Research Article Genre Research Articles

Generic Variation & Private Intention: A Multi-Dimensional Exploration of Book Reviews and Prefaces

Abstract Based on Bhatia’s multi-dimensional analytical framework for discourse analysis, we explore key issues involved in genres construction such as private intention, manipulation of generic value and interdiscursive strategies. Two prefaces and two book reviews by expert linguists were collected and analyzed at great length from both text-internal and text-external perspectives. Meanwhile, four professionals from relevant disciplines were interviewed for their insights into the issues investigated. Through examining textual features, covert interdiscursivity and narrative accounts of the professional writers, the following findings are generated. 1) Generic variation occurs within and between the two genres due to expert writers’ intentional manipulation of generic value. 2) Interdiscursive strategies like “genre embedding”, “genre bending” and “genre mixing” are exploited by expert writers to achieve their particular private intention. Specifically, preface genre can be presented, to some extent, as a research article mixed with some promotional flavor, and features of research article genre, promotional genre and introductory genre are found mixed in the review genre. 3) Representations of the preface and book review genres such as linguistic feature, move structure and interdiscursivity are ultimately affected by generic value, authors’ private intention, professional practice and disciplinary culture. The findings have important implications for ESP/EAP writing practitioners and learners.

Literary research article abstracts: An analysis of rhetorical moves and their linguistic realizations

Research article abstracts are the most effective means of sharing research results. This function and the evolution of the research article genre have kept the abstract in the focus of academic investigations. However, despite the impressive research output on abstracts, research addressing specifically literature research article (LRA) abstracts is scarce. This study, therefore, describes the move structure of the LRA abstract, defines the functions of the identified moves, and discusses their linguistic realizations. To conduct the research, a corpus consisting of 135 abstracts from four international journals with high impact factors was compiled and subjected (a) to move analysis performed by a human analyst and (b) to software-driven analyses involving text analysis software. The results reveal that LRA abstracts have a non-hierarchical eight-move structure with four stable moves, whose functions are to present the background, purpose, methodology and outcomes of the research. LRA abstracts are a mix of the descriptive and informative abstracts and structurally overlap with the rhetorical structure of RA introductions. They have high syntactic complexity and lexical density and contain primarily low frequency words. These features and their high information content make them difficult to process.

Open science notebooks: New insights, new affordances

New media have had a profound impact on the way scientists access, carry out and communicate their research. Driven by the impetus of the Open Science movement, some researchers have put their laboratory notebook online, providing access to this occluded and largely unexplored research genre. Drawing on the notion of the adaptability of language, this paper proposes a case-study of an online genomics notebook from two perspectives, inter-generic and intra-generic. We first investigate the considerable adaptation that takes place when the record of experimental work in the notebook is shaped into a public research claim in the downstream research article genre, focusing on utterer-interpreter relations and the immediacy of the notebook vs the decontextualized reconstruction of the article. We then investigate how migration to the web also results in adaptation by comparing the online notebook with the traditional paper notebooks used in science labs. The comparison shows that the online version places more emphasis on emotive elements and that its language and presentational features are more informal. We conclude with some comments on the metapragmatic awareness of the author of the online notebook as he navigates between these different genres and media.

Features of Saudi English Research Articles Abstracts

The research article (RA) abstract genre has attracted significant attention in the academic community. A well-written abstract can draw journal editors’ attention and improve an author’s chances of being accepted for publishing and later being read and cited by peers. This study is a contrastive genre analysis of Saudi English RA abstracts within a World Englishes (WE) perspective. It aims to answer two questions. What are the genre structure and periodicity patterns in abstracts written by Saudi researchers for a local audience? What are the differences and similarities in genre structure and periodicity patterns between abstracts written by Saudi researchers and abstracts written internationally? The data comprised three sets of RA abstracts: the first was a Saudi English set with 37 abstracts; the second was an international set with 29 abstracts; and the third was an Arabic set with 27 abstracts. The three sets were analysed based on Swales and Feak’s (2009) five-moves CARS model through which this study investigated the moves’ presence, sequence, cyclicality, length, use of citation, use of acronyms, use of percentages, use of listing, and paragraphing. Findings show that Saudi English RA abstracts differ from the international RA abstracts in showing more move presence fluctuation; verbosity; move cyclicality; excessive use of citation, acronyms, and listings; and multi-paragraphing. Due to the scarcity of studies about Saudi English in general, this study could shed some light on this emerging variety of English and trigger more studies on Saudi English RA abstracts from new perspectives.

