International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 5 (2), February 2014; 564-­‐573 Esfandiari, R ISSN (online): 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN (print): 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org REALIZATION OF RHETORICAL MOVES AND VERB TENSE
VARIATION IN TWO SUBDISCIPLINES OF COMPUTER
SCIENCES: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND
ARCHITECTURE
Rajab Esfandiari
Department of English Language, Faculty of Humanities, Imam Khomeini International
University, Qazvin, Iran
E-mail: [email protected]
ABSTRACT
A research article abstract is the first part a reader examines to decide to keep reading the
article, because it is a concise summary of the research article. The present study was aimed at
exploring the rhetorical moves and the verb tense of each move of abstracts in the fields of
Artificial Intelligence and Architecture: two influential subfields in Computer Sciences. Thirty
two abstracts from four journals published in 2013 were examined. Hyland’s (2000) fiverhetorical move model was chosen as the analytical framework for this purpose. The findings
indicated that there were four conventional moves and one optional move in abstracts in both
related disciplines. In terms of verb tense, present tense is the preferred tense in both
subdisciplines. The findings also showed no significant disciplinary variation. The implications
are discussed in light of the results of the study.
KEYWORDS: Research article abstracts, move analysis, verb tense, abstracts, subdisciplinary
variation, genres
INTRODUCTION
Academic writing is the area with which second language learners have many problems. These
problems are more pronounced when language learners come from content areas such as
Chemistry. One difficulty relates to the general writing conventions such as punctuation and
stylistic issues. Student writers often find it difficult to master the various punctuation marks and
stylistics variations (Hirvela, Nussbaum, & Pierson, 2012). A second problem concerns the
lexico-grammatical variations (Hyland, 2012). These lexixo-grammatical variations include the
presence of academic words, lexical bundles, special register very common in prospective field of
the study, and predominance of certain grammatical structures. A third difficulty has to do with
the macro structure of the different parts of a genre such as a research article (Swales, 1990,
2004). Students are often unaware of these generic structures which experienced members of the
communities of practice share. Despite the plethora of research in the examination of rhetorical
moves and verb tense variations in other disciplines, Artificial Intelligence and Architecture are
two subfields for which little research in rhetorical moves and verb tense variation has been
undertaken.
564
International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 5 (2), February 2014; 564-­‐573 Esfandiari, R ISSN (online): 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN (print): 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
Writing in academic contexts poses great challenge for writers, especially for novice student
writers. They are supposed to master the distinctive features of their disciplinary discourse,
although rhetorical conventions are often different from those in their mother tongue. An
effective way to help students cope with the challenges in academic writing could be to make
students aware of writing style and conventions through genre analysis. This has actually been a
major concern of the research in English for specific purposes (ESP) (Atai, 2013; Harding, 2006;
Paltridge, 2013).
It is a fact that the abstract is one of the most important sections of any research article. Hyland
(2000) states that “the abstract is generally the readers’ first encounter with a text, and is often the
point at which they decide whether to continue and give the accompanying article further
attention or to ignore it” (p. 63). In Pho’s (2008) words, “acquiring the skills of writing an
abstract is therefore important to novice writers to enter the discourse community of their
discipline” (p. 231). Abstracts have also been stated to “constitute the gateway that leads readers
to take up an article, journals to select contributions, or organizers of conferences to accept or
reject papers” (Lorés, 2004, p. 281). In other words, an abstract, according to Bhatia (1993), is “a
description or factual summary of the much longer report, and is meant to give the reader an
exact and concise knowledge of the full article” (p. 78).
Because of the importance of abstracts in the academic communities and their different formats
in research articles, several authors have proposed guidelines about how abstracts should be
written or structured, including Bhatia’s (1993) typical four-move model: (1) purpose, (2)
method, (3) results, and (4) conclusions; Santos’ (1996) five-move model: (1) Situating the
research, (2) Presenting the research, (3) Describing the methodology, (4) Summarizing the
results, and (5) Discussing the research; and Hyland’s (2000) five-move model: (1) introduction,
(2) purpose, (3) method, (4) product, and (5) conclusion. Not all published abstracts, however,
necessarily follow these conventions. In what follows, we sketch out some empirical studies done
in abstract writing.
The structure of research article abstracts and their variation across disciplines and cultures have
been studied in scientific disciplines such as medicine, biomedicine, engineering, physics,
biology, applied linguistics and so on. However, the studies of abstracts from two closely related
disciplines are still in progress. For example, Samraj (2005) studied abstracts in relation to
introduction from Conservation Biology and Wildlife Behavior research articles as a genre set
and provided a new way of looking at abstracts. Pho (2008) studied the macro-organization of
abstracts in applied linguistics and educational technology and found some differences in terms
of generic structure. Anderson and Maclean (1997) looked into the research abstracts written in
medicine. The findings of their statistical analysis revealed that there was considerable variation
in terms of moves used in the abstracts and that not all moves were present in the abstracts under
investigation. In like manner, Cross and Oppenheim (2006) investigated the abstracts in
Protozoology. The results of their investigation showed that the abstracts followed the tradition in
terms of the five major moves, but only two moves were obligatory and the rest were optional.
