Rhetorical Sections Research Articles

Mapping cohesion in research articles of applied linguistics: A close look at rhetorical sections

There is a dearth of research on cohesion in academic writing, specifically in research articles (RAs). In addition, there is little quantitative information on how cohesion is realized in different rhetorical sections of RAs. Thus, the present study investigated cohesion at sentence, paragraph, and the whole textual levels across the rhetorical sections of RAs of applied linguistics. To this end, 25 indices of local, global, and text cohesion were obtained from a corpus of 100 RAs in the field of applied linguistics divided into seven sections (abstract, introduction, literature review, method, results, discussion, and conclusion). The results of mixed-effects modeling showed that the measures of local and text cohesion were significantly affected by the rhetorical section. Moreover, random forest modeling revealed that the indices of global cohesion could predict the introduction, method, and results sections, while text cohesion was a classifier for abstract and conclusion sections. The findings are thoroughly discussed, offering insights into their theoretical and pedagogical implications.

Self-mention in L2 (Czech) learner academic discourse: Realisations, functions and distribution across master's theses

This article explores self-mention in L2 (Czech) English-medium master's theses written in the humanities along three dimensions of analysis: realisation, authorial roles and distribution across rhetorical sections. While extending the scope of self-mention to cover nominal forms, the aim of the study is to find out how Czech graduates combine pronominal and nominal self-mention to modulate the degree of visibility and authority they convey in their texts. The contrastive corpus-based investigation compares a corpus of Czech English-medium master's theses with two reference L1 corpora representing learner and published academic discourse to examine differences pertaining to variation along culture, expertise and discipline dimensions. The findings indicate that realisation patterns of self-mention and preferences for specific authorial roles vary significantly across the corpora. Czech graduates tend to be reluctant to display a high degree of visibility and authority, prefer to adopt a stance of humility, and fail to approximate disciplinary patterns of self-mention. The paper argues that this is motivated by the efforts of students to blend L1 and L2 academic conventions, their lower level of rhetorical maturity, and the audience addressed by the students in the examination context of the master's thesis.

In-Text Variation in the Use of Lexical Bundles in a Corpus of Research Articles in Public Health

Abstract This article seeks to contribute to the body of research on the formulaicity of academic written English by adopting a text-internal perspective on the use of lexical bundles across four main rhetorical sections (i.e. Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion) of research articles in public health. The corpus linguistic approach was adopted to explore a section-coded corpus of 200 research papers published in high impact journals with the aim of identifying salient shared and section-specific 4-word bundles, calculating their respective frequencies as well as classifying them structurally and functionally. The results show that the Method is the most formulaic section, containing the greatest number of bundles, including those most frequent and section-specific ones. The sections also differ in the extent to which they exploit the distinct structural and functional categories of shared bundles to fulfill their individual communicative needs.

An Analysis of Interactional Metadiscourse Markers in Political Science Research Articles

The study examined the interactional metadiscourse markers used in higher and lower tiered political science research articles. The specific aspects studied were: (1) the frequencies of five categories of interactional markers; and (2) the distribution of interactional markers by rhetorical sections. The descriptive study which involved the analysis of political science research articles published in 40 SCOPUS-indexed journals (20 Quartile 1; 20 Quartiles 3 and 4) conducted using Hyland’s (2005) interpersonal metadiscourse model identified 10,903 markers. Both Q1 and Q3-Q4 political science articles have boosters and hedges as the most frequently used markers, and engagement markers as the least used marker. There are significant differences between the higher and lower tiered political science research articles in the frequencies of interactional metadiscourse markers found in rhetorical sections. The method section has the most self-mentions, particularly in articles published in Q1 journals. Writers of articles published in Q1 journals prioritise boosters, indicating confidence in emphasising certainty, but writers of articles published in Q3-Q4 journals prioritise hedges over boosters. The Q1 articles have more attitude markers in the introduction and results-discussion-conclusion sections but less in the abstract and method sections, but writers of Q3-Q4 articles use attitude markers in similar frequencies across sections. The findings suggest that the nature of reader engagement varies with rhetorical sections in research articles.