Discourse Classification into Rhetorical Functions for AWE Feedback

NLP-based technology constitutes the backbone of automated analysis of writing and feedback on grammar, usage, mechanics, style, organization, coherence, and content. However, analysis of rhetorical intent is a challenging NLP problem that remains to be addressed in order to facilitate the learning of academic genres. This paper reports on the development of the analysis engine for the [TOOL], an AWE program designed to provide genre and discipline-specific feedback on the functional units of research article discourse. Unlike traditional NLP-based applications that categorize complete documents, [TOOL]’s analyzer categorizes every sentence in the text as both a rhetorical move and step using a 17-step schema. The paper first reviews the approaches to and implementations of automated discourse categorization in order to provide a background for the automated genre analysis methodology. Then, it describes the construction of a cascade of two support vector machine classifiers trained on a multi-disciplinary corpus of annotated Introduction texts. Lastly, it demonstrates how this categorization approach was applied to the generation of feedback on the rhetorical functions of the research article genre. This work not only demonstrates the usefulness of NLP for automated genre analysis, but also paves the road for future AWE endeavors and forms of automated feedback that could facilitate construction of functional meaning in writing.

A genre-inspired and lexico-grammatical approach for helping postgraduate students craft research grant proposals

Nowadays, there is increasing pressure on academic staff and their postgraduate students to publish in prestigious high-impact journals. It is therefore not surprising to find that academic writing programs are increasingly targeting English for Research Publication Processes (ERPP), in particular the research article (RA) genre. Grant proposal writing is another important high-stakes genre as getting a research article published is often dependent on being awarded a grant to undertake the research project in the first place. However, this “behind-the-scenes” genre has not received much attention in the ESP literature, either from a research or pedagogic perspective. This article describes the design and implementation of a research grant proposal writing module offered to postgraduate students of science and engineering. The materials are very much influenced by the research findings on grant proposal writing and adopt a Swalesian genre-based approach to the pedagogy. Tasks in which students match lexico-grammatical patterning to specific move structures are also outlined. At the same time, I also briefly raise two issues related to lexico-grammar, i.e. the question of novice writers' language re-use from corpus resources and the identification of ELF-type language in academic writing, important aspects which merit more attention and reflection for ESP courses targeted at scholarly writing.

Furthering and applying move/step constructs: Technology-driven marshalling of Swalesian genre theory for EAP pedagogy

John Swales' seminal work has inspired a wealth of research with important pedagogical implications for genre-based writing instruction. Continuing the prolific move analysis tradition in EAP research, this article presents empirically devised and validated cross-disciplinary IMRD move/step frameworks for the research article genre and demonstrates how Swales' move and step concepts underlying these frameworks formed the foundation of innovative genre-based automated writing evaluation technology. Overall, this paper makes the relationships between genre theory, genre analysis, and genre instruction explicit, demonstrating that move analysis is a powerful and promising theoretical, analytic, and teaching construct. With that, we take Swales' vision to a new dimension of conceptualizing EAP.

Phraseology used to comment on results in the Discussion section of applied linguistics quantitative research articles

This paper presents word clusters used to comment on results in the Discussion section of quantitative research articles in the field of applied linguistics. The corpus linguistic approach was adopted to identify clusters in 124 Discussion texts from leading applied linguistics journals. The identified clusters were then comprehensively analysed in context for their discourse functions. Next, the present study mapped the clusters onto an analytical framework termed the ‘four-Step model’, based on Yang and Allison's (2003) genre-based description of the Commenting on results Move. The study provided a detailed corpus linguistic account of how the clusters were used in specific Steps described in the model. A detailed description of the linguistic features, the internal structure (Move/Step cycles and embedding) and communicative functions of specific Steps in the Commenting on results Move were also presented based on the concordance analysis of the clusters. The findings further suggest that the use of specific clusters strongly manifests, and is conditioned by, the research article genre. The study has pedagogical implications for academic writing courses for students, especially for those from non-English language backgrounds.

Distinguishing textual features characterizing structural variation in research articles across three engineering sub-discipline corpora

Genre analysis has provided insights into the textual organization of different genres. In the research article (RA) genre, previous studies demonstrate that disciplinary variation is discernible. To raise the investigation to the level of sub-disciplines, this study addresses two research questions: (1) What is the textual organization of individual RA sections in corpora from three engineering sub-disciplines? and (2) What are the significant statistical variations in textual organization that distinguish one engineering sub-discipline from another? Initially, three corpora were compiled, consisting of 180 full length high quality RAs representing three sub-disciplines of engineering (civil, software, and biomedical). Then, the corpora were analyzed using genre analysis to identify the textual organization prevalent in individual RA sections of each engineering sub-discipline. Subsequently, units of textual analysis called ‘move’ and ‘step’ were quantified and statistically analyzed to capture significant statistical variations in each section. The analysis reveals the influence of the sub-disciplines on the textual organization variations across the corpora, highlighting the unique characteristics and perspectives of each sub-discipline. The findings contribute to enhanced quality professional communication by creating and raising awareness and sensitivity among prospective engineering students and practitioners when they are involved in the task of reading and/or writing RAs.

