negotiation in published research article discussions

Research article (RA) discussions require authors to underline new research findings through negotiating conflict, known as academic conflict (AC), with a specific strand of literature. However, AC has been either inadequately represented in particular disciplines, or left unnoticed across disciplines in academic writing research. This study follows a cross-disciplinary perspective to examine and compare AC negotiation in published medical and applied linguistics RA discussions based on Hunston’s framework. A specialised corpus consisting of 60 RAs, 30 from each discipline, from prestigious journals was screened for AC frequency and recurrent features through manual rhetorical analysis. The findings revealed little variation in overall AC realisation across the two disciplines. In terms of AC components, medical RAs included frequent proposed claims and recurrent conflict resolution features, indicating authors’ tendency to overuse self-interpretations in arguing against previous claims. By contrast, applied linguistics authors relied more on opposed claim components to discuss new findings and resolve research tensions. These findings help enrich our understanding of AC realisations across discipline RAs, which in turn might offer helpful insights into more proportionate academic writing practice and pedagogy.

Native experts and reputable journals as points of reference: A study on research-article discussions

The current study sought to compare the rhetorical moves and steps that native-English-speaking and Iranian authors of research articles (RAs) employ in writing up the ‘discussion’ sections of their RAs. It was hypothesized that the latter group is not as proficient in writing RA discussions as the former group. A total of 66 (N=66) RA discussions from three reputable international academic journals and three Iranian journals were sampled from years 2009 to 2019. This corpus was then analyzed by three human coders who used Yang and Allison’s (2003) rhetorical move analysis model for scoring the sampled RA discussions. Results showed stark differences between Iranian and native RA writers; the majority of the rhetorical moves and steps that are considered obligatory or conventional by the native group are seen as options by the Iranian group. With the native group and the reputable international journals being the standard points of reference, it was concluded that Iranian authors of RAs lack the professional knowledge and expertise prerequisite to writing standard RA discussions. It is recommended (a) that non-native authors of RAs receive professional training for writing standard discussions, and (b) that journal editors be more sensitive to rhetorical moves and steps before they accept a submission for publication.

The different ways to write publishable research articles: Using cluster analysis to uncover patterns of APPRAISAL in discussions across disciplines

Most existing English for Academic Purposes (EAP) studies from a discourse analysis perspective adopt a discipline-based framework that foregrounds the influence of discipline on linguistic features. However, this practice may become unproductive and impractical, given the increasing interdisciplinarity of research. Informed by APPRAISAL theory, this study used Cluster Analysis and identified five different linguistic profiles in research article (RA) discussions (n = 240) from four disciplines: Chemistry, Geoscience, Education, and Management. The distinctions of the profiles cannot be fully explained by disciplinary characteristics. Instead, they may be shaped by the interplay of various factors, including 1) positively appraising the practical significance of the research, 2) mitigating claims and addressing alternative voices, 3) drawing upon existing knowledge, 4) reiterating experimental procedures and real-world observations, 5) idiosyncratic styles, and 6) journal specificities. The findings contribute to a new understanding of linguistic features and variations of research writing and offer empirical support to the recent call for re-examining the foregrounding of disciplinary influence in writing research. The identified linguistic profiles and shaping factors can guide the teaching and learning of the different ways to write publishable RAs across disciplines.

RHETORICAL MOVES VARIATIONS OF RESEARCH ARTICLE DISCUSSION SECTION PUBLISHED IN REPUTABLE JOURNALS

Publishing academic articles is no longer an option but an obligation among academics. Nevertheless, in reality, many students have difficulty writing research results in the form of articles. The current research aims to describe the arrangement of the discussion sections in research articles published in reputable journals and the difference between the research article discussion section in journals indexed with SINTA 1 and SINTA 2. A qualitative study content analysis is used in this research. The data in this study were analyzed using Yang & Allison's (2003) Models. Twenty discussions were taken as the primary data. At first, twenty research articles were selected from SINTA, ten discussions from S1, and the other ten articles were from S2. The articles selected here are those which were published in 2021. The research findings show that there are three moves that the authors always include, namely Move 2 (reporting results), Move 4 Step a (interpreting results), and Move 4 Step b (comparing results with literature). The findings also imply that the authors have used most of the moves and steps proposed by Yang & Allison's (2003) framework in compiling the discussion section. This research can benefit researchers, especially university students who want to submit their manuscripts to journals. By knowing what the editors want in writing the discussion section, mistakes can be minimized since the most revision is on this part.