ASSESSMENT OF A GENRE-BASED APPROACH TO SCIENTIFIC WRITING THROUGH THE ANALYSIS OF STUDENT-PRODUCED ABSTRACTS

A course aimed at writing Scientific Research Articles (SRA) in English was offered to Spanish-speaking researchers at a public university in Argentina. It deployed activities described by the Reading to Learn Pedagogy (R2L) (MARTIN; ROSE, 2012). This article assesses the effectiveness of this pedagogy by analyzing students’ productions. We compared students’ abstracts of SRA written before and after the implementation of R2L’s practices, considering the presence or absence of rhetorical sections and the use of evaluative language under the light of the System of Appraisal (MARTIN; WHITE, 2005). Texts written after the course include a larger number of sections compared to the ones written before, and they also exhibit a larger amount of Attitude and Graduation elements. The higher complexity of the texts written after the course suggests that the teaching of scientific genres to English as a Foreign Language students through an R2L-informed approach is effective.

Epistemic lexical verbs in English-language economics articles by Polish and Anglophone authors

The study investigates cross-cultural variation in the use of epistemic lexical verbs (ELVs) in English research articles on economics written by Polish and Anglophone scholars. Two corpora of articles published in Polish and international journals are explored to analyze the frequency, prominence, distribution and phraseological behaviour of selected ELVs across the introductory, concluding and main body parts of the collected texts. The results demonstrate that Anglophone writers use more ELVs than their Polish counterparts, though both groups prefer judgement over evidential verbs and most frequently use ELVs in the combined Results and Discussion section. Cross-cultural differences are observed in the choice of the specific ELVs, their frequency rates and the recurrent phraseology in the distinct rhetorical sections. These results may have implications for novice writers aspiring to understand the motivations behind the specific rhetorical choices contributing to the effective announcement of new knowledge claims in English-language economics articles.

Is postgraduate English academic writing more clausal or phrasal? Syntactic complexification at the crossroads of genre, proficiency, and statistical modelling

This study uses a novel approach to describe modern English academic texts in terms of the amount and distribution of syntactic subordination, coordination and phrasal structures. Inconsistent results have been reported in previous scholarship regarding the trajectory of syntactic complexification based on English language backgrounds and linguistic proficiency of writers. For the first time, a combination of two predictive statistical modelling methods of mixed-effects modelling and supervised machine learning modelling with random forest is used to examine the extent to which the type, amount, and distribution of these syntactic structures can be attributed to a text-intrinsic feature (sub-genres or rhetorical sections of academic register) and a text-extrinsic factor (English language background based on academic context) in a corpus of master’s dissertations. To revisit the theories of English L1 vs. L2 texts, strong predictors of syntactic complexity across academic writings of EFL, ESL, and English L1 postgraduate students were identified. The findings show that EFL texts are dominantly subordinate in nature, English L1’s dominantly phrasal, and the ESL dissertations exhibited similar amounts of subordination and phrasal structures. Distinct syntactic structures also characterise rhetorical sections: abstracts are predominantly phrasal, literature reviews distinctly subordinate, and conclusion sections have noticeable amounts of verb phrases.

A multifactorial analysis of metaphors in political discourse

Abstract The rising prominence of women in politics has sparked a growing interest in comparing the language of male and female politicians. Many researchers have explored whether gender in politics has had an impact on their metaphor styles. While these studies have been oriented qualitatively and have concentrated on the two-way interaction between metaphor and gender, the possibility that metaphor and gender may interact with other additional factors is largely overlooked. This article adopts a quantitatively oriented approach complemented with textual analysis to explore potential multiple-way interactions between ‘metaphor’, ‘gender’, ‘speech section’ and ‘political role’ in political discourse. By conducting a case study of metaphor use in Hong Kong political speeches, we found evidence of gendered metaphors and their variability according to politicians’ political roles and different rhetorical sections in their speeches.

