Search

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.

This study focuses on continuing research on the impact of MEESUS (Medical English Education SUpport System), a tool designed to aid the understanding of medical article abstracts, in an in-person learning environment. Our earlier findings from an online class in 2022 showed that MEESUS appeared to help students understand abstracts written with highly specific terminology. Recently enhanced features of MEESUS include the automatic display of bilingual concordance lines and error-tolerant word input. In this study, 107 fourth-year medical students were voluntarily divided into MEESUS users and non-users. They were asked to choose an abstract based on the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) criteria for reporting randomised trials in journal and conference abstracts, extract information from it, and draft a summary in English. Task outputs were evaluated by five raters, who were unaware of the group membership. A significant positive correlation was seen between the total task scores and TOEFL ITP scores for non-users (Spearman's rho = 0.709, p = 0.004); however, no correlation was found among MEESUS users. Analysis of the students' feedback revealed that the proportion of comments expressing perceived difficulty was significantly higher in the present in-person classroom study than in the previous online class observation (x² = 21.3, df = 1, p < 0.01). The findings indicated that MEESUS may have effectively served as a scaffolding device for the students with relatively lower proficiency and that the students' perceived burden of the tasks was greater in the in-person context. [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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

This paper examined whether the use of the authentic translation of research article abstracts would help fourth-year medical students decipher the highly codified language used in randomised controlled trial (RCT) abstracts to understand the information. The students used our Medical English Education SUpport System (MEESUS) to read an RCT abstract. MEESUS incorporates parallel corpora of English abstracts and their Japanese translations with bilingual displays that students can use to look up words and sentences. The students used MEESUS to read an RCT abstract of their choosing and learned about the CONsolidated Standards Of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) criteria for reporting randomised trials in journal and conference abstracts. Students were asked to complete tasks including abstract information extraction following the CONSORT guideline and to write a summary. The analysis of the tasks showed that higher scores were obtained by users of the bilingual displays than non-users in all task items. The ratio of high scorers in the writing task was significantly greater in the bilingual display users than in the non-users (χ2 = 3.878, df = 1, p = 0.0489). The presence of the authentic translation seems to have led to a better understanding of the disciplinespecific, conventionally institutionalized type of abstracts in English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An abstract is the main part of a Research Article (RA) that gives a major outlook of the whole article and it makes the reader decide to read or leave a particular article. It is less studied part in terms of research, especially in the context of Pakistan. Therefore, this study is aimed to compare the abstracts of research articles written by native (American) and non-native (Pakistani) authors. The focus of the current study is to investigate the frequency and percentage of each move of RA abstracts composed by native and non-native writers of English. To achieve this end, a corpus of 30 native and 30 non-native abstracts is collected and Hyland's (2000) five-move model is applied to analyse the data. The results show that the move 1 (Introduction) occurred in all (60) abstracts and it is obligatory in Pakistani as well as American context. Furthermore, the results show that the difference in Conclusion move in Pakistani abstracts is 73%. On the other hand, the frequency of remaining three moves including purpose, method and product is similar in American and Pakistani contexts with minor differences. It is recommended that more comparative research be done on this specific subject utilizing more data sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

With an increasing number of international students coming to China for higher education, the learning needs of academic Chinese increased sharply. However, Chinese for Academic Purposes (CAP) is still in its infancy in both academic research and teaching practice. As a result, students lack the support for their academic Chinese skills and encounter difficulties according to their feedback. Meanwhile, the studies on English for Academic Purposes (EAP) pedagogy are fruitful. Among all the pedagogies, corpus-based instruction with genre analysis were found to be an effective approach in improving students’ EAP writing abilities. This study thus applied corpus-based genre analysis teaching approach to CAP teaching and examined the effectiveness. Through the construction and analysis of a specific corpus, this paper first investigated the move structure and high-frequency words and expressions of Chinese research article (RA) abstracts in the discipline of Economics and Management Science. Afterwards, a mini learning corpus was compiled for students’ exploration. The learning materials and sample tasks were introduced and data were collected from students’ feedback and writing samples before and after the teaching intervention. The results revealed that, firstly, the conventional move structure of Chinese RA abstracts in Economics and Management Science was I-MR-D, which is similar to English RA abstracts. Method and Results are two conventional moves. Second, corpus-based genre analysis can partially improve students’ performances in academic writing. After the teaching intervention, students’ awareness of text structure and the use of academic Chinese expressions improved noticeably. Though based on a small sample size, the research findings contribute towards the understanding of linguistic conventions of Chinese RA abstracts. Moreover, the materials and pedagogy used in this project shed new light on the instruction of Chinese writing as well as CAP curriculum development.

