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This study seeks to explore potential problems of English Language Teaching (ELT) academics in Thailand in getting their research published in international journals. Using content analysis, the study analyzes and compares 100 research articles published by ELT academics in Thailand with 100 research articles published in international journals. To analyze the articles, 25 specific quality categories, manifesting five generic aspects of quality are used. The main findings from the chi-square analysis comparing the two groups of the research articles reveal that five out of six quality categories associated with the literature review and two out of four with the discussion were shown to be significantly different with large effect sizes. The ratings in these seven categories suggest that the articles published by the academics in Thailand are of lower quality. The findings also show that these seven categories fall into three of the five generic quality aspects, namely, justification, awareness, and coherence. Possible explanations for the comparatively low quality of the Thai research articles include conflicts between national research policies and academics' motivations for conducting research and national cultural values, issues that may also apply to academics in other peripheral countries. (Contains 5 tables.)

"Establishing a niche" often constitutes a crucial rhetorical move in research proposals and journal papers in various academic disciplines. Research proposals and reports submitted by novice writers may at times be rejected on grounds of their inability to demonstrate a need to carry out research in a suggested area. This genre-based investigation looked into how experienced writers use rhetorical steps and linguistic choices to establish research niches in the introductory sections of high impact management research papers. Apart from revealing how "indicating a gap" and "adding to what is known" are strategically deployed by writers using a wide spectrum of persuasive communicative resources and linguistic mechanisms aimed at downplaying the significance of past research and foregrounding the "newness" of their studies, this paper discusses ways of minimizing the difficulty involved in drawing a distinct line of demarcation between these different and yet inter-related rhetorical steps under specific circumstances. I have also demonstrated the extent to which my findings have pertinent theoretical and practical implications concerning the need to distinguish and present research niches using the contextual information derived from research-based discourse. (Contains 5 figures and 8 tables.)

In contrast to the prescribed anonymity of the research article, the bio which accompanies it is perhaps the most explicit assertion of self-representation in scholarly life. Here is a rhetorical space where, in 50-100 words, authors are able to craft a narrative of expertise for themselves. It is a key opening for academics, both novice and experienced, to manage a public image through the careful recounting of achievement. Yet despite the current interest in identity, the bio has largely escaped attention. In this paper we address this neglect through analysis of 600 bios across three disciplines, exploring the importance of discipline, status and gender in mediating the ways writers claim an identity. Our argument is that, despite its brevity, the bio is an important means of representing an academic self through the recognition of collective values and membership. (Contains 6 tables.)

Outwardly the rhetorical organisation of sections of research reports in different disciplines can appear similar. Close examination, however, may reveal subtle differences. Numerous studies have drawn on the genre-based approach developed by Swales (1990, 2004) to investigate the schematic structure of sections of articles in a range of disciplines. Dentistry does not appear to have attracted this kind of research interest. The present study examined discussion sections of articles in Dentistry with reference to a schematic framework of discussion sections in Applied Linguistics. Steps in "commenting on results" moves were closely examined to understand how arguments about the meaning and significance of results in the Dentistry discussions were constructed. Findings showed the discussion sections could largely be accounted for in terms of moves and steps in the framework (thus indicating a broadly similar rhetorical organisation) and they revealed two patterns of argumentation in commenting moves, one not reported in previous genre-based research. Findings from the study are discussed in relation to disciplinary variation. The study provides a genre-based description of discussion sections of articles in Dentistry and suggests that analysis of steps, sub steps and sequences within moves can be a useful focus for genre-based investigation of disciplinary norms. (Contains 2 figures and 2 tables.)

As English is the leading medium of communication in academia, publication in international journals presents a goal and a challenge for some non-Anglophone researchers. Research articles (RAs) written in English and Spanish have been examined in order to discover whether the textual organization in each language is similar or different. However, intercultural studies of texts produced by L2 writers in English are few in number--in particular studies focussing on the Introduction section which is known to be troublesome for novice writers. In this paper, I examine RAs in English and Spanish as well as RAs written in English by Spanish-background speakers in the fields of applied linguistics, using Swales' (2004) schema to focus on the Introduction genre moves and steps. The results indicate that while the English L1 texts display a close affinity to the CARS (2004) schema, the Spanish L1 texts display some culture specific writing style. On the other hand, English L2 texts produced by Spanish writers appear to be developing CARS-like control of the Introduction section, thus accommodating the needs of a broader audience. I hope my findings will assist Spanish scholars to achieve greater visibility worldwide by giving closer attention to English rhetorical conventions. (Contains 5 tables.)

