Tracing convergence and divergence in pairs of Spanish and English research article abstracts: The case of Ibérica (original) (raw)
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Journal of Language and Education, 2022
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.
THE DISCUSSION SECTION OF ENGLISH AND SPANISH RESEARCH ARTICLES IN PSYCHOLOGY: A CONTRASTIVE STUDY
ESP Today, 2016
Since the appearance of Swales' (1990) CARS model to describe the rhetorical organization of research articles, several researchers have proposed different rhetorical structures for each of the canonical sections of this genre in different disciplines. However, little research has been conducted on the structural organisation of the discussion section from a contrastive perspective. This paper, therefore, reports on the rhetorical organization of the discussion section of English and Spanish research articles in the field of Psychology using Swales' (1981, 1990) model of analysis. Even though the general results reveal that there are similarities between English and Spanish discussions in terms of the use of moves, some differences were also noted. The analysis of the English corpus showed that Providing background information, Stating results, Referring to previous research and Providing explanations were obligatory moves, while the analysis of the Spanish corpus revealed that only two moves could be considered obligatory: Stating results and Referring to previous research. Based on these findings, a single-level move structure consisting of eight moves is proposed for the articles in the corpora. The sequence of identified moves can be useful to native and non-native writers and may enhance the design of ESP course materials.
Journal of Pragmatics, 2015
This corpus-driven study focuses on reflexive metadiscourse, taking the non-integrative approach to the study of this phenomenon . The aim of this research project was to compare the deployment of reflexive metadiscourse in research articles from three disciplines (Medicine, Economics and Linguistics) written in Spanish, by looking at the occurrence of certain lexico-grammatical features that signal it. In this mixed-methods study, which combines quantitative and qualitative results, the findings were derived from a close manual analysis of 238 recent empirical RAs from Spanish-medium journals indexed in Web of Science (the MEL-2011 corpus). The results indicate that scientific writers from Economics and Medicine employ significantly fewer metadiscourse markers than their counterparts in Linguistics. There are also statistically significant differences between the three corpora in terms of several functional categories: self-mentions, relational markers, directives, discourse verbs, and code glosses. This suggests that this scientific genre varies greatly in terms of the manner and the extent to which scholarly writers from different disciplines are expected to signal their authorial presence, interact with their audience and guide the reader.
Research Article is one of the most important genres that received extensive attention in genre analysis. Research abstracts have received extreme importance due to the valuable academic information in the world. The present study aims to explore the rhetorical structure of the Iranian and international abstracts published in leading English and Persian journals. The researcher randomly selected 40 research articles from six Iranian journals of applied linguistics and international journals of applied linguistics. The study used two types of instruments. The Ant Mover software is a freeware text structure analysis program (developed by Anthony Laurence, 2003). According to Hyland's model, five moves are involved, including Introduction (M1) purposes (M2) Method (M3) product (M4) and conclusion (M5). The corpus, then, was analyzed based on the Ant Mover software and Hyland's (2000) five move frameworks to identify the rhetorical structure of the selected corpus. As a result, the frequency of each move in each abstract was calculated after the moves were analyzed. A frequency and percentage were counted and a chi-square analysis was run to answer the research hypothesis. The finding also showed that despite the differences in frequency of moves in two corpora, these differences were not statistically significant.
