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A cross-disciplinary analysis of thematic structure of dissertation abstracts

journal contribution
posted on 2013-08-01, 00:00 authored by S Arizavi, Hossein Shokouhi, S Mousavi
The ways by which the academic texts are investigated differ from time to time with legacies of each tradition influencing the subsequent approaches. One of the approaches that has not lost its favor ever since it was established is the Australian Systemic Functional tradition. Based on the descriptions provided by this tradition, in this study, the thematic structure (Halliday, 1994) of the gap indication move and the Introduction section (Swales, 2004) of 120 dissertation abstracts from six disciplines was investigated at two levels, i.e. choice of theme type and thematic progression. The simple topical theme was recognized as the typical theme of the rhetorical units in focus across the six disciplines. With respect to the thematic progression, the theme-reiteration and zig-zag patterns were found to be the characteristic patterns. These results indicate that the language of abstracts is remarkably factual and far from abstraction.

History

Journal

Iranian EFL journal

Volume

9

Issue

4

Season

Article 7

Pagination

94 - 112

Publisher

Iranian EFL Journal

Location

Tehran, Iran

ISSN

1836-8751

eISSN

1836-8743

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2013, Iranian EFL Journal

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