565
International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 5 (2), February 2014; 564-­‐573 Esfandiari, R ISSN (online): 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN (print): 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org Some researchers have analyzed linguistic realization of rhetorical moves in abstracts. SalagerMeyer (1992), for example, analyzed the abstracts written in medicine across various genres.
This researcher found some very interesting results. He found that simple past tense and simple
present tense are mainly used in medical abstracts for very different purposes. In another study,
Tseng (2011) examined 90 research article abstracts in three applied linguistics journals. He
found a four-move structure, and the dominant tense used was simple present tense. He attributed
the dominance of present tense to the nature subdisicplines in applied linguistics.
As the above review of literature shows, significant variations can be discerned regarding the
overall format of abstracts across disciplines. The literature also reveals that the tenses which
authors employ in the rhetorical moves of abstracts may vary considerably ranging from simple
present tense to simple past tense. This variation can be attributed to the different disciplines for
which the authors publish, the different philosophies underlying these disciplines, and the
constraints these disciplines exert on the authors. The above literature further shows that most of
the analyses have been applied to parent disciplines, and sub-disciplines, or related subdisciplines of the same discipline, are rarely addressed.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Given the paucity of research analysis in abstracts in sub-disciplines, we set out to analyse the
abstracts of two interrelated sub disciplines—artificial intelligence and architecture—in computer
sciences for which, to our mind, no research has been undertaken. We, therefore, posed the
following research questions to focus our study on:
1. What are the features of the move structure of abstracts in terms of move frequency in the
Artificial Intelligence and Architecture?
2. What is the preferred verb tense of each move in the abstracts of Artificial Intelligence and
Architecture?
METHODOLOGY
The creation of the corpus
A total of 32 research article abstracts were selected from four journals in the field of computer
sciences, two of which were related to Artificial Intelligence and the other two to Architecture.
Eight of the articles were selected from journal of Artificial Intelligence, and eight of the articles
from the journal of Artificial Intelligence in Engineering in the field of Artificial Intelligence.
Eight of the articles were selected from Parallel and Distributed Computing, and eight of the
articles from Microprocessors and Microsystems in the field of Architecture. All of the research
articles (RAs) were selected from internationally peer-reviewed acclaimed journals with high
impact factor. All 32 research articles in the four journals were published in 2013 by Elsevier.
We selected 2013 research articles because they were accessible and they were the most recent.
All research articles with the conventional format of Introduction-Method-Results-Discussion
(IMRD) were selected.
566
International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 5 (2), February 2014; 564-­‐573 Esfandiari, R ISSN (online): 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN (print): 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org The approach to the analysis of move structure
With the different existing models for abstract writing such as Bhatia’s (1993) typical four-move
model (traditional model), Santos’ (1996) five-move model, and Hyland’s (2000) five-move
model, the question of which model was an appropriate model to use in the present study was
difficult to decide. Ten research article abstracts from both disciplines were chosen for a pilot
study, five research article abstracts from each discipline, to test the three models. It was found
that some sentences were not included in any moves in Bhatia’s (1993) typical four-move model
as shown in following examples.
•
An abstract extracted from the field of Artificial Intelligence:
In a seminal paper, Lin and Reiter introduced a model-theoretic definition for the progression of a
basic action theory in the situation calculus, and proved that it implies the intended properties.
They also showed that this definition comes with a strong negative result, namely that for certain
cases first-order logic is not expressive enough to correctly characterize the progressed theory
and second-order axioms are necessary. However, they also considered an alternative simpler
definition according to which the progressed theory is always first-order definable. They
conjectured that this alternative definition is incorrect in the sense that the progressed theory is
too weak and may sometimes lose information. This conjecture and the status of the definability
of progression in first-order logic has remained open since. In this paper we present two
significant results about this alternative definition of progression.
•
An abstract extracted from the field of Architecture:
Classification using Ant Programming is a challenging data mining task which demands a great
deal of computational resources when handling data sets of high dimensionality. This paper
presents a new parallelization approach of an existing multi-objective Ant Programming model
for classification, using GPUs and the NVIDIA CUDA programming model.
