Introduction
Genre analysis has been in the limelight for
more than two decades. The increasing
interest in this discipline is motivated by a
need to supply models of academic and
scientific texts for the students, so that they
can produce those texts appropriately.
Likewise, scholars and scientists need to
communicate their ideas and findings using
publications, and it requires them to have a
full grasp of the discourse community’s
conventions (Martin, 2003). English has
long been established as the language of
scientific communication (Flowerdew &
Dudley-Evans, 2002); it is a norm for
journals published in any other language to
require the authors to provide English
abstracts for their articles (Lores, 2004).
Unfortunately, lack of knowledge of text
structures and audience expectations has
caused non-native writers to be relatively
unsuccessful in the international community
(Connor, as cited in Martin, 2003).
Since Swales’s (1981) work RA
Introduction section, there have been
numerous studies on different sections of the
RA, such as Brett (1994) and Williams
(1999) on the Results; Hopkins and Dudley-Evans (1988), Holmes (1997) and Fallahi
and Erzi (2003) on the Discussion section.
The abstract is one of the most important
sections of the RA; it can determine the
acceptance or rejection of an article for
conferences, and its selection by readers.
Nevertheless, as Swales (1990) also
maintains, the abstract, as a genre, has
received insufficient attention from the
researchers.
A number of genre analysis studies have
been conducted on RA abstracts in English
(Anderson & Maclean, 1997; Cross &
Oppenheim, 2006; Duncan, 2008; Lores,
2004; Salager-Meyer, 1991; Stotesbury,
2003) and other languages such as German
(Busch-Lauer, 1995) and Spanish (Martin,
2003); yet it seems that abstracts in the
Persian language have been left unexplored.
Moreover, one of the fields highly
disregarded by genre scholars is literature.
In fact, only two studies (Afshari, 2005;
Stotesbury, 2003) relating to literature were
known to the researchers.
Lores (2004) hypothesized that, despite the
general belief that all abstracts follow the
IMRD structure, there are two types of
abstracts which she named "informative"
and "indicative", and suggested that while
the former conformed to IMRD, the latter
corresponded with CARS model. However,
these models have never been applied to
literature abstracts to see whether they can
thoroughly represent their generic structure.
The only report is the study conducted by
Stotesbury (2003) which indicated a
“different rhetorical structure and style” (p.
330) in literature abstracts, but the degree of
difference was not the focus of the study.
In addition, Martin (2003) links the
deviations he found in Spanish abstracts
from the international standards to “the
relationship between the writer and the
discourse community s/he addresses, which
is different both in terms of numbers and
expectations” (p. 42). Similarly, Tahririan
and Jalilifar (2004) speculate that
“sociocultural factors condition the way
academic writers write abstracts” (p. 140).
In the case of Persian writers writing in
English, there are studies (Afshari, 2005;
Tahririan & Jalilifar, 2004) revealing some
deviations from the international standards,
but since no study has investigated the
norms and conventions of Persian writing,
these deviations can never be confidently
linked to cultural differences.
The present study aimed at filling the
abovementioned gaps in the literature by
comparing the generic standards of Persian
and international communities, and by
discovering to which community the
Persian-speaking writers writing in English
belong. Besides, the predictive value of
CARS and IMRD models was examined to
evaluate their appropriateness for literature
abstracts.
Background
Genre was first introduced in the area of
ESP in the 1980s. Various influences on
Genre Analysis have been listed by scholars,
namely the examination of children’s
writings in Australia, composition studies
and new rhetoric in North America, and also
Miller’s (as cited in Paltridge, 2007, p. 931)
notion of “genre as social action”.
Definition of genre
Defining genre is a “fuzzy” task (Swales,
1990). Traditionally, the word indicated
various kinds of literary and artistic works;
however, its use was extended by linguists
to cover “classes of language use and
communication in all areas of life” (Allison,
1999, p. 144).
For Swales (1990, p. 58), a genre
“comprises a class of communicative events,
the members of which share some set of
communicative purposes.” For him,
particular genres share similarities in their
structure, style, content, intended audience,
and rhetorical movement.
Elements in genre
Genres, as perceived in linguistic
approaches, are characterized in terms of
communicative functions they serve, and
can be analyzed into “generic structures”
(Flowerdew & Dudley-Evans, 2002) or
obligatory and optional elements which
comprise these functions. Swales (1990)
classified these elements as follows:
1. Moves
Moves represent the writer’s social purpose
and include steps. Move is defined by
Nwogu (1997) as “a text segment made up
of a bundle of linguistic features . . . which
give the segment a uniform orientation and
signal the content of discourse in it” (p.
