Rhetorical Moves and Metadiscourse in English Abstracts of Research Articles and Masters’ Theses

Abstract

Rhetorical communication and metadiscoursal devices are important in understanding the rhetorical negotiations involved in academic texts. Research studies comparing these two phases of the analysis of English abstracts of research articles and Masters’ theses written by non-native English writers are limited. Three corpora of abstracts in the field of business were analyzed for their rhetorical moves by using Hyland’s (2000) model and metadiscourse markers in the moves by using Hyland’s (2005) metadiscourse taxonomy. Some striking similarities and differences were found among the three sets of data. Purpose, Method, and Product moves were found with different degrees of occurrences, while the Introduction and Conclusion moves occurred infrequently. The employment of interactive devices outnumbered the interactional devices. Transitions and self-mention were the most frequent markers in the international corpus, while frame markers and attitude markers were found extensively in the two Thai-based corpora. The findings of the analysis of the two related genres shed light on the genre variations which were derived from genre-specific features. This  can be ascribed to the dynamic nature of research articles as a professional genre and theses as an educational genre. Additionally, the study provides inexperienced non-native writers with a deeper understanding of the rhetorical structure and metadiscourse devices realized in research articles and theses.