Rhetorical Structure of Applied Linguistics Research Article Discussions: A Comparative Cross-Cultural Analysis

Background. Recent years have seen tremendous research efforts in the development of English for academic and research publication purposes, utilising an established approach to comparative genre analysis. This growing interest is primarily driven by the global dominance of Anglophone writing conventions, which necessitates raising awareness among researchers, particularly in non-Anglophone contexts.
 Purpose. This study explored and analysed the communicative intents of the discussion sections in research articles in two different contexts to investigate the effect of nativeness on the structural organisation in this genre. The focus of the study was on the rhetorical structure and employment of Moves in the applied linguistics research article Discussions, written in English by Iranian and native English-speaking researchers.
 Methods. A mixed-methods research study was conducted on two corpora, comprising 40 Discussions written by Iranian scholars and 40 Discussions written by native English-speaking scholars, selected from research articles published in international peer-reviewed journals.
 Results. The comparison of the two corpora revealed similarities and differences in the frequency, type, structure, sequence, and cyclicity of Moves. While there were significant differences in the frequency and sequence of Moves and Steps, both corpora employed the same types. They featured cyclical structures with no evidence of linear patterns across the Discussions. Both groups of researchers found it essential to provide background information and report and comment on the results in the research article Discussions, however, with notable differences in commenting strategies, i.e., Steps. The results indicated that socio-cultural conventions might have influenced the scholars' under- and over-employment of certain Moves and Steps in the research article Discussions.
 Implications. The findings of this study provide research-based evidence to practically and pedagogically assist in the context of English for academic and specific purposes, particularly in teaching English for research publication purposes to non-native English-speaking scholars.

A Genre Analysis on The Discussion Section Of Quantitative And Qualitative Research Articles In ELT And Linguistics

This study aimed at: 1) investigating the move and steps found in quantitative and qualitative research articles discussion; 2) investigating the rhetoric structure patterns of quantitative and qualitative research article discussion. This study is a qualitative-research focusing on genre analysis on qualitative and quantitative RA discussions. There were 20 qualitative and 20 quantitative research article discussions of EFL and applied linguistics journals were investigated in this research. Using Yang & Allison’s (2003) framework to analyze the data, it is found that all moves in the framework were employed in RA discussion of both qualitative and quantitative research. However, the number of occurrences of each move were different between discussion section of these two different approaches. Furthermore, the patterns of both qualitative and quantitative RA discussion was not significantly different. There were two types of patterns in RA discussion both in qualitative and quantitative, repetitive pattern and organized pattern. although there were some variations in each of those patterns. The present study provides more evidence of generic structure of RA discussion section as well as proposes some useful insights related to move analysis on research article discussion in ELT and Linguistics area. Limitations and recommendations are discussed in this study.

Potential factors influencing the rhetorical patterns of research article discussion sections

The present study reports potential factors influencing the rhetorical patterns of research articles (RA) discussion sections. The study was conducted by utilizing descriptive qualitative research. The researcher purposefully focused on investigating 10 bilingual writers who wrote both one English and one Indonesian research article. The selected writers were those who had an educational background in language and language teaching. The interviews covered the interviewees’ background information, current activities, writing activities, and their rhetorical patterns of discussion sections. The interviews were conducted by utilizing the snowball technique to search for more information. The interview data were analyzed into some steps namely, transcribing the interview data, organizing data, summarizing data, and interpreting data. All data transcription was then categorized and coded. Research findings revealed that the writers’ choice of move structure could be as a result of learning from other people’s rhetorical patterns, believing themselves, having high self-confidence, having high writing frequency, and having high awareness in the micro and macrostructure of writing discussion sections. The Indonesian writers have opened their minds to learn and read other researchers’ articles and then determine whether the patterns are suitable for them or not. The writers’ starting point of experiencing to have their RA published made them believe in themselves and felt self-confident. Thus, the more they wanted to write RA, the higher they had writing frequency and awareness in the micro and macrostructure of writing discussion sections.