النقد الاجتماعي بين البلاغة والتحليل النقدي للخطاب : مراجعة للمشروع البلاغي الخطابي للدكتور عماد عبد اللطيف = A Review of the Rhetorical Discursive Project by Dr. Imad Abdul Latif

This article reviews the Emad Abdul Latif project, which combines rhetoric and discourse analysis. It reveals its fundamental pillars, which we summarize in the form of a triangle with three ribs: rhetoric, critical discourse analysis, and critical theory. As well as his preoccupation with social criticism through rhetorical analysis, and concludes the most outstanding proposals in this area, especially the proposal of Audience rhetoric, then the proposal to integrate it with the critical discourse analysis. This research can bring the reader closer to the rhetorical sections of the project owner, represented in the Greek Rhetoric, the Arabic Rhetoric, and the New Rhetoric. He can also draw attention to Abdul Latif's interest to the topics of political discourse, religious discourse, media discourse, virtual world, visual rhetoric, and the nature of his treatment with a critical social vision that protects the masses against the powerful practices of the speech makers and prepares them for their resistance. This research makes it easier for the specialized reader to read the revised project, and simplifies his introductions to understand his critical social vision, aspiring to resist power, and making fruitful change in the cognitive structures of the masses. The social criticism with this project and its like is no longer confined to sociologists and philosophers; rather,it calls linguists, speech analysts and rhetorical scholars to use of their experiences, procedural and analytical tools to deal with humanitarian, social and political issues, and to stop looking at the linguistic material in a dry manner, that does not exceed the structural description based on the dismantling of elements and the monitoring of Internal relations, without taking into account their social relations.

Theoretical Framework of Stance: An Introduction of A New Analytical Category, Neutral Epistemic Stance

This paper extends Hyland’s (2005) theoretical framework of stance through the introduction of an additional analytic category of stance, neutral epistemic stance corresponding to Mushin’s (2001) factual epistemological stance. This article reviews various theoretical frameworks of stance and argues that none of these theoretical frameworks provide neutral linguistic markers of stance in academic writing. Using a corpus of twelve accounting PhD theses I conducted a textual analysis of different rhetorical sections between the theses, identifying what stance markers are used and why such stance markers are used and in what linguistic context such markers are used. This process led me to identify a new analytical category, neutral epistemic stance. This study contributes to the ongoing literature on stance in academic writing, arguing that unevaluated stance is also indicating taking up a neutral stance and can be understood as part of ‘doing objectivity’ in academic writing.

Nominalization in the Writing of Novice vs. Experienced Members of Academic Communities: A Comparative Discourse Analysis

The language register used in academic communities has the special features of density, complexity, and abstractness which are associated with nominalization with which new members of the communities might not be familiar. To explore the possible distance between novice and established members regarding their awareness of this grammatical feature, the present study investigated the employment of nominalization in the writings of Iranian graduate students (both MA and PhD students) and experienced figures in applied linguistics. Forty five research articles in the discipline by the three groups of writers served as the corpus of the study. A rigorous analysis began by identifying and outlining nominalization instances manually through and per all rhetorical sections of the articles. The occurrences of the two types of nominal expressions was counted and normalized. So as to detect the possible significant differences between the samples, chi-square tests were run. The results revealed that the experienced writers used significantly more nominalization in their writings. However, although the total nominal expressions used in MA texts were more than those used in PhD texts, the difference turned out not to be significant. There were also similarities and variations in the ranking patterns of the two types of nominalization in four rhetorical sections of the three groups of the articles. It can be concluded that the differences might reflect the distance between the novice and the established authors regarding their awareness of the importance of nominalization in academic writing. The implications of the study for EAP courses were also discussed.

Signposting Propositions: A Study of Interactive Metadiscourse Marking in the Composition of Research Articles Across Sciences

Writers ensure the expected (re)construction of concepts in the mind of the audience through effective signposting of the inevitably linear linguistic stream, which is a main aspect of metadiscourse called interactive metadiscourse. In this study, the use of interactive metadiscourse markers in research articles was investigated to examine any probable difference existing between different disciplines and also the two rhetorical sections of research articles. For this purpose, we examined a corpus of 120 research articles from four academic disciplines. The results obtained from the functional-contextual analysis of the corpus revealed no statistically significant difference in the use of these markers across disciplines, which suggested a parallel convention to be at work among academic writers in signposting the propositions. Of course, the sections of articles were different attributable to the difference in their cognitive genre. The findings could offer implications for the teaching and learning of academic writing.