This study investigates the rhetorical organisation of English and Chinese research article introductions in the field of educational psychology using (Swales, 1990) and (Swales, 2004) framework of move analysis. A corpus of 40 research articles (20 Chinese and 20 English) was selected. The English research articles, written by first-language English speakers, were selected from "The Journal of Educational Psychology" while the Chinese research articles, written by first-language Chinese speakers, were selected from [image omitted] ("Psychological Development and Education"). The findings reveal that English and Chinese research article introductions generally employ the three moves (i.e., Move 1, Move 2 and Move 3) as outlined by (Swales, 1990) and (Swales, 2004). Swales's Create a Research Space (CARS) model however, could not account for certain rhetorical strategies found in the two sets of introductions. English and Chinese research article introductions differ in the extent to which the moves and steps are used in the introductions. That is, generally speaking, the rhetorical moves and steps were employed in fewer Chinese introductions compared to the English. It is proposed that an analytic-synthetic approach can be used to teach academic writing to Chinese ESL students, encouraging them to engage in genre-analysis tasks before doing their own writing. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

A key concern for writers is the creation of cohesion in a text, and writers are told by style manuals to avoid the use of demonstratives ("this," "that," "these," "those") as pronouns in order to maintain cohesion. However, previous corpus-based investigations have already revealed that authors of academic texts use demonstratives as both determiners and pronouns. Using a corpus of academic research articles in Education and Sociology, I investigate the extended linguistic environments in which the demonstratives "this" and "these" are used with the goal of understanding how expert writers employ demonstratives as pronouns and determiners to create cohesion. The results of the study indicate that pronominal uses of "this/these" most overwhelmingly refer to antecedents that are complete clauses (but not extended discourse that spans sentence boundaries). When the demonstratives are followed by a noun, shell nouns and abstract nouns are used most of the time. Shell nouns, in contrast to other abstract nouns, most often refer to antecedents that are complete clauses or that are "extended," meaning that the antecedent spans sentence boundaries. The implications of these results for teaching academic writing are discussed.

A cross-cultural approach is taken to analyse Linguistics research articles in English and Italian in terms of 1) the use of exclusive first-person subject pronouns in English and first-person inflected verbs in Italian, and 2) the passive voice in both languages and "si" constructions in Italian. The aim is to determine whether personal and impersonal authorial references as realised by these features are susceptible to variation across academic writing cultures. The results indicate differences in the frequency of use of personal and impersonal authorial references across discourse functions. This variation seems to be due to the adoption of differing interpersonal strategies, subjectivity or objectivity, within the two academic discourse communities, and the dissimilar incidence of particular discourse functions and sub-functions, which ultimately influence the rate of occurrence of personal and impersonal authorial references. (Contains 8 tables.)

This paper focuses on the interpersonal potential of the conditional clause as a rhetorical device for establishing a dialogue between the author and the reader of an academic text in search for shared understanding and consensus. It presents a corpus-based analysis of functions conditional clauses play in linguistics research articles in an attempt to identify those that contribute to shaping interpersonal relations in discourse rather than to specification of the subject matter, and to assess their relative frequency. The results indicate that although their predominant function in the material studied is content-oriented, there are various types of "if"-clauses whose role is essentially interpersonal: to guide the reader's interpretation while allowing for a certain degree of independence in reaching the conclusions, to engage the reader by leaving some questions open for further discussion, to negotiate terms and concepts, to ward off possible criticism, to signal problem areas, to acknowledge other points of view or potential threats to the cogency of argumentation, and to involve the readers by directly soliciting their approval. (Contains 1 figure.)

This paper deals with interpersonality in research article abstracts analysed in terms of interactional metadiscourse. The evolution in the distribution of three prominent interactional markers comprised in Hyland's (2005a) model, viz. hedges, boosters and attitude markers, is investigated in three decades of abstract writing in the field of applied linguistics in the broad sense. On the basis of a quantitative corpus survey of abstracts in "Journal of Pragmatics," two major points are made. One is that the distribution of hedges, boosters and attitude markers in abstracts, when compared with their distribution in research articles, supports the idea that abstracts are not just pale reflections of the full-length articles, but rather have a specific make-up, which can plausibly be linked to their function. The second point is that the use of interactional metadiscourse in abstracts has undergone interesting changes in the course of the past 30 years. On the whole, the degree of interpersonality realised by hedges, boosters and attitude markers diminishes over time, though notable differences exist with regard to the subcategories in the interactional domain. In the discussion section, we try to arrive at an explanation for the changes that have occurred, taking genre, discourse community, research practice and rhetoric strategy into account. (Contains 5 figures and 1 table.)

The view of academic discourse as a rhetorical activity involving interactions between writers and readers is now central to most perspectives on EAP, but these interactions are conducted differently in different disciplinary and generic contexts. In this paper I use the term "proximity" to refer to a writer's control of those rhetorical features which display both authority as an expert and a personal position towards issues in an unfolding text. Examining a corpus of texts in two very different genres, research papers and popular science articles, I attempt to highlight some of the ways writers manage their display of expertise and interactions with readers through rhetorical choices which textually construct both the writer and the reader as people with similar understandings and goals. (Contains 1 figure.)