122).
2. Steps
Steps are optional textual elements, which
may or may not exist in any specific text.
Pedagogic potentials of genre analysis
Genre Analysis is known for its various
pedagogic implications. Kay and Dudley-Evans (1998) asserted that genre is a “very
powerful pedagogic tool” because it defines
the kinds of discourse the students need to
be able to produce, and also—considering
its social context and purpose—it can
explain “why a discourse is the way it is” (p.
310).
Poole (2002), too, considered genre analysis
to be the “best-realized link between
discourse analysis and contemporary L2
pedagogy” (p. 76) because it aids writing
instructors via yielding analyses of different
academic texts, and also helps them provide
appropriate discourse awareness for their
students.
Cross-cultural and cross-linguistic studies
involving Persian
The number of cross-cultural genre studies
of different sections of RA written by
Persian native speakers is relatively small
(Atai & Falah, 2005; Atai & Sadr, 2006;
Bandary, 1999; Keshavarz, Ataei, &
Barzegar, 2007), and the researchers have
encountered only one instance of such
studies focusing on abstracts: Tahririan and
Jalilifar (2004) conducted a study on
Applied Linguistics abstracts written by
native speakers of Persian, English and other
languages, and speculated that the
differences might be linked to first language
interference and sociocultural factors.
Thus far, the researchers have come across
only one cross-linguistic genre study
involving Persian RAs: Falahi Moghimi and
Mobasher (2007) studied the Introduction
section of 60 English and 60 Persian
Mechanical Engineering RAs, and found a
significant difference between the
frequencies of steps of these two categories.
No study on Persian abstracts has been
conducted.
This study
To fill the abovementioned gaps in the
literature, assess the predictive power of the
existing models, and investigate the cross-linguistic, cross-cultural similarities and
differences of RA abstracts in the field of
literature, two questions were addressed in
the present study:
1) Is there any association between the
frequency of moves used in the
corpus, i.e. abstract sections of
Persian research articles written by
Persian native speakers (PPs),
English articles written by Persian
native speakers (EPs), and English
articles written by English native
speakers (EEs) in the field of
literature, and the models for abstract
(IMRD and CARS)?
2) Is the frequency of the moves
incorporated into the abstracts of EPs
the same as those of the PPs or those
of the EEs?
Corpus
A total of 90 abstracts were employed in this
study. The corpus in Persian consisted of 30
literature abstracts written by Persian native
speakers and published in Iranian academic
journals. Ten journals were randomly
selected, and three articles were chosen from
each.
The English corpus was composed of two
groups. The first group included 30
literature abstracts, written by Persian native
speakers, and published in Iranian journals.
Four journals were chosen; nine articles
were picked out from the first journal;
another nine from the second; eight from the
third, and four from the fourth.
The second group consisted of 30 abstracts
in the discipline of literature written by
English native speakers and published in
international ISI journals. Ten journals were
decided upon, and three articles were
extracted from each.
All the journals were available online, and
the articles were chosen from the most
recent issues of the journals. The articles
were all checked in terms of the nationality
of their authors and those written by Persian
and English native speakers were selected.
Table 1 below presents a summary of the
corpus characteristics.
Procedure
The analysis of the data was carried out in
two main stages. The IMRD model for
informative abstracts and Swales’s (2004)
CARS model for Introduction section which
applies to indicative abstracts as mentioned
by Lores (2004) were used as the basis of
analysis.
In the first stage, the abstracts were scanned
for the presence of Introduction, Method,
Results, and Discussion moves, following
Lores’s definition of each (Table 2).
In the second stage, the abstracts were
checked against Swales’s (2004) CARS
model (Table 3) to test its predictive value
for literature abstracts.
It is to be noted that each of the I, M, R and
D sections corresponds to the following
models, respectively: Swales’s (2004)
CARS model for Introduction, Lim’s (2006)
for Method, Brett’s (1994) for Results, and
Hopkins and Dudley-Evans’s (1988) model
for Discussion. These models were later
utilized in a step analysis to find out if any
steps existed in the literature abstracts not
predicted by the models.
Sample analysis
An instance of the move analysis of an
English abstract written by an English native
speaker will be presented below.
In the first stage, the abstract was inspected
to find out whether it manifested the four
moves of I, M, R, and D and was, thus, an
“informative" abstract. It was found that all
four moves existed in it:
1 (Introduction)
This essay reassesses James Fenimore
Cooper's literary relationship to Walter
Scott…
2 (Method)
… by examining the depiction of Scots in
The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and The
Prairie (1827).
