A structural move analysis of the abstract section of ISI articles of Iranian and native scholars in the field of agricultural engineering

2018 IJRSLL – Volume 7 Issue 3

Author/s:

Tavakoli Gheinani, Majid
Islamic Azad University, Najafabad Branch, Iran (majidtavakoli.edu93@yahoo.com)

Tabatabaei, Omid*
Islamic Azad University, Najafabad Branch, Iran (tabatabaeiomid@yahoo.com)

Abstract:

This study aimed at investigating the rhetorical moves that are used in the abstract section of ISI articles in the field of agricultural engineering and figuring out the differences between Iranian and native English scholars in using the moves in their abstracts. The other goal of the study was to figure out the obligatory and optional moves of the abstracts. To this end, 120 abstracts containing 60 abstracts written by Iranian scholars and 60 abstracts written by native English scholars published in ISI journals between 2010 and 2015 in the field of agricultural engineering were selected. The results indicated that there were significant differences between Iranian and native scholars in using move 1 and move 3, while there were not significant differences between the two groups of writers in using move 2, move 4, and move 5. The findings of the present study may contain some implications for ESP instruction and academic writing.

Keywords: abstract; agricultural engineering; genre analysis; move analysis; research article; rhetorical move

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrsll.2017.1864

*Corresponding Author