English

Hedging devices are important tools and have been used widely in academic and scientific writing, but their usefulness in business writing has seldom been explored. In a business setting, very few studies have been carried out on hedging in business letters. Some scholars have indicated that the use of hedges is also important in business letters. However, not many business writers are aware of the use and importance of hedging devices in business letters, especially complaint business letters. The aim of the paper is to present findings in the use of hedging devices in complaint business letters among 30 native speakers of English, who have working experience in the business context. The study aims to determine the types and forms of hedging devices that native speakers of English commonly use when writing business letters, as well as, to determine the types and forms of hedging devices that commonly occur in the rhetorical sections (introduction, body, and closure) of business letters. The study employs Hyland’s model of hedging to identify the forms and types of hedges commonly used by native speakers of English. The findings show that content-oriented hedges are used more frequently in terms of types of hedging devices, while reader pronouns are the forms of hedging devices that are used most frequently in terms of forms of hedging devices in complaint business letters. In all the rhetorical sections of complaint business letters, content-oriented hedges and reader pronouns are commonly used. From the findings, it is clear that hedging is an important aspect of business writing because hedges make a text more reader-friendly since those hedges allow negotiation to occur between the writer and the reader. Hedges also allow the message to be carried across more clearly and precisely. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/GEMA-2014-1403-08

Publishing research in the international context: An analysis of Spanish scholars' academic writing needs in the social sciences

In the last decades, publishing research in the international arena has become an imperative among scholars in Spain. However, many researchers experience difficulties in publishing their work in English-medium international journals. The present paper is part of a wider research project which aims at identifying, analysing and catering for the needs of Spanish researchers in English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP). The first stage of our project involved a large-scale online survey administered to researchers at five universities and research institutions in Spain. This paper reports on the responses provided by informants from the social fields of Education, Psychology and Sociology. Taking a Spanish–English intercultural perspective, our objective is twofold: firstly, to explore the difficulties experienced by Spanish scholars in these disciplines, along with the strategies they use when publishing in English; and secondly, to identify their ERPP needs, with the prospect of developing materials and courses which will help them produce effective academic writing and publish their research internationally. The results point at a generalised need for training in specific areas of academic writing, such as the rhetorical sections of the RA and the most common problems and difficulties encountered by Spanish authors when writing their papers in English.

An Exploration of Discoursal Construction of Identity in Academic Writing

This study focused on how second/foreign language writers enact, construct, and invent themselves through writing. Hyland's model of metadiscourse (2004a) used as the analytical tool for analyzing texts. Based on a corpus of 30 research articles, the overall distribution of evidential markers, hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mentions were calculated across four rhetorical sections (Abstract, Introduction, Methodology, Discussion and Conclusion) of the research articles. According to the results, identity is a critical aspect of writing and that it should be brought into the mainstream of second/foreign language writing pedagogy through consciousness raising or the specific teaching of certain features.

Gender-based Study of Metadiscourse in Research Articles’ Rhetorical Sections

This study investigated whether or not male and female writers of academic research articles were different in the use of interpersonal resources in English. In order to carry out the study, 32 applied linguistics research articles with the standard macrostructure of empirical research articles (Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion/Conclusion) were selected from amongst the highest ranked journals. The results of the current study indicated that, with respect to both interactive and interactional features, there were no significant gender-based differences in the overall distribution of interpersonal resources in the four sections of the articles (p-value> 0.05). It also confirmed the view that writing differences are not gender-specific, but rather section-specific. In this line, identification of male and female EFL learners’ use of metadiscourse elements will provide guidelines to EFL teachers to tailor their teaching methods and avoid mismatches between classroom practices and learners’ language use.

A Comparative Study of Intensity Markers in Engineering and Applied Linguistics

Writers use intensity markers as one of strategies in order to negotiate their claims and to make their writings persuasive and credible. This study is an attempt to examine the type, frequency, and functions of intensity markers in research articles of two disciplines of Applied Linguistics and Electrical Engineering by analyzing surface linguistic features. Based on a corpus of forty research articles, the overall rhetorical and categorical distribution of intensity markers were calculated across two rhetorical sections of Abstract and Conclusion of research articles. The results indicates that the overall distribution of intensity markers in Applied Linguistics articles is higher than Electrical Engineering ones. These findings may have some implications for the teaching of academic writing to EFL students.