Argument Schemes and Soundness/Strength in Published Research Article Discussion Sections: A Diachronic Study

Argument Schemes and Soundness/Strength in Published Research Article Discussion Sections: A Diachronic Study

Evaluative language in applied linguistics research article discussions: exploring the functions and patterns of that-structures in argumentative texts

Research on academic stance and evaluation has been prolific over the past few decades. Few studies, however, have focused on exploring the evaluative potential of that-constructions in shaping the structure of academic arguments. To address this lacuna, the current study aimed at exploring the potential impact of the distinct communicative functions of the research article discussion on the way its argument structure is linguistically shaped through the utilization of evaluative that-structures in applied linguistics research article discussions. Textual analysis was carried out for identifying the forms and functions of that-clauses. The findings indicated that the subtleties of the writers’ intended purposes depict themselves in the way they linguistically structure their arguments by taking advantage of the evaluative potential of that-clauses to specify the findings of their research, to specify the interpretations and implications of their findings, and to comment on the work of others.

A Multi-Dimensional Analysis of Research Article Discussion Sections in an Engineering Discipline: Corpus Explorations and Scientists’ Perceptions

Writing discussion sections of research articles (RAs) is difficult for novice scientists. The study investigates patterns of linguistic characterizations in discussion sections of RAs in chemical engineering. Around 240,000-word corpus was compiled using 213 discussion sections extracted from 20 disciplinary journals. Multi-dimensional (MD) analysis proposed by Biber was used to capture linguistic co-occurrence patterns based on a constellation of features across collected texts. The MD results show six salient linguistic patterns: (1) Involvement and interactivity; (2) Description versus Narration; (3) Expression of attitude; (4) Informational production; (5) Framing scientific claims; and (6) Expression of denial. Discourse-based interviews were then conducted with eight professional scientists to elicit their perception of MD findings concerning their reading experience and understanding of established writing conventions. The implications for EAP professionals are proposed as to the explicit instruction on teaching novice writers how to employ stance expressions strategically in academic writing.

Crafting theoretical value in management research article discussion sections

The enactment of theoretical contribution in research articles (RAs) is a critical academic writing practice for showcasing the scientific progress of a disciplinary field. To decide how novel research strengthens a discipline’s current state of knowledge necessitates evaluating the new empirical results based upon its specific academic norms. Yet the academic values utilized to formulate theoretical advancement have been little studied in the literature. Drawing upon pertinent evaluation frameworks, the purpose of this study is to uncover how RA authors negotiate the theoretical value of novel research by conducting a rhetorical analysis of 60 research article discussion sections taken from four prestigious management journals. The present investigation reveals a tentative taxonomy of six rhetorical appeal types deployed by RA authors to articulate the value of novel research in the knowledge market. The widespread use of these appeals in management research article discussion sections indicates that a strong promotional orientation is prevalent in the rhetoric of the journals examined. The findings of this research have theoretical and pedagogical implications for academic evaluation and promotion, as well as for teaching academic writing

Use of Adverbials in Discussion Sections of Research Articles in Thai and International Journals

The purpose of this study was to compare the discussion sections of research articles in applied linguistics in Thai and international journals. The corpus consisted of 20 English research articles: 10 from Thai journals and 10 from international journals. The adverbials framework of Biber et al. (1999) was employed in this study. The study explained the different usage of adverbials in discussion sections of both corpora. The results show that most of the use of adverbials in research article discussion sections in Thai and international journals is similar. There are five adverbials which are different and influence the presentation of content in discussion sections. It is hoped that this study may help teachers to design writing courses for novice writers or undergraduate and postgraduate students in writing research article discussion sections to publish in an international level.