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]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated by the scanty of works on background information of abstracts, this article analyses the discourse functions of mood choices in background information of arts-based research article abstracts. Background information segments of three hundred abstracts of arts-based research articles obtained from the internet and purposively selected were analysed using insights from the systemic functional linguistic tool of mood. Given the generic compliant function – based categorisation adopted, five kinds of indicative mood structures namely; mission indicative mood, premises setting, assumption indicative mood; justification and classification mood are found to characterise the data but premises setting mood choices which function to: (i) give historical background to the study; (ii) define concept(s) that are central to the study at hand; (iii) anchor or state the research objective(s) and (iv) build up arguments against existing (previous) studies with a view to establishing the justification for the current research are observed to be predominant in the data. This study concludes therefore that an understanding of mood choices and their generic compliant functions has potency of finding lasting solution to the problems being encountered by budding academics in writing their Background Information (BI). It equally serves as useful material for academic discourse pedagogy.

Stance is a feature of academic writing that refers to how writers interact and engage with their readers by means of linguistic devices. This study focuses on the grammatical devices—and semantic distinctions thereof—that are employed by academic writers of English to express stance in research article abstracts in the areas of applied linguistics (AL) and literature (L). To this end, a corpus of 120 research article abstracts (60 in the area of AL and another 60 in that of L) was built and analysed using SPSS and following Biber et al.’s (1999) framework of grammatical devices of stance. The abstracts were extracted from high-quality journals in the respective areas: Applied Linguistics and English: Journal of the English Association. Both are ISI journals and published by Oxford Academic Publishing. A mixed-method approach, applying quantitative and qualitative measures, was adopted to answer the two questions: How is stance grammatically expressed in AL research article abstracts and L research article abstracts, and How is the expression of stance in AL research article abstracts similar to/different from that in L ones? The findings are construed in light of theories of academic discourse and English for Academic Purposes (EAP). The results reveal that there are important similarities and differences in the extent to which and the means through which stance is expressed in AL research article abstracts and L research article abstracts. In particular, the findings show that both AL and L abstracts were similar in the most frequently used stance marker which is the stance complement clause. However, they were different in the frequency of use of other devices. The study provides insights into the ways academic writers express stance in various fields which better our ability to write research article abstracts.

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.

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.

Motivated by the scanty of works on background information of abstracts, this article analyses the discourse functions of mood choices in background information of arts-based research article abstracts. Background information segments of three hundred abstracts of arts-based research articles obtained from the internet and purposively selected were analysed using insights from the systemic functional linguistic tool of mood. Given the generic compliant function - based categorisation adopted, five kinds of indicative mood structures namely; mission indicative mood, premises setting, assumption indicative mood; justification and classification mood are found to characterise the data but premises setting mood choices which function to: (i) give historical background to the study; (ii) define concept(s) that are central to the study at hand; (iii) anchor or state the research objective(s) and (iv) build up arguments against existing (previous) studies with a view to establishing the justification for the current research are observed to be predominant in the data. This study concludes therefore that an understanding of mood choices and their generic compliant functions has potency of finding lasting solution to the problems being encountered by budding academics in writing their Background Information (BI). It equally serves as useful material for academic discourse pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the course of the last decades, digital communication has contributed significantly to the dissemination of scientific knowledge, thus allowing also lay readers access to material primarily intended for expert audiences. This change has also affected domains, like legal research, which are traditionally and explicitly targeted to 'insiders', and particularly the esoteric community (i.e. experts working on similar cases/issues, as opposed to the exoteric scientific community at large). For the products of legal research to become appealing and 'usable' for both these audiences, their (meta-)representation needs to be strategically designed in order for legal academic texts to be recognized as authoritative sources where to find relevant contents and their discussion. This is the main purpose of abstracts (RAAs), which are meant to anticipate the main information contained in the associated research article (RA) in a way that is clear, comprehensible and cognitively appealing, so as to encourage readers to read the ensuing text in full. On this basis, this study analyses RAA discourse in online legal publications: a corpus of 100 RAAs from the Harvard Law Review (https://harvardlawreview.org/issues/) is investigated in order to show how discursive choices may depend upon the epistemology of the domain, the content discussed (which may range from constitutional law, foreign affairs and national security to issues concerning privacy, intellectual property or civil rights), the target audience's competence, background knowledge, motivation, or needs, and, ultimately, the purpose of the RA (i.e. speculative reasons vs practical application). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Language & Linguistics Studies is the property of Journal of Language & Linguistics Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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.

