A Contrastive Study of Move Structure in the Introduction

Section of Physical versus Social Sciences Research Articles in English

Researchers : Biook Behnam & Amir Nikoukhesal
Abstract
We have adopted a genre analytic method, namely move analysis, in
order to investigate whether there are statistically significant
1. Introduction 3. Results differences in research article introductions, between physical and
social disciplines as far as move structure is concerned. In this study
move structure is confined to move and step frequency.

In recent years, genre analysis has received considerable attention

Genre analysis has gained
ground in recent years in the
context of English for Specific
Purposes (ESP). As an
important genre in the research
article (RA), the introduction
has received significant
attention from the academic
community.
Keywords: Genre analysis, Move
analysis, Research article introduction,
CARS model, Physical and social
sciences.
in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) context. Genre analysis,
which has proven to be pedagogically efficient in making Discussion
language learners aware of frameworks according to which
various genres are shaped, strives to determine the rhetorical
organization and identify linguistic features of the genre under
As previously mentioned, in this paper we report on an
study.
analysis of research article introductions from two different
disciplines, physical and social sciences. We have adopted a
2. Method genre analytic method, namely move analysis, in order to
investigate whether there are statistically significant
differences in research article introductions, between
physical and social disciplines as far as move structure is
2.1 Model and Data Analysis concerned.
The model could effectively explain the generic organization of research article
introductions in physical and social sciences in terms of their move structure.
2.2 The Corpus

Forty physical and social sciences recent research article introductions (20 from each of

discipline), all published in 2008-2013, were randomly selected from four physical

(represented by physics and chemistry) and four social sciences (represented by

economics and sociology) scientific sources in English.