As can be seen in the two extracts, they do not exactly match with the purpose-method-resultsconclusions moves in Bhatia’s (1993) model. As we mentioned earlier, most of the abstracts
contained five moves. We, therefore, had to choose between Santos’ (1996) model and Hyland’s
(2000) model. Santos’ (1996) model was based on 94 abstracts in the field of applied linguistics,
while Hyland’s (2000) model was based on 800 abstracts across 8 disciplines including
philosophy, sociology, applied linguistics, marketing, electrical engineering, mechanical
engineering, physics, and biology, with 100 abstracts in each discipline. Santos’ (1996) model
was limited to the field of applied linguistics, while Hyland’s (2000) model covered the
disciplines of sciences and social sciences. Hyland’s model is better suited to the purpose of the
present study to analyze research article abstracts as shown in Table1extracted from Hyland
(2000, p. 67).
567
International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 5 (2), February 2014; 564-­‐573 Esfandiari, R ISSN (online): 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN (print): 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org Table 1: Framework for abstract moves analysis function
Title
Description
Introduction
Establishes context of the paper and motivates the
research or discussion.
Purpose
Indicates purpose, thesis or hypothesis, outlines the
intention behind the paper.
Method
Provides
information
on
design, procedures,
assumptions, approach, data, etc.
Product
States main findings or results, the argument, or what
was accomplished.
Conclusion
Interprets or extends results beyond scope of paper,
draws inferences, points to applications or wider
implications.
To determine whether a move was optional or conventional, we counted the frequency of a
particular move. According to Kanoksilapatham (2005), the conventional move should occur
60%. If the frequency of a move fell below 60%, the move was considered as an optional move.
Analysis of the verb tense of moves
This study focused on three verb tenses of the moves, namely, the present tense (including the
present perfect), the past tense, and the future tense. The purpose of the analysis was to realize
the preferred verb tense used in each move of an abstract.
RESULT AND DISCUSSION
Move Frequency
To answer the first research question (What are the features of the move structure of abstracts in
terms of move frequency in the Artificial Intelligence and Architecture?), we present the
following pieces of information. Hyland’s (2000) model was applied to analyze the rhetorical
structure of research article abstracts. The results of the occurrences of moves are illustrated in
Tables 2 and 3.
Table 2: The occurrences of moves in the abstracts from the two journals in the field of AI
Journals
Move occurrences
Move
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence in
Engineering
Introduction
6
4
10 (62.5%)
Purpose
8
8
16 (100%)
Method
8
8
16 (100%)
Product
8
5
13 (81.25%)
Conclusion
2
2
4 (25%)
568
International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 5 (2), February 2014; 564-­‐573 Esfandiari, R ISSN (online): 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN (print): 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org Table 3: The occurrences of moves in the abstracts from the two journals in the field of Architecture
Move
Introduction
Purpose
Method
Product
Conclusion
Journals
Parallel and Distributed Microprocessors and
Computing
Microsystems
7
4
8
8
8
8
8
8
4
2
Move occurrences
11 (68.75%)
16 (100%)
16 (100%)
16 (100%)
6 (37.5%)
The analysis of move frequency could tell us which moves were conventional and which were
optional. Most of the abstracts in the corpus had three or four moves. Based on the move
frequency, Introduction move, Purpose move, Method move, and Product move were
conventional moves because the percentage of occurrence was greater than 60% (See Tables 2
and 3). In the present study, Conclusion move was classified as optional in both fields because
the percentage of occurrence was less than 60%. It is also interesting to mention that in Hyland’s
study (2000), this move is used in 21% of the abstracts and mostly in the discipline of biology
and marketing. He noted that conclusions explicitly emphasize the value of the paper, either that
of the discipline or that of the community and it can be concluded that the higher percentage of
this move in RAs may help to promote the value of RAs. Move frequencies of each filed can be
visually displayed in Figure 1. As can be seen, the low frequency of Conclusion move and high
frequency of other four moves in two related disciplines in Computer Sciences show that there is
not significant subdisciplinary variation between the fields of Architecture and Artificial
Intelligence in terms of move structure in abstracts.
Figure 1: Move frequencies in each Filed
Verb Tense of the Abstract Moves
The second research question in this study was what is the preferred verb tense of each move in
the abstracts of Artificial Intelligence and Architecture? To answer this question, we present the
following pieces of information. In Table 4 and Table 5, we present the number of frequencies
and percentages of verb tenses.