• Modality shifts mostly in value, followed by type and orientation in translation. • Original modal stance shifts to a stronger and more objectivised one in translation. • Modality shifts are largely contributed by loss of low-value implicit propositions. • Lexical, syntactic and textual factors affect modality shifts. Research on translation shifts, especially divergence in modality, that occur to English translations of Chinese research article abstracts is rare. The article aims to explore the linguistic changes in modality use, a linguistic device for expressing authors' evaluative judgement, in the abstracts of Chinese research articles and their English translations. By adopting a three-step analytical coding procedure from Systemic Functional Linguistics, the study analyses the cross-linguistic modality shifts in modal value, type and orientation in English translations of Chinese research article abstracts (RAAs) from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. It is found that 1) quantitatively, a considerable number of modality shifts have been observed in translated RAAs on value, followed by type and orientation, in which the distributions present a stronger and more objectivised stance resulting from a loss of modality on low-value implicit proposition; 2) qualitatively, Chinese-specific lexical, syntactic, and textual factors are associated with modality shifts, including lexical ambiguity, "run-on" sentences, and implicit information structure. The findings provide evidence of how original authorial modal stance is influenced by translators and integrated into academic discourse. The study also paves the way for future investigations of possible variables (e.g., the speech-written mode) in modality shifts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the ANSI (American National Standards Institute) guidelines, abstracts of research articles should be written in an objective mode. The abstracts should provide the main points of a study as briefly, concisely and objectively as possible. However, several studies found there to be disciplinary variations in rhetorical structure and in linguistic features. Hyland (2005b) also found that RA abstracts were likely an interaction between authors and their readers. Therefore, novice authors should see to it that their abstracts are crafted with the awareness of rhetorical moves, some linguistic features and the element of interactional metadiscourse to create an effective RA abstract. The present study aims to explore the rhetorical structure and the linguistic features in 100 RA abstracts in the field of food technology. Hyland's five-move model is chosen as an analytical framework to detect rhetorical structure. Hyland (2005b)'s classification of stance and Hyland (2005a)'s taxonomy of interactive metadiscourse markers are employed as the approach in the analysis of linguistic features. The study focused on the choice of tenses, evaluative that- structure, stances and transition markers appearing in each move: Introduction, Method, Purpose, Results and Conclusion. The findings suggest that particular linguistic features appear in certain rhetorical moves. The findings could be used for their pedagogical implications for novice authors in the field of food technology, especially in the EFL context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) has stood the test of time as a model of text analysis. The present literature contains a plethora of studies that while taking the 'clause' as a unit of analysis have put into investigation the metafunctions in research articles of a single field of study or those of various fields in comparison. Although 'clause complex' is another unit of SF analysis, by far there has been only one study on research articles where it was the unit of analysis (Sellami Baklouti, 2011). Therefore, the purpose of this study was to put into analysis the 'taxis', 'expansion' and 'projection' deployed in Applied Linguistics research article abstracts (RAAs) by native (N) and non-native (NN) writers. To this end, 20 Applied Linguistics RAAs (10 by N English writers and 10 by NN English writers on the sub-fields of Discourse Analysis and Language Assessment) were analyzed according to Halliday & Matthiessen's (2013) 'clause complex' framework. The results indicated that there is a significant difference in the use of 'projection' by Ns and NNs, while the distribution of 'taxis' and 'expansion' is the same. The findings also showed what types of 'taxis', 'expansion' and 'projection' were deployed by Ns and NNs.

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]

Being a specific communicative genre of disseminating knowledge in today's academic arena, the research article abstract has its own specific conventional structure. Through such a seminal genre, research article writers are able to ratify and contribute their own new findings to the research community they belong to. Taking a cross-disciplinary quantitative approach, this study explores the status of interactional metadiscourse markers as prevalent interpersonal-driven features in research article abstracts. The central objective is to investigate how research article writers in particular discipline tackle and deploy interactional metadiscourse markers in the abstract section of their papers in the effort to propagate their ideas. Hyland's (2005) taxonomy of metadiscourse was adopted to analyse sixty research article abstracts written in two disciplines (Applied Linguistics and Economics) sourced from discipline-specific journals. As found, variations across the two fields of knowledge studied were enormously marked. Results of the present research may be of help for research article writers, particularly novice writers, to learn more about the socio-rhetorical conventions and prevalent discursive strategies established in their own specific disciplinary community. [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]

A generic analysis of research article abstracts can cover issues of different types; among them are linguistic features. An integral part of linguistic features of research article abstracts is interactive metadiscourse usage that can assist to make the text persuasive and unfolding to a discourse community. The main principle behind applying interactive metadiscourse is the view of writing as socially engaging; specifically, it indicates the ways writers project themselves into their arguments to declare their attitudes and commitments to the readers. This study aimed to explore how interactive metadiscourse markers are deployed by research article abstract writers belonging to different disciplinary communities within the soft sciences, while trying to reach the audience by creating a wellorganized discourse. Hyland's (2005) interpersonal model of metadiscourse was adopted to analyze 60 research article abstracts written in Applied Linguistics and Economics. Based on the results, there were marked variations found across the two disciplines in terms of interactive metadiscourse markers. [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]

