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Scientific writing exhibits distinctive linguistic characteristics. One such feature is the prevalent use of inanimate subjects paired with active verbs, a common strategy in academic writing to convey impersonality and objectivity (Hyland, 1996; Johns, 2001; Master, 1991, 2001; Mauranen, 2001; Šeškauskiené, 2009). This study focuses on examining the lexico-grammatical patterns in research article abstracts, particularly the usage of active verbs combined with inanimate subjects as in "The present study attempts to...". The dataset for this analysis comprises 720 abstracts randomly selected from fields including biology, engineering, chemistry, physics, economics, linguistics, psychology and sociology. Recognizing the cultural and disciplinary variations in scientific language, the research evaluates Turkish-written abstracts (n=240), their English translations (n=240), and abstracts written originally in English (n=240). This research seeks to examine how frequently academic writers in Turkish and English employ inanimate subjects paired with active verbs to convey their stance within abstract sections. The findings reveal both similarities and differences across languages and disciplines. The study indicates that abstracts in Turkish and English commonly use inanimate subjects to maintain an objective tone. However, abstracts originally written in English demonstrate a stronger focus on authority and competition within the scientific discourse community, marked by more frequent use of the active voice. Additionally, a comparison across disciplines reveals that social science abstracts frequently make use of inanimate subjects, while those in the natural sciences tend to favor the passive voice. These findings suggest that the choice of lexico-grammatical structures for expressing stance is shaped by both cultural norms and disciplinary conventions in academic writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study aimed to explore the generic organization of research article (RA) abstracts published in the Iranian local and international history journals. To this end, a corpus of 80 RA abstracts (40 local and 40 international) were scrutinized in terms of their constituent moves based on Hyland’s (2000) five-move model. Additionally, the study examined the interactional metadiscourse markers across various local and international abstract moves, using Hyland’s (2005) interpersonal metadiscourse model. The results of the genre analysis revealed a high frequency of introduction and purpose moves in local abstracts, as well as introduction, purpose, and product moves in the international corpus. The analysis of interactional metadiscourse markers revealed that boosters were the most frequently occurring category in the two groups of abstracts. Nevertheless, hedges were more frequently used by the local authors while the international researchers made a higher use of self-mentions. The results revealed the informed subjectivity and venue-based patterns of interaction at the service of presenting a persuasive account of the research objectives and outcomes in the field of history. The findings have pedagogical implications for EAP courses that aim to equip novice members of the history discourse community with the tools necessary to adhere to generic and interactional conventions.

There is currently a growing tendency to a meaning-based approach to the analysis of syntactic complexity in academic writing. While previous studies have offered illuminating insights into linguistic realizations of rhetorical structures in relation to syntactic complexity, they have typically analyzed lexicogrammatical features in a decontextualized manner. Drawing on a corpus-based cross-sectional design, this study takes a function-first approach to investigating the rhetorical functions of syntactically complex structures in research article (RA) abstracts in applied linguistics. To that end, a corpus of 270 texts from leading applied linguistics journals was constructed. Based on the model proposed by Pho (2008), we manually annotated the texts for the moves, and measured their syntactic complexity using phrasal, clausal, and global metrics. SPSS (version 25) was run for the analysis of data. Results of one-way MANOVA (multivariate analysis of variance) and Chi-square tests revealed significant variations among rhetorical moves in terms of clausal and phrasal complexity measures. The findings also showed that academic writers varied the complexity of their written structures according to their rhetorical goals. The results establish form-meaning mappings between syntactically complex structures and rhetorical functions. The findings carry pedagogical implications for student writers to adjust their prose using functionally appropriate complex structures following expert writers through comparing their own writing with that of expert writers to notice the gaps.

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 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 about the rhetorical and discursive practices associated with research article abstracts to applied linguistics researchers, students, and instructors.

The paper examines comparatively and diachronically the generic structure of research article abstracts written in English for international scientific journals and abstracts written in Italian and published in Italian journals in the field of linguistics, with the aim of exploring generic and cross-linguistic variation over the last 20 years. The data consist of two small corpora of English and Italian linguistics research article abstracts spaced at ten-year intervals, namely 1997, 2007 and 2017. The analysis shows that the generic structure and rhetorical organisation of abstracts written in Italian conforms to the international conventions based on the norms of the English academic discourse community. However, they are rhetorically less complex than English abstracts. Diachronic variation has also been observed in the frequency and distribution of every single move across the two language corpora over the decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces and discusses a computer-assisted study that seeks to shed light on the frequency and use of the central modal verbs (can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, would) in research article (further: RA) abstracts in applied linguistics published in the Inner and Outer Circles of English, respectively. The study is informed by the construal of the Circles of English that are comprised of the Inner Circle, where English is spoken as the mother tongue (for example, the United Kingdom), the Outer Circle, where it is used as a second language in the former British colonies (for instance, Hong Kong, Malaysia, etc.), and the Expanding Circle (e.g., Japan), where English is spoken and taught as a foreign language (Kachru 48). In the construal of the Circles of English, the Outer Circle is regarded as a heterogeneous sociolinguistic space with fluid boundaries (Higgins 615) that affects the frequency and use of the central modal verbs in a variety of textual genres (Lee and Collins 501). Against this background, the study aims at identifying and analysing the frequency of the central modal verbs in a corpus of RA abstracts in applied linguistics published by international peer reviewed journals associated with the Outer Circle (one journal published in Hong Kong and one in Malaysia, respectively) and the Inner Circle of English (one journal published in the United Kingdom). The results of the quantitative analysis of the corpus indicate that the most frequent modal verbs in the entire corpus are can and may, which function as hedging devices in the journals that are associated with the Outer and Inner Circles of English, respectively. These findings are discussed in the article through the prism of the construal of the Circles of English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research article abstract is one of the most important sections of any journal article, but conventions on how it is written may vary in accordance with the contexts that surround them. This study analyzes the moves that occur among a corpus of 29 semi-randomly selected online research article abstracts taken from three Middle East and North Africa (MENA)-based journals in applied linguistics. Using Hyland’s (2000) Introduction-Purpose-Methods-Product-Conclusion (I-P-M-Pr-C) move structure as framework and as a result of the analysis of the corpora, it can be surmised that the Purpose (P), Method (M), and Product (Pr) moves are the most prevalent across the corpora of two of the three journals. In addition, only three abstracts out of 29 feature the complete and sequenced I-P-M-Pr-C structure that Hyland (2000) developed. These results suggest the following: Hyland’s move structure may be individually evident across the corpus, but it is not sequenced in the order that Hyland’s structure is originally presented. This study also posits the influence of journal-writing conventions, such as abstract lengths, on how writers compose their abstracts and thus results in the foregrounding of some moves (e.g., Purpose, Method, Product), the backgrounding of others (e.g., Introduction, Conclusion), and the existence of mixed moves. Lastly, implications for the teaching of writing and other directions of related research are provided.