This study investigates the ways writers comment on the results of their research. Making claims in the form of Commenting on Results is a key move in discussion of results sections. Using data drawn from published journal articles and master dissertations in Language Teaching, the study investigates how published academics and students writing their MA dissertations present claims based on the results of their research. Drawing on a genre-based description of moves and steps in final sections of research reports (Yang & Allison, 2003), the present study was an intensive investigation of the Commenting on Results move in discussion of results sections. The aims were to develop the description of this move and to explore possible differences in the writing of the authors of published research articles (experts) and master's dissertations (relative novices). (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

This paper reports on the way article writers bring prior texts into biology research articles. It studies the functional moves in which citations occur and their formal features, providing a better understanding of the linguistic resources that are used to construct intertextuality in science. The results show the functions of citations were strongly associated with the rhetorical moves in which they occurred and with particular sections of the research article, although citations providing background information occurred in all the sections. The study also found that integral citations were preferred in the more argumentative moves. Self citations occurred in all moves, suggesting the relevance of networking not only with others' research but also with the authors' own previous studies. These findings may be useful in academic writing courses addressed to non-native English speakers, who need to be made aware of the specific language resources available for the construction of consensus in science to become successful writers. (Contains 4 tables.)

"If"-conditionals are a highly valuable resource in academic discourses, whether spoken or written, as they can be used to hypothesize, hedge, manage interaction with the addressee, and promote or on the contrary circumscribe the scope of research claims. This article analyses how "if"-conditionals are brought into play in three genres of medical discourse: research articles, conference presentations, and editorials. These corpus- and genre-based usages are contrasted with what is predicted in the theory on conditionals and in the explanations learners are likely to have met. Our results indicate that "if"-conditionals are used, both formally and functionally speaking, in very specific ways in the highly focussed, purposeful disciplinary genres. Previous exposure to and training in the use of this common syntactic pattern does not always prepare learners for this reality of discourse practice. A more genre-sensitive approach to the teaching of syntax in the EAP classroom is therefore advocated. (Contains 6 tables and 1 figure.)

This paper compares published writing produced by British and Sudanese medical researchers. Twenty research articles were examined, 10 by British and 10 by Sudanese writers. All had been published in highly regarded international journals. As expected, all 20 articles conformed to editorial requirements and followed the conventional IMRD structure to a large extent. Differences were noted in the realisation of these components, however, and particularly in the discussion section where the reported findings were interpreted in terms of their significance and relevance. The British and Sudanese writers differed in their use of hedging, and the British writing made far greater use of nominalisation, both to express authorial disinterestedness and to realise processes and attributes in a more succinct way. Such variations are subtle and may not be immediately obvious to the reader, but could usefully inform the content of academic writing courses in Sudanese medical schools. (Contains 4 tables.)

This paper reports a corpus investigation of the Methods sections of research-reporting articles in academic journals. In published pedagogic materials, Swales and Feak [Swales, J. M., & Feak, C. (1994). Academic writing for graduate students. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; Swales, J. M., & Feak, C. (2000). English in today's research world. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.], while not offering a generic structure, discuss the tendencies for Methods sections reporting research in the social sciences to be "slow" (or "extended"), and those in the physical sciences, such as medicine and engineering, to be "fast" (or "compressed")--the metaphors of speed or density relating to the degree of elaboration employed in describing and justifying the research design and process. The aim of this study is to examine the differences between fast and slow tendencies in Methods sections in terms of their internal, cognitive discourse organization. Two small corpora, each consisting of thirty Methods sections (one for each of the two groups of subjects), are analyzed in two ways. First the corpora are rater-analyzed for their use of the organizational features of a "cognitive genre" model for textual structures (see Bruce, I. J. (2005). Syllabus design for general EAP courses: a cognitive approach. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 4(3), 239-256.) and secondly by the use of corpus software for linguistic features that characterize the model. The findings of the study suggest that "fast" Methods sections that report research in the physical sciences generally employ a "means-focused" discourse structure, and "slow" Methods sections in social science reports tend to employ a combination of "chronological" and "non-sequential" descriptive structures. The study concludes that learner writers may benefit from access to the types of general, "procedural" knowledge that these discoursal structures employ.

