A Comparative Study on Rhetorical Moves of IJAL’s Abstracts Written by UPI’s Lecturers and by UPI-Other Indonesian Universities’ Lecturers

Abstract

A well-written abstract is considered as the reflection of a qualified journal article which can be read by academic readers. It also serves as a determining point whether the reader decides to continue reading the text. Some of the previous studies examined abstracts based on the background of the writers as an expert-novice and a native-non-native. Meanwhile, this study presents research in progress on rhetorical moves of accepted research article (RA) abstracts, influenced by the different forms of collaboration which may have different realizations of abstract rhetorical patterns and linguistic features, i.e., voice and tense. Six abstracts of Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics (IJAL) articles published in 2020 and 2021 were selected. The selected abstracts are compared based on Hyland's (2000) theory of rhetorical move analysis. The data are taken from those written by lecturers of Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia (UPI) and those by UPI's lecturers and other Indonesian universities' lecturers. The results of this study revealed differences in rhetorical moves and steps. On the other hand, the linguistics features in selected abstracts showed similarities in terms of tense and voice. Implications of the present research findings to English for academic writing courses and journal writing workshops will be discussed.

Authors’ Affiliation Influence Towards Rhetorical Moves and Linguistic Features of Rejected Raas

“…Those findings were partly in line with some related previous studies (e.g. Harisbaya et al, 2021;Kanafani et al, 2021;Kurniawan et al, 2019). In Harisbaya et al 's findings, Move 4 became one of the prior moves, yet the appearance still did not predominate the data.…”

“…A plethora of research in RAAs has applied rhetorical move analysis to identify not only the moves of abstract but also the steps of it. Moves exhibit the communicative purposes of abstract, while steps that are integrated into moves provide narrower strategies in organizing and explaining the concise ideas of the author of RAs (Harisbaya et al, 2021;Yoon & Casal, 2020). Furthermore, linguistic features also take a role in rhetorical move analysis to set the functional boundaries in helping the researchers classify the potential moves and steps of RAAs (Andika et al, 2018;Yoon & Casal, 2020) and even denoting authorial stance (Pho, 2008).…”

“…Rhetorical moves analyses have been extensively established in the area of research article abstract; however, scant attention has been paid to analyzing RAA based on authors' affiliation. Harisbaya et al (2021) and conduct similar research through their proceedings regarding the effect of authors' affiliation collaboration in constructing RAAs. Their findings are interesting, yet still require to be discussed further.…”

“…Using Hyland's (2000) rhetorical moves model which was also employed in some previous studies (e.g. Amnuai, 2019;Kurniawan et al, 2019;Harisbaya et al, 2021;Tamela, 2019;Wahyuni et al, 2021;Pratiwi & Kurniawan, 2021) as the basis of analysis, this research is expected to produce clear answers for the following questions: (1) How is the rhetorical organization of the rejected RA abstracts manifested across two groups of affiliation? (2) What linguistic features were dominantly exhibited in both groups?…”

Rhetorical Moves Analysis on Scopus-Indexed Research Article Abstracts by National and International Authors

“…Hence, confirming that the high proportion of past tenses in Move 3 of both data groups and Move 4 of international authors' abstracts is in accordance with the typical characteristics of the moves. Voice-wise, the extensive use of active voice dominating the voice's proportion across all the moves resonates with the findings of Kanafani et al (2021), Gani et al (2020), Andika et al (2018), Harisbaya et al (2021), andKuniawan andSabila (2021).…”