A Genre Analysis of Academic Business Research Articles

Yu-Ling You ； C. A. Lin

《Taiwan International ESP Journal》 Volume 7 Issue 1 (2015/06) Pp. 1-37

https://doi.org/10.6706/TIESPJ.2015.7.1.1

Parallel abstracts

The aim of the current study was to investigate and compare the move structures and metadiscourse use in the Introductions of business research articles (RAs) written by both native- English-speaking (NS) and non-native-English-speaking (NNS) authors. Corpora were compiled from 60 business research articles, 30 written by NS authors and 30 by NNS authors, selected from 15 journals. The results of the move analysis revealed the Introductions of the business RAs written by NS and NNS authors were similar in the use of moves and steps. About half of the Introductions followed the strict move pattern M1＞M2＞M3 (Swales, 1990, 2004), and almost 90% of them included the three moves. As for the use of metadiscourse features, RA authors used slightly more interactive resources than interactional ones. Moreover, the comparison showed that NNS authors adopted more transitions and evidentials whereas NS authors used self-mentions more frequently. The findings indicate that NNS authors tended to emphasize the importance of coherence of text and of relating their current research to preceding studies, while their NS counterparts relied more on their own personal opinions than on other authorities.

Parallel keywords

Move analysis ； Metadiscourse ； EAP ； English Academic writing ； Genre analysis ； Contrastive analysis

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