Specialist Informants Research Articles

A rhetorical move-step analysis of graphical abstracts in experimental research articles

Graphical abstracts (GAs) have recently emerged as an add-on genre of experimental research articles (ERAs) in STEM fields. This study used Swales’ (1990, 2004) framework to analyze GAs’ move and step structures and investigated how they were influenced by ERAs’ take-home messages. Our corpus comprised 110 GAs from 55 high-impact journals across 11 STEM disciplines. Thirty-three specialist informants played a dominant role in identifying ERAs’ take-home messages, GAs’ IMRD moves, and the specific steps realizing those moves. Our findings revealed that GAs’ move and step structures, along with their frequently used moves and steps, are significantly influenced by ERAs’ three distinct types of take-home messages: (1) exploration of new phenomena and/or mechanisms, (2) introduction of new methodologies, and (3) development of new products. GAs tend to fulfill a highlight-to-attract purpose by focusing on ERAs’ main scientific contributions, in contrast to the verbal and video abstracts that fulfill a summarize-to-attract purpose by reproducing ERAs’ full IMRD structure. Our findings enrich the current understanding of GAs’ rhetorical structures and have practical implications for genre-based GA design and pedagogy.

Writers' communicative resources for comparing present and past research findings: A pedagogically motivated inquiry into scientists' rhetorical practices

Despite the pivotal role of ‘comparing present and past research findings' (CPPRF) in both softer and harder sciences, scant attention has been directed to how linguistic resources are used in such comparisons in certain applied sciences, particularly Material Science (MS) and Agricultural Science (AS). Based on a genre analysis and interviews with specialist informants, we examined the prevalence of CPPRF, the circumstances involved, and the salient linguistic resources employed by expert writers in the two disciplines. It was found that CPPRF is markedly more prevalent in the ‘Results and Discussion’ sections of the research articles in AS than those in MS. Agricultural scientists use more author prominent citations, especially after alignment verbs, to accentuate the roles of previous researchers while making new knowledge claims. Experts in both fields, however, employ ‘copula-complex preposition’ and ‘copula-adjective-preposition’ structures expressing commonality to explicitly support previous research findings. In cases of divergences, writers draw on comparative adjectives to tacitly avoid direct conflicts with previous researchers' findings in the process of knowledge creation. It is recommended that specific word combinations be highlighted in relation to writers' attempts to generate knowledge via comparisons of present and previous research outcomes, thus implicitly signalling additional contributions of their studies.

Establishing a research territory in economics: Implications for academic writing instruction

Doing a literature review to establish a research territory constitutes an important task that both experienced and novice writers have to grapple with in research writing. While previous studies have focused on how research gaps are indicated, few studies have exclusively investigated the language resources needed to establish a territory, especially in economics. Using a genre-based textual analysis and inputs from specialist informants, we identified the key rhetorical strategies and language resources used by expert writers to review previous research in high impact publications. The results revealed that this overarching move focuses not only on centrality claims aimed at explicitly captivating the interest of the academic fraternity and real-world stakeholders, but also on previously published information signalling the breadth of knowledge acquired by writers. While specific ‘noun-prepositional phrase’ structures are used to indicate circumstantial exigencies, attributive adjectives depicting enormity are employed to signal growing scholarly engagement in a selected research domain. To furnish background information on previous research methods and findings, writers employ present-tense reporting verbs and gravity-enhancing expressions to delineate present alarming situations, thus demonstrating their readiness to stay current in economic situations. Our findings have pedagogical implications for designing instructional materials in economics and social sciences at large.

COMMUNICATIVE STRATEGIES USED IN TOURISM AND PHARMACOLOGY RESEARCH ARTICLE DISCUSSIONS

Writing a good discussion section is crucial as how the section is written contributes to the acceptance of a research article (RA) by the reader. Through a move structure model for the Discussion section of RAs and the taxonomies of hedges and boosters, the study examines communicative strategies, namely move structures (move and step) as well as the metadiscoursal devices (hedges and boosters) used by Tourism and Pharmacology authors to discuss research results in Tourism and Pharmacology RA discussions. Thus, in the current study, the Discussion sections of 20 Tourism RAs and 20 Pharmacology RAs were analysed using a mixed method comprising both the qualitative and quantitative analyses. In the qualitative method, a content analysis was used to identify the communicative strategies in terms of rhetorical ‘moves’ and ‘steps’ as well as hedges and boosters employed in the selected RA discussions. In addition, a semi-structured interview was conducted with specialist informants to obtain further insight for the present findings. On the other hand, in the quantitative method, data was quantified in terms of the number of sentences employing the moves/steps and the frequencies of hedges and boosters found in the corpora. The findings show that authors of Tourism and Pharmacology RAs tend to report and comment on their research findings in a reciprocally connected manner. However, a major difference was observed in terms of how the findings were commented on. Besides, both the Tourism and Pharmacology authors were also found to utilise hedges more frequently than boosters to avoid overclaiming their results. The findings of this study can help future academic authors and students to employ effective communicative strategies to discuss research results along with the appropriate use of hedges and boosters.

