A pragmatic approach to the macro-structure and metadiscoursal features of research article introductions in the field of Agricultural Sciences

Seminars and interactive lectures as a community of knowledge co-construction: The use of modifiers

“…They have attracted increasing research attention in the past four decades, especially from researchers who are interested in their occurrence in casual conversation and scholarly writing and who contrastively analyse the functions of PFMs associated with cultural and disciplinary contexts (e.g., Del Saz Rubio, 2011;Hu & Cao, 2011;Mur-Dueñas, 2011). These analyses attest to the contextually sensitive and multifunctional attributes of modifiers.…”

Digital Business Discourse

“…Another approach to the moves of academic papers was suggested by Dudley-Evans (1994), who identified information move, statement of result, finding, expected outcome, reference to previous research, explanation, claim, limitation and recommendation. Further studies have built on these classifications of moves, adding other elements depending on the medium of communication, but still mainly with reference to academic English and grant proposals (Biber et al, 2007; Connor, 2000;Del Saz Rubio, 2011;de Vries & van der Meij, 2003;Henry & Roseberry, 2001;Kanoksilapatham, 2005;Lim, 2012;Peacock, 2002;Ren & Li, 2011;Sun, 2004;Upton & Connor, 2001). The above authors have put forward different models or made further proposals for moves and steps, focusing on, for example, research papers and other specific fields of communication.…”

Purpose statements in experimental doctoral dissertations submitted to U.S. universities: An inquiry into doctoral students' communicative resources in language education

“…Despite these numerous studies on research introductions in recent years, relatively little attention has been devoted to the language resources needed to present purpose statements. For example, although Hirano (2009), Del Saz Rubio (2011 and Soler-Monreal et al (2011) have studied the research introductions in English for Specific Purposes, Agricultural Sciences and Computing respectively, they have largely directed their attention to the sequences of the three introductory moves mentioned above, thus paying less attention to the specific lexico-grammatical structures needed to accomplish these moves. Studying and understanding rhetorical moves, however, requires analysts' knowledge of both content and its associated "linguistic exponents" (Kanoksilapatham, 2005, p. 272).…”

“…The need to comprehend the rhetorical functions and linguistic realisations of purpose statements can be more clearly justified for two reasons. First, past studies that reported some findings on research purposes (e.g., Cortes, 2013;Del Saz Rubio, 2011;Hirano, 2009;Ozturk, 2007;Samraj, 2002Samraj, , 2005Sheldon, 2011) were based on analyses of research article introductions rather than the dissertation/thesis introductions. For instance, purpose statements have been found in 78.33%, 81.67% and 83.05% of research article introductions in Civil Enginerring, Software Engineering and Biomedical Engineering respectively (Kanoksilapatham, 2015); however frequencies of such statements may differ in other disciplines, particularly when another genre, such as doctoral dissertation introductions are involved.…”