(Results)
Read as companion texts, these novels
represent the imperial migrations of Scots as
a cause of Native Americans' unfortunate,
but for Cooper seemingly inevitable,
eradication. They also trace the
development of an American identity that
incorporates feudal chivalry and savage
fortitude and that is formed through cultural
appropriation rather than racial mixing. The
Last of the Mohicans' Scottish protagonist,
Duncan Heyward, learns to survive in the
northeastern wilderness by adopting the
Mohicans' savage self-control as a
complement to his own feudal chivalry; in
turn, The Prairie's Paul Hover equips
himself for the challenges of westward
expansion by adopting both the remnants of
this chivalry and the exilic adaptability and
colonial striving that Cooper accords to
Scots
(Discussion)
I suggest that the cultural appropriation
through which Heyward and Hover achieve
an American identity that incorporates
Scottish chivalry and savage self-command
offers a model for the literary relationship
between Cooper's and Scott's historical
romances. The Leather stocking Tales
borrow selectively from the Waverely
Novels, rejecting their valorization of feudal
chivalry while incorporating their
representation of cultural appropriation as
a mechanism of teleological social
development.
The same abstract was then matched with
CARS to see if it was similar to an
“indicative” abstract. It showed one move:
I3 (Presenting Present Research).
Results
The first step to answer the questions was to
analyze the abstracts and note all
occurrences of moves based on IMRD and
CARS models.
After the first stage of analysis and in order
to achieve a better understanding of the
nature of literature abstracts, and also to
assess the appropriateness of the two models,
the researchers matched the corpus with the
models once more to identify the steps as
well. During this stage, a number of new
steps were discovered which will be
discussed in detail.
Question No. 1 The first question was an
attempt to analyze the abstracts using two
models: IMRD and CARS.
Analysis based on IMRD moves
To answer the first part of question number
1, i.e. the existence of any association
between the frequency of moves used by the
three groups based on IMRD, the abstracts
were subjected to a move analysis to check
the existence of the moves I, M, R and D.
The results are summarized in Table 4
below. (The percentages have been rounded
up and Critical χ2 for df of 2 is 5.99.)
As the table suggests, the three groups’ use
of the I and R sections is close to the
prediction made by the model, i.e. the three
groups follow the IMRD model in their
incorporation of Introduction and Results.
Nevertheless, all groups make use of the M
and D sections significantly less than the
model predicts.
Concerning the sequence of moves, only
13% of the abstracts manifested the I-M-R-D sequence; the most frequent sequences
were I (12 PPs) and I-R (7 EPs and 5 EEs).
Analysis based on CARS moves
To answer the second part of question
number 1, i.e. the existence of any
association between the frequency of moves
used in the three groups based on CARS, the
abstracts were scanned for the existence of
the CARS moves. The results have been
summarized in Table 5 below.
As the table shows, the three groups
incorporate I1 and I3 into their abstracts as
frequently as the model predicts, but the use
of I2 has been far less than the prediction of
the model.
In respect to sequences, 33% of the abstracts
showed I1-I2-I3 sequence (2 PPs, 2 EPs, and
6 EEs); the most frequent move sequence
was I1-I3 (25 PPs, 18 EPs, and 11 EEs).
Step analysis
In order to further elucidate the nature of
literature abstracts and also the predictive
power of the models, the corpus was
subjected to a deeper analysis which
identified the constituent steps as well.
Several points were revealed after this stage
of analysis.
1. Four new steps, not predicted by the
models, were discovered in the corpus. The
researchers named them “Solution”,
“Counter-claiming”, “Significance” and
“Implications”, and they existed in two (EP
and EE), three (EP and EE), two (PP and
EP) and five (PP and EP) abstracts
respectively. (It is worth noting that the step
“Counter-claiming” had previously been
considered in Swales’s 1990 version of
CARS, yet removed from the 2004 version
concerned in this study.) Examples of these
new steps are included in Appendix A.
2. There was a shortcoming in Swales’s
(2004) CARS model regarding the first two
steps, i.e. I1s1 “Claiming Centrality” and
I1s2 “Making Topic Generalizations”.
Swales (1990) defines the function of the
former as follows: “centrality claims are
appeals to the discourse community
whereby members are asked to accept that
the research about to be reported is part of a
lively, significant or well-established
research area” (p. 144). Regarding the latter,
he writes: “Step 2. . . represents a more
neutral kind of general statement than Step
1” (p. 146).