Succinct summaries of research methods

In research writing, one of the challenging questions is about the extent to which methods need to be succinctly summarised in introductory sections. To answer this intriguing question, Swales’ (2004) genre-based analytical framework was used to examine the frequencies of method summaries (MSs) in the research article introductions (RAIs) in two major social science disciplines, namely Ethnic Studies (ES) and Industrial Relations (IR), which have been overlooked in previous studies. Apart from examining expert writers’ recurrent lexico-grammatical resources, semi-structured interviews were conducted with six specialist informants in both disciplines. We have found that the MSs are characterised by the recurrent use of prepositional phrases expressing data sources, cardinal numerals accentuating subjects’ involvement, post-modifying structures describing samples, and verb-infinitive/preposition structures signalling facilitation. IR researchers exhibit a greater propensity to foreground MSs than ES researchers, and the difference is ascribable to the underlying philosophical assumptions behind the adoption of methodological approaches. In our concluding remarks, we (i) demonstrate how findings based on an analysis of salient language resources can help instructors make informed decisions while guiding learners to craft a cogent method summary, and (ii) argue that the information derived from our textual analysis and specialist informants’ inputs can further contribute to our understanding of expert writers’ rhetorical practices across different social science disciplines.

Expert Writers’ Recommendations in Economics Research Articles: Implications for the Teaching of English for Academic Purposes

The presentation of economics research results often constitutes the climax of data-driven research articles in the discipline, but how writers make recommendations based on their results remains a fertile area for an in-depth investigation. To date, no research has been conducted to ascertain the extent to which economics researchers incorporate such recommendations, and how they use language resources to perform the communicative functions involved. Our genre-based study employed the Swalesian move-step analytical framework to examine the occurrence of this pivotal rhetorical category, which makes suggestions based on research findings in economics. This largely qualitative analysis was triangulated via interviews with specialist informants in the field. Our results have shown that recommendations, being a quasi-obligatory move that comprises two noteworthy optional steps, are strategically linked with not only research results but also limitations of the research being reported. The expert writers employ a wide spectrum of language resources, particularly adjectives depicting indeterminacy and noun phrases denoting industrial and policy implications, to tacitly accentuate the value of their results. In regard to pedagogical implications, it is suggested that instructors devise exercises requiring novice writers to construct sentences involving suggestion indicators and verb phrases signalling epistemic modality while guiding learners to make recommendations for future research. With respect to recommendations for practical applications, text-completion exercises may be designed to familiarise learners with the use of active clauses containing nominalisations, which are largely intended to minimise self-mentions and increase objectivity while proposing actions to be taken in real-life settings. Keywords : English for academic purposes; discourse analysis; genre analysis; academic writing; recommendations

Expert writers’ structural outlines in research papers: An inquiry into social sciences

While novice writers are often expected to lucidly demonstrate the order in which different components of their reports are arranged, it is not clear as to whether such outlines are sufficiently prevalent in some social sciences. Neither are we certain about the range of structure- related language resources that can be introduced to novice writers. Based on an in-depth textual analysis and specialist informants’ inputs, this study ascertained the prevalence of structural outlines, reasons for using or avoiding them, and the linguistic resources needed to present them in high impact journals in two social science disciplines, namely ethnic studies (ES) and industrial relations (IR). It was found that the majority of the ES researchers avoid structural outlines, but most of the IR researchers incorporate them for reasons associated with the research methodologies chosen. While ES researchers prefer to use locative adverbials and different tenses, IR researchers tend to employ passive structures in structural outlines. Expert writers in both disciplines, however, rely on the use of nominalisations denoting discourse categories and personal pronouns in combination with communication, accomplishment and activity verbs. Recommendations are provided on how instructors can prepare relevant teaching materials to raise students’ consciousness of the prevalent lexico-grammatical choices needed.