A Genre-Based Analysis on Discussion Section of Research Articles in Indonesian Written by Indonesian Speakers

This study examines the genre of research article (RA) discussion section written in Indonesian by Indonesian writer aiming at exploring how Indonesian writers discuss their research findings in their RAs. The corpus for this study consists of 47 selected RAs published mainly in university-based journals in Indonesia from social science and humanity disciplines. Swales’ eight-move structure (EMS) model of discussion section of RAs was employed for the data analysis. The results show that the EMS model is effective to use to analyze the move structure of the discussion section of Indonesian RAs; there is no significant difference between the move structures in the Indonesian RAs between different fields of discipline. The most noticeable differences occur in terms of the absence of Move 4 (reference to previous research findings) in the majority of the Indonesian RAs and the difference between the RAs in the same discipline in terms of the number of moves found. The difference in research practice and RA writing practice in Indonesia are the most possible cause of the differences in the move structure.

Stripped of Authorship or Projected Identity? Iranian Scholars’ Presence in Research Articles

Research Article (RA) genre has been a significant area of research in academic writing over past decades. However, authors’ identity in RAs has not received much attention, especially in soft sciences like applied linguistics. This paper reports a corpus analysis of Iranian writers’ authorial presence markers in RAs in the field of applied linguistics. The corpus comprised 30 RAs (200,000 words) from three peer-reviewed journals published in Iran. This study was carried out in two phases. Initially, the corpus was content-analysed for exclusive instances of authorial presence markers and then, frequency of each authorial indicator was calculated. Content analysis revealed various authorial markers used by Iranian scholars to manifest themselves in their writings, for instance, personal pronouns, self-citations, and other self-mention terms. Authorial markers varied in terms of frequency in single-authored and multiple-authored articles. Personal pronouns were found to be the most salient authorial markers. Furthermore, authors in the corpus employed authorial markers for different promotional purposes such as pursuing uniqueness in their studies and regarding themselves as prominent figures in the field. The results of this study underline the need for further research into the identities adopted by writers in their works and the whys and wherefores behind using particular identity markers rather than others. This study would be of benefit to academic writers and teachers of writing courses since it helps them discern the linguistic choices available to non-native speakers of English to manifest themselves in their writings and to gain acceptance in the discipline community.

The role of genre in information structuring in English

In a recent paper, Biber and Gray (2010) provide empirical evidence for the dramatic increase of compressed structures in English academic writing over the last 100 years. According to their corpus findings, the grammatical complexity of academic writing displays a phrasal rather than clausal character, the corollary of which is a compressed rather than elaborated discourse style (the latter one being typical of spoken registers). Given this finding, the question arises as to how far the traditional view that information structure should be viewed as a single partition of information within a given utterance adequately accounts for genre-specific information packaging strategies. To provide an answer to this question, the current study sets out to explore and compare information structuring within what will be referred to here as ‘compression strategies’, namely the use of adverbial subordinate clauses, -ING constructions, and complex NP constructions across two different genres: the highly compressed genre of research article abstracts, and fiction. The findings reported here suggest that in more compressed discourse styles such as academic writing, there is a higher probability of encountering information structure partition not only at the clausal but also at the phrasal level. The present paper highlights the importance of genre variation as one predictor of variation in information structuring within constructions.

The cooperative principle in discourse communities and genres: A framework for the use of metadiscourse

Developments in characterizing discourse communities and their various genres are hoped to provide more insight into the nature of language in use. Such characterizations gradually tend to include the rhetorical and less visible aspects of different genres in different discourse communities. The trend seems rewarding due to the multilingual membership in discourse communities and inevitability of interference from speech communities. Although several studies have tried to describe the distribution and nature of metadiscourse marking across disciplines and languages, no systematic attempt was made, to our knowledge, to introduce a practical model that presumably guides the users in the real time of writing. By analyzing metadiscourse samples from the genre of research article of academic discourse community, this study embarks on introducing a tentative model based on Gricean cooperative principle (CP) that is hoped to help the multilingual members of academic discourse community in the use of metadiscourse markers. The Gricean categories of CP, developed here, are hoped to provide a practical framework that informs how to use rather than how is it used of metadiscourse in writing research articles. Such a model can be assumed an improvement against coarse-grained holistic guides for the use of metadiscourse offered by previous studies. The attempt also led to a new classification of metadiscourse and added two new metadiscourse strategies of collapsers and disclaimers.