The difference between these two steps was
sometimes clear, as in the following
example chosen from the corpus:
(I1s1) Scholars have long been fascinated
with the performance of Richard II on the
eve of the Essex “rising”—an episode where
the interface between drama and politics is
particularly broad and responsive. . . .
(I1s2) The incident is intriguing because we
only know about it from the chance survival
of three newsletters reporting that, in early
August 1628, a performance of
Shakespeare’s play Henry VIII was
“bespoken of purpose” at the Globe by the
duke of Buckingham.
Nonetheless, in eight cases this dichotomy
did not seem to be efficient in describing the
steps. For instance, in the next case taken
from the corpus, the two opening steps
cannot be named I1s1 and I1s2.
Step1: In the text-based disciplines,
psychoanalysis and Marxism have had a
major influence on how we read,
Step2: and this has been expressed most
consistently in the practice of symptomatic
reading, a mode of interpretation that
assumes that a text’s truest meaning lies in
what it does not say, describes textual
surfaces as superfluous, and seeks to
unmask hidden meanings. For symptomatic
readers, texts possess meanings that are
veiled, latent, all but absent if it were not for
their irrepressible and recurring symptoms.
Here, the difference is not related to the
persuasive or neutral tone of the writer, but
is more of a “general” versus “specific”
background information, which is not
captured by Swales’s (2004) I1s1-I1s2
dichotomy. It is worth mentioning that this
difference had been noted in Dudley-Evans’s 1989 Introduction model (as cited in
Bandary, 1999, p. 55) via these three moves:
“Introducing the field”, “Introducing the
general topic (within the field)” and
“Introducing the particular topic (within the
general topic)”.
3. There were six cases (all within the PP
group) where one step was confined within
the boundaries of another step. In other
words, one step subsumed another step. This
phenomenon was exclusive to the
Introduction section where the I3s1 step
contained either an I2s2 or an I3s4 step
when matched with CARS model, or their
corresponding Method steps when matched
with IMRD. Nevertheless, these cases were
all counted as I3s1 steps while doing the
statistical analyses.
Question No. 2
The second question explores the
similarities between the groups. The purpose
was to see whether the patterns utilized in
abstracts written in English by Persian
writers were similar to those in abstracts
written in Persian by Persian writers, or to
the patterns employed in abstracts written in
English by English writers. Question
number 1 had delved into the comparison of
the abstracts with the model; this time,
however, the groups were compared with
one another. Thus, the frequencies were
calculated from the data, not based on the
models.
Analysis based on IMRD
The frequency of occurrence of IMRD
moves in the three groups were counted and
compared, and the next table summarizes
the results.
With regard to Table 6 above, it can be
concluded that there is no difference among
the groups in the incorporation of the IMRD
moves into their abstracts. All groups
employed I almost all the time but D to a
low degree, but there are differences in the
extent to which each group employs R and
D and M.
Analysis based on CARS
Table 7 below presents the results for the
frequency of occurrence of CARS moves.
As can be seen, the frequency of occurrence
of the I1 and I3 moves is equally high across
the three groups. Respecting move I2, the
EP group is different from PPs and EEs in
that it uses I2 significantly more than the
other groups. Therefore, one can conclude
that the three groups are similar to one
another except for I2 move, where EPs are
significantly different from the other two
groups.
Discussion
This study had three major aims:
1) evaluating Lores’s (2004) claim that
different types of abstracts
correspond with different models;
2) probing into the generic structures of
literature RA abstracts; and
3) checking if Persian scholars are
under the influence of Persian
culture and/or community
expectations regarding RA genres
when they write in English.
In so doing, a number of questions were
raised. To answer these questions a corpus
of 90 literature RA abstracts written in
English and Persian by English and Persian
native speakers were subjected to move
analysis.
The first question to deal with in the present
study was whether there is any association
between the frequency of moves in the
abstracts and the IMRD and CARS models.
The results for the match with the IMRD
model illustrated that the abstracts follow
the model only in their Introduction and
Results sections. Only 13% of the abstracts
had the I-M-R-D pattern.
The results for the match against the CARS
model revealed that the corpus follows the
model in the use of I1 (Establishing
Research Territory) and I3 (Presenting
Present Research) moves, but does not
include I2 (Establishing a Niche). Also, 33%
of the abstracts had the I1-I2-I3 move
sequence.