Thematicity in Published vs. Unpublished Iranian TEFL Theses

Writing up their theses, postgraduate/MA students investigate patterns that can guide them in efficiently preparing their theses. Analyzing theme/rheme patterning, proven as a signaler of coherence and cohesion in written discourse, may provide the patterns postgraduate students search for. There is, therefore, an urgent necessity to scrutinize the issue from different perspectives, and propose recommendations to improve the written discourse quality especially among non-native writers. Accordingly, this study addressed thematicity in two rhetorical sections, that is, method and results sections of three categories of MA students’ theses: (1) those with theses-driven articles published in scholarly journals, (2) those with theses-driven articles presented in conferences, and (3) those with no such presentations in any academic fields. Following Halliday’s (1994) and McCabe’s (1999) models of thematic organization and progression, 45 theses, 15 from each category, were compared in terms of thematicity. Although frequency data indicated that the tendency in using different thematic patterns was higher in published theses, but Chi-square test did not reveal any significant differences among the three categories in terms of theme selection and progression. These similarities in terms of thematicity can be attributed to the same genre to which different theses belonged. The results of the study are discussed to provide fruitful insights about thematic conventions applied in written discourse.

Music and the language of love: seventeenth-century French airs

Acknowledgments Note on Quotations, Translations, and Musical Examples Introduction 1. Music and Texts: An Overview of the Sources A General Description of the Air The Publications The Composers Publications by Lambert, Bacilly, La Barre, and Le Camus: A Description The Song Texts Poetic Structure Style or Elocution: Figurative Language and Poetic Syntax Poetry and Rhetoric 2. Rhetoric and Meaning in the Seventeenth-Century French Air Seventeenth-Century French Sources on Rhetoric and Music Persuading the Passions 3. Musical Representations of the Primary Passions The Primary Passions The Agitated Passions The Modest Passions The Neutral Passion Summary 4. Setting the Texts Painful Love Bittersweet Love Enticing Love Joyous Love Summary 5. Form and Style: The Organization and Function of Expressions, Syntax, and Rhetorical Figures Form (Disposition) The Organization of Expressions in Short Airs The Organization of Expressions in Long Airs Form in Single-Strophe Airs The Rhetorical Sections of a Piece: Their Function and Expression Style (Elocution): Poetic Structure, Punctuation, and Rhetorical Figures 6. L'Art du Chant: Performing French Airs A Haute Voix The Art of Proper Singing Ornamentation The Pronunciation of Seventeenth-Century French Syllabic Quantity Tempo Le Mouvement Repeats Basso Continuo Accompaniment 7. Salon Culture and the Mid-Seventeenth-Century French Air The French Air and Conversation Musical Seductions Galanterie and the Air: Undercurrents of Eroticism and Lessons of Morality Women Singing Airs as Men 8. The Late-Seventeenth-Century Air and the Rhetoric of Distraction The Air after 1670 Songs and the Rhetoric of Distraction Pleasure, Airs, and the New Rhetoric The Legacy of Lambert, Bacilly, Le Camus, and La Barre Notes Bibliography Index

Towards a target-oriented model for quantitative contrastive analysis in translation studies

This paper describes the design of a 192-text Spanish-English specialized corpus of biomedical research articles (RAs) divided into three 64-text subcorpora (English texts, their corresponding Spanish translations, and Spanish comparable texts) for use in quantitative contrastive analysis. The paper also presents an exploratory study analysing theme–rheme structure in these subcorpora. Two definitions of theme were used: Halliday’s ideational theme and preverbal theme (i.e., all clause constituents before the finite verb of the main clause). The study adopted a target-oriented approach and assessed the acceptability of the translated texts with regard to the statistical norm of the comparable native-speaker Spanish subcorpus. Statistically significant differences were found for marked theme and its different syntactic manifestations (prepositional phrase adjunct and subordinate clauses) and there was evidence of a different thematic distribution within the semantic category person (researcher, patient, first person). The most striking results were found for different measures of theme length, suggesting a consistent information overload in the thematic zone in the whole RA and in the individual rhetorical sections except for the Introduction. The translated texts occupy a kind of no-man’s land half-way between the source articles and the independently created Spanish RAs. A refined three-stage model of the study design is proposed for future target-oriented quantitative and qualitative research into translation.