Although research articles (RAs) have been frequently characterised by impersonal language, which entails the use of nominalisations and passive sentences, self-mentions, that is, explicit references to the RA author(s), are found to intermingle with those impersonal constructions. These self-references can be considered a rhetorical strategy that scholars may use to present themselves as authorial selves, promoting themselves and outlining their specific, novel contribution to their discipline. This paper aims at quantitatively and qualitatively analysing the use and distribution of self-mentions--realised by self-references (i.e., first person singular and plural pronouns and possessive adjectives) and self-citations--in a comparable corpus of business management RAs written in English for an international readership by scholars based at North American universities and RAs written in Spanish for a national readership by scholars based at Spanish universities. The former were found to make greater use of self-mentions than the latter. Significant differences were also found in the distribution of self-mentions and the rhetorical functions both groups of scholars most commonly perform through the use of exclusive "we". The different results in both sub-corpora suggest that the use of self-mentions in RAs is not only conditioned by the discipline to which the authors belong but also by the specific cultural context in which RAs are produced and distributed.

Work in corpus linguistics has led to the development of a theory of language as "phraseology" [Hunston, S., & Francis, G. (1999). "Pattern grammar: A corpus-driven approach to the lexical grammar of English." Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sinclair, J. M. (1991). "Corpus, concordance, collocation." Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sinclair, J. M. (2004). "Trust the text: Language, corpus and discourse." London: Routledge.]. This paper investigates whether and to what extent phraseology, as exemplified by the grammar patterns "it" v-link ADJ that- (e.g. "It is clear that the problem of evidence continues to vex new historicist criticism") and "it" v-link ADJ to-inf (e.g. "it is important to compare unemployment rates on a consistent basis"), varies or remains consistent across four multi-million word corpora representing two different genres (research articles and book reviews) and two different disciplinary discourses (History and Literary Criticism), and is therefore at least partly constitutive of these generic and discursive formations. A quantitative analysis of the corpus data reveals significant and systematic distributional trends across both genres and disciplines, and a qualitative analysis of concordance lines confirms that these trends are not arbitrary but motivated by genre-specific purposes and discipline-specific practices, respectively. The paper concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and pedagogical implications of the study, and by making suggestions for further research. (Contains 6 tables.)

The present study assumes that, despite the relative uniformity of research articles (RAs) imposed by the requirements of the genre, there may be intercultural variation in the rhetorical preferences of different writing cultures. This study develops further Moreno's [Text 18 (1998) 545] model for the comparison of the metatext employed in English and Spanish to signal premise-conclusion intersentential coherence relations. It does so by focusing on the types and preference of use of retrospective cohesive mechanisms employed in premise-conclusion metatext to label the premise from which the upcoming conclusion is to be drawn. Variability is sought in different aspects of the label arriving at the following conclusions: (1) With regards to the extent to which authors make explicit reference to the stretch of discourse from which the upcoming conclusion is to be drawn, Spanish academics show a greater tendency towards the use of fuzzy labels; (2) The overall distribution of the lexical range of labels is also different, with English showing a greater tendency towards the use of non-metalinguistic labels. Retrospective labels have a greater tendency to add interpersonal meanings in English both (3) through the label itself and (4) through its modification; (5) The various ways in which modifiers in retrospective labels add ideational meaning seem to be distributed differently. (Contains 5 tables.)

Raises a number of methodological questions about the universality of commonly applied linguistic categories by offering a critical reading of the adverbial "evidently" as it appears in a corpus of contemporary research articles. Analyzes the adverbial from three general vantage points: its function as hedge or booster; the way it intervenes in the overall "meta-textual" strategy; the way it intervenes in the over-all "meta-pragmatic" strategy. (Author/VWL)

Reports on a study of evaluation in research article abstracts across disciplines. Results show differences in the manifestation, number, and type of explicit evaluations in the abstracts belonging to different disciplines in the field of the humanities, social and natural sciences. Also revealed differences in the rhetorical structure of the abstracts, in particular in the human sciences. (Author/VWL)

Attempts to isolate some of the aspects in which the evaluative language most typical of research articles produced within the discipline of art history differs from the evaluation prevalent in academic discourse in other fields. (Author/VWL)

Abstract: Getting papers published in the (largely English-language) international literature is important for individual researchers, their institutions, and the academic community, and the resulting pressure is being felt increasingly in China as a result of top-down policy initiatives. For many researchers, reaching this goal involves two intersecting aspects: developing very specific skills in English as an additional language, often from an initial intermediate proficiency level; and learning to meet the discipline-specific expectations of English-speaking journal referees and editors. This paper describes and evaluates workshops, designed to improve the publication skills of researchers in the agricultural and environmental sciences, which seek explicitly to address both aspects. Key features include a collaborative presentation team consisting of an EAP practitioner and practising scientists who are experienced referees, and methodology based on research findings from genre analysis and EAP. The paper analyses evaluative data from four workshops in China during 2001–2003. Findings include high satisfaction levels of participants, strong endorsement of the value of the collaborating-colleague presentation team, and significantly increased confidence to write a paper in English for international submission. The only participant characteristic associated with best benefit was a completed higher degree. Implications are presented for future practice. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]