2013
The present study explored the rhetorical variations and the relationship within two related genres from two related disciplines. The two related genres were research article abstracts and introductions. The two related disciplines were linguistics and applied linguistics. This chapter provided background of the study, statement of the problem, research objectives and research questions, and significance of the study. The last section listed abbreviations and definition of terms used in the present study. 1.1 Background of the Study Research article is the dominant form of professional paper whose communicative purpose is mainly to share new findings with other members of the authors' discourse community. Writing a paper that is acceptable for publication in a scholarly journal is a challenge to novice writers, especially for non-native speakers. They have to follow a particular pattern of organization accepted by members of that professional community. Understanding the pattern of organization of research articles in such a profession is essential. For the textual overview of the research article, Bruce (1983) suggested that the predominant Introduction-Method-Results-Discussion format follows the logical cycle of an inductive inquiry. Research article abstracts and introductions are at the beginning of an article. They are the first parts of an article to be read by readers. Salager-Meyer (1992) stated Table 2.1 The Comparisons of ESP, New Rhetoric and Australian Genre Studies Schools ESP Genre Analysis New Rhetoric Studies Australian Genre Studies Defining Criteria Communicative purpose Recurrent social actions Goal-oriented purposeful activity Social context of use Discourse community Community ownership Context of culture Perspectives on text Genre shapes the schematic structure of the discourse and constraints the choice of context and style Genre knowledge includes both form and content and a sense of what is appropriate to a particular purpose at a particular point of time Genre is concerned with systems of social processes: the ways in which field, mode, and tenor are phrased into each other; these variables converge on texture. Medium of analysis Texts Users and context Text Unit of analysis Move and step-Stage Research methods Analysis of text Case studies, interview, observation, protocols Analysis of text Genre studies RAs in various disciplines, dissertations, business, dissertations, business, communications, legal cases, etc. BJCP BJHP BJEP LCP Experimental articles Review articles Experimental articles Review articles Experimental articles Review articles Experimental articles Review articles Objectives Design Methods Results Conclusions Purpose Methods Results Conclusions Objectives Design Methods Results Conclusions Purpose Methods Results Conclusions Background Aims Sample Method Results Conclusions Comment (optional)
2016
The present study is a contrastive investigation of conclusions of research articles (RAs) written in Portuguese as a native language, English as a native language and English as a foreign language. The analysis was carried out according to the principles of genre studies as proposed by Swales (1990). The corpus is composed of 36 conclusions of RAs in the field of applied linguistics. The findings reveal no constant pattern of rhetorical organization and no obligatory moves or steps. However, the results indicate the occurrence of a complex array of moves and steps which exhibits a cyclical structure but with differences in the three languages investigated. Furthermore, the samples investigated permitted the elaboration of a proposal of a model for this component of RAs. The study, therefore, contributes to a richer understanding of the nature of conclusions of RAs and, as such, of academic writing. Key-words: Genre; conclusions of RAs; rhetorical organization; contrastive. Resumo O...
Rhetorical differences in RA introductions written by English L1 and L2
As English is the leading medium of communication in academia, publication in internationaljournals presents a goal and a challenge for some non-Anglophone researchers.Research articles (RAs) written in English and Spanish have been examined in order to discover whether the textual organization in each language is similar or different.However, intercultural studies of texts produced by L2 writers in English are few in number - in particular studies focussing on the Introduction section which is known to be troublesome for novice writers. In this paper, I examine RAs in English and Spanish as well as RAs written in English by Spanish-background speakers in the fields of applied linguistics, using Swales’ (2004) schema to focus on the Introduction genre moves and steps. The results indicate that while the English L1 texts display a close affinity to the CARS (2004) schema, the Spanish L1 texts display some culture specific writing style. On the other hand, English L2 texts produced by Spanish writers appear to be developing CARS-like control of the Introduction section, thus accommodating the needs of a broader audience. I hope my findings will assist Spanish scholars to achieve greater visibility worldwide by giving closer attention to English rhetorical conventions.
Journal of Modern Research in English Language Studies, 2022
There is a shortage of studies on the generic structure of research article abstracts published in Iranian and international applied linguistics journals considering their employed research approach (i.e., quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods). Thus, this study endeavored to analyze the moves in 288 quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research (MMR) article abstracts in six Iranian and six international applied linguistics journals published between 2012 and 2019, following Hyland's (2000) model. To analyze the data, the frequency of distribution and percentages of the rhetorical moves were estimated, and the Kruskal-Wallis test was run on the data. The findings indicated that the moves of Purpose, Product, and Method occupied the largest portion of local and international abstracts. Furthermore, in comparison to the international corpus, the Iranian corpus contained more moves based on Hyland's (2000) model. A deeper analysis of both corpora revealed that the rhetorical moves were distributed almost evenly within quantitative, qualitative, and MMR abstracts, with the exception that in the international corpus, the Product move appeared significantly less in qualitative abstracts than in quantitative and MMR abstracts. The most frequently used move patterns in both datasets were; I-P-M-Pr-C, P-M-Pr-C, P-M-Pr, and I-P-M-Pr. It can be concluded that applied linguistics researchers tend to follow Hyland's (2000) model as much as possible when writing research article abstracts. Furthermore, although some divergences exist regarding the rhetorical moves frequency of distribution and patterning in qualitative, quantitative, and MMR abstracts in both local and international datasets, similarities are more remarkable than differences. The results can provide practical insights into the rhetorical and discursive practices associated with research article abstracts to applied linguistics researchers, students, and instructors.