scholarly journals Another Look at the Rhetorical Moves and Linguistic Realizations in International and Indonesian Journal Articles: A Case of Tourism Research

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eri Kurniawan ◽  
Nurul Aini Akrima Sabila

Although a significant number of studies have been conducted to explore the rhetorical structures of research article abstracts, there is a paucity of research specifically comparing the move patterns, and linguistic features of tourism research article abstracts published in international and national journals. Such a comparison is quintessential to address a notion that journal indexation may factor into the quality of textual organization in abstract writing. Employing Hyland’s (2000) analytical framework, the paper analyzed 120 tourism research article abstracts from international journals indexed by Scopus and Indonesian journals indexed by Sinta. Findings revealed more similarities than differences across the two corpora. All of Hyland’s five moves were generally found in the abstracts, with  M2 (Purpose), M3 (Method), and M4 (Product) as the most occurring moves in both data sets. An exception was found in M1 (Introduction) and M5 (Conclusion), where M1 was favored and M5 was excluded in Sinta-indexed abstracts, yet the reverse was true of Scopus-indexed counterparts. In terms of the linguistic features, present tense and active voice were evidently dominant across both data groups, with a notable exception in Method move, where past tense and passive voice were more favorable. These findings appear to suggest that journal indexation does not profoundly influence abstract writing. Recommendations and implications for academic writing for publication purposes are also discussed.

Author(s):  
Shurli Makmillen ◽  
Michelle Riedlinger

AbstractThis study contributes to research into genre innovation and scholarship exploring how Indigenous epistemes are disrupting dominant discourses of the academy. Using a case study approach, we investigated 31 research articles produced by Mäori scholars and published in the journal AlterNative between 2006 and 2018. We looked for linguistic features associated with self-positioning and self-identification. We found heightened ambiguous uses of “we”; a prevalence of verbs associated with personal (as opposed to discursive) uses of “I/we”; personal storytelling; and a privileging of Elders’ contributions to the existing state of knowledge. We argue these features reflect and reinforce Indigenous scholars’ social relations with particular communities of practice within and outside of the academy. They are also in keeping with Indigenous knowledge-making practices, protocols, and languages, and signal sites of negotiation and innovation in the research article. We present the implications for rhetorical genre studies and for teaching academic genres.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-30
Author(s):  
Basim Alamri

The present study implemented a genre-based approach to analyze the rhetorical structure of English language research articles (RAs): specifically, the Introduction-Methods-Results-Discussion-Conclusion (I-M-R-D-C) sections. Next, lexical bundles (LBs) associated with patterns of moves were identified by applying a corpus-driven approach. The study analyzed two corpora of 30 RAs purposely selected from 16 peer-reviewed journals of applied linguistics published in Saudi Arabia and internationally during the years of 2011-2016. First, a genre-based approach was used to identify the move structures of RAs through analyzing different RA sections by different models. Next, lexical bundles associated with each identified move in each IMRDC section were analyzed using a corpus-driven approach, based on structural and functional taxonomies. The study findings showed that both corpora share similarities and differences related to rhetorical structures and lexical bundles. These findings have pedagogical implications for novice writers, graduate students, and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) instruction, including raising awareness of rhetorical structures and LBs in academic writing for publication, which could help produce more successful publishable research articles.


Author(s):  
Ju Chuan Huang

Abstract This study explores the rhetorical structure and linguistic features of research article abstracts in an applied discipline. Recently, many emerging applied disciplines have evolved to incorporate knowledge from a variety of disciplinary areas. Therefore, the writing style may vary within one discipline. While most studies have compared rhetorical variations between disciplines, few have examined sub-disciplinary variations. The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent to which variations exist among research article abstracts in three sub-fields of one applied discipline: marine engineering. A small specific corpus consisting of 60 marine engineering abstracts was compiled. By examining similarities and differences in the rhetorical structure, frequently used verbs, tense, and the use of first person pronouns, the analysis showed that sub-disciplinary variations existed among the three sub-fields. For example, the abstracts in the sub-field of automatic control (a discipline closely related to electronic engineering) differ from the abstracts of the other two sub-fields as for rhetorical structure, verb tense, and frequency of use of first-person pronouns. The findings of this study indicate that English for Specific Purposes (ESP) instructors should take into account sub-disciplinary preferences when teaching academic writing so that students can make informed choices when writing in their specific sub-field.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 151-167
Author(s):  
S. A. Sheypak

The paper addresses concerns of preparing the research article for publication in a high-ranking international journal. The paper argues how to develop the competence which is required for successful manuscript submission in the international peer-review journal. The analysis of the reasons for rejecting the manuscript submitted in international journals suggests considering a successful submission through the dialogue between the author and the discourse community of the journal selected for publication. The publication competence of the author is considered as the author’s ability to construct his/her position in the text or authorial voice. Bakhtin’s concept of voice allows interpreting authorial positioning in the dialogue with the discourse community selected for submission. While only the author’s position in the article is intentionally aligned with the epistemological, discursive, and rhetorical boundaries of the discursive community of the journal, the author’s voice may be approved by the community through publication. The approach adopted in the paper is based on Swales’ concept of discourse community and the concept of author’s positioning in academic text suggested by Ivanič. The structure of authorial positioning in the article is developed by using Schmid’s model of the narrative text. The publication competence of the author confirms his/her ability to construct authorial voice, which requires firstly determining the boundaries of the discursive community selected for publication through reading. When the author aligns his/her position in the manuscript with the community boundaries, the author’s voice is addressed to the selected community and it is able to convince the community in the validity of the researcher’s results. In conclusion, the structure of authorial positioning in the research paper is suggested for designing the curriculum of academic writing for publication purposes (ERPP) which aims at successful interactions between the author and the journal community at all stages of manuscript elaboration.