Arousing Readers’ Interest: An Inquiry into Chinese Argumentative Essays

Arousing readers’ interest constitutes a major component in argumentative essays, but how writers use language resources to capture readers’ interest in the written discourse remains a fascinating area for a qualitative exploration. Based on a genre-based analytical framework, the researchers studied the salient linguistic resources used by professional writers to attract readers’ attention to their argumentative essays. Additional information was elicited from specialist informants to examine the circumstances under which the rhetorical move was used. It was found that writers arouse readers’ interest using five different strategies aimed at highlighting recent unusual situations, underscoring current relevance of alarming situations, reporting attention-grabbing observations, indicating rapid changes in the modern era, and foregrounding the severity of the problems encountered. Apart from identifying writers’ appeals in the five communicative functions, the researchers ascertained how writers vividly depict situations using a range of salient language resources, particularly temporal adverbials signalling noteworthy situations during previous time periods, noun phrases accentuating the significance of specific circumstances, and adjectival modifiers highlighting abundance or prevalence. Aside from illustrating how writers deploy four-character idiomatic expressions indicating deteriorating situations and rapid social transformations, this paper will reveal how writers capture readers’ attention by using adjectival phrases denoting the severity of situations, verb phrases signalling undesirable behaviours, and predicator-object structures denoting annoying habits. Recommendations are given on how instructors can use a broad array of rhetorical strategies and language resources to design exercises aimed at helping learners to aptly attract readers’ attention to their argumentative essays.

ISOMORPHISM AND ALLOMORPHISM OF ROMANCE TERMINOLOGICAL WORD COMBINATIONS

The article reflects the main results of comparative-typological study concerning the organization of terminological phrases on the basis of four closely related languages - French, Spanish, Italian and Romanian. Attention is focused on the study of theme-rheme organization of phrases on the material of multilingual and bilingual dictionaries in some of the most priority areas of electronics and electrical engineering. Despite the isomorphism of the studied languages, the complex use of a number of methods (comparative-typological method, quantitative analysis, actual division method, questioning of specialist informants) allowed to detect several allomorphic features in the theme-rheme organization of their word combinations. They consist in the use of possessive and definite articles, prepositions, and ordinal numbers. The presence of possessive articles in the Romanian language is recognized as the most striking allomorphic property, thanks to which theme-rheme organization of a Romanian word-combination becomes more transparent in comparison with other Romance languages. The importance of the study of allomorphic features of languages for lexicography, theory and practice of translation is emphasized.

Bridging Higher Education and Industrial Needs Here Comes the Specialist!

In an intercultural setting, it is timely to say that there is a crucial need to bridge the dimensions of professional discourses such as the engineering discourses, the business discourses and the legislative discourses. While various approaches are used to investigate intercultural communication, genre analysts believe that the use of specialist informants is beneficial, to provide important information on the targeted discourse community. This paper reports one such possibility to extract reliable information related to the needs of the written communication. Data was extracted using a set of interview questions manoeuvred based on Munby’s CNP model. The findings highlighted the extent of workplace intercultural communication involving particularly the English language written skill.

Hedging in the Discussion Sections of English and Malay Educational Research Articles

Academic writers resort to hedging as one of the interpersonal metadiscourse categories needed to present their findings cautiously in the hope that their research contribution can be accepted by the academic community. Such acceptance, to a great extent, depends on how propositions and claims are presented to the academic community. The purpose of the present study was to compare and contrast the hedges used in the Discussion sections of educational research articles in English with those in Malay. To provide additional insights, information was elicited from both English and Malay specialist informants on their perceptions of hedging in research article writing. This study contributes to an understanding on the use of hedges throughout the Discussion sections of the research articles from the two languages and possible contextual and socio-cultural factors which may have influenced their use. The corpus of the present study is made up of the Discussion sections of English and Malay research articles published between 2012 and 2017. The analytical framework of this study is based on Hyland’s (1996) four hedging functions, which are writer-oriented, attribute-oriented, reliability-oriented, and reader-oriented. Our analysis shows that overall, hedges are found in more English than Malay discussions. The greater number of hedges in the English data is in principle expected as English is a remarkably hedging culture. A closer examination reveals that English writers tend to subtly bring the value of the writer’s contribution to the fore, tone down the force of the arguments, and bring forth the tentative nature of the conclusion drawn on the issue examined. The findings provide pedagogical implications in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classroom.