569
International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 5 (2), February 2014; 564-­‐573 Esfandiari, R ISSN (online): 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN (print): 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org Table 4: Verb tense frequency in each moves in the abstracts from the two journals in the field of AI
Journals
Artificial Intelligence
Verb tense
Introduction
Present
Past
Future
Purpose
Present
Past
Future
Method
Present
Past
Future
Product
Present
Past
Future
Conclusion
Present
Past
Future
Total number of occurrences
Artificial Intelligence
Engineering
in
6
0
0
4
0
0
10 (62.5%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
8
0
0
8
0
0
16 (100%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
8
0
0
8
0
0
16 (100%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
8
0
0
5
0
0
13 (81.25%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
2
0
0
0
0
2
2 (2.34%)
0 (0%)
2 (2.34%)
Table 5: Verb tense frequency in each moves in the abstracts from the two journals in the field of Architecture
Journals
Journal of Parallel
Distributed Computing
Verb tense
Introduction
Present
Past
Future
Purpose
Present
Past
Future
Method
Present
Past
Future
Product
Present
Past
Future
Conclusion
Present
Past
Future
Total number of occurrences
and
Journal of Microprocessors
and Microsystems
7
0
0
4
0
0
11(68.75%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
8
0
0
8
0
0
16 (100%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
8
0
0
8
0
0
16 (100%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
8
0
0
8
0
0
16 (100%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
4
0
0
2
0
0
6 (37.5%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
As can be seen above, in the field of Computer Sciences, the preference of using present tense to
the past and future tense was found in the four journals in two related disciplines (Architecture
and Artificial Intelligence). In addition, in the present study the future tense was just observed in
570
International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 5 (2), February 2014; 564-­‐573 Esfandiari, R ISSN (online): 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN (print): 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org Conclusion move in Architecture, but in low frequency and past tense was not found in both
fields.
Discussion
Discussion of the first research question
The results of this study revealed five moves are present in both Artificial Intelligence and
Architecture. This implies that, in both subfields, moves are present, but only four moves are
conventional and one is optional. One possible explanation concerning the optional Conclusion
move is that in computer Sciences the procedures the researchers use to arrive at results are
considered more important than mere presentation of implications. This could be a cogent reason
why Purpose move and Method move have exactly the same frequency and percentages in four
subfields. The findings further confirm the five-move model proposed by Hyland (2000). As the
results of this study show, Hyland’s model is more powerful to be applied to research article
abstracts in Artificial Intelligence and Architecture in so far as the subfields are concerned.
Discussion of the second research question
Simple present tense is the dominant verb tense in two subdicplines of Computer Sciences. The
findings are in line with Tseng (2011) who found that simple present tense was dominantly used
in applied linguistics. The findings of the study, however, are not in keeping with those of Swales
and Feak (2004) who found that researchers often use simple present tense in the opening and
concluding sentences of their abstracts, but there could be a lot of variability in other parts of the
abstract. One reason why so many variations are found in many disciplines could be attributed to
the different world views the researchers impose on their pieces of writing. One possible reason
for the dominance of presence of simple present tense in these two subdisciplines of Computer
Sciences is because the procedures or the findings might be regarded as true, hence the use of
simple present tense.
CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS
This study examined 32 research article abstracts from four journals in two related disciplines in
Computer Sciences, Artificial Intelligence and Architecture from two perspectives: the move
frequency and the verb tense of each move. The major findings are summarized below.
First, considering rhetorical structure of abstracts, Conclusion move is optional and Introduction,
Purpose, Method, and Product moves are conventional in both subdisciplines and we did not have
significant disciplinary variation in related journals of Architecture and Artificial Intelligence.
Second, given the verb tense of each move, present tense was the preferred verb tense. Moreover,
there were no variations in this regard between the abstracts written in both Architecture and
Artificial Intelligence.
Pedagogical implications
The findings of the present study have some pedagogical implications. The rhetorical structure
and some linguistic features of research article abstracts can be included in academic writing
courses for all students in these two subfields of Computer Sciences to prepare them to
571
International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 5 (2), February 2014; 564-­‐573 Esfandiari, R ISSN (online): 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN (print): 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org participate in their professional communities. In ESP courses, students really need to be aware of
generic structure and some important linguistic features of the research article abstracts in their
disciplines. Having such knowledge is important for them in order to help them to make progress
in their study and academic career. In order to provide useful instruction on abstract writing to
inexperienced writers, they should be equipped with how an abstract is constructed in different
academic situations. To reach this goal, such information should come from corpus-based
research findings and demonstrate the differences between disciplines and as we know this job is
the major interest in ESP.
Limitations of the study
This study is limited in some ways. The corpus we constructed was very small, comprising 32
research article abstracts from only four journals. The findings of this study, therefore, should be
treated with caution. We suggest that researchers in the future create larger corpora in these two
closely related subfields of Computer Sciences to ensure the same results will be obtained with
larger corpora. Another limitation was that the abstracts were selected from journals which were
published in 2013, which limit the transferability and generalisability of the findings. We,
therefore, recommend that researchers do not limit themselves to a very limited time period to
obtain more robust results. This requires selection of abstracts form journals published over a
longer time span.
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