The Generic structure of master's theses abstracts
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Date
2021
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Larbi Ben M’hidi University-Oum El Bouaghi
Abstract
Ever since the justifiable break-up with the formalistic and decontextualized view of academic discourse started to gain public acknowledgement, an increasing number of scholars have shifted perspectives towards a more functional and socio-cultural situated interpretation of academic texts. In fact, one of the earliest, yet the most legitimate conception of genre by John Swales (1990) has sparked the interest of various researchers and pedagogues to embark on the flourishing realm of genre analysis. Remarkably, over the past two decades, the abstract has represented a solid ground for genre-based inquiries. Current research has exceptionally supported rhetorical move analyses of research articles abstracts. However, research on Master theses abstracts' rhetorical organization is still embryonic and relatively under-investigated. To help diminish this scarcity, the present study sought to explore the rhetorical move structure of a total of 40 abstracts composed by native English postgraduates from Portland State University and non-native English postgraduates form Oum El Bouaghi University in the field of applied linguistics, each of which comprising 20 abstracts. To carry out a comparative genre analysis, this study has adopted Dos Santos' (1996) five-move framework to gain insights into moves, sub-moves, and move-sequence performed in each corpus. The analysis unveiled that both groups manifest the exact same moves underlined by Dos Santos (1996). However, the findings revealed that the native postgraduates significantly outperformed their non-native counterparts in their overall adherence to the five moves. The results suggest that Portland postgraduates are more acquainted with the abstract rhetorical structure as compared to OEB postgraduates. Henceforth, the present research recommends the integration of a genre-based approach to teaching academic writing in order to familiarize non-native EFL students with some shared generic regularities and conventions and secure effective communication within the discourse community.
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Keywords
Genre analysis, Master's thesis abstract, Rhetorical move structure, Move analysis, five-move framework