Expert writers’ descriptions and justifications of research instruments and materials

The Methods section often serves as the driving force in the construction of empirical research reports. In research writing in particular, novice writers often overlook the importance of promotional elements that describe and justify the use of their research materials and instruments. In the present study, a discourse-analytic genre-based approach was used to study the information elements in a corpus of 32 experimental research reports published in eight established journals on language education. The related descriptions require the use of imperative clauses, verb phrases indicating obligations and functions, predicator-adverbial structures highlighting degrees of commonality and noun phrases denoting circumstances. Justifications of the use of research materials and instruments recurrently involve (1) structures that demonstrate writers' cognizance of difficulty levels, (2) means adjuncts indicating consistency, (3) integral citations in participial clauses and (4) cogent statements associating recent endorsements sought from multiple specialist informants in an academic community. The findings obtained can be used by instructors to demonstrate how contextual knowledge and communicative resources are generally used by expert writers to persuasively construct methodological knowledge.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DA’WAH AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP: A CASE STUDY ON INTEAM GROUP IN ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY IN MALAYSIA

Purpose: Nasheed is an art and media of da’wah in Islam. In Malaysia, the songs of da’wah and divine is always welcome although various genres of new music are present. This study aims to examine the relationship between da’wah and entrepreneurship by one of the famous nasheed group in Malaysia which is Inteam.
 Methodology: This methodology of this study is qualitatively conducted where entrepreneurs were interviewed via open ended questions. The specialist informants and interviewers were the tools employed for data gathering purpose.
 Main findings: This study help to understand the concepts of entrepreneurs and its relationship with da’wah. It is hoped that the findings of this study would add a larger knowledge about entrepreneurs especially among Muslim entrepreneurs in Malaysia.
 Limitations: This study is focused on two persons those were interviewed, which are Mr. Muhammad Hazamin and Mr. Mohd Syahril at Inteam records, at Damansara Kuala Lumpur. Their feedback were quite good because those respondent perfectly answered the questions.
 Implications of the study will be elaborated together with recommendations for future studies.
 The originality in this studies is, it should introduce element of da’wah even doing a business to be a good Muslim.

ANALYSING THE MACROORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE REVIEW ARTICLE GENRE IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS

The aim of this research is (1) to analyse the macro-organisational structure and (2) to investigate and describe the analytical sections of the data. The data, drawn from a randomly selected corpus of 32 review articles, was analysed following Swales’ (1990) genre analysis to describe and investigate the schematic structure of the review article genre. The findings revealed that the CARS model was often observed in this genre. Moreover, although both review articles and research articles have been considered sub-genres of the research genre, there is a significant variation among them in terms of the schematic structure, rhetorical strategies, and functions. The schematic structure and functions of the review article genre were further investigated by consulting the specialist informants. The macroorganisational structure of this genre proposed hence provide the instructive guidance for EFL graduates and junior researchers how to review the developments critically during their research writing. Keywords: academic review genres, review article genre, macro-organisational structure, analytical sections of review article genre

Writing descriptions of experimental procedures in language education: Implications for the teaching of English for academic purposes

In the writing of experimental research reports in social sciences, one of the challenging components that learners need to include is associated with procedural descriptions. Nonetheless, owing to the lack of related exposure to rhetorical and language conventions, learners frequently encounter difficulties in using appropriate language resources to report such procedures. Motivated by the need to provide learners with some materials that genuinely reflect the language choices expected by expert members of an academic community, this study looks into how published writers use a broad spectrum of linguistic strategies to present experimental procedures in research reports published in high-impact journals on language education. Based on a genre-based analytical framework and pertinent data elicited from specialist informants, this paper reveals how language instructors can make informed choices in the preparation of teaching materials by taking note of various lexico-grammatical choices, especially recurrent parallel structures, agentless passive structures exhibiting varying degrees of obligation, and specific adverbials in different sentential positions. The findings have accentuated the need to consider some major differences between published advice presented in a manual and the actual practice of expert writers in EAP lessons aimed at raising learners' consciousness of the language resources needed for reporting experimental procedures.