Taking an authorial stance in English and Arabic research article discussions

Abstract Taking an authorial stance is essential in academic writing but remains a challenge for novice researchers, especially EFL/ESL writers. This study explores how authors of English and Arabic research article discussions employ evaluative language resources while commenting on their results. To this end, the study investigated the employment of Engagement resources within Appraisal Theory (Martin & White 2005). The findings exhibited a great divergence between the two language groups as Arabic discussions relied more on Contracting strategies, which indicate the tendency to close down the space for dialogic alternatives, while their English counterparts preferred Expanding resources, which open up the dialogic space for alternative voices. The study, therefore, bears some pedagogical implications for L2 learners.

The argument style in research article discussions to support research findings in language studies

The argument quality in a research article discussion (henceforth RAD) determines the quality of the article as a whole, and therefore this section must be written as convincingly as possible. However, authors in different disciplines such as Language Studies (LS) may address this section in a different argument style. This study is aimed at investigating how Indonesian writers in LS support their findings in their RADs. There were 40 RADs taken from four different Indonesian journals in LS; the articles were chosen from the latest volumes of the nationally accredited journals. This study used a genre analysis method in which the major source of data is a collection of texts as a product of language activity. The results show that the majority of Indonesian writers use Style 1 (interpreting the research findings or suggesting what the research findings mean), Style 2 (explaining or elaborating the research findings), Style-3 (stating the possible cause/s of the research findings), and Style 4 (illustrating or exemplifying the research findings) to support their research findings. However, unlike international authors, Indonesian writers do not relate their research findings with those of previous related studies; if they do so, it is to confirm the interpretation or explanation of their research results. The results of this study may help Indonesian authors in LS improve the quality of their RADs especially when writing articles in English to be submitted to an international journal.

Academic conflict in Applied Linguistics research article discussions: The case of native and non-native writers

Among the significant tasks faced by academic writers are establishing their expertise in negotiating their new research findings, and resolving tensions between current knowledge and previous claims. These little-explored areas contrast with the attention devoted to examining basic moves and steps in different parts of research articles. The present article implements Hunston's (1993) conceptualization of academic conflict by native and non-native writers when composing the discussion section of papers written in their L1 and L2. To this end, three types of Applied Linguistics research articles were selected as the main corpus of the study: 20 English papers written by native speakers of English, 20 English papers written by non-native speakers of English, and 20 Persian papers written by native speakers of Persian. The analyses revealed that English papers (whether written by native or non-native writers) included more academic conflict structures compared to Persian research articles. However, in terms of the distinct components of academic conflict, English and Persian articles contained a similar number of recurrent proposed and opposed claim structures. The main area of difference between English papers (written by natives) and Persian articles was in the use of inconsistency indicators and conflict resolution.

Key phrase frames in the discussion section of research articles of higher education

Recent scholarship on phraseology in academic writing has concentrated on phrase frames (p-frames), which are recurrent sequences of identical words with a variable slot. The present study purports to identify the key phrase frames in the discussion section of research articles of higher education. The corpus used in this research consists of the discussions of research articles published from 2013 to 2018 in thirteen leading journals in the field of higher education. The p-frames extracted by KfNgram were compared with the British Academic Written English Corpus11The British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus (www.coventry.ac.uk/bawe) was developed at the Universities of Warwick, Reading and Oxford Brookes, under the directorship of Hilary Nesi and Sheena Gardner (formerly of the Centre for Applied Linguistics [previously called CELTE], Warwick), Paul Thompson (Department of Applied Linguistics, Reading) and Paul Wickens (Westminster Institute of Education, Oxford Brookes), funded by the ESRC (RES-000-23-0800). to find those phraseological items specific to the discipline of higher education, resulting in a list of 58 four-word and 40 five-word p-frames that are key to the research article discussion in this field. Moreover, the majority of these frames were found to be non-verb content word phrases, and referential expressions in terms of discourse function. Pedagogical implications for discipline-specific writing programs are offered.