| The academic journal is an important carrier of academic research results, and a major means to communicate the research results promptly. Academic journals provide scholars not only chances to publish their own research studies and access to research studies of other scholars, but also a platform for scholars to communicate and debate on certain research topics. In the western English academic journals, as well as research papers, genres such as editorials, Letters to the Editor and news section are also published as means of academic communication. Yet, despite the important communicative functions they serve, these genres remain a neglected field among discourse analysis. The present study aims to investigate one of these genres: academic journal editorials,in order to find out its generic structure and lexical features as well.In the present research, the corpora were selected from 4 academic western English journals in medicine and 4 journals in social sciences respectively, ranging from 2002 to 2007. Then 36 editorials were collected from medical journals to form the corpora MC (Medicine Corpora), and 36 were collected from social sciences to form the corpora SSC (Social Sciences Corpora). Swales'(1990) CARS model was employed in the present study as the theoretical frame pattern in identifying the semantic units. The linguistic feature of lexis was also examined.The results show that some degree of variation exists despite a certain degree of homogeneity between the medical and social science journal editorials. The main findings are as follows:â‘ In the present corpus, editorials in MC are recognized to consist of 6 moves: Move 1 (making topic generalizations), Move 2 (reviewing previous knowledge), Move 3 (establishing a niche), Move 4 (presenting the study/studies under review), Move 5 (addressing limitations and inconsistencies of the study/studies under review) and Move 6 (conclusion). Among the 6 moves, Move 1, Move2, Move 3, Move 4 and Move 6 are obligatory moves. Editorials in SSC are also recognized to be made up of those 6 moves, while there are only 3 obligatory moves: Move 1, Move 4 and Move 6.â‘¡One significant variation occurring in the two disciplines is Move 5 (addressing limitations and inconsistencies of the study/studies under review). This move accounts for 50% in MC while only 5.6% in SSC. The author suggests that medical editorials tend to evaluate both positively and negatively on the reviewed study, while social science editorials tend to focus on positive evaluation of the reviewed studies in the corpus of the present study.â‘¢As to the numbers of moves contained in academic journal editorials, the most frequent move pattern in MC is 5M which accounts for 33.3%, while the most frequent move pattern in SSC is 3M which accounts for 41.7%. Generally, the author suggests, the generic structure of medical journal editorials is more mature and stable than that of social science editorials in the corpus of the present study.â‘£The evaluative characteristics of editorials are also recognized in lexis. In Move 4, adjectives, adverbs, verbs and nouns with positive evaluative value are found in both MC and SSC and there are seven words which are shared by the two disciplines:"first","great","innovative","new","opportunity","further"and"confirm". In Move 5, a sharp variation occurs. While there are numbers of adjectives, adverbs, verbs and nouns with negative evaluative value recognized in MC, there are only three kinds of words with negative evaluative value found in SSC."Only"is the one shared word between the two disciplines in terms of negative value. The author suggests that medical editorials are more critical than social science editorials in the corpus of the present study.As a whole, this study examines the main generic structures of medical and social science editorials published in western English academic journals, and their main lexical characteristics. It is hoped that the present study can enrich the current knowledge of academic genres and provide the basis for a genre-based approach to academic reading and writing for L2 (Second Language) and EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students as well as teachers in the field of applied linguistics. |
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