Weed Diversity and Uses: a Case Study from Tea Plantations in Northern Thailand

Based on concerns that useful weed diversity in agroecosystems as well as associated traditional knowledge may be declining due to agricultural intensification and indiscriminate eradication of weeds, we studied weed diversity and use by local ethnic groups in tea plantations in northern Thailand under different agricultural intensities and landscape complexities, namely agroforestry, organic, and Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) based conventional system. In each system, we sampled five tea plantations using belt-transects of 25 m2. Use data were collected through interviews with specialist informants. We recorded 214 weed species (gamma-diversity) of which 66 were useful. Agroforestry system had the highest alpha- and beta-weed diversity, suggesting that the low agricultural intensity and high landscape complexity in this system is associated with higher weed diversity in tea plantations. The common weed species were clearly different in the three systems and only a small fraction (22 species) of widespread weeds was shared among them, resulting in low weed similarity between systems. The 66 useful species of weeds were mostly for food and medicine. Uses of some weeds were shared between systems. Many of the useful weeds are invasive species, suggesting that they are prevalent and inexpensive plant resources for rural people and could represent alternative resources in the future. Because the occurrence of invasive weeds may affect the natural habitats of the native flora, integrating the exploitation of weeds into weed management strategies may reduce the weed population while sustaining agrobiodiversity and conserving associated traditional knowledge in the long term.

A Needs Analysis of the Written Communication - What Say the Lawyers?

A rule of the thumb is: you apply what you have learnt. However, many have failed to do so. This paper reports the lack of ability to apply the learnt knowledge into real-life context of the legislative communicative event of writing the important legal documents. Parameters of Munby’s Communication Needs Processor (CNP) were adapted and used to investigate the need to master the written communication in the legislative domain. The data was gathered from semi-structured interviews with selected specialist informants who are legal practitioners in legal firms. Thematic analysis was applied to the responses received. The findings highlighted crucial problems faced by legal practitioners when employing fresh graduates from law faculties of various higher learning institutions in the nation. The findings are deemed important and are used to justify the need of a research investigating the written legislative discourse. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s2p230

Purpose statements in experimental doctoral dissertations submitted to U.S. universities: An inquiry into doctoral students' communicative resources in language education

While it is widely known that purpose statements are generally incorporated in dissertations and academic journal papers, graduate student writers often encounter difficulties in the writing of such crucial statements. This paper looks into the extent to which doctoral candidates use inter-move shifts to strategically arrive at their purpose statements, and how they employ communicative resources to construct such pivotal statements that drive their entire studies. Based on an analytical framework developed by Swales (1990; 2004) and relevant qualitative data provided by specialist informants, we have analysed a corpus of experimental doctoral dissertations submitted to 32 American universities within a period of 10 years in order to ascertain (i) the degree to which research purpose is presented in dissertation introductions, (ii) how preceding rhetorical segments are strategically connected with purpose statements, and (iii) the ways in which prominent lexico-grammatical structures are used to attain strategic communicative functions. The findings of this study have illustrated how instructors in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) can possibly prepare relevant teaching materials aimed at guiding learners to present the foundational segments that determine the overall direction of their studies.

Hedging in Academic Writing - A Pedagogically-Motivated Qualitative Study

The present study explores the use of hedges in academic writing based on Hyland's (1996) pragmatic framework of hedging orientations. It also elicits insight from specialist informants on the use of hedges in academic writing. The corpus comprises thirty randomly-selected research article discussions (published between 2010-2014) from the Journal of English for Academic Purposes. The analysis reveals that a repertoire of lexical signals and hedging strategies have been used to realize the different hedging orientations employed in the corpus. Informants stated that second language learners’ inability to use hedges in their academic prose could be due to socio-cultural factor, classroom instruction, disciplinary culture and disciplinary appeals. The present study has pedagogical implications.

How do Writers Evaluate their Own Empirical Research? A Genre-based Inquiry into Economics Journal Papers

Genre literature has indicated that academic discourse communities commonly uphold established conventions with regard to the writing of research articles in their respective disciplines. Recent studies have also acknowledged that disciplinary differences exist in the writing of research articles, and this has resulted in numerous investigations into the specific genre features of this text type in various academic fields. An interesting area which has been identified in past research is a rhetorical move that evaluates the study being reported. To date, however, this move on self-evaluation has not been examined at length in a core academic discipline such as economics. Using the latest Swalesian move-step analytical framework, this study aims to analyse the communicative functions of this move in empirical economics research articles and identify its constituent steps. The textual analysis of this investigation was triangulated by a qualitative analysis of spoken data elicited from specialist informants in the field of economics. Our results indicate that self-evaluation of a study is, by and large, a principal or quasi-obligatory move although each of its three steps is optional in economics research reports. These three constituent steps collectively play a pivotal role in putting the research into perspective for the reader after research results are presented. The findings of this study have contributed to the advancement of genre knowledge in that they have shed some light on how instructors can design relevant teaching materials aimed at helping learners to foreground the value of their studies in the later portions of their research reports.