Metadiskursas magistro darbuose, parašytuose gimtąja ir negimtąja anglų kalba

Nemažai pastarojo dešimtmečio akademinio diskurso tyrinėjimų orientuojasi į tarpasmeninės kal­bos funkcijos ir metadiskurso analizę. Nustatyta, jog tarpasmeninių rašytojo ir skaitytojo santykių pobūdis bei metadiskurso strategijų vartojimas akademiniuose tekstuose gerokai varijuoja dėl kultūrinio-kalbinio konteksto, disciplinos ir žanro ypatumų. Mokslinis straipsnis yra bene dažniausiai tyrinėjamas akademinis žanras, o kitiems žanrams skiriama mažiau dėmesio. Šiame straipsnyje ana­lizuojama tarpasmeninė kalbos funkcija magistro darbo (MA thesis) žanre. Lyginamos metadiskurso strategijos tekstuose, sukurtuose skirtinguose edukaciniuose kontekstuose – Anglijos ir Lietuvos universitetuose. Tyrimo tikslais sukaupti du tekstynai: 20 gimtakalbių ir 20 negimtakalbių (lietuvių) studentų darbų anglų kalba iš kalbotyros srities. Nustatyta, jog MA darbuose gausiai vartojamas tekstą organizuojantismetadiskursas, saikingai – į diskurso dalyvius orientuotas metadiskursas, re­tai – vertinamasismetadiskursas. Gretinamoji analizė parodė, jog metadiskurso žymenų santykinis dažnumas yra gana panašus gimtakalbių ir negimtakalbių tekstuose. Tačiau pastebėta, jog skiriasi tam tikrų mažesnių, specifinių kategorijų vartojimas: negimtakalbiai (lietuviai) studentai vartoja daug daugiau teksto jungtukų ir daug mažiau endoforinių, į skaitytoją orientuotų beivertinamųjų žymenų. Straipsnyje taip pat aptariama edukacinių institucijų tradicijų bei individualaus rašymo stiliaus svarba kuriant tarpasmeninius rašytojo ir skaitytojo santykius akademiniame diskurse.

Text genre as a factor in the formation of scientific literacy

Learning using primary literature may be a way of developing a capacity for scientific ways of thinking among students. Since reading research articles is a difficult task for novices, we examined the possible benefits of learning using primary literature versus secondary literature, particularly with respect to their influence on the creation and formation of scientific literacy. We report on a comparison between four groups of high school students, each with differing degrees of prior knowledge in biology, who read a domain-related text written in either the scientific research article genre (adapted primary literature) or the popular-scientific genre (secondary literature). Although there was no significant difference in the students' ability to summarize the main ideas of each text, indicating that there was no eminent distinction in their content, we found that students who read adapted primary literature demonstrated better inquiry skills, whereas secondary literature readers comprehended the text better and demonstrated less negative attitudes toward the reading task. Since the scientific content of the two texts was essentially identical, we suggest that the differences in students' performances stem from the structure of the text, dictated by its genre. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 42: 403–428, 2005

Hedging in Scientific Research Articles

This book provides a comprehensive study of hedging in academic research papers, relating a systematic analysis of forms to a pragmatic explanation for their use. Based on a detailed examination of journal articles and interviews with research scientists, the study shows that the extensive use of possibility and tentativeness in research writing is intimately connected to the social and institutional practices of academic communities and is at the heart of how knowledge comes to be socially accredited through texts. The study identifies the major forms, functions and distribution of hedges and explores the research article genre in detail to present an explanatory framework based on a complex social and ideological interpretive environment. The results show that hedging is central to Scientific argument, individual scientists and, ultimately, to science itself. The importance of hedging to student writers is also recognised and a chapter devoted to teaching implications.

Genre analysis, and the social sciences: An investigation of the structure of research article discussion sections in three disciplines

The Discussion sections of 30 social science Research Articles, 10 each from the disciplines of history, political science and sociology, were analyzed according to a modified version of the moves, or communicative categories, presented in previous studies. It was found that, although there were fundamental similarities to the natural sciences, social science Discussion sections also displayed some distinctive features. History texts were particularly distinctive, and of the three disciplines bore the least resemblance to those of the natural sciences. It is suggested that this distinctiveness is sufficient to justify the idea of a social science subgenre of the Research Article genre and that data of this kind are needed if academic reading and writing materials are to be developed that are sensitive to the structural features of academic texts and in particular to the ways in which such features vary according to discipline.