Thus, it can be concluded from the results
that none of the models is able to describe
the corpus reliably. However, CARS seems
to be a better model for this field than IMRD
since (a) two out of its three moves are
incorporated into the abstracts, and (b) it
predicts the move sequence of abstracts
more accurately than IMRD does.
In regard to the first aim, one may thus be
able to claim that in line with Lores’s (2004)
idea, some abstracts (here, literature
abstracts) tend to follow CARS model and
not the IMRD model and are, in her words,
of the “indicative” type, not “informative.”
Still, even CARS is not a strong predictor
for these abstracts.
As for the second aim, i.e., comprehending
the nature of literature RA abstracts, one can
argue that the writers tend to focus on
Introduction and Results, yet neglect
Method and, to a greater extent, Discussion.
Also, they do not generally mention the
niche in the previous works which led them
to carry out the study.
The second question of this study dealt with
the similarities between the groups. The
focus here is on the English abstracts written
by Persian native speakers (EPs), and to find
out which group they are more similar to,
the EE or the PP group.
Concerning the IMRD model, the three
groups were similar to one another.
Respecting CARS model, on the other hand,
a discrepancy was observed: the EP group
used I2 move significantly more than both
EEs and PPs, and was – surprisingly –
different from the other two. In other words,
literature abstracts written by Persian native
speakers are not entirely under the influence
of either Persian or English communities,
but define a standard of their own.
The third aim of the study is thus gained: the
argument advanced by Martin (2003) and
Tahririan and Jalilifar (2004) about the
influence of sociocultural factors on the way
academicians write abstracts is corroborated;
however, this influence is not necessarily
exhibited in terms of similarity to any other
community rather than their own. In other
words, one should be cautious in
interpreting the abovementioned hypothesis
as predictor of similarities between
communities sharing the same native
language.
Theoretical implications
The present study aimed at, among others,
evaluating Lores’s (2004) claim that
different types of abstracts conformed to
different models. She made a distinction
between “informative” and “indicative”
abstracts, and held that the former
corresponded with IMRD while the latter
with CARS model. The findings of this
study corroborate this claim: literature
abstracts are mostly of the indicative type
and generally follow CARS model. Still, the
abstracts exhibited marked deviations from
CARS and it cannot, therefore, be
considered as a reliable predictor of these
abstracts.
Another aim of this study was to clarify the
nature of literature RA abstracts. Based on
the results, it is evident that literature
scholars fail to mention the reason why they
are conducting the study, and often avoid
presenting and discussing the results.
Furthermore, a number of deficiencies in the
models were described by this study, and
four new steps were identified.
This study also evaluated the hypothesis put
forward by, among others, Martin (2003)
and Tahririan and Jalilifar (2004) that the
way academicians write is under the
influence of sociocultural factors, by
demonstrating how the abstracts by Persian-speaking literature scholars writing in
English differ from those by English-speaking writers. Nonetheless, one cannot
confidently link this deviation to native
language differences, since the same
discrepancy was shown between the two
groups of Persian-speaking scholars too. The
influencing factor is not the native language
but rather the norms of the community for
which the scholars write.
Pedagogical implications
Besides theoretical implications, this study
has a number of implications for teaching
English as a foreign language.
It is generally believed (Martin, 2003) that,
in order to be accepted within the scientific
communities, scholars must be familiar with
international generic conventions of their
field. Thus, it may be necessary for syllabus
designers to develop ESP courses on generic
structures in university programs to make
sure Persian native speakers are familiar
with generic norms of writing.
The results of this study may also serve as a
guide for literature scholars with other
native languages who wish to write in
English, by delineating the generic structure
of literature RA abstracts published in
international journals.
This research study, besides answering some
questions, raises some others which can be
dealt with in other studies:
1) The researcher focused on RA
abstracts written on the subject of
literature. A similar procedure may
be replicated with abstracts written
by English and Persian native
speakers on other similarly
disregarded subjects, in order to
discover the generic conventions of
those disciplines.
2) The present study focused on RA
abstracts. It is possible that thesis
abstracts behave in different ways;
48 Genre analysis of literature research article abstracts
therefore, it is necessary to inspect
them as well.
3) A similar research study can be
carried out using models other than
those utilized in this study, in order
to find a better model for describing
literature RA abstracts.
4) This study was confined to 90 RA
abstracts. A similar study with a
larger corpus may lead to more
reliable results.
5) It is also rewarding to examine the
lexico-grammatical features of
Persian and English RA abstracts to
more clearly perceive the difference
between Persian and international
community norms.