The main purpose of this study is to investigate to what extent there is a rhetorical variation (if there is any) between research article abstracts written by American academic writers and those written by Taiwanese, and Turkish academic writers in the area of social sciences. This study presents a contrastive analysis of 138 article abstracts (46 by American academic writers, 46 by Taiwanese academic writers, and 46 by Turkish academic writers) published in a refereed online journal 'Social Behavior and Personality'. The purpose of the study was to ascertain whether these article abstracts, which focus on the same issue but written by authors from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds and addressing audiences from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, employed the same rhetorical strategies to introduce their works. For this purpose, the generic structures of these texts were analyzed. The analysis follows the Swalesian approach. The article abstracts seem to share a number of important rhetorical strategies. It appears that these abstracts conform closely to the M2-M3-M4 arrangement. On the whole, the rhetorical strategies shared by the groups in this section of the research articles outweigh the rhetorical strategies not so commonly employed. However, the abstracts written by Turkish speaking academic and Taiwanese speaking academic writers tend to underline their contribution to the field of study much further. Discussions and implications related to the findings will be presented in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to justify publication, the writers of scientific texts must create a research space that allows them to present new knowledge claims to the other members of the discourse community. This implies the use of a number of rhetorical strategies which involve the criticism of members of their own academic community. This article explores the interpersonal pragmatic phenomenon of academic criticism (AC) from a crosslinguistic perspective in research article abstracts. To this end, we have analyzed the various rhetorical options that writers may use to convey critical speech acts, in a corpus of 160 research paper abstracts written in English and Spanish in two disciplines (phonetics and psychology) of the social sciences. The results showed that the overall frequency of occurrence of instances of academic criticism is higher in the English abstracts, and that in the English texts, the writers preferred to convey criticism in an impersonal and indirect way, whereas in the Spanish texts, the writers opted more frequently for the use of personal and direct AC. The reason for this rhetorical variation is mainly explained by the influence of the sociopragmatic context of publication, that is, the relationship between the writers and the discourse community they are addressing, which is different both in terms of size and pressure. [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]

Stance is a feature of academic writing that refers to how writers interact and engage with their readers by means of linguistic devices. This study focuses on the grammatical devices-and semantic distinctions thereof-that are employed by academic writers of English to express stance in research article abstracts in the areas of applied linguistics (AL) and literature (L). To this end, a corpus of 120 research article abstracts (60 in the area of AL and another 60 in that of L) was built and analysed using SPSS and following Biber et al.'s (1999) framework of grammatical devices of stance. The abstracts were extracted from high-quality journals in the respective areas: Applied Linguistics and English: Journal of the English Association . Both are ISI journals and published by Oxford Academic Publishing. A mixed-method approach, applying quantitative and qualitative measures, was adopted to answer the two questions: How is stance grammatically expressed in AL research article abstracts and L research article abstracts, and How is the expression of stance in AL research article abstracts similar to/different from that in L ones? The findings are construed in light of theories of academic discourse and English for Academic Purposes (EAP). The results reveal that there are important similarities and differences in the extent to which and the means through which stance is expressed in AL research article abstracts and L research article abstracts. In particular, the findings show that both AL and L abstracts were similar in the most frequently used stance marker which is the stance complement clause. However, they were different in the frequency of use of other devices. The study provides insights into the ways academic writers express stance in various fields which better our ability to write research article abstracts., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest., (© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

• The translation of research article rhetorical conventions is rarely researched. • We explored 3 corpora of article abstracts in 3 journals between 2006 and 2016. • Chinese and English article abstracts have different rhetorical moves. • Foreignization is the dominant strategy to mediate different rhetorical moves. • This may have negative impact on their reception in the international community. Research on mediating cross-cultural differences in rhetorical conventions of research article abstracts (RAAs) between such culturally distant languages as English and Chinese is rare. This article aims to explore the differences in rhetorical preferences between independently produced English and Chinese research article abstracts and the strategies used in translating Chinese RAAs into English. RAAs published in three journals between 2006 and 2016 were selected to form three corpora: corpus A consisting of 32 English RAAs, corpus B made up of 38 Chinese RAAs, and corpus C including 38 English RAAs which are translations of the RAAs in corpus B. Corpus A and B form a comparable corpus while corpus B and C constitute a parallel corpus. Results suggest that Chinese and English RAAs have different preferences in rhetorical move patterns because the rhetorical moves of Product and Method are much more frequent in English RAAs compared with their Chinese counterparts, and that rhetorical foreignization is the dominant strategy in translating Chinese RAAs into English. Possible reasons of such rhetorical differences and the impact of this resistant strategy on the reception of the translated RAAs in the international community is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]