This study intends to scrutinize the realizations and discourse functions of context frames in research article abstracts written by native and non-native writers of English from four disciplines namely: Applied Linguistics, Economics, Biology, and Mechanical Engineering. To this end, 200 research article abstracts (50 from each discipline) were selected for analysis. From the 50 research article abstracts of each discipline, 25 were written by native writers of English and 25 written by Iranian non-native writers of English. The corpora, then, were analyzed based on the analytical framework proposed by Ebrahimi (2014). Based on the findings obtained, it can be concluded that the context frame’s selection, frequency and discourse functions are affected and imposed by the nature of discipline and genre of RA abstracts. The result also indicated that there is a difference between native and Iranian non-native writers of English in dealing with these elements. In addition, the findings stress the fact that writing is restricted by the disciplinary conventions and writers’ background knowledge of English language.

Article abstracts may be among the most efficient means of disseminating research results if certain basic principles regarding their content and structure are followed. No research outcomes have yet been made available on the structure of abstracts published in Czech linguistic periodicals. The current study presents a survey of 120 such abstracts collected from four journals and, on the basis of rhetorical moves analysis, describes their shared features, strengths and shortcomings. The results show that many of these abstracts fail to include moves which are generally considered obligatory (results, data and method description) and that their informative value is consequently lower than sufficient. The study concludes by recommending that awareness of rhetorical principles amongst Czech academics be raised e.g. through instructional texts or courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Play a major role as time-saving and information-managing devices in our globalized world of scientific communication. In many non-Anglophone academic journals the pressure to disseminate results internationally is manifested in the requirement to write an English version of the abstract, usually a requisite for the journal to be included in international databases and citation indexes. In this paper it is my aim to investigate the main lexicogrammatical choices which contribute to the identification of rhetorical moves in research article (RA) abstracts translated into English by Spanish academics, and which are published in prestigious national journals as a requisite for those journals to be included in international databases. To carry out this analysis, three sets of texts have been compiled: (i) Spanish abstracts published in prestigious Spanish journals, (ii) their corresponding English translations published in the same journals; (iii) RA abstracts written in English by Anglophone academics (affiliated to Anglophone institutions) and published in leading international journals whose language of publication is English. I will focus on the discipline of Sociology, an emergent field for Spanish academics in terms of their contribution to the international arena. My ultimate aim is to explore how English translations compare with English L1 abstracts in terms of lexicogrammatical choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes a composite approach that combines move analysis and multidimensional analysis to a contrastive study of textual variations in discourse moves between native and non-native English abstracts, focusing on the biology discipline. Building on a new multidimensional analysis model of English abstracts established in Cao & Xiao (2013), the present study demonstrates that in comparison with their Chinese counterparts, native English writers display a more active involvement and a more interactive style; and in all obligatory moves, they are also more focused and confident in using intensifying devices. Native and non-native abstracts differ significantly at both dimension level and move level. Such differences are discussed with reference to possible reasons and our suggestions for English abstract writing in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research in the area of intercultural rhetoric has mainly focused on academic writing in English and other languages. However, the writing of research article abstracts in English and Arabic has yet received scarce attention. To this end, this study shows how academic writers interact with their readers in both English and Arabic, or how writers express their stance and engage with readers. Eighty abstracts of research articles in the field of social sciences (40 for each language)—published in two journals (Scopus Q4): Dirasat: Human and Social Sciences and the International Journal of Interdisciplinary Educational Studies —were retrieved for quantitative and qualitative analyses using Hyland's (2005, 2019) framework. The findings are discussed in light of theories of metadiscourse and intercultural rhetoric. The analysis revealed that there are clear differences in the way academic writers express their stance and engage with readers in the two languages. Specifically, the findings showed that Arabic academic writers made less use of hedges and more use of boosters and attitude markers than English academic writers. In addition, self-mention as a stance feature was totally absent in the English abstracts but was located eight times in the Arabic ones. Finally, Arabic academic writers made less use of the engagement markers than English academic writers. The findings call for more cross-linguistic and cross-cultural analyses of academic writing in general, and research articles in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]