2022 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-83
Author(s):  
Wei Xiao ◽  
Jin Liu ◽  
Li Li

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in research article (RA thereafter) introductions. Most previous studies focused on the macro structures, rhetorical functions and linguistic realizations of RA introductions, but few intended to investigate the information content distribution from the perspective of information theory. The current study conducted an entropy-based study on the distributional patterns of information content in RA introductions and their variations across disciplines (humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences). Three indices, that is, one-, two-, and three-gram entropies, were used to analyze 120 RA introductions (40 introductions from each disciplinary area). The results reveal that, first, in RA introductions, the information content is unevenly distributed, with the information content of Move 1 being the highest, followed in sequence by Move 3 and Move 2; second, the three entropy indices may reflect different linguistic features of RA introductions; and, third, disciplinary variations of information content were found. In Move 1, the RA introductions of natural sciences are more informative than those of the other two disciplines, and in Move 3 the RA introductions of social sciences are more informative as well. This study has implications for genre-based instruction in the pedagogy of academic writing, as well as the broadening of the applications of quantitative corpus linguistic methods into less touched fields.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 60
Author(s):  
Leo Candra Wahyu Utami

Rhetoric in writing an abstract is required for the writers’ goal which is to deliver adequate information to the readers by implementing an appropriate compositional structure of the abstract.<strong> </strong>This study aims to explore the use of grammatical construction of every rhetorical move in the research article abstracts. The result showed that grammatical constructions are found in the research article abstracts. The use of present tense is dominant in all five moves. Additionally, past tense is mostly found in method move. Active voice and passive voice are also found in all five moves. However, passive voice is frequently found in method and conclusion. In this case, the writers construct the abstract as objective as possible. <em>That-</em>complement clause is characteristically found in product move. Thus, implementation of this study is beneficial for the writers in academic writing to realize the use of grammatical constructions in the research article abstracts.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. p94
Author(s):  
Wenli Xu ◽  
Yi Tang

The present study investigated the variations in linguistic features of English academic writing by American and Chinese scientists by building a corpus of 600 English agricultural journal abstracts and using the natural language processing tool Coh-Metrix. Through a one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and a discriminant function analysis (DFA), we statistically analyzed the corpus texts based on their lexical, syntactic and cohesive features and generated 8 distinguishing linguistic indices. The results indicated that Chinese scientists tended to write abstracts with more frequent words, more similar sentence structures, more modifiers per noun phrase and more agentless passive voice forms, while the American counterparts tended to write abstracts with a wider range of vocabulary, more specific terms, more words with multiple senses and more adversative connectives. These findings offer good guidance for Chinese scientists to write in a style closer to the agricultural research field and the native speakers so as to get their manuscripts better reviewed and more easily published. These findings also have practical implications for the development of agricultural English teaching materials as well as the curriculum design.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-71
Author(s):  
Husnul Hakim ◽  
Safnil Arsyad ◽  
Syahrial Syahrial

The existence of abstract is compulsory within a research article (RA). Abstract is a summary or brief overview that describes entire content of RA. At a glimpse, abstract tells readers what the RA is all about and at the same time, it acknowledges readers and allows them indirectly to give pre-assessment about quality of the RA. This study aims to find rhetorical moves and linguistic features; tenses and voice forms of RA abstracts by Indonesian authors in Applied Linguistics published in international journals. Using content analysis method, sixty RA abstracts were extracted from two international journals; Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics (IJAL) and TEFLIN journal, and examined based on their rhetorical move following five-move model by Hyland (2005) and Arsyad (2014) for fact-finding. The results reveal; 1) Move 2 (Aim/ Purpose), Move 3 (Method) and Move 4 (Finding/ Result) exist in total sixty RA abstracts, unlike Move 1 (Introduction) and Move 5 (Conclusion and Suggestion), 2) The Simple Present Tense is major tense to apply in all rhetorical moves except in Move 3 (Method) in which Past Tense is mostly used. 3) Active voice dominates rhetorical moves except in Move 3 (Method) in which Passive voice is precisely more applied. This study concludes that the use of rhetorical move models and linguistic features in RA abstracts implies the quality of RA abstracts. Indonesian authors are suggested to follow international standards and trends to achieve outstanding RA abstract.


Corpora ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Cao ◽  
Richard Xiao

This article takes the multi-dimensional (MD) analysis approach to explore the textual variations between native and non-native English abstracts on the basis of a balanced corpus containing English abstracts written by native English and native Chinese writers from twelve academic disciplines. A total of 47 out of 163 linguistic features are retained after factor analysis, which underlies a seven-dimension framework representing seven communicative functions. The results show that the two types of abstracts demonstrate significant differences in five out of the seven dimensions. To be more specific, native English writers display a more active involvement and commitment in presenting their ideas than Chinese writers. They also use intensifying devices more frequently. In contrast, Chinese writers show stronger preferences for conceptual elaboration, passives and abstract noun phrases no matter whether the two types of data are examined as a whole or whether variations across disciplines are taken into account. The results are discussed in relation to the possible reasons and suggestions for English abstract writing in China. Methodologically, this study innovatively expands on Biber's (1988) MD analytical framework by integrating colligation in addition